Yet the sledges ran up in fine style, people came to the door laughing
and excited, the floor of the hostel rang hollow, the passage was wet
with snow, it was a real, warm interior.
The new-comers tramped up the bare wooden stairs, following the serving
woman. Gudrun and Gerald took the first bedroom. In a moment they found
themselves alone in a bare, smallish, close-shut room that was all of
golden-coloured wood, floor, walls, ceiling, door, all of the same warm
gold panelling of oiled pine. There was a window opposite the door, but
low down, because the roof sloped. Under the slope of the ceiling were
the table with wash-hand bowl and jug, and across, another table with
mirror. On either side the door were two beds piled high with an
enormous blue-checked overbolster, enormous.
This was all--no cupboard, none of the amenities of life. Here they
were shut up together in this cell of golden-coloured wood, with two
blue checked beds. They looked at each other and laughed, frightened by
this naked nearness of isolation.
A man knocked and came in with the luggage. He was a sturdy fellow with
flattish cheek-bones, rather pale, and with coarse fair moustache.
Gudrun watched him put down the bags, in silence, then tramp heavily
out.
'It isn't too rough, is it?' Gerald asked.
The bedroom was not very warm, and she shivered slightly.
'It is wonderful,' she equivocated. 'Look at the colour of this
panelling--it's wonderful, like being inside a nut.' He was standing watching her, feeling his short-cut moustache, leaning
back slightly and watching her with his keen, undaunted eyes, dominated
by the constant passion, that was like a doom upon him.
She went and crouched down in front of the window, curious.
'Oh, but this--!' she cried involuntarily, almost in pain.
In front was a valley shut in under the sky, the last huge slopes of
snow and black rock, and at the end, like the navel of the earth, a
white-folded wall, and two peaks glimmering in the late light. Straight
in front ran the cradle of silent snow, between the great slopes that
were fringed with a little roughness of pine-trees, like hair, round
the base. But the cradle of snow ran on to the eternal closing-in,
where the walls of snow and rock rose impenetrable, and the mountain
peaks above were in heaven immediate. This was the centre, the knot,
the navel of the world, where the earth belonged to the skies, pure,
unapproachable, impassable.
It filled Gudrun with a strange rapture. She crouched in front of the
window, clenching her face in her hands, in a sort of trance. At last
she had arrived, she had reached her place. Here at last she folded her
venture and settled down like a crystal in the navel of snow, and was
gone.