For always, except in her moments of excitement, she felt a want within herself.She was unsure.She had felt that now, at last, in Gerald's strong and violent love, she was living fully and finally.But when she compared herself with Ursula, already her soul was jealous, unsatisfied.She was not satisfied -- she was never to be satisfied.
What was she short of now? It was marriage -- it was the wonderful stability of marriage.She did want it, let her say what she might.She had been lying.The old idea of marriage was right even now -- marriage and the home.Yet her mouth gave a little grimace at the words.She thought of Gerald and Shortlands -- marriage and the home! Ah well, let it rest! He meant a great deal to her -- but -- ! Perhaps it was not in her to marry.
She was one of life's outcasts, one of the drifting lives that have no root.No, no it could not be so.She suddenly conjured up a rosy room, with herself in a beautiful gown, and a handsome man in evening dress who held her in his arms in the firelight, and kissed her.This picture she entitled `Home.' It would have done for the Royal Academy.
`Come with us to tea -- do ,' said Ursula, as they ran nearer to the cottage of Willey Green.
`Thanks awfully -- but I must go in -- ' said Gudrun.She wanted very much to go on with Ursula and Birkin.
That seemed like life indeed to her.Yet a certain perversity would not let her.
`Do come -- yes, it would be so nice,' pleaded Ursula.
`I'm awfully sorry -- I should love to -- but I can't -- really --'
She descended from the car in trembling haste.
`Can't you really!' came Ursula's regretful voice.
`No, really I can't,' responded Gudrun's pathetic, chagrined words out of the dusk.
`All right, are you?' called Birkin.
`Quite!' said Gudrun.`Good-night!'
`Good-night,' they called.
`Come whenever you like, we shall be glad,' called Birkin.
`Thank you very much,' called Gudrun, in the strange, twanging voice of lonely chagrin that was very puzzling to him.She turned away to her cottage gate, and they drove on.But immediately she stood to watch them, as the car ran vague into the distance.And as she went up the path to her strange house, her heart was full of incomprehensible bitterness.
In her parlour was a long-case clock, and inserted into its dial was a ruddy, round, slant-eyed, joyous-painted face, that wagged over with the most ridiculous ogle when the clock ticked, and back again with the same absurd glad-eye at the next tick.All the time the absurd smooth, brown-ruddy face gave her an obtrusive `glad-eye.' She stood for minutes, watching it, till a sort of maddened disgust overcame her, and she laughed at herself hollowly.And still it rocked, and gave her the glad-eye from one side, then from the other, from one side, then from the other.Ah, how unhappy she was! In the midst of her most active happiness, ah, how unhappy she was! She glanced at the table.Gooseberry jam, and the same home-made cake with too much soda in it! Still, gooseberry jam was good, and one so rarely got it.
All the evening she wanted to go to the Mill.But she coldly refused to allow herself.She went the next afternoon instead.She was happy to find Ursula alone.It was a lovely, intimate secluded atmosphere.They talked endlessly and delightedly.`Aren't you fearfully happy here?'
said Gudrun to her sister glancing at her own bright eyes in the mirror.
She always envied, almost with resentment, the strange positive fullness that subsisted in the atmosphere around Ursula and Birkin.
How really beautifully this room is done,' she said aloud.`This hard plaited matting -- what a lovely colour it is, the colour of cool light!'
And it seemed to her perfect.
