Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in thewindow-bay of their father's house in Beldover, working andtalking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-colouredembroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board whichshe held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking astheir thoughts strayed through their minds.'Ursula,' said Gudrun, 'don't you REALLY WANT to getmarried?' Ursula laid her embroidery in her lap and lookedup. Her face was calm and considerate.'I don't know,' she replied. 'It depends how you mean.'Gudrun was slightly taken aback. She watched her sisterfor some moments.'Well,' she said, ironically, 'it usually means one thing!But don't you think anyhow, you'd be—' she darkenedslightly—'in a better position than you are in now.'A shadow came over Ursula's face.'I might,' she said. 'But I'm not sure.'Again Gudrun paused, slightly irritated. She wanted tobe quite definite.'You don't think one needs the EXPERIENCE of havingbeen married?' she asked.'Do you think it need BE an experience?' replied Ursula.
'Bound to be, in some way or other,' said Gudrun, coolly. 'Possibly undesirable, but bound to be an experience ofsome sort.''Not really,' said Ursula. 'More likely to be the end of experience.'Gudrun sat very still, to attend to this.'Of course,' she said, 'there's THAT to consider.' Thisbrought the conversation to a close. Gudrun, almost angrily, took up her rubber and began to rub out part of herdrawing. Ursula stitched absorbedly.'You wouldn't consider a good offer?' asked Gudrun.'I think I've rejected several,' said Ursula.'REALLY!' Gudrun flushed dark—'But anything reallyworth while? Have you REALLY?''A thousand a year, and an awfully nice man. I liked himawfully,' said Ursula.'Really! But weren't you fearfully tempted?''In the abstract but not in the concrete,' said Ursula.'When it comes to the point, one isn't even tempted—oh,if I were tempted, I'd marry like a shot. I'm only tempted NOT to.' The faces of both sisters suddenly lit up withamusement.'Isn't it an amazing thing,' cried Gudrun, 'how strong thetemptation is, not to!' They both laughed, looking at eachother. In their hearts they were frightened.There was a long pause, whilst Ursula stitched andGudrun went on with her sketch. The sisters were women,Ursula twenty-six, and Gudrun twenty-five. But both hadthe remote, virgin look of modern girls, sisters of Artemis rather than of Hebe. Gudrun was very beautiful, passive,soft-skinned, soft-limbed. She wore a dress of dark-bluesilky stuff, with ruches of blue and green linen lace in theneck and sleeves; and she had emerald-green stockings. Herlook of confidence and diffidence contrasted with Ursula'ssensitive expectancy. The provincial people, intimidated byGudrun's perfect sang-froid and exclusive bareness of manner, said of her: 'She is a smart woman.' She had just comeback from London, where she had spent several years, working at an art-school, as a student, and living a studio life.'I was hoping now for a man to come along,' Gudrunsaid, suddenly catching her underlip between her teeth, andmaking a strange grimace, half sly smiling, half anguish.Ursula was afraid.'So you have come home, expecting him here?' shelaughed.'Oh my dear,' cried Gudrun, strident, 'I wouldn't go outof my way to look for him. But if there did happen to comealong a highly attractive individual of sufficient means—well—' she tailed off ironically. Then she looked searchinglyat Ursula, as if to probe her. 'Don't you find yourself gettingbored?' she asked of her sister. 'Don't you find, that thingsfail to materialise? NOTHING MATERIALISES! Everything withers in the bud.''What withers in the bud?' asked Ursula.'Oh, everything—oneself—things in general.' There wasa pause, whilst each sister vaguely considered her fate.'It does frighten one,' said Ursula, and again there was apause. 'But do you hope to get anywhere by just marrying? 'It seems to be the inevitable next step,' said Gudrun. Ursula pondered this, with a little bitterness. She was a classmistress herself, in Willey Green Grammar School, as shehad been for some years.'I know,' she said, 'it seems like that when one thinks inthe abstract. But really imagine it: imagine any man oneknows, imagine him coming home to one every evening,and saying 'Hello,' and giving one a kiss—'There was a blank pause.'Yes,' said Gudrun, in a narrowed voice. 'It's just impossible. The man makes it impossible.''Of course there's children—' said Ursula doubtfully.Gudrun's face hardened.'Do you REALLY want children, Ursula?' she asked coldly. A dazzled, baffled look came on Ursula's face.'One feels it is still beyond one,' she said.'DO you feel like that?' asked Gudrun. 'I get no feelingwhatever from the thought of bearing children.'Gudrun looked at Ursula with a masklike, expressionlessface. Ursula knitted her brows.'Perhaps it isn't genuine,' she faltered. 'Perhaps onedoesn't really want them, in one's soul—only superficially.'A hardness came over Gudrun's face. She did not want tobe too definite.'When one thinks of other people's children—' said Ursula.Again Gudrun looked at her sister, almost hostile.'Exactly,' she said, to close the conversation.The two sisters worked on in silence, Ursula having al-ways that strange brightness of an essential flame that iscaught, meshed, contravened. She lived a good deal by herself, to herself, working, passing on from day to day, andalways thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it inher own understanding. Her active living was suspended,but underneath, in the darkness, something was coming topass. If only she could break through the last integuments!She seemed to try and put her hands out, like an infant inthe womb, and she could not, not yet. Still she had a strangeprescience, an intimation of something yet to come.She laid down her work and looked at her sister. Shethought Gudrun so CHARMING, so infinitely charming,in her softness and her fine, exquisite richness of textureand delicacy of line. There was a certain playfulness abouther too, such a piquancy or ironic suggestion, such an untouched reserve. Ursula admired her with all her soul.'Why did you come home, Prune?' she asked.Gudrun knew she was being admired. She sat back fromher drawing and looked at Ursula, from under her finelycurved lashes.'Why did I come back, Ursula?' she repeated. 'I haveasked myself a thousand times.''And don't you know?''Yes, I think I do. I think my coming back home was justRECULER POUR MIEUX SAUTER.'And she looked with a long, slow look of knowledge atUrsula.'I know!' cried Ursula, looking slightly dazzled and falsified, and as if she did NOT know. 'But where can one jump to?''Oh, it doesn't matter,' said Gudrun, somewhat superbly.'If one jumps over the edge, one is bound to land somewhere.''But isn't it very risky?' asked Ursula.A slow mocking smile dawned on Gudrun's face.'Ah!' she said laughing. 'What is it all but words!' Andso again she closed the conversation. But Ursula was stillbrooding.'And how do you find home, now you have come back toit?' she asked.Gudrun paused for some moments, coldly, before answering. Then, in a cold truthful voice, she said:'I find myself completely out of it.''And father?'Gudrun looked at Ursula, almost with resentment, as ifbrought to bay.'I haven't thought about him: I've refrained,' she saidcoldly.'Yes,' wavered Ursula; and the conversation was really atan end. The sisters found themselves confronted by a void, aterrifying chasm, as if they had looked over the edge.They worked on in silence for some time, Gudrun's cheekwas flushed with repressed emotion. She resented its havingbeen called into being.'Shall we go out and look at that wedding?' she asked atlength, in a voice that was too casual.'Yes!' cried Ursula, too eagerly, throwing aside her sewing and leaping up, as if to escape something, thus betraying the tension of the situation and causing a friction of disliketo go over Gudrun's nerves.As she went upstairs, Ursula was aware of the house, ofher home round about her. And she loathed it, the sordid,too-familiar place! She was afraid at the depth of her feeling against the home, the milieu, the whole atmosphere andcondition of this obsolete life. Her feeling frightened her.The two girls were soon walking swiftly down the mainroad of Beldover, a wide street, part shops, part dwelling-houses, utterly formless and sordid, without poverty.Gudrun, new from her life in Chelsea and Sussex, shrankcruelly from this amorphous ugliness of a small collierytown in the Midlands. Yet forward she went, through thewhole sordid gamut of pettiness, the long amorphous, grittystreet. She was exposed to every stare, she passed on througha stretch of torment. It was strange that she should havechosen to come back and test the full effect of this shapeless, barren ugliness upon herself. Why had she wanted tosubmit herself to it, did she still want to submit herself to it,the insufferable torture of these ugly, meaningless people,this defaced countryside? She felt like a beetle toiling in thedust. She was filled with repulsion.They turned off the main road, past a black patch of common-garden, where sooty cabbage stumps stood shameless.No one thought to be ashamed. No one was ashamed of itall.'It is like a country in an underworld,' said Gudrun.'The colliers bring it above-ground with them, shovel it up.Ursula, it's marvellous, it's really marvellous—it's really wonderful, another world. The people are all ghouls, andeverything is ghostly. Everything is a ghoulish replica of thereal world, a replica, a ghoul, all soiled, everything sordid.It's like being mad, Ursula.'The sisters were crossing a black path through a dark,soiled field. On the left was a large landscape, a valley withcollieries, and opposite hills with cornfields and woods, allblackened with distance, as if seen through a veil of crape.White and black smoke rose up in steady columns, magic within the dark air. Near at hand came the long rows ofdwellings, approaching curved up the hill-slope, in straightlines along the brow of the hill. They were of darkened redbrick, brittle, with dark slate roofs. The path on which thesisters walked was black, trodden-in by the feet of the recurrent colliers, and bounded from the field by iron fences;the stile that led again into the road was rubbed shiny bythe moleskins of the passing miners. Now the two girlswere going between some rows of dwellings, of the poorersort. Women, their arms folded over their coarse aprons,standing gossiping at the end of their block, stared after theBrangwen sisters with that long, unwearying stare of aborigines; children called out names.Gudrun went on her way half dazed. If this were humanlife, if these were human beings, living in a complete world,then what was her own world, outside? She was aware of hergrass-green stockings, her large grass-green velour hat, herfull soft coat, of a strong blue colour. And she felt as if shewere treading in the air, quite unstable, her heart was contracted, as if at any minute she might be precipitated to the ground. She was afraid.She clung to Ursula, who, through long usage was inuredto this violation of a dark, uncreated, hostile world. But allthe time her heart was crying, as if in the midst of someordeal: 'I want to go back, I want to go away, I want not toknow it, not to know that this exists.' Yet she must go forward.Ursula could feel her suffering.'You hate this, don't you?' she asked.'It bewilders me,' stammered Gudrun.'You won't stay long,' replied Ursula.And Gudrun went along, grasping at release.They drew away from the colliery region, over the curveof the hill, into the purer country of the other side, towardsWilley Green. Still the faint glamour of blackness persisted over the fields and the wooded hills, and seemed darklyto gleam in the air. It was a spring day, chill, with snatches of sunshine. Yellow celandines showed out from thehedge-bottoms, and in the cottage gardens of Willey Green,currant-bushes were breaking into leaf, and little flowerswere coming white on the grey alyssum that hung over thestone walls.Turning, they passed down the high-road, that went between high banks towards the church. There, in the lowestbend of the road, low under the trees, stood a little group ofexpectant people, waiting to see the wedding. The daughterof the chief mine-owner of the district, Thomas Crich, wasgetting married to a naval officer.'Let us go back,' said Gudrun, swerving away. 'There are all those people.'And she hung wavering in the road.'Never mind them,' said Ursula, 'they're all right. Theyall know me, they don't matter.''But must we go through them?' asked Gudrun.'They're quite all right, really,' said Ursula, going forward.And together the two sisters approached the group of uneasy, watchful common people. They were chiefly women,colliers' wives of the more shiftless sort. They had watchful,underworld faces.The two sisters held themselves tense, and went straighttowards the gate. The women made way for them, but barelysufficient, as if grudging to yield ground. The sisters passedin silence through the stone gateway and up the steps, onthe red carpet, a policeman estimating their progress.'What price the stockings!' said a voice at the back ofGudrun. A sudden fierce anger swept over the girl, violentand murderous. She would have liked them all annihilated,cleared away, so that the world was left clear for her. Howshe hated walking up the churchyard path, along the redcarpet, continuing in motion, in their sight.'I won't go into the church,' she said suddenly, with suchfinal decision that Ursula immediately halted, turned round,and branched off up a small side path which led to the littleprivate gate of the Grammar School, whose grounds adjoined those of the church.Just inside the gate of the school shrubbery, outside thechurchyard, Ursula sat down for a moment on the low stonewall under the laurel bushes, to rest. Behind her, the large red building of the school rose up peacefully, the windowsall open for the holiday. Over the shrubs, before her, werethe pale roofs and tower of the old church. The sisters werehidden by the foliage.Gudrun sat down in silence. Her mouth was shut close,her face averted. She was regretting bitterly that she had evercome back. Ursula looked at her, and thought how amazingly beautiful she was, flushed with discomfiture. But shecaused a constraint over Ursula's nature, a certain weariness. Ursula wished to be alone, freed from the tightness,the enclosure of Gudrun's presence.'Are we going to stay here?' asked Gudrun.'I was only resting a minute,' said Ursula, getting up as ifrebuked. 'We will stand in the corner by the fives-court, weshall see everything from there.'For the moment, the sunshine fell brightly into thechurchyard, there was a vague scent of sap and of spring,perhaps of violets from off the graves. Some white daisieswere out, bright as angels. In the air, the unfolding leaves ofa copper-beech were blood-red.Punctually at eleven o'clock, the carriages began toarrive. There was a stir in the crowd at the gate, a concentration as a carriage drove up, wedding guests were mountingup the steps and passing along the red carpet to the church.They were all gay and excited because the sun was shining.Gudrun watched them closely, with objective curiosity.She saw each one as a complete figure, like a character ina book, or a subject in a picture, or a marionette in a theatre, a finished creation. She loved to recognise their various
