`You'll never get it in houses and furniture -- or even clothes.Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man.And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible.And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you.It is all horrible.It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation.You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure.
You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside.'
She stood in the street contemplating.
`And we are never to have a complete place of our own -- never a home?'
she said.
`Pray God, in this world, no,' he answered.
`But there's only this world,' she objected.
He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference.
`Meanwhile, then, we'll avoid having things of our own,' he said.
`But you've just bought a chair,' she said.
`I can tell the man I don't want it,' he replied.
She pondered again.Then a queer little movement twitched her face.
`No,' she said, `we don't want it.I'm sick of old things.'
`New ones as well,' he said.
They retraced their steps.
There -- in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth.She was fair, rather short, stout.He was of medium height, attractively built.His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned.
`Let us give it to them ,' whispered Ursula.`Look they are getting a home together.'
` I won't aid abet them in it,' he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female.
`Oh yes,' cried Ursula.`It's right for them -- there's nothing else for them.'
`Very well,' said Birkin, `you offer it to them.I'll watch.'
Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand -- or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing.
`We bought a chair,' said Ursula, `and we don't want it.Would you have it? We should be glad if you would.'
The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them.
`Would you care for it?' repeated Ursula.`It's really very pretty -- but -- but --' she smiled rather dazzlingly.
The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do.And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can.
`We wanted to give it to you,' explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them.She was attracted by the young man.He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle.His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark.His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn.He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed.
His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless, trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat.
Ursula had apprehended him with a fine frisson of attraction.
The full-built woman was staring offensively.Again Ursula forgot him.
`Won't you have the chair?' she said.
The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet faroff, almost insolent.The woman drew herself up.There was a certain costermonger richness about her.She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile.Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened.
`What's the matter?' he said, smiling.His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures.The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth:
`What she warnt? -- eh?' An odd smile writhed his lips.
Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids.
`To give you a chair -- that -- with the label on it,' he said, pointing.
The man looked at the object indicated.There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men.
`What's she warnt to give it us for, guvnor,' he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula.
`Thought you'd like it -- it's a pretty chair.We bought it and don't want it.No need for you to have it, don't be frightened,' said Birkin, with a wry smile.
The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising.
`Why don't you want it for yourselves, if you've just bought it?' asked the woman coolly.`'Taint good enough for you, now you've had a look at it.Frightened it's got something in it, eh?'
She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment.
`I'd never thought of that,' said Birkin.`But no, the wood's too thin everywhere.'
`You see,' said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased.` We are just going to get married, and we thought we'd buy things.Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn't have furniture, we'd go abroad.'
The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation.They appreciated each other.The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth.He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence.
