`Here we are,' said Birkin.And on her side she saw: `Elsass -- Lothringen -- Luxembourg, Metz -- Basle.'
`That was it, Basle!'
The porter came up.
`A Bale -- deuxieme classe? -- Voila!' And he clambered into the high train.They followed.The compartments were already some of them taken.
But many were dim and empty.The luggage was stowed, the porter was tipped.
`Nous avons encore -- ?' said Birkin, looking at his watch and at the porter.
`Encore une demi-heure.' With which, in his blue blouse, he disappeared.
He was ugly and insolent.
`Come,' said Birkin.`It is cold.Let us eat.'
There was a coffee-wagon on the platform.They drank hot, watery coffee, and ate the long rolls, split, with ham between, which were such a wide bite that it almost dislocated Ursula's jaw; and they walked beside the high trains.It was all so strange, so extremely desolate, like the underworld, grey, grey, dirt grey, desolate, forlorn, nowhere -- grey, dreary nowhere.
At last they were moving through the night.In the darkness Ursula made out the flat fields, the wet flat dreary darkness of the Continent.They pulled up surprisingly soon -- Bruges! Then on through the level darkness, with glimpses of sleeping farms and thin poplar trees and deserted high-roads.
She sat dismayed, hand in hand with Birkin.He pale, immobile like a revenant himself, looked sometimes out of the window, sometimes closed his eyes.
Then his eyes opened again, dark as the darkness outside.
A flash of a few lights on the darkness -- Ghent station! A few more spectres moving outside on the platform -- then the bell -- then motion again through the level darkness.Ursula saw a man with a lantern come out of a farm by the railway, and cross to the dark farm-buildings.She thought of the Marsh, the old, intimate farm-life at Cossethay.My God, how far was she projected from her childhood, how far was she still to go! In one life-time one travelled through aeons.The great chasm of memory from her childhood in the intimate country surroundings of Cossethay and the Marsh Farm -- she remembered the servant Tilly, who used to give her bread and butter sprinkled with brown sugar, in the old living-room where the grandfather clock had two pink roses in a basket painted above the figures on the face -- and now when she was travelling into the unknown with Birkin, an utter stranger -- was so great, that it seemed she had no identity, that the child she had been, playing in Cossethay churchyard, was a little creature of history, not really herself.
They were at Brussels -- half an hour for breakfast.They got down.
On the great station clock it said six o'clock.They had coffee and rolls and honey in the vast desert refreshment room, so dreary, always so dreary, dirty, so spacious, such desolation of space.But she washed her face and hands in hot water, and combed her hair -- that was a blessing.
Soon they were in the train again and moving on.The greyness of dawn began.There were several people in the compartment, large florid Belgian business-men with long brown beards, talking incessantly in an ugly French she was too tired to follow.
It seemed the train ran by degrees out of the darkness into a faint light, then beat after beat into the day.Ah, how weary it was! Faintly, the trees showed, like shadows.Then a house, white, had a curious distinctness.
How was it? Then she saw a village -- there were always houses passing.
This was an old world she was still journeying through, winter-heavy and dreary.There was plough-land and pasture, and copses of bare trees, copses of bushes, and homesteads naked and work-bare.No new earth had come to pass.
She looked at Birkin's face.It was white and still and eternal, too eternal.She linked her fingers imploringly in his, under the cover of her rug.His fingers responded, his eyes looked back at her.How dark, like a night, his eyes were, like another world beyond! Oh, if he were the world as well, if only the world were he! If only he could call a world into being, that should be their own world!
The Belgians left, the train ran on, through Luxembourg, through Alsace-Lorraine, through Metz.But she was blind, she could see no more.Her soul did not look out.
They came at last to Basle, to the hotel.It was all a drifting trance, from which she never came to.They went out in the morning, before the train departed.She saw the street, the river, she stood on the bridge.
But it all meant nothing.She remembered some shops -- one full of pictures, one with orange velvet and ermine.But what did these signify? -- nothing.
She was not at ease till they were in the train again.Then she was relieved.So long as they were moving onwards, she was satisfied.They came to Zurich, then, before very long, ran under the mountains, that were deep in snow.At last she was drawing near.This was the other world now.
Innsbruck was wonderful, deep in snow, and evening.They drove in an open sledge over the snow: the train had been so hot and stifling.And the hotel, with the golden light glowing under the porch, seemed like a home.
They laughed with pleasure when they were in the hall.The place seemed full and busy.
`Do you know if Mr and Mrs Crich -- English -- from Paris, have arrived?'
Birkin asked in German.
The porter reflected a moment, and was just going to answer, when Ursula caught sight of Gudrun sauntering down the stairs, wearing her dark glossy coat, with grey fur.
`Gudrun! Gudrun!' she called, waving up the well of the staircase.`Shu-hu!'
Gudrun looked over the rail, and immediately lost her sauntering, diffident air.Her eyes flashed.
`Really -- Ursula!' she cried.And she began to move downstairs as Ursula ran up.They met at a turn and kissed with laughter and exclamations inarticulate and stirring.
`But!' cried Gudrun, mortified.`We thought it was tomorrow you were coming! I wanted to come to the station.'
`No, we've come today!' cried Ursula.`Isn't it lovely here!'
`Adorable!' said Gudrun.`Gerald's just gone out to get something.Ursula, aren't you fearfully tired?'
