She was isolated now from the life of her childhood, a
foreigner in a new life, of work and mechanical consideration.
She and Maggie, in their dinner-hours and their occasional teas
at the little restaurant, discussed life and ideas. Maggie was a
great suffragette, trusting in the vote. To Ursula the vote was
never a reality. She had within her the strange, passionate
knowledge of religion and living far transcending the limits of
the automatic system that contained the vote. But her
fundamental, organic knowledge had as yet to take form and rise
to utterance. For her, as for Maggie, the liberty of woman meant
something real and deep. She felt that somewhere, in something,
she was not free. And she wanted to be. She was in revolt. For
once she were free she could get somewhere. Ah, the wonderful,
real somewhere that was beyond her, the somewhere that she felt
deep, deep inside her.
In coming out and earning her own living she had made a
strong, cruel move towards freeing herself. But having more
freedom she only became more profoundly aware of the big want.
She wanted so many things. She wanted to read great, beautiful
books, and be rich with them; she wanted to see beautiful
things, and have the joy of them for ever; she wanted to know
big, free people; and there remained always the want she could
put no name to.
It was so difficult. There were so many things, so much to
meet and surpass. And one never knew where one was going. It was
a blind fight. She had suffered bitterly in this school of St.
Philip's. She was like a young filly that has been broken in to
the shafts, and has lost its freedom. And now she was suffering
bitterly from the agony of the shafts. The agony, the galling,
the ignominy of her breaking in. This wore into her soul. But
she would never submit. To shafts like these she would never
submit for long. But she would know them. She would serve them
that she might destroy them.
She and Maggie went to all kinds of places together, to big
suffrage meetings in Nottingham, to concerts, to theatres, to
exhibitions of pictures. Ursula saved her money and bought a
bicycle, and the two girls rode to Lincoln, to Southwell, and
into Derbyshire. They had an endless wealth of things to talk
about. And it was a great joy, finding, discovering.
But Ursula never told about Winifred Inger. That was a sort
of secret side-show to her life, never to be opened. She did not
even think of it. It was the closed door she had not the
strength to open.
Once she was broken in to her teaching, Ursula began
gradually to have a new life of her own again. She was going to
college in eighteen months' time. Then she would take her
degree, and she would--ah, she would perhaps be a big
woman, and lead a movement. Who knows?--At any rate she
would go to college in eighteen months' time. All that mattered
now was work, work.