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diff --git a/4240-h/4240-h.htm b/4240-h/4240-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..74b50a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/4240-h/4240-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,35997 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Women in Love, by D. H. 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H. Lawrence</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Women in Love</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: D. H. Lawrence</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December 14, 2001 [eBook #4240]<br /> +[Most recently updated: September 9, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Col Choat</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN IN LOVE ***</div> + +<h1>Women in Love</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by D. H. Lawrence</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER I. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap01">Sisters</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER II. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap02">Shortlands</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER III. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap03">Class-room</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER IV. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap04">Diver</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER V. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap05">In the Train</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER VI. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap06">Crème de Menthe</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER VII. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap07">Fetish</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER VIII. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap08">Breadalby</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER IX. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap09">Coal-dust</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER X. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap10">Sketch-book</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XI. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap11">An Island</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XII. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap12">Carpeting</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XIII. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap13">Mino</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XIV. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap14">Water-party</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XV. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap15">Sunday Evening</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XVI. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap16">Man to Man</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XVII. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap17">The Industrial Magnate</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XVIII. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap18">Rabbit</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XIX. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap19">Moony</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XX. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap20">Gladiatorial</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XXI. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap21">Threshold</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XXII. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap22">Woman to Woman</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XXIII. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap23">Excurse</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XXIV. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap24">Death and Love</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XXV. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap25">Marriage or Not</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XXVI. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap26">A Chair</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XXVII. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap27">Flitting</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XXVIII. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap28">Gudrun in the Pompadour</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XXIX. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap29">Continental</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XXX. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap30">Snowed Up</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XXXI. </td> +<td> +<a href="#chap31">Exeunt</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.<br/> +SISTERS</h2> + +<p> +Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their +father’s house in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a +piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which +she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts strayed +through their minds. +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula,” said Gudrun, “don’t you <i>really want</i> +to get married?” Ursula laid her embroidery in her lap and looked up. Her +face was calm and considerate. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she replied. “It depends how you +mean.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was slightly taken aback. She watched her sister for some moments. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she said, ironically, “it usually means one thing! +But don’t you think anyhow, you’d be—” she darkened +slightly—“in a better position than you are in now.” +</p> + +<p> +A shadow came over Ursula’s face. +</p> + +<p> +“I might,” she said. “But I’m not sure.” +</p> + +<p> +Again Gudrun paused, slightly irritated. She wanted to be quite definite. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t think one needs the <i>experience</i> of having been +married?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think it need <i>be</i> an experience?” replied Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Bound to be, in some way or other,” said Gudrun, coolly. +“Possibly undesirable, but bound to be an experience of some sort.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not really,” said Ursula. “More likely to be the end of +experience.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun sat very still, to attend to this. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” she said, “there’s <i>that</i> to +consider.” This brought the conversation to a close. Gudrun, almost +angrily, took up her rubber and began to rub out part of her drawing. Ursula +stitched absorbedly. +</p> + +<p> +“You wouldn’t consider a good offer?” asked Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“I think I’ve rejected several,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Really!</i>” Gudrun flushed dark—“But anything +really worth while? Have you <i>really?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“A thousand a year, and an awfully nice man. I liked him +awfully,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Really! But weren’t you fearfully tempted?” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>not</i> +to.” The faces of both sisters suddenly lit up with amusement. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it an amazing thing,” cried Gudrun, “how +strong the temptation is, not to!” They both laughed, looking at each +other. In their hearts they were frightened. +</p> + +<p> +There was a long pause, whilst Ursula stitched and Gudrun went on with her +sketch. The sisters were women, Ursula twenty-six, and Gudrun twenty-five. But +both had the 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-blue silky stuff, with ruches of blue and green linen lace in +the neck and sleeves; and she had emerald-green stockings. Her look of +confidence and diffidence contrasted with Ursula’s sensitive expectancy. +The provincial people, intimidated by Gudrun’s perfect <i>sang-froid</i> and +exclusive bareness of manner, said of her: “She is a smart woman.” +She had just come back from London, where she had spent several years, working +at an art-school, as a student, and living a studio life. +</p> + +<p> +“I was hoping now for a man to come along,” Gudrun said, +suddenly catching her underlip between her teeth, and making a strange grimace, +half sly smiling, half anguish. Ursula was afraid. +</p> + +<p> +“So you have come home, expecting him here?” she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh my dear,” cried Gudrun, strident, “I wouldn’t go +out of my way to look for him. But if there did happen to come along a highly +attractive individual of sufficient means—well—” she tailed +off ironically. Then she looked searchingly at Ursula, as if to probe her. +“Don’t you find yourself getting bored?” she asked of her +sister. “Don’t you find, that things fail to materialize? <i>Nothing +materializes!</i> Everything withers in the bud.” +</p> + +<p> +“What withers in the bud?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, everything—oneself—things in general.” There +was a pause, whilst each sister vaguely considered her fate. +</p> + +<p> +“It does frighten one,” said Ursula, and again there was a +pause. “But do you hope to get anywhere by just marrying?” +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to be the inevitable next step,” said Gudrun. Ursula +pondered this, with a little bitterness. She was a class mistress herself, in +Willey Green Grammar School, as she had been for some years. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” she said, “it seems like that when one thinks in +the abstract. But really imagine it: imagine any man one knows, imagine him +coming home to one every evening, and saying ‘Hello,’ and giving one a +kiss—” +</p> + +<p> +There was a blank pause. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gudrun, in a narrowed voice. “It’s just +impossible. The man makes it impossible.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course there’s children—” said Ursula +doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun’s face hardened. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you <i>really</i> want children, Ursula?” she asked coldly. +A dazzled, baffled look came on Ursula’s face. +</p> + +<p> +“One feels it is still beyond one,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Do</i> you feel like that?” asked Gudrun. “I get no feeling +whatever from the thought of bearing children.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked at Ursula with a masklike, expressionless face. Ursula knitted +her brows. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps it isn’t genuine,” she faltered. “Perhaps +one doesn’t really want them, in one’s soul—only +superficially.” A hardness came over Gudrun’s face. She did not want +to be too definite. +</p> + +<p> +“When one thinks of other people’s children—” said +Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +Again Gudrun looked at her sister, almost hostile. +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly,” she said, to close the conversation. +</p> + +<p> +The two sisters worked on in silence, Ursula having always that strange +brightness of an essential flame that is caught, meshed, contravened. She lived +a good deal by herself, to herself, working, passing on from day to day, and +always thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it in her own +understanding. Her active living was suspended, but underneath, in the darkness, +something was coming to pass. If only she could break through the last +integuments! She seemed to try and put her hands out, like an infant in the +womb, and she could not, not yet. Still she had a strange prescience, an +intimation of something yet to come. +</p> + +<p> +She laid down her work and looked at her sister. She thought Gudrun so +<i>charming</i>, so infinitely charming, in her softness and her fine, exquisite +richness of texture and delicacy of line. There was a certain playfulness about +her too, such a piquancy or ironic suggestion, such an untouched reserve. Ursula +admired her with all her soul. +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you come home, Prune?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun knew she was being admired. She sat back from her drawing and looked +at Ursula, from under her finely-curved lashes. +</p> + +<p> +“Why did I come back, Ursula?” she repeated. “I have asked +myself a thousand times.” +</p> + +<p> +“And don’t you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I think I do. I think my coming back home was just <i>reculer pour +mieux sauter</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +And she looked with a long, slow look of knowledge at Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“I know!” cried Ursula, looking slightly dazzled and falsified, +and as if she did <i>not</i> know. “But where can one jump to?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said Gudrun, somewhat superbly. +“If one jumps over the edge, one is bound to land somewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“But isn’t it very risky?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +A slow mocking smile dawned on Gudrun’s face. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” she said laughing. “What is it all but words!” +And so again she closed the conversation. But Ursula was still brooding. +</p> + +<p> +“And how do you find home, now you have come back to it?” she +asked. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun paused for some moments, coldly, before answering. Then, in a cold +truthful voice, she said: +</p> + +<p> +“I find myself completely out of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And father?” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked at Ursula, almost with resentment, as if brought to bay. +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t thought about him: I’ve refrained,” she +said coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” wavered Ursula; and the conversation was really at an +end. The sisters found themselves confronted by a void, a terrifying chasm, as +if they had looked over the edge. +</p> + +<p> +They worked on in silence for some time, Gudrun’s cheek was flushed +with repressed emotion. She resented its having been called into being. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go out and look at that wedding?” she asked at length, +in a voice that was too casual. +</p> + +<p> +“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 dislike to go over Gudrun’s nerves. +</p> + +<p> +As she went upstairs, Ursula was aware of the house, of her 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 and +condition of this obsolete life. Her feeling frightened her. +</p> + +<p> +The two girls were soon walking swiftly down the main road 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, shrank cruelly +from this amorphous ugliness of a small colliery town in the Midlands. Yet +forward she went, through the whole sordid gamut of pettiness, the long +amorphous, gritty street. She was exposed to every stare, she passed on through +a stretch of torment. It was strange that she should have chosen to come back +and test the full effect of this shapeless, barren ugliness upon herself. Why +had she wanted to submit 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 the dust. She was filled with +repulsion. +</p> + +<p> +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 it all. +</p> + +<p> +“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, and everything is ghostly. Everything +is a ghoulish replica of the real world, a replica, a ghoul, all soiled, +everything sordid. It’s like being mad, Ursula.” +</p> + +<p> +The sisters were crossing a black path through a dark, soiled field. On the +left was a large landscape, a valley with collieries, and opposite hills with +cornfields and woods, all blackened 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 of dwellings, approaching curved up the +hill-slope, in straight lines along the brow of the hill. They were of darkened +red brick, brittle, with dark slate roofs. The path on which the sisters 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 by the moleskins of the passing miners. Now the two girls were going +between some rows of dwellings, of the poorer sort. Women, their arms folded +over their coarse aprons, standing gossiping at the end of their block, stared +after the Brangwen sisters with that long, unwearying stare of aborigines; +children called out names. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun went on her way half dazed. If this were human life, if these were +human beings, living in a complete world, then what was her own world, outside? +She was aware of her grass-green stockings, her large grass-green velour hat, +her full soft coat, of a strong blue colour. And she felt as if she were +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. +</p> + +<p> +She clung to Ursula, who, through long usage was inured to this violation of +a dark, uncreated, hostile world. But all the time her heart was crying, as if +in the midst of some ordeal: “I want to go back, I want to go away, I want +not to know it, not to know that this exists.” Yet she must go forward. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula could feel her suffering. +</p> + +<p> +“You hate this, don’t you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“It bewilders me,” stammered Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“You won’t stay long,” replied Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +And Gudrun went along, grasping at release. +</p> + +<p> +They drew away from the colliery region, over the curve of the hill, into +the purer country of the other side, towards Willey Green. Still the faint +glamour of blackness persisted over the fields and the wooded hills, and seemed +darkly to gleam in the air. It was a spring day, chill, with snatches of +sunshine. Yellow celandines showed out from the hedge-bottoms, and in the +cottage gardens of Willey Green, currant-bushes were breaking into leaf, and +little flowers were coming white on the grey alyssum that hung over the stone +walls. +</p> + +<p> +Turning, they passed down the high-road, that went between high banks +towards the church. There, in the lowest bend of the road, low under the trees, +stood a little group of expectant people, waiting to see the wedding. The +daughter of the chief mine-owner of the district, Thomas Crich, was getting +married to a naval officer. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us go back,” said Gudrun, swerving away. “There are +all those people.” +</p> + +<p> +And she hung wavering in the road. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind them,” said Ursula, “they’re all right. +They all know me, they don’t matter.” +</p> + +<p> +“But must we go through them?” asked Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +The two sisters held themselves tense, and went straight towards the gate. +The women made way for them, but barely sufficient, as if grudging to yield +ground. The sisters passed in silence through the stone gateway and up the +steps, on the red carpet, a policeman estimating their progress. +</p> + +<p> +“What price the stockings!” said a voice at the back of Gudrun. +A sudden fierce anger swept over the girl, violent and murderous. She would have +liked them all annihilated, cleared away, so that the world was left clear for +her. How she hated walking up the churchyard path, along the red carpet, +continuing in motion, in their sight. +</p> + +<p> +“I won’t go into the church,” she said suddenly, with such +final decision that Ursula immediately halted, turned round, and branched off up +a small side path which led to the little private gate of the Grammar School, +whose grounds adjoined those of the church. +</p> + +<p> +Just inside the gate of the school shrubbery, outside the churchyard, Ursula +sat down for a moment on the low stone wall under the laurel bushes, to rest. +Behind her, the large red building of the school rose up peacefully, the windows +all open for the holiday. Over the shrubs, before her, were the pale roofs and +tower of the old church. The sisters were hidden by the foliage. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun sat down in silence. Her mouth was shut close, her face averted. She +was regretting bitterly that she had ever come back. Ursula looked at her, and +thought how amazingly beautiful she was, flushed with discomfiture. But she +caused a constraint over Ursula’s nature, a certain weariness. Ursula +wished to be alone, freed from the tightness, the enclosure of Gudrun’s +presence. +</p> + +<p> +“Are we going to stay here?” asked Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“I was only resting a minute,” said Ursula, getting up as if +rebuked. “We will stand in the corner by the fives-court, we shall see +everything from there.” +</p> + +<p> +For the moment, the sunshine fell brightly into the churchyard, there was a +vague scent of sap and of spring, perhaps of violets from off the graves. Some +white daisies were out, bright as angels. In the air, the unfolding leaves of a +copper-beech were blood-red. +</p> + +<p> +Punctually at eleven o’clock, the carriages began to arrive. There was +a stir in the crowd at the gate, a concentration as a carriage drove up, wedding +guests were mounting up the steps and passing along the red carpet to the +church. They were all gay and excited because the sun was shining. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun watched them closely, with objective curiosity. She saw each one as a +complete figure, like a character in a book, or a subject in a picture, or a +marionette in a theatre, a finished creation. She loved to recognise their +various characteristics, to place them in their true light, give them their own +surroundings, settle them for ever as they passed before her along the path to +the church. She knew them, they were finished, sealed and stamped and finished +with, for her. There was none that had anything unknown, unresolved, until the +Criches themselves began to appear. Then her interest was piqued. Here was +something not quite so preconcluded. +</p> + +<p> +There came the mother, Mrs Crich, with her eldest son Gerald. She was a +queer unkempt figure, in spite of the attempts that had obviously been made to +bring her into line for the day. Her face was pale, yellowish, with a clear, +transparent skin, she leaned forward rather, her features were strongly marked, +handsome, with a tense, unseeing, predative look. Her colourless hair was +untidy, wisps floating down on to her sac coat of dark blue silk, from under her +blue silk hat. She looked like a woman with a monomania, furtive almost, but +heavily proud. +</p> + +<p> +Her son was of a fair, sun-tanned type, rather above middle height, +well-made, and almost exaggeratedly well-dressed. But about him also was the +strange, guarded look, the unconscious glisten, as if he did not belong to the +same creation as the people about him. Gudrun lighted on him at once. There was +something northern about him that magnetised her. In his clear northern flesh +and his fair hair was a glisten like sunshine refracted through crystals of ice. +And he looked so new, unbroached, pure as an arctic thing. Perhaps he was thirty +years old, perhaps more. His gleaming beauty, maleness, like a young, +good-humoured, smiling wolf, did not blind her to the significant, sinister +stillness in his bearing, the lurking danger of his unsubdued temper. “His +totem is the wolf,” she repeated to herself. “His mother is an old, +unbroken wolf.” And then she experienced a keen paroxyism, a transport, as +if she had made some incredible discovery, known to nobody else on earth. A +strange transport took possession of her, all her veins were in a paroxysm of +violent sensation. “Good God!” she exclaimed to herself, “what +is this?” And then, a moment after, she was saying assuredly, “I +shall know more of that man.” She was tortured with desire to see him +again, a nostalgia, a necessity to see him again, to make sure it was not all a +mistake, that she was not deluding herself, that she really felt this strange +and overwhelming sensation on his account, this knowledge of him in her essence, +this powerful apprehension of him. “Am I <i>really</i> singled out for him in +some way, is there really some pale gold, arctic light that envelopes only us +two?” she asked herself. And she could not believe it, she remained in a +muse, scarcely conscious of what was going on around. +</p> + +<p> +The bridesmaids were here, and yet the bridegroom had not come. Ursula +wondered if something was amiss, and if the wedding would yet all go wrong. She +felt troubled, as if it rested upon her. The chief bridesmaids had arrived. +Ursula watched them come up the steps. One of them she knew, a tall, slow, +reluctant woman with a weight of fair hair and a pale, long face. This was +Hermione Roddice, a friend of the Criches. Now she came along, with her head +held up, balancing an enormous flat hat of pale yellow velvet, on which were +streaks of ostrich feathers, natural and grey. She drifted forward as if +scarcely conscious, her long blanched face lifted up, not to see the world. She +was rich. She wore a dress of silky, frail velvet, of pale yellow colour, and +she carried a lot of small rose-coloured cyclamens. Her shoes and stockings were +of brownish grey, like the feathers on her hat, her hair was heavy, she drifted +along with a peculiar fixity of the hips, a strange unwilling motion. She was +impressive, in her lovely pale-yellow and brownish-rose, yet macabre, something +repulsive. People were silent when she passed, impressed, roused, wanting to +jeer, yet for some reason silenced. Her long, pale face, that she carried lifted +up, somewhat in the Rossetti fashion, seemed almost drugged, as if a strange +mass of thoughts coiled in the darkness within her, and she was never allowed to +escape. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula watched her with fascination. She knew her a little. She was the most +remarkable woman in the Midlands. Her father was a Derbyshire Baronet of the old +school, she was a woman of the new school, full of intellectuality, and heavy, +nerve-worn with consciousness. She was passionately interested in reform, her +soul was given up to the public cause. But she was a man’s woman, it was +the manly world that held her. +</p> + +<p> +She had various intimacies of mind and soul with various men of capacity. +Ursula knew, among these men, only Rupert Birkin, who was one of the +school-inspectors of the county. But Gudrun had met others, in London. Moving +with her artist friends in different kinds of society, Gudrun had already come +to know a good many people of repute and standing. She had met Hermione twice, +but they did not take to each other. It would be queer to meet again down here +in the Midlands, where their social standing was so diverse, after they had +known each other on terms of equality in the houses of sundry acquaintances in +town. For Gudrun had been a social success, and had her friends among the slack +aristocracy that keeps touch with the arts. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione knew herself to be well-dressed; she knew herself to be the social +equal, if not far the superior, of anyone she was likely to meet in Willey +Green. She knew she was accepted in the world of culture and of intellect. She +was a <i>Kulturträger</i>, a medium for the culture of ideas. With all that was +highest, whether in society or in thought or in public action, or even in art, +she was at one, she moved among the foremost, at home with them. No one could +put her down, no one could make mock of her, because she stood among the first, +and those that were against her were below her, either in rank, or in wealth, or +in high association of thought and progress and understanding. So, she was +invulnerable. All her life, she had sought to make herself invulnerable, +unassailable, beyond reach of the world’s judgment. +</p> + +<p> +And yet her soul was tortured, exposed. Even walking up the path to the +church, confident as she was that in every respect she stood beyond all vulgar +judgment, knowing perfectly that her appearance was complete and perfect, +according to the first standards, yet she suffered a torture, under her +confidence and her pride, feeling herself exposed to wounds and to mockery and +to despite. She always felt vulnerable, vulnerable, there was always a secret +chink in her armour. She did not know herself what it was. It was a lack of +robust self, she had no natural sufficiency, there was a terrible void, a lack, +a deficiency of being within her. +</p> + +<p> +And she wanted someone to close up this deficiency, to close it up for ever. +She craved for Rupert Birkin. When he was there, she felt complete, she was +sufficient, whole. For the rest of time she was established on the sand, built +over a chasm, and, in spite of all her vanity and securities, any common +maid-servant of positive, robust temper could fling her down this bottomless pit +of insufficiency, by the slightest movement of jeering or contempt. And all the +while the pensive, tortured woman piled up her own defences of æsthetic +knowledge, and culture, and world-visions, and disinterestedness. Yet she could +never stop up the terrible gap of insufficiency. +</p> + +<p> +If only Birkin would form a close and abiding connection with her, she would +be safe during this fretful voyage of life. He could make her sound and +triumphant, triumphant over the very angels of heaven. If only he would do it! +But she was tortured with fear, with misgiving. She made herself beautiful, she +strove so hard to come to that degree of beauty and advantage, when he should be +convinced. But always there was a deficiency. +</p> + +<p> +He was perverse too. He fought her off, he always fought her off. The more +she strove to bring him to her, the more he battled her back. And they had been +lovers now, for years. Oh, it was so wearying, so aching; she was so tired. But +still she believed in herself. She knew he was trying to leave her. She knew he +was trying to break away from her finally, to be free. But still she believed in +her strength to keep him, she believed in her own higher knowledge. His own +knowledge was high, she was the central touchstone of truth. She only needed his +conjunction with her. +</p> + +<p> +And this, this conjunction with her, which was his highest fulfilment also, +with the perverseness of a wilful child he wanted to deny. With the wilfulness +of an obstinate child, he wanted to break the holy connection that was between +them. +</p> + +<p> +He would be at this wedding; he was to be groom’s man. He would be in +the church, waiting. He would know when she came. She shuddered with nervous +apprehension and desire as she went through the church-door. He would be there, +surely he would see how beautiful her dress was, surely he would see how she had +made herself beautiful for him. He would understand, he would be able to see how +she was made for him, the first, how she was, for him, the highest. Surely at +last he would be able to accept his highest fate, he would not deny her. +</p> + +<p> +In a little convulsion of too-tired yearning, she entered the church and +looked slowly along her cheeks for him, her slender body convulsed with +agitation. As best man, he would be standing beside the altar. She looked +slowly, deferring in her certainty. +</p> + +<p> +And then, he was not there. A terrible storm came over her, as if she were +drowning. She was possessed by a devastating hopelessness. And she approached +mechanically to the altar. Never had she known such a pang of utter and final +hopelessness. It was beyond death, so utterly null, desert. +</p> + +<p> +The bridegroom and the groom’s man had not yet come. There was a +growing consternation outside. Ursula felt almost responsible. She could not +bear it that the bride should arrive, and no groom. The wedding must not be a +fiasco, it must not. +</p> + +<p> +But here was the bride’s carriage, adorned with ribbons and cockades. +Gaily the grey horses curvetted to their destination at the church-gate, a +laughter in the whole movement. Here was the quick of all laughter and pleasure. +The door of the carriage was thrown open, to let out the very blossom of the +day. The people on the roadway murmured faintly with the discontented murmuring +of a crowd. +</p> + +<p> +The father stepped out first into the air of the morning, like a shadow. He +was a tall, thin, careworn man, with a thin black beard that was touched with +grey. He waited at the door of the carriage patiently, self-obliterated. +</p> + +<p> +In the opening of the doorway was a shower of fine foliage and flowers, a +whiteness of satin and lace, and a sound of a gay voice saying: +</p> + +<p> +“How do I get out?” +</p> + +<p> +A ripple of satisfaction ran through the expectant people. They pressed near +to receive her, looking with zest at the stooping blond head with its flower +buds, and at the delicate, white, tentative foot that was reaching down to the +step of the carriage. There was a sudden foaming rush, and the bride like a +sudden surf-rush, floating all white beside her father in the morning shadow of +trees, her veil flowing with laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s done it!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +She put her hand on the arm of her care-worn, sallow father, and frothing +her light draperies, proceeded over the eternal red carpet. Her father, mute and +yellowish, his black beard making him look more careworn, mounted the steps +stiffly, as if his spirit were absent; but the laughing mist of the bride went +along with him undiminished. +</p> + +<p> +And no bridegroom had arrived! It was intolerable for her. Ursula, her heart +strained with anxiety, was watching the hill beyond; the white, descending road, +that should give sight of him. There was a carriage. It was running. It had just +come into sight. Yes, it was he. Ursula turned towards the bride and the people, +and, from her place of vantage, gave an inarticulate cry. She wanted to warn +them that he was coming. But her cry was inarticulate and inaudible, and she +flushed deeply, between her desire and her wincing confusion. +</p> + +<p> +The carriage rattled down the hill, and drew near. There was a shout from +the people. The bride, who had just reached the top of the steps, turned round +gaily to see what was the commotion. She saw a confusion among the people, a cab +pulling up, and her lover dropping out of the carriage, and dodging among the +horses and into the crowd. +</p> + +<p> +“Tibs! Tibs!” she cried in her sudden, mocking excitement, +standing high on the path in the sunlight and waving her bouquet. He, dodging +with his hat in his hand, had not heard. +</p> + +<p> +“Tibs!” she cried again, looking down to him. +</p> + +<p> +He glanced up, unaware, and saw the bride and her father standing on the +path above him. A queer, startled look went over his face. He hesitated for a +moment. Then he gathered himself together for a leap, to overtake her. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah-h-h!” came her strange, intaken cry, as, on the reflex, she +started, turned and fled, scudding with an unthinkable swift beating of her +white feet and fraying of her white garments, towards the church. Like a hound +the young man was after her, leaping the steps and swinging past her father, his +supple haunches working like those of a hound that bears down on the quarry. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, after her!” cried the vulgar women below, carried suddenly +into the sport. +</p> + +<p> +She, her flowers shaken from her like froth, was steadying herself to turn +the angle of the church. She glanced behind, and with a wild cry of laughter and +challenge, veered, poised, and was gone beyond the grey stone buttress. In +another instant the bridegroom, bent forward as he ran, had caught the angle of +the silent stone with his hand, and had swung himself out of sight, his supple, +strong loins vanishing in pursuit. +</p> + +<p> +Instantly cries and exclamations of excitement burst from the crowd at the +gate. And then Ursula noticed again the dark, rather stooping figure of Mr +Crich, waiting suspended on the path, watching with expressionless face the +flight to the church. It was over, and he turned round to look behind him, at +the figure of Rupert Birkin, who at once came forward and joined him. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll bring up the rear,” said Birkin, a faint smile on +his face. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay!” replied the father laconically. And the two men turned +together up the path. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin was as thin as Mr Crich, pale and ill-looking. His figure was narrow +but nicely made. He went with a slight trail of one foot, which came only from +self-consciousness. Although he was dressed correctly for his part, yet there +was an innate incongruity which caused a slight ridiculousness in his +appearance. His nature was clever and separate, he did not fit at all in the +conventional occasion. Yet he subordinated himself to the common idea, +travestied himself. +</p> + +<p> +He affected to be quite ordinary, perfectly and marvellously commonplace. +And he did it so well, taking the tone of his surroundings, adjusting himself +quickly to his interlocutor and his circumstance, that he achieved a +verisimilitude of ordinary commonplaceness that usually propitiated his +onlookers for the moment, disarmed them from attacking his singleness. +</p> + +<p> +Now he spoke quite easily and pleasantly to Mr Crich, as they walked along +the path; he played with situations like a man on a tight-rope: but always on a +tight-rope, pretending nothing but ease. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sorry we are so late,” he was saying. “We +couldn’t find a button-hook, so it took us a long time to button our +boots. But you were to the moment.” +</p> + +<p> +“We are usually to time,” said Mr Crich. +</p> + +<p> +“And I’m always late,” said Birkin. “But today I was +<i>really</i> punctual, only accidentally not so. I’m sorry.” +</p> + +<p> +The two men were gone, there was nothing more to see, for the time. Ursula +was left thinking about Birkin. He piqued her, attracted her, and annoyed her. +</p> + +<p> +She wanted to know him more. She had spoken with him once or twice, but only +in his official capacity as inspector. She thought he seemed to acknowledge some +kinship between her and him, a natural, tacit understanding, a using of the same +language. But there had been no time for the understanding to develop. And +something kept her from him, as well as attracted her to him. There was a +certain hostility, a hidden ultimate reserve in him, cold and inaccessible. +</p> + +<p> +Yet she wanted to know him. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think of Rupert Birkin?” she asked, a little +reluctantly, of Gudrun. She did not want to discuss him. +</p> + +<p> +“What do I think of Rupert Birkin?” repeated Gudrun. “I +think he’s attractive—decidedly attractive. What I can’t stand +about him is his way with other people—his way of treating any little fool +as if she were his greatest consideration. One feels so awfully sold, +oneself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why does he do it?” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Because he has no real critical faculty—of people, at all +events,” said Gudrun. “I tell you, he treats any little fool as he +treats me or you—and it’s such an insult.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it is,” said Ursula. “One must discriminate.” +</p> + +<p> +“One <i>must</i> discriminate,” repeated Gudrun. “But he’s +a wonderful chap, in other respects—a marvellous personality. But you +can’t trust him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Ursula vaguely. She was always forced to assent to +Gudrun’s pronouncements, even when she was not in accord altogether. +</p> + +<p> +The sisters sat silent, waiting for the wedding party to come out. Gudrun +was impatient of talk. She wanted to think about Gerald Crich. She wanted to see +if the strong feeling she had got from him was real. She wanted to have herself +ready. +</p> + +<p> +Inside the church, the wedding was going on. Hermione Roddice was thinking +only of Birkin. He stood near her. She seemed to gravitate physically towards +him. She wanted to stand touching him. She could hardly be sure he was near her, +if she did not touch him. Yet she stood subjected through the wedding service. +</p> + +<p> +She had suffered so bitterly when he did not come, that still she was dazed. +Still she was gnawed as by a neuralgia, tormented by his potential absence from +her. She had awaited him in a faint delirium of nervous torture. As she stood +bearing herself pensively, the rapt look on her face, that seemed spiritual, +like the angels, but which came from torture, gave her a certain poignancy that +tore his heart with pity. He saw her bowed head, her rapt face, the face of an +almost demoniacal ecstatic. Feeling him looking, she lifted her face and sought +his eyes, her own beautiful grey eyes flaring him a great signal. But he avoided +her look, she sank her head in torment and shame, the gnawing at her heart going +on. And he too was tortured with shame, and ultimate dislike, and with acute +pity for her, because he did not want to meet her eyes, he did not want to +receive her flare of recognition. +</p> + +<p> +The bride and bridegroom were married, the party went into the vestry. +Hermione crowded involuntarily up against Birkin, to touch him. And he endured +it. +</p> + +<p> +Outside, Gudrun and Ursula listened for their father’s playing on the +organ. He would enjoy playing a wedding march. Now the married pair were coming! +The bells were ringing, making the air shake. Ursula wondered if the trees and +the flowers could feel the vibration, and what they thought of it, this strange +motion in the air. The bride was quite demure on the arm of the bridegroom, who +stared up into the sky before him, shutting and opening his eyes unconsciously, +as if he were neither here nor there. He looked rather comical, blinking and +trying to be in the scene, when emotionally he was violated by his exposure to a +crowd. He looked a typical naval officer, manly, and up to his duty. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin came with Hermione. She had a rapt, triumphant look, like the fallen +angels restored, yet still subtly demoniacal, now she held Birkin by the arm. +And he was expressionless, neutralised, possessed by her as if it were his fate, +without question. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald Crich came, fair, good-looking, healthy, with a great reserve of +energy. He was erect and complete, there was a strange stealth glistening +through his amiable, almost happy appearance. Gudrun rose sharply and went away. +She could not bear it. She wanted to be alone, to know this strange, sharp +inoculation that had changed the whole temper of her blood. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.<br/> +SHORTLANDS</h2> + +<p> +The Brangwens went home to Beldover, the wedding-party gathered at +Shortlands, the Criches’ home. It was a long, low old house, a sort of +manor farm, that spread along the top of a slope just beyond the narrow little +lake of Willey Water. Shortlands looked across a sloping meadow that might be a +park, because of the large, solitary trees that stood here and there, across the +water of the narrow lake, at the wooded hill that successfully hid the colliery +valley beyond, but did not quite hide the rising smoke. Nevertheless, the scene +was rural and picturesque, very peaceful, and the house had a charm of its own. +</p> + +<p> +It was crowded now with the family and the wedding guests. The father, who +was not well, withdrew to rest. Gerald was host. He stood in the homely entrance +hall, friendly and easy, attending to the men. He seemed to take pleasure in his +social functions, he smiled, and was abundant in hospitality. +</p> + +<p> +The women wandered about in a little confusion, chased hither and thither by +the three married daughters of the house. All the while there could be heard the +characteristic, imperious voice of one Crich woman or another calling +“Helen, come here a minute,” “Marjory, I want +you—here.” “Oh, I say, Mrs Witham—.” There was a +great rustling of skirts, swift glimpses of smartly-dressed women, a child +danced through the hall and back again, a maidservant came and went hurriedly. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile the men stood in calm little groups, chatting, smoking, pretending +to pay no heed to the rustling animation of the women’s world. But they +could not really talk, because of the glassy ravel of women’s excited, +cold laughter and running voices. They waited, uneasy, suspended, rather bored. +But Gerald remained as if genial and happy, unaware that he was waiting or +unoccupied, knowing himself the very pivot of the occasion. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Mrs Crich came noiselessly into the room, peering about with her +strong, clear face. She was still wearing her hat, and her sac coat of blue +silk. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, mother?” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing, nothing!” she answered vaguely. And she went straight +towards Birkin, who was talking to a Crich brother-in-law. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, Mr Birkin,” she said, in her low voice, that +seemed to take no count of her guests. She held out her hand to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh Mrs Crich,” replied Birkin, in his readily-changing voice, +“I couldn’t come to you before.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know half the people here,” she said, in her low +voice. Her son-in-law moved uneasily away. +</p> + +<p> +“And you don’t like strangers?” laughed Birkin. “I +myself can never see why one should take account of people, just because they +happen to be in the room with one: why <i>should</i> I know they are there?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why indeed, why indeed!” said Mrs Crich, in her low, tense +voice. “Except that they <i>are</i> there. <i>I</i> don’t know people +whom I find in the house. The children introduce them to me—‘Mother, this +is Mr So-and-so.’ I am no further. What has Mr So-and-so to do with his own +name?—and what have I to do with either him or his name?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked up at Birkin. She startled him. He was flattered too that she +came to talk to him, for she took hardly any notice of anybody. He looked down +at her tense clear face, with its heavy features, but he was afraid to look into +her heavy-seeing blue eyes. He noticed instead how her hair looped in slack, +slovenly strands over her rather beautiful ears, which were not quite clean. +Neither was her neck perfectly clean. Even in that he seemed to belong to her, +rather than to the rest of the company; though, he thought to himself, he was +always well washed, at any rate at the neck and ears. +</p> + +<p> +He smiled faintly, thinking these things. Yet he was tense, feeling that he +and the elderly, estranged woman were conferring together like traitors, like +enemies within the camp of the other people. He resembled a deer, that throws +one ear back upon the trail behind, and one ear forward, to know what is ahead. +</p> + +<p> +“People don’t really matter,” he said, rather unwilling to +continue. +</p> + +<p> +The mother looked up at him with sudden, dark interrogation, as if doubting +his sincerity. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you mean, <i>matter?</i>” she asked sharply. +</p> + +<p> +“Not many people are anything at all,” he answered, forced to go +deeper than he wanted to. “They jingle and giggle. It would be much better +if they were just wiped out. Essentially, they don’t exist, they +aren’t there.” +</p> + +<p> +She watched him steadily while he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“But we didn’t imagine them,” she said sharply. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s nothing to imagine, that’s why they don’t +exist.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she said, “I would hardly go as far as that. There +they are, whether they exist or no. It doesn’t rest with me to decide on +their existence. I only know that I can’t be expected to take count of +them all. You can’t expect me to know them, just because they happen to be +there. As far as <i>I</i> go they might as well not be there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Mightn’t they?” she asked again. +</p> + +<p> +“Just as well,” he repeated. And there was a little pause. +</p> + +<p> +“Except that they <i>are</i> there, and that’s a nuisance,” she +said. “There are my sons-in-law,” she went on, in a sort of +monologue. “Now Laura’s got married, there’s another. And I +really don’t know John from James yet. They come up to me and call me +mother. I know what they will say—‘how are you, mother?’ I ought to say, +‘I am not your mother, in any sense.’ But what is the use? There they are. I +have had children of my own. I suppose I know them from another woman’s +children.” +</p> + +<p> +“One would suppose so,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him, somewhat surprised, forgetting perhaps that she was +talking to him. And she lost her thread. +</p> + +<p> +She looked round the room, vaguely. Birkin could not guess what she was +looking for, nor what she was thinking. Evidently she noticed her sons. +</p> + +<p> +“Are my children all there?” she asked him abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed, startled, afraid perhaps. +</p> + +<p> +“I scarcely know them, except Gerald,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Gerald!” she exclaimed. “He’s the most wanting of +them all. You’d never think it, to look at him now, would you?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +The mother looked across at her eldest son, stared at him heavily for some +time. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay,” she said, in an incomprehensible monosyllable, that +sounded profoundly cynical. Birkin felt afraid, as if he dared not realise. And +Mrs Crich moved away, forgetting him. But she returned on her traces. +</p> + +<p> +“I should like him to have a friend,” she said. “He has +never had a friend.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked down into her eyes, which were blue, and watching heavily. He +could not understand them. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” he said +to himself, almost flippantly. +</p> + +<p> +Then he remembered, with a slight shock, that that was Cain’s cry. And +Gerald was Cain, if anybody. Not that he was Cain, either, although he had slain +his brother. There was such a thing as pure accident, and the consequences did +not attach to one, even though one had killed one’s brother in such wise. +Gerald as a boy had accidentally killed his brother. What then? Why seek to draw +a brand and a curse across the life that had caused the accident? A man can live +by accident, and die by accident. Or can he not? Is every man’s life +subject to pure accident, is it only the race, the genus, the species, that has +a universal reference? Or is this not true, is there no such thing as pure +accident? Has <i>everything</i> that happens a universal significance? Has it? Birkin, +pondering as he stood there, had forgotten Mrs Crich, as she had forgotten him. +</p> + +<p> +He did not believe that there was any such thing as accident. It all hung +together, in the deepest sense. +</p> + +<p> +Just as he had decided this, one of the Crich daughters came up, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you come and take your hat off, mother dear? We shall be +sitting down to eat in a minute, and it’s a formal occasion, darling, +isn’t it?” She drew her arm through her mother’s, and they +went away. Birkin immediately went to talk to the nearest man. +</p> + +<p> +The gong sounded for the luncheon. The men looked up, but no move was made +to the dining-room. The women of the house seemed not to feel that the sound had +meaning for them. Five minutes passed by. The elderly manservant, Crowther, +appeared in the doorway exasperatedly. He looked with appeal at Gerald. The +latter took up a large, curved conch shell, that lay on a shelf, and without +reference to anybody, blew a shattering blast. It was a strange rousing noise, +that made the heart beat. The summons was almost magical. Everybody came +running, as if at a signal. And then the crowd in one impulse moved to the +dining-room. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald waited a moment, for his sister to play hostess. He knew his mother +would pay no attention to her duties. But his sister merely crowded to her seat. +Therefore the young man, slightly too dictatorial, directed the guests to their +places. +</p> + +<p> +There was a moment’s lull, as everybody looked at the <i>hors +d’oeuvres</i> that were being handed round. And out of this lull, a girl of +thirteen or fourteen, with her long hair down her back, said in a calm, +self-possessed voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Gerald, you forget father, when you make that unearthly noise.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do I?” he answered. And then, to the company, “Father is +lying down, he is not quite well.” +</p> + +<p> +“How is he, really?” called one of the married daughters, +peeping round the immense wedding cake that towered up in the middle of the +table shedding its artificial flowers. +</p> + +<p> +“He has no pain, but he feels tired,” replied Winifred, the girl +with the hair down her back. +</p> + +<p> +The wine was filled, and everybody was talking boisterously. At the far end +of the table sat the mother, with her loosely-looped hair. She had Birkin for a +neighbour. Sometimes she glanced fiercely down the rows of faces, bending +forwards and staring unceremoniously. And she would say in a low voice to +Birkin: +</p> + +<p> +“Who is that young man?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” Birkin answered discreetly. +</p> + +<p> +“Have I seen him before?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think so. <i>I</i> haven’t,” he replied. And she +was satisfied. Her eyes closed wearily, a peace came over her face, she looked +like a queen in repose. Then she started, a little social smile came on her +face, for a moment she looked the pleasant hostess. For a moment she bent +graciously, as if everyone were welcome and delightful. And then immediately the +shadow came back, a sullen, eagle look was on her face, she glanced from under +her brows like a sinister creature at bay, hating them all. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother,” called Diana, a handsome girl a little older than +Winifred, “I may have wine, mayn’t I?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you may have wine,” replied the mother automatically, for +she was perfectly indifferent to the question. +</p> + +<p> +And Diana beckoned to the footman to fill her glass. +</p> + +<p> +“Gerald shouldn’t forbid me,” she said calmly, to the +company at large. +</p> + +<p> +“All right, Di,” said her brother amiably. And she glanced +challenge at him as she drank from her glass. +</p> + +<p> +There was a strange freedom, that almost amounted to anarchy, in the house. +It was rather a resistance to authority, than liberty. Gerald had some command, +by mere force of personality, not because of any granted position. There was a +quality in his voice, amiable but dominant, that cowed the others, who were all +younger than he. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione was having a discussion with the bridegroom about nationality. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, “I think that the appeal to patriotism is +a mistake. It is like one house of business rivalling another house of +business.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well you can hardly say that, can you?” exclaimed Gerald, who +had a real <i>passion</i> for discussion. “You couldn’t call a race a +business concern, could you?—and nationality roughly corresponds to race, +I think. I think it is <i>meant</i> to.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a moment’s pause. Gerald and Hermione were always strangely +but politely and evenly inimical. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Do</i> you think race corresponds with nationality?” she asked +musingly, with expressionless indecision. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin knew she was waiting for him to participate. And dutifully he spoke +up. +</p> + +<p> +“I think Gerald is right—race is the essential element in +nationality, in Europe at least,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Again Hermione paused, as if to allow this statement to cool. Then she said +with strange assumption of authority: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but even so, is the patriotic appeal an appeal to the racial +instinct? Is it not rather an appeal to the proprietory instinct, the <i>commercial</i> +instinct? And isn’t this what we mean by nationality?” +</p> + +<p> +“Probably,” said Birkin, who felt that such a discussion was out +of place and out of time. +</p> + +<p> +But Gerald was now on the scent of argument. +</p> + +<p> +“A race may have its commercial aspect,” he said. “In fact +it must. It is like a family. You <i>must</i> make provision. And to make provision you +have got to strive against other families, other nations. I don’t see why +you shouldn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +Again Hermione made a pause, domineering and cold, before she replied: +“Yes, I think it is always wrong to provoke a spirit of rivalry. It makes +bad blood. And bad blood accumulates.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you can’t do away with the spirit of emulation +altogether?” said Gerald. “It is one of the necessary incentives to +production and improvement.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” came Hermione’s sauntering response. “I think +you can do away with it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I must say,” said Birkin, “I detest the spirit of +emulation.” Hermione was biting a piece of bread, pulling it from between +her teeth with her fingers, in a slow, slightly derisive movement. She turned to +Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“You do hate it, yes,” she said, intimate and gratified. +</p> + +<p> +“Detest it,” he repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she murmured, assured and satisfied. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” Gerald insisted, “you don’t allow one man to +take away his neighbour’s living, so why should you allow one nation to +take away the living from another nation?” +</p> + +<p> +There was a long slow murmur from Hermione before she broke into speech, +saying with a laconic indifference: +</p> + +<p> +“It is not always a question of possessions, is it? It is not all a +question of goods?” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald was nettled by this implication of vulgar materialism. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, more or less,” he retorted. “If I go and take a +man’s hat from off his head, that hat becomes a symbol of that man’s +liberty. When he fights me for his hat, he is fighting me for his +liberty.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione was nonplussed. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, irritated. “But that way of arguing by +imaginary instances is not supposed to be genuine, is it? A man does <i>not</i> +come and take my hat from off my head, does he?” +</p> + +<p> +“Only because the law prevents him,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Not only,” said Birkin. “Ninety-nine men out of a hundred +don’t want my hat.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a matter of opinion,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Or the hat,” laughed the bridegroom. +</p> + +<p> +“And if he does want my hat, such as it is,” said Birkin, +“why, surely it is open to me to decide, which is a greater loss to me, my +hat, or my liberty as a free and indifferent man. If I am compelled to offer +fight, I lose the latter. It is a question which is worth more to me, my +pleasant liberty of conduct, or my hat.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Hermione, watching Birkin strangely. +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“But would you let somebody come and snatch your hat off your +head?” the bride asked of Hermione. +</p> + +<p> +The face of the tall straight woman turned slowly and as if drugged to this +new speaker. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she replied, in a low inhuman tone, that seemed to contain +a chuckle. “No, I shouldn’t let anybody take my hat off my +head.” +</p> + +<p> +“How would you prevent it?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” replied Hermione slowly. “Probably I +should kill him.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a strange chuckle in her tone, a dangerous and convincing humour +in her bearing. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Gerald, “I can see Rupert’s point. +It is a question to him whether his hat or his peace of mind is more +important.” +</p> + +<p> +“Peace of body,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, as you like there,” replied Gerald. “But how are +you going to decide this for a nation?” +</p> + +<p> +“Heaven preserve me,” laughed Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but suppose you have to?” Gerald persisted. +</p> + +<p> +“Then it is the same. If the national crown-piece is an old hat, then +the thieving gent may have it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But <i>can</i> the national or racial hat be an old hat?” insisted +Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Pretty well bound to be, I believe,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not so sure,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t agree, Rupert,” said Hermione. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m all for the old national hat,” laughed Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“And a fool you look in it,” cried Diana, his pert sister who +was just in her teens. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, we’re quite out of our depths with these old hats,” +cried Laura Crich. “Dry up now, Gerald. We’re going to drink toasts. +Let us drink toasts. Toasts—glasses, glasses—now then, toasts! +Speech! Speech!” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin, thinking about race or national death, watched his glass being +filled with champagne. The bubbles broke at the rim, the man withdrew, and +feeling a sudden thirst at the sight of the fresh wine, Birkin drank up his +glass. A queer little tension in the room roused him. He felt a sharp +constraint. +</p> + +<p> +“Did I do it by accident, or on purpose?” he asked himself. And +he decided that, according to the vulgar phrase, he had done it +“accidentally on purpose.” He looked round at the hired footman. And +the hired footman came, with a silent step of cold servant-like disapprobation. +Birkin decided that he detested toasts, and footmen, and assemblies, and mankind +altogether, in most of its aspects. Then he rose to make a speech. But he was +somehow disgusted. +</p> + +<p> +At length it was over, the meal. Several men strolled out into the garden. +There was a lawn, and flower-beds, and at the boundary an iron fence shutting +off the little field or park. The view was pleasant; a highroad curving round +the edge of a low lake, under the trees. In the spring air, the water gleamed +and the opposite woods were purplish with new life. Charming Jersey cattle came +to the fence, breathing hoarsely from their velvet muzzles at the human beings, +expecting perhaps a crust. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin leaned on the fence. A cow was breathing wet hotness on his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Pretty cattle, very pretty,” said Marshall, one of the +brothers-in-law. “They give the best milk you can have.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, my little beauty, eh, my beauty!” said Marshall, in a queer +high falsetto voice, that caused the other man to have convulsions of laughter +in his stomach. +</p> + +<p> +“Who won the race, Lupton?” he called to the bridegroom, to hide +the fact that he was laughing. +</p> + +<p> +The bridegroom took his cigar from his mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“The race?” he exclaimed. Then a rather thin smile came over his +face. He did not want to say anything about the flight to the church door. +“We got there together. At least she touched first, but I had my hand on +her shoulder.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s this?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin told him about the race of the bride and the bridegroom. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” said Gerald, in disapproval. “What made you +late then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Lupton would talk about the immortality of the soul,” said +Birkin, “and then he hadn’t got a button-hook.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh God!” cried Marshall. “The immortality of the soul on +your wedding day! Hadn’t you got anything better to occupy your +mind?” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s wrong with it?” asked the bridegroom, a +clean-shaven naval man, flushing sensitively. +</p> + +<p> +“Sounds as if you were going to be executed instead of married. <i>The +immortality of the soul!</i>” repeated the brother-in-law, with most killing +emphasis. +</p> + +<p> +But he fell quite flat. +</p> + +<p> +“And what did you decide?” asked Gerald, at once pricking up his +ears at the thought of a metaphysical discussion. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t want a soul today, my boy,” said Marshall. +“It’d be in your road.” +</p> + +<p> +“Christ! Marshall, go and talk to somebody else,” cried Gerald, +with sudden impatience. +</p> + +<p> +“By God, I’m willing,” said Marshall, in a temper. +“Too much bloody soul and talk altogether—” +</p> + +<p> +He withdrew in a dudgeon, Gerald staring after him with angry eyes, that +grew gradually calm and amiable as the stoutly-built form of the other man +passed into the distance. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s one thing, Lupton,” said Gerald, turning suddenly +to the bridegroom. “Laura won’t have brought such a fool into the +family as Lottie did.” +</p> + +<p> +“Comfort yourself with that,” laughed Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“I take no notice of them,” laughed the bridegroom. +</p> + +<p> +“What about this race then—who began it?” Gerald asked. +</p> + +<p> +“We were late. Laura was at the top of the churchyard steps when our +cab came up. She saw Lupton bolting towards her. And she fled. But why do you +look so cross? Does it hurt your sense of the family dignity?” +</p> + +<p> +“It does, rather,” said Gerald. “If you’re doing a +thing, do it properly, and if you’re not going to do it properly, leave it +alone.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very nice aphorism,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you agree?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Quite,” said Birkin. “Only it bores me rather, when you +become aphoristic.” +</p> + +<p> +“Damn you, Rupert, you want all the aphorisms your own way,” +said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“No. I want them out of the way, and you’re always shoving them +in it.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald smiled grimly at this humorism. Then he made a little gesture of +dismissal, with his eyebrows. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t believe in having any standard of behaviour at all, +do you?” he challenged Birkin, censoriously. +</p> + +<p> +“Standard—no. I hate standards. But they’re necessary for +the common ruck. Anybody who is anything can just be himself and do as he +likes.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what do you mean by being himself?” said Gerald. “Is +that an aphorism or a cliché?” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean just doing what you want to do. I think it was perfect good +form in Laura to bolt from Lupton to the church door. It was almost a +masterpiece in good form. It’s the hardest thing in the world to act +spontaneously on one’s impulses—and it’s the only really +gentlemanly thing to do—provided you’re fit to do it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t expect me to take you seriously, do you?” asked +Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Gerald, you’re one of the very few people I do expect that +of.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I’m afraid I can’t come up to your expectations +here, at any rate. You think people should just do as they like.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think they always do. But I should like them to like the purely +individual thing in themselves, which makes them act in singleness. And they +only like to do the collective thing.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I,” said Gerald grimly, “shouldn’t like to be +in a world of people who acted individually and spontaneously, as you call it. +We should have everybody cutting everybody else’s throat in five +minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +“That means <i>you</i> would like to be cutting everybody’s +throat,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“How does that follow?” asked Gerald crossly. +</p> + +<p> +“No man,” said Birkin, “cuts another man’s throat +unless he wants to cut it, and unless the other man wants it cutting. This is a +complete truth. It takes two people to make a murder: a murderer and a murderee. +And a murderee is a man who is murderable. And a man who is murderable is a man +who in a profound if hidden lust desires to be murdered.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sometimes you talk pure nonsense,” said Gerald to Birkin. +“As a matter of fact, none of us wants our throat cut, and most other +people would like to cut it for us—some time or other—” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a nasty view of things, Gerald,” said Birkin, +“and no wonder you are afraid of yourself and your own unhappiness.” +</p> + +<p> +“How am I afraid of myself?” said Gerald; “and I +don’t think I am unhappy.” +</p> + +<p> +“You seem to have a lurking desire to have your gizzard slit, and +imagine every man has his knife up his sleeve for you,” Birkin said. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you make that out?” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“From you,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause of strange enmity between the two men, that was very near +to love. It was always the same between them; always their talk brought them +into a deadly nearness of contact, a strange, perilous intimacy which was either +hate or love, or both. They parted with apparent unconcern, as if their going +apart were a trivial occurrence. And they really kept it to the level of trivial +occurrence. Yet the heart of each burned from the other. They burned with each +other, inwardly. This they would never admit. They intended to keep their +relationship a casual free-and-easy friendship, they were not going to be so +unmanly and unnatural as to allow any heart-burning between them. They had not +the faintest belief in deep relationship between men and men, and their +disbelief prevented any development of their powerful but suppressed +friendliness. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.<br/> +CLASS-ROOM</h2> + +<p> +A school-day was drawing to a close. In the class-room the last lesson was +in progress, peaceful and still. It was elementary botany. The desks were +littered with catkins, hazel and willow, which the children had been sketching. +But the sky had come overdark, as the end of the afternoon approached: there was +scarcely light to draw any more. Ursula stood in front of the class, leading the +children by questions to understand the structure and the meaning of the +catkins. +</p> + +<p> +A heavy, copper-coloured beam of light came in at the west window, gilding +the outlines of the children’s heads with red gold, and falling on the +wall opposite in a rich, ruddy illumination. Ursula, however, was scarcely +conscious of it. She was busy, the end of the day was here, the work went on as +a peaceful tide that is at flood, hushed to retire. +</p> + +<p> +This day had gone by like so many more, in an activity that was like a +trance. At the end there was a little haste, to finish what was in hand. She was +pressing the children with questions, so that they should know all they were to +know, by the time the gong went. She stood in shadow in front of the class, with +catkins in her hand, and she leaned towards the children, absorbed in the +passion of instruction. +</p> + +<p> +She heard, but did not notice the click of the door. Suddenly she started. +She saw, in the shaft of ruddy, copper-coloured light near her, the face of a +man. It was gleaming like fire, watching her, waiting for her to be aware. It +startled her terribly. She thought she was going to faint. All her suppressed, +subconscious fear sprang into being, with anguish. +</p> + +<p> +“Did I startle you?” said Birkin, shaking hands with her. +“I thought you had heard me come in.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she faltered, scarcely able to speak. He laughed, saying +he was sorry. She wondered why it amused him. +</p> + +<p> +“It is so dark,” he said. “Shall we have the light?” +</p> + +<p> +And moving aside, he switched on the strong electric lights. The class-room +was distinct and hard, a strange place after the soft dim magic that filled it +before he came. Birkin turned curiously to look at Ursula. Her eyes were round +and wondering, bewildered, her mouth quivered slightly. She looked like one who +is suddenly wakened. There was a living, tender beauty, like a tender light of +dawn shining from her face. He looked at her with a new pleasure, feeling gay in +his heart, irresponsible. +</p> + +<p> +“You are doing catkins?” he asked, picking up a piece of hazel +from a scholar’s desk in front of him. “Are they as far out as this? +I hadn’t noticed them this year.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked absorbedly at the tassel of hazel in his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“The red ones too!” he said, looking at the flickers of crimson +that came from the female bud. +</p> + +<p> +Then he went in among the desks, to see the scholars’ books. Ursula +watched his intent progress. There was a stillness in his motion that hushed the +activities of her heart. She seemed to be standing aside in arrested silence, +watching him move in another, concentrated world. His presence was so quiet, +almost like a vacancy in the corporate air. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly he lifted his face to her, and her heart quickened at the flicker +of his voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Give them some crayons, won’t you?” he said, “so +that they can make the gynaecious flowers red, and the androgynous yellow. +I’d chalk them in plain, chalk in nothing else, merely the red and the +yellow. Outline scarcely matters in this case. There is just the one fact to +emphasise.” +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t any crayons,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“There will be some somewhere—red and yellow, that’s all +you want.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula sent out a boy on a quest. +</p> + +<p> +“It will make the books untidy,” she said to Birkin, flushing +deeply. +</p> + +<p> +“Not very,” he said. “You must mark in these things +obviously. It’s the fact you want to emphasise, not the subjective +impression to record. What’s the fact?—red little spiky stigmas of +the female flower, dangling yellow male catkin, yellow pollen flying from one to +the other. Make a pictorial record of the fact, as a child does when drawing a +face—two eyes, one nose, mouth with teeth—so—” And he +drew a figure on the blackboard. +</p> + +<p> +At that moment another vision was seen through the glass panels of the door. +It was Hermione Roddice. Birkin went and opened to her. +</p> + +<p> +“I saw your car,” she said to him. “Do you mind my coming +to find you? I wanted to see you when you were on duty.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him for a long time, intimate and playful, then she gave a +short little laugh. And then only she turned to Ursula, who, with all the class, +had been watching the little scene between the lovers. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, Miss Brangwen,” sang Hermione, in her low, odd, +singing fashion, that sounded almost as if she were poking fun. “Do you +mind my coming in?” +</p> + +<p> +Her grey, almost sardonic eyes rested all the while on Ursula, as if summing +her up. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you <i>sure?</i>” repeated Hermione, with complete <i>sang-froid</i>, +and an odd, half-bullying effrontery. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, I like it awfully,” laughed Ursula, a little bit excited +and bewildered, because Hermione seemed to be compelling her, coming very close +to her, as if intimate with her; and yet, how could she be intimate? +</p> + +<p> +This was the answer Hermione wanted. She turned satisfied to Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you doing?” she sang, in her casual, inquisitive +fashion. +</p> + +<p> +“Catkins,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Really!” she said. “And what do you learn about +them?” She spoke all the while in a mocking, half teasing fashion, as if +making game of the whole business. She picked up a twig of the catkin, piqued by +Birkin’s attention to it. +</p> + +<p> +She was a strange figure in the class-room, wearing a large, old cloak of +greenish cloth, on which was a raised pattern of dull gold. The high collar, and +the inside of the cloak, was lined with dark fur. Beneath she had a dress of +fine lavender-coloured cloth, trimmed with fur, and her hat was close-fitting, +made of fur and of the dull, green-and-gold figured stuff. She was tall and +strange, she looked as if she had come out of some new, bizarre picture. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know the little red ovary flowers, that produce the nuts? Have +you ever noticed them?” he asked her. And he came close and pointed them +out to her, on the sprig she held. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she replied. “What are they?” +</p> + +<p> +“Those are the little seed-producing flowers, and the long catkins, +they only produce pollen, to fertilise them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do they, do they!” repeated Hermione, looking closely. +</p> + +<p> +“From those little red bits, the nuts come; if they receive pollen +from the long danglers.” +</p> + +<p> +“Little red flames, little red flames,” murmured Hermione to +herself. And she remained for some moments looking only at the small buds out of +which the red flickers of the stigma issued. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t they beautiful? I think they’re so +beautiful,” she said, moving close to Birkin, and pointing to the red +filaments with her long, white finger. +</p> + +<p> +“Had you never noticed them before?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No, never before,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“And now you will always see them,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Now I shall always see them,” she repeated. “Thank you so +much for showing me. I think they’re so beautiful—little red +flames—” +</p> + +<p> +Her absorption was strange, almost rhapsodic. Both Birkin and Ursula were +suspended. The little red pistillate flowers had some strange, almost +mystic-passionate attraction for her. +</p> + +<p> +The lesson was finished, the books were put away, at last the class was +dismissed. And still Hermione sat at the table, with her chin in her hand, her +elbow on the table, her long white face pushed up, not attending to anything. +Birkin had gone to the window, and was looking from the brilliantly-lighted room +on to the grey, colourless outside, where rain was noiselessly falling. Ursula +put away her things in the cupboard. +</p> + +<p> +At length Hermione rose and came near to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Your sister has come home?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“And does she like being back in Beldover?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I wonder she can bear it. It takes all my strength, to bear the +ugliness of this district, when I stay here. Won’t you come and see me? +Won’t you come with your sister to stay at Breadalby for a few +days?—do—” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you very much,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Then I will write to you,” said Hermione. “You think your +sister will come? I should be so glad. I think she is wonderful. I think some of +her work is really wonderful. I have two water-wagtails, carved in wood, and +painted—perhaps you have seen it?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it is perfectly wonderful—like a flash of +instinct.” +</p> + +<p> +“Her little carvings <i>are</i> strange,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly beautiful—full of primitive passion—” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it queer that she always likes little things?—she +must always work small things, that one can put between one’s hands, birds +and tiny animals. She likes to look through the wrong end of the opera glasses, +and see the world that way—why is it, do you think?” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione looked down at Ursula with that long, detached scrutinising gaze +that excited the younger woman. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Hermione at length. “It is curious. The little +things seem to be more subtle to her—” +</p> + +<p> +“But they aren’t, are they? A mouse isn’t any more subtle +than a lion, is it?” +</p> + +<p> +Again Hermione looked down at Ursula with that long scrutiny, as if she were +following some train of thought of her own, and barely attending to the +other’s speech. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Rupert, Rupert,” she sang mildly, calling him to her. He +approached in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Are little things more subtle than big things?” she asked, with +the odd grunt of laughter in her voice, as if she were making game of him in the +question. +</p> + +<p> +“Dunno,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I hate subtleties,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione looked at her slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I always think they are a sign of weakness,” said Ursula, up in +arms, as if her prestige were threatened. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione took no notice. Suddenly her face puckered, her brow was knit with +thought, she seemed twisted in troublesome effort for utterance. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you really think, Rupert,” she asked, as if Ursula were not +present, “do you really think it is worth while? Do you really think the +children are better for being roused to consciousness?” +</p> + +<p> +A dark flash went over his face, a silent fury. He was hollow-cheeked and +pale, almost unearthly. And the woman, with her serious, conscience-harrowing +question tortured him on the quick. +</p> + +<p> +“They are not roused to consciousness,” he said. +“Consciousness comes to them, willy-nilly.” +</p> + +<p> +“But do you think they are better for having it quickened, stimulated? +Isn’t it better that they should remain unconscious of the hazel, +isn’t it better that they should see as a whole, without all this pulling +to pieces, all this knowledge?” +</p> + +<p> +“Would you rather, for yourself, know or not know, that the little red +flowers are there, putting out for the pollen?” he asked harshly. His +voice was brutal, scornful, cruel. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione remained with her face lifted up, abstracted. He hung silent in +irritation. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she replied, balancing mildly. “I +don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +“But knowing is everything to you, it is all your life,” he +broke out. She slowly looked at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“To know, that is your all, that is your life—you have only +this, this knowledge,” he cried. “There is only one tree, there is +only one fruit, in your mouth.” +</p> + +<p> +Again she was some time silent. +</p> + +<p> +“Is there?” she said at last, with the same untouched calm. And +then in a tone of whimsical inquisitiveness: “What fruit, Rupert?” +</p> + +<p> +“The eternal apple,” he replied in exasperation, hating his own +metaphors. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. There was a look of exhaustion about her. For +some moments there was silence. Then, pulling herself together with a convulsed +movement, Hermione resumed, in a sing-song, casual voice: +</p> + +<p> +“But leaving me apart, Rupert; do you think the children are better, +richer, happier, for all this knowledge; do you really think they are? Or is it +better to leave them untouched, spontaneous. Hadn’t they better be +animals, simple animals, crude, violent, <i>anything</i>, rather than this +self-consciousness, this incapacity to be spontaneous.” +</p> + +<p> +They thought she had finished. But with a queer rumbling in her throat she +resumed, “Hadn’t they better be anything than grow up crippled, +crippled in their souls, crippled in their feelings—so thrown +back—so turned back on themselves—incapable—” Hermione +clenched her fist like one in a trance—“of any spontaneous action, +always deliberate, always burdened with choice, never carried away.” +</p> + +<p> +Again they thought she had finished. But just as he was going to reply, she +resumed her queer rhapsody—“never carried away, out of themselves, +always conscious, always self-conscious, always aware of themselves. Isn’t +<i>anything</i> better than this? Better be animals, mere animals with no mind at all, +than this, this <i>nothingness</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +“But do you think it is knowledge that makes us unliving and +self-conscious?” he asked irritably. +</p> + +<p> +She opened her eyes and looked at him slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. She paused, watching him all the while, her +eyes vague. Then she wiped her fingers across her brow, with a vague weariness. +It irritated him bitterly. “It is the mind,” she said, “and +that is death.” She raised her eyes slowly to him: “Isn’t the +mind—” she said, with the convulsed movement of her body, +“isn’t it our death? Doesn’t it destroy all our spontaneity, +all our instincts? Are not the young people growing up today, really dead before +they have a chance to live?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not because they have too much mind, but too little,” he said +brutally. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you <i>sure?</i>” she cried. “It seems to me the reverse. +They are over-conscious, burdened to death with consciousness.” +</p> + +<p> +“Imprisoned within a limited, false set of concepts,” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +But she took no notice of this, only went on with her own rhapsodic +interrogation. +</p> + +<p> +“When we have knowledge, don’t we lose everything but +knowledge?” she asked pathetically. “If I know about the flower, +don’t I lose the flower and have only the knowledge? Aren’t we +exchanging the substance for the shadow, aren’t we forfeiting life for +this dead quality of knowledge? And what does it mean to me, after all? What +does all this knowing mean to me? It means nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are merely making words,” he said; “knowledge means +everything to you. Even your animalism, you want it in your head. You +don’t want to <i>be</i> an animal, you want to observe your own animal +functions, to get a mental thrill out of them. It is all purely +secondary—and more decadent than the most hide-bound intellectualism. +What is it but the worst and last form of intellectualism, this love of yours +for passion and the animal instincts? Passion and the instincts—you want +them hard enough, but through your head, in your consciousness. It all takes +place in your head, under that skull of yours. Only you won’t be +conscious of what <i>actually</i> is: you want the lie that will match the +rest of your furniture.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione set hard and poisonous against this attack. Ursula stood covered +with wonder and shame. It frightened her, to see how they hated each other. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all that Lady of Shalott business,” he said, in his +strong abstract voice. He seemed to be charging her before the unseeing air. +“You’ve got that mirror, your own fixed will, your immortal +understanding, your own tight conscious world, and there is nothing beyond it. +There, in the mirror, you must have everything. But now you have come to all +your conclusions, you want to go back and be like a savage, without knowledge. +You want a life of pure sensation and ‘passion.’” +</p> + +<p> +He quoted the last word satirically against her. She sat convulsed with fury +and violation, speechless, like a stricken pythoness of the Greek oracle. +</p> + +<p> +“But your passion is a lie,” he went on violently. “It +isn’t passion at all, it is your <i>will</i>. It’s your bullying will. You +want to clutch things and have them in your power. You want to have things in +your power. And why? Because you haven’t got any real body, any dark +sensual body of life. You have no sensuality. You have only your will and your +conceit of consciousness, and your lust for power, to <i>know</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her in mingled hate and contempt, also in pain because she +suffered, and in shame because he knew he tortured her. He had an impulse to +kneel and plead for forgiveness. But a bitterer red anger burned up to fury in +him. He became unconscious of her, he was only a passionate voice speaking. +</p> + +<p> +“Spontaneous!” he cried. “You and spontaneity! You, the +most deliberate thing that ever walked or crawled! You’d be verily +deliberately spontaneous—that’s you. Because you want to have +everything in your own volition, your deliberate voluntary consciousness. You +want it all in that loathsome little skull of yours, that ought to be cracked +like a nut. For you’ll be the same till it is cracked, like an insect in +its skin. If one cracked your skull perhaps one might get a spontaneous, +passionate woman out of you, with real sensuality. As it is, what you want is +pornography—looking at yourself in mirrors, watching your naked animal +actions in mirrors, so that you can have it all in your consciousness, make it +all mental.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a sense of violation in the air, as if too much was said, the +unforgivable. Yet Ursula was concerned now only with solving her own problems, +in the light of his words. She was pale and abstracted. +</p> + +<p> +“But do you really <i>want</i> sensuality?” she asked, puzzled. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked at her, and became intent in his explanation. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, “that and nothing else, at this point. It +is a fulfilment—the great dark knowledge you can’t have in your +head—the dark involuntary being. It is death to one’s self—but +it is the coming into being of another.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how? How can you have knowledge not in your head?” she +asked, quite unable to interpret his phrases. +</p> + +<p> +“In the blood,” he answered; “when the mind and the known +world is drowned in darkness everything must go—there must be the deluge. +Then you find yourself a palpable body of darkness, a demon—” +</p> + +<p> +“But why should I be a demon—?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“‘<i>Woman wailing for her demon lover</i>’—” he +quoted—“why, I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione roused herself as from a death—annihilation. +</p> + +<p> +“He is such a <i>dreadful</i> satanist, isn’t he?” she drawled to +Ursula, in a queer resonant voice, that ended on a shrill little laugh of pure +ridicule. The two women were jeering at him, jeering him into nothingness. The +laugh of the shrill, triumphant female sounded from Hermione, jeering him as if +he were a neuter. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “You are the real devil who won’t let +life exist.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him with a long, slow look, malevolent, supercilious. +</p> + +<p> +“You know all about it, don’t you?” she said, with slow, +cold, cunning mockery. +</p> + +<p> +“Enough,” he replied, his face fixing fine and clear like steel. +A horrible despair, and at the same time a sense of release, liberation, came +over Hermione. She turned with a pleasant intimacy to Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“You are sure you will come to Breadalby?” she said, urging. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I should like to very much,” replied Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione looked down at her, gratified, reflecting, and strangely absent, as +if possessed, as if not quite there. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m so glad,” she said, pulling herself together. +“Some time in about a fortnight. Yes? I will write to you here, at the +school, shall I? Yes. And you’ll be sure to come? Yes. I shall be so glad. +Good-bye! Good-bye!” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione held out her hand and looked into the eyes of the other woman. She +knew Ursula as an immediate rival, and the knowledge strangely exhilarated her. +Also she was taking leave. It always gave her a sense of strength, advantage, to +be departing and leaving the other behind. Moreover she was taking the man with +her, if only in hate. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin stood aside, fixed and unreal. But now, when it was his turn to bid +good-bye, he began to speak again. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s the whole difference in the world,” he said, +“between the actual sensual being, and the vicious mental-deliberate +profligacy our lot goes in for. In our night-time, there’s always the +electricity switched on, we watch ourselves, we get it all in the head, really. +You’ve got to lapse out before you can know what sensual reality is, lapse +into unknowingness, and give up your volition. You’ve got to do it. +You’ve got to learn not-to-be, before you can come into being. +</p> + +<p> +“But we have got such a conceit of ourselves—that’s where +it is. We are so conceited, and so unproud. We’ve got no pride, +we’re all conceit, so conceited in our own papier-maché realised selves. +We’d rather die than give up our little self-righteous self-opinionated +self-will.” +</p> + +<p> +There was silence in the room. Both women were hostile and resentful. He +sounded as if he were addressing a meeting. Hermione merely paid no attention, +stood with her shoulders tight in a shrug of dislike. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was watching him as if furtively, not really aware of what she was +seeing. There was a great physical attractiveness in him—a curious hidden +richness, that came through his thinness and his pallor like another voice, +conveying another knowledge of him. It was in the curves of his brows and his +chin, rich, fine, exquisite curves, the powerful beauty of life itself. She +could not say what it was. But there was a sense of richness and of liberty. +</p> + +<p> +“But we are sensual enough, without making ourselves so, aren’t +we?” she asked, turning to him with a certain golden laughter flickering +under her greenish eyes, like a challenge. And immediately the queer, careless, +terribly attractive smile came over his eyes and brows, though his mouth did not +relax. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “we aren’t. We’re too full of +ourselves.” +</p> + +<p> +“Surely it isn’t a matter of conceit,” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“That and nothing else.” +</p> + +<p> +She was frankly puzzled. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think that people are most conceited of all about +their sensual powers?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s why they aren’t sensual—only +sensuous—which is another matter. They’re <i>always</i> aware of +themselves—and they’re so conceited, that rather than release +themselves, and live in another world, from another centre, +they’d—” +</p> + +<p> +“You want your tea, don’t you,” said Hermione, turning to +Ursula with a gracious kindliness. “You’ve worked all +day—” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin stopped short. A spasm of anger and chagrin went over Ursula. His +face set. And he bade good-bye, as if he had ceased to notice her. +</p> + +<p> +They were gone. Ursula stood looking at the door for some moments. Then she +put out the lights. And having done so, she sat down again in her chair, +absorbed and lost. And then she began to cry, bitterly, bitterly weeping: but +whether for misery or joy, she never knew. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br/> +DIVER</h2> + +<p> +The week passed away. On the Saturday it rained, a soft drizzling rain that +held off at times. In one of the intervals Gudrun and Ursula set out for a walk, +going towards Willey Water. The atmosphere was grey and translucent, the birds +sang sharply on the young twigs, the earth would be quickening and hastening in +growth. The two girls walked swiftly, gladly, because of the soft, subtle rush +of morning that filled the wet haze. By the road the black-thorn was in blossom, +white and wet, its tiny amber grains burning faintly in the white smoke of +blossom. Purple twigs were darkly luminous in the grey air, high hedges glowed +like living shadows, hovering nearer, coming into creation. The morning was full +of a new creation. +</p> + +<p> +When the sisters came to Willey Water, the lake lay all grey and visionary, +stretching into the moist, translucent vista of trees and meadow. Fine electric +activity in sound came from the dumbles below the road, the birds piping one +against the other, and water mysteriously plashing, issuing from the lake. +</p> + +<p> +The two girls drifted swiftly along. In front of them, at the corner of the +lake, near the road, was a mossy boat-house under a walnut tree, and a little +landing-stage where a boat was moored, wavering like a shadow on the still grey +water, below the green, decayed poles. All was shadowy with coming summer. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly, from the boat-house, a white figure ran out, frightening in its +swift sharp transit, across the old landing-stage. It launched in a white arc +through the air, there was a bursting of the water, and among the smooth ripples +a swimmer was making out to space, in a centre of faintly heaving motion. The +whole otherworld, wet and remote, he had to himself. He could move into the pure +translucency of the grey, uncreated water. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun stood by the stone wall, watching. +</p> + +<p> +“How I envy him,” she said, in low, desirous tones. +</p> + +<p> +“Ugh!” shivered Ursula. “So cold!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but how good, how really fine, to swim out there!” The +sisters stood watching the swimmer move further into the grey, moist, full space +of the water, pulsing with his own small, invading motion, and arched over with +mist and dim woods. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you wish it were you?” asked Gudrun, looking at +Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“I do,” said Ursula. “But I’m not +sure—it’s so wet.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Gudrun, reluctantly. She stood watching the motion on +the bosom of the water, as if fascinated. He, having swum a certain distance, +turned round and was swimming on his back, looking along the water at the two +girls by the wall. In the faint wash of motion, they could see his ruddy face, +and could feel him watching them. +</p> + +<p> +“It is Gerald Crich,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” replied Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +And she stood motionless gazing over the water at the face which washed up +and down on the flood, as he swam steadily. From his separate element he saw +them and he exulted to himself because of his own advantage, his possession of a +world to himself. He was immune and perfect. He loved his own vigorous, +thrusting motion, and the violent impulse of the very cold water against his +limbs, buoying him up. He could see the girls watching him a way off, outside, +and that pleased him. He lifted his arm from the water, in a sign to them. +</p> + +<p> +“He is waving,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied Gudrun. They watched him. He waved again, with a +strange movement of recognition across the difference. +</p> + +<p> +“Like a Nibelung,” laughed Ursula. Gudrun said nothing, only +stood still looking over the water. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald suddenly turned, and was swimming away swiftly, with a side stroke. +He was alone now, alone and immune in the middle of the waters, which he had all +to himself. He exulted in his isolation in the new element, unquestioned and +unconditioned. He was happy, thrusting with his legs and all his body, without +bond or connection anywhere, just himself in the watery world. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun envied him almost painfully. Even this momentary possession of pure +isolation and fluidity seemed to her so terribly desirable that she felt herself +as if damned, out there on the high-road. +</p> + +<p> +“God, what it is to be a man!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” exclaimed Ursula in surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“The freedom, the liberty, the mobility!” cried Gudrun, +strangely flushed and brilliant. “You’re a man, you want to do a +thing, you do it. You haven’t the <i>thousand</i> obstacles a woman has in front +of her.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula wondered what was in Gudrun’s mind, to occasion this outburst. +She could not understand. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want to do?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing,” cried Gudrun, in swift refutation. “But +supposing I did. Supposing I want to swim up that water. It is impossible, it is +one of the impossibilities of life, for me to take my clothes off now and jump +in. But isn’t it <i>ridiculous</i>, doesn’t it simply prevent our +living!” +</p> + +<p> +She was so hot, so flushed, so furious, that Ursula was puzzled. +</p> + +<p> +The two sisters went on, up the road. They were passing between the trees +just below Shortlands. They looked up at the long, low house, dim and glamorous +in the wet morning, its cedar trees slanting before the windows. Gudrun seemed +to be studying it closely. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think it’s attractive, Ursula?” asked +Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Very,” said Ursula. “Very peaceful and charming.” +</p> + +<p> +“It has form, too—it has a period.” +</p> + +<p> +“What period?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, eighteenth century, for certain; Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane +Austen, don’t you think?” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think so?” repeated Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps. But I don’t think the Criches fit the period. I know +Gerald is putting in a private electric plant, for lighting the house, and is +making all kinds of latest improvements.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun shrugged her shoulders swiftly. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” she said, “that’s quite +inevitable.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite,” laughed Ursula. “He is several generations of +youngness at one go. They hate him for it. He takes them all by the scruff of +the neck, and fairly flings them along. He’ll have to die soon, when +he’s made every possible improvement, and there will be nothing more to +improve. He’s got <i>go</i>, anyhow.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly, he’s got go,” said Gudrun. “In fact +I’ve never seen a man that showed signs of so much. The unfortunate thing +is, where does his <i>go</i> go to, what becomes of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I know,” said Ursula. “It goes in applying the latest +appliances!” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“You know he shot his brother?” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Shot his brother?” cried Gudrun, frowning as if in +disapprobation. +</p> + +<p> +“Didn’t you know? Oh yes!—I thought you knew. He and his +brother were playing together with a gun. He told his brother to look down the +gun, and it was loaded, and blew the top of his head off. Isn’t it a +horrible story?” +</p> + +<p> +“How fearful!” cried Gudrun. “But it is long ago?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, they were quite boys,” said Ursula. “I think it +is one of the most horrible stories I know.” +</p> + +<p> +“And he of course did not know that the gun was loaded?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. You see it was an old thing that had been lying in the stable +for years. Nobody dreamed it would ever go off, and of course, no one imagined +it was loaded. But isn’t it dreadful, that it should happen?” +</p> + +<p> +“Frightful!” cried Gudrun. “And isn’t it horrible +too to think of such a thing happening to one, when one was a child, and having +to carry the responsibility of it all through one’s life. Imagine it, two +boys playing together—then this comes upon them, for no reason +whatever—out of the air. Ursula, it’s very frightening! Oh, +it’s one of the things I can’t bear. Murder, that is thinkable, +because there’s a will behind it. But a thing like that to <i>happen</i> to +one—” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps there <i>was</i> an unconscious will behind it,” said Ursula. +“This playing at killing has some primitive <i>desire</i> for killing in it, +don’t you think?” +</p> + +<p> +“Desire!” said Gudrun, coldly, stiffening a little. “I +can’t see that they were even playing at killing. I suppose one boy said +to the other, ‘You look down the barrel while I pull the trigger, and see what +happens.’ It seems to me the purest form of accident.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Ursula. “I couldn’t pull the trigger of +the emptiest gun in the world, not if some-one were looking down the barrel. One +instinctively doesn’t do it—one can’t.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was silent for some moments, in sharp disagreement. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” she said coldly. “If one is a woman, and +grown up, one’s instinct prevents one. But I cannot see how that applies +to a couple of boys playing together.” +</p> + +<p> +Her voice was cold and angry. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” persisted Ursula. At that moment they heard a +woman’s voice a few yards off say loudly: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh damn the thing!” They went forward and saw Laura Crich and +Hermione Roddice in the field on the other side of the hedge, and Laura Crich +struggling with the gate, to get out. Ursula at once hurried up and helped to +lift the gate. +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks so much,” said Laura, looking up flushed and +amazon-like, yet rather confused. “It isn’t right on the +hinges.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Ursula. “And they’re so heavy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Surprising!” cried Laura. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do,” sang Hermione, from out of the field, the +moment she could make her voice heard. “It’s nice now. Are you going +for a walk? Yes. Isn’t the young green beautiful? So beautiful—quite +burning. Good morning—good morning—you’ll come and see +me?—thank you so much—next week—yes—good-bye, g-o-o-d +b-y-e.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun and Ursula stood and watched her slowly waving her head up and down, +and waving her hand slowly in dismissal, smiling a strange affected smile, +making a tall queer, frightening figure, with her heavy fair hair slipping to +her eyes. Then they moved off, as if they had been dismissed like inferiors. The +four women parted. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as they had gone far enough, Ursula said, her cheeks burning, +</p> + +<p> +“I do think she’s impudent.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who, Hermione Roddice?” asked Gudrun. “Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“The way she treats one—impudence!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, Ursula, what did you notice that was so impudent?” asked +Gudrun rather coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“Her whole manner. Oh, it’s impossible, the way she tries to +bully one. Pure bullying. She’s an impudent woman. ‘You’ll come and +see me,’ as if we should be falling over ourselves for the privilege.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t understand, Ursula, what you are so much put out +about,” said Gudrun, in some exasperation. “One knows those women +are impudent—these free women who have emancipated themselves from the +aristocracy.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it is so <i>unnecessary</i>—so vulgar,” cried Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t see it. And if I did—pour moi, elle +n’existe pas. I don’t grant her the power to be impudent to +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think she likes you?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, no, I shouldn’t think she did.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why does she ask you to go to Breadalby and stay with +her?” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun lifted her shoulders in a low shrug. +</p> + +<p> +“After all, she’s got the sense to know we’re not just the +ordinary run,” said Gudrun. “Whatever she is, she’s not a +fool. And I’d rather have somebody I detested, than the ordinary woman who +keeps to her own set. Hermione Roddice does risk herself in some +respects.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula pondered this for a time. +</p> + +<p> +“I doubt it,” she replied. “Really she risks nothing. I +suppose we ought to admire her for knowing she <i>can</i> invite us—school +teachers—and risk nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Precisely!” said Gudrun. “Think of the myriads of women +that daren’t do it. She makes the most of her +privileges—that’s something. I suppose, really, we should do the +same, in her place.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Ursula. “No. It would bore me. I couldn’t +spend my time playing her games. It’s infra dig.” +</p> + +<p> +The two sisters were like a pair of scissors, snipping off everything that +came athwart them; or like a knife and a whetstone, the one sharpened against +the other. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” cried Ursula suddenly, “she ought to thank +her stars if we will go and see her. You are perfectly beautiful, a thousand +times more beautiful than ever she is or was, and to my thinking, a thousand +times more beautifully dressed, for she never looks fresh and natural, like a +flower, always old, thought-out; and we <i>are</i> more intelligent than most +people.” +</p> + +<p> +“Undoubtedly!” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“And it ought to be admitted, simply,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly it ought,” said Gudrun. “But you’ll find +that the really chic thing is to be so absolutely ordinary, so perfectly +commonplace and like the person in the street, that you really are a masterpiece +of humanity, not the person in the street actually, but the artistic creation of +her—” +</p> + +<p> +“How awful!” cried Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Ursula, it <i>is</i> awful, in most respects. You daren’t be +anything that isn’t amazingly <i>à terre</i>, so much <i>à terre</i> that +it is the artistic creation of ordinariness.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s very dull to create oneself into nothing better,” +laughed Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Very dull!” retorted Gudrun. “Really Ursula, it is dull, +that’s just the word. One longs to be high-flown, and make speeches like +Corneille, after it.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was becoming flushed and excited over her own cleverness. +</p> + +<p> +“Strut,” said Ursula. “One wants to strut, to be a swan +among geese.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly,” cried Gudrun, “a swan among geese.” +</p> + +<p> +“They are all so busy playing the ugly duckling,” cried Ursula, +with mocking laughter. “And I don’t feel a bit like a humble and +pathetic ugly duckling. I do feel like a swan among geese—I can’t +help it. They make one feel so. And I don’t care what <i>they</i> think +of me. <i>Je m’en fiche.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked up at Ursula with a queer, uncertain envy and dislike. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, the only thing to do is to despise them all—just +all,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +The sisters went home again, to read and talk and work, and wait for Monday, +for school. Ursula often wondered what else she waited for, besides the +beginning and end of the school week, and the beginning and end of the holidays. +This was a whole life! Sometimes she had periods of tight horror, when it seemed +to her that her life would pass away, and be gone, without having been more than +this. But she never really accepted it. Her spirit was active, her life like a +shoot that is growing steadily, but which has not yet come above ground. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.<br/> +IN THE TRAIN</h2> + +<p> +One day at this time Birkin was called to London. He was not very fixed in +his abode. He had rooms in Nottingham, because his work lay chiefly in that +town. But often he was in London, or in Oxford. He moved about a great deal, his +life seemed uncertain, without any definite rhythm, any organic meaning. +</p> + +<p> +On the platform of the railway station he saw Gerald Crich, reading a +newspaper, and evidently waiting for the train. Birkin stood some distance off, +among the people. It was against his instinct to approach anybody. +</p> + +<p> +From time to time, in a manner characteristic of him, Gerald lifted his head +and looked round. Even though he was reading the newspaper closely, he must keep +a watchful eye on his external surroundings. There seemed to be a dual +consciousness running in him. He was thinking vigorously of something he read in +the newspaper, and at the same time his eye ran over the surfaces of the life +round him, and he missed nothing. Birkin, who was watching him, was irritated by +his duality. He noticed too, that Gerald seemed always to be at bay against +everybody, in spite of his queer, genial, social manner when roused. +</p> + +<p> +Now Birkin started violently at seeing this genial look flash on to +Gerald’s face, at seeing Gerald approaching with hand outstretched. +</p> + +<p> +“Hallo, Rupert, where are you going?” +</p> + +<p> +“London. So are you, I suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald’s eyes went over Birkin’s face in curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll travel together if you like,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you usually go first?” asked Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t stand the crowd,” replied Gerald. “But +third’ll be all right. There’s a restaurant car, we can have some +tea.” +</p> + +<p> +The two men looked at the station clock, having nothing further to say. +</p> + +<p> +“What were you reading in the paper?” Birkin asked. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked at him quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it funny, what they <i>do</i> put in the +newspapers,” he said. “Here are two leaders—” he +held out his <i>Daily Telegraph</i>, “full of the ordinary newspaper +cant—” he scanned the columns down—“and then +there’s this little—I dunno what you’d call it, essay, +almost—appearing with the leaders, and saying there must arise a man +who will give new values to things, give us new truths, a new attitude to +life, or else we shall be a crumbling nothingness in a few years, a country +in ruin—” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose that’s a bit of newspaper cant, as well,” said +Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“It sounds as if the man meant it, and quite genuinely,” said +Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Give it to me,” said Birkin, holding out his hand for the +paper. +</p> + +<p> +The train came, and they went on board, sitting on either side a little +table, by the window, in the restaurant car. Birkin glanced over his paper, then +looked up at Gerald, who was waiting for him. +</p> + +<p> +“I believe the man means it,” he said, “as far as he means +anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“And do you think it’s true? Do you think we really want a new +gospel?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin shrugged his shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“I think the people who say they want a new religion are the last to +accept anything new. They want novelty right enough. But to stare straight at +this life that we’ve brought upon ourselves, and reject it, absolutely +smash up the old idols of ourselves, that we sh’ll never do. You’ve +got very badly to want to get rid of the old, before anything new will +appear—even in the self.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald watched him closely. +</p> + +<p> +“You think we ought to break up this life, just start and let +fly?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“This life. Yes I do. We’ve got to bust it completely, or +shrivel inside it, as in a tight skin. For it won’t expand any +more.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a queer little smile in Gerald’s eyes, a look of amusement, +calm and curious. +</p> + +<p> +“And how do you propose to begin? I suppose you mean, reform the whole +order of society?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin had a slight, tense frown between the brows. He too was impatient of +the conversation. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t propose at all,” he replied. “When we +really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any +sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for +self-important people.” +</p> + +<p> +The little smile began to die out of Gerald’s eyes, and he said, +looking with a cool stare at Birkin: +</p> + +<p> +“So you really think things are very bad?” +</p> + +<p> +“Completely bad.” +</p> + +<p> +The smile appeared again. +</p> + +<p> +“In what way?” +</p> + +<p> +“Every way,” said Birkin. “We are such dreary liars. Our +one idea is to lie to ourselves. We have an ideal of a perfect world, clean and +straight and sufficient. So we cover the earth with foulness; life is a blotch +of labour, like insects scurrying in filth, so that your collier can have a +pianoforte in his parlour, and you can have a butler and a motor-car in your +up-to-date house, and as a nation we can sport the Ritz, or the Empire, Gaby +Deslys and the Sunday newspapers. It is very dreary.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald took a little time to re-adjust himself after this tirade. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you have us live without houses—return to nature?” +he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I would have nothing at all. People only do what they want to +do—and what they are capable of doing. If they were capable of anything +else, there would be something else.” +</p> + +<p> +Again Gerald pondered. He was not going to take offence at Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think the collier’s <i>pianoforte</i>, as you call it, +is a symbol for something very real, a real desire for something higher, in the +collier’s life?” +</p> + +<p> +“Higher!” cried Birkin. “Yes. Amazing heights of upright +grandeur. It makes him so much higher in his neighbouring collier’s eyes. +He sees himself reflected in the neighbouring opinion, like in a Brocken mist, +several feet taller on the strength of the pianoforte, and he is satisfied. He +lives for the sake of that Brocken spectre, the reflection of himself in the +human opinion. You do the same. If you are of high importance to humanity you +are of high importance to yourself. That is why you work so hard at the mines. +If you can produce coal to cook five thousand dinners a day, you are five +thousand times more important than if you cooked only your own dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose I am,” laughed Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you see,” said Birkin, “that to help my +neighbour to eat is no more than eating myself. ‘I eat, thou eatest, he eats, we +eat, you eat, they eat’—and what then? Why should every man decline the +whole verb. First person singular is enough for me.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got to start with material things,” said Gerald. +Which statement Birkin ignored. +</p> + +<p> +“And we’ve got to live for <i>something</i>, we’re not just +cattle that can graze and have done with it,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me,” said Birkin. “What do you live for?” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald’s face went baffled. +</p> + +<p> +“What do I live for?” he repeated. “I suppose I live to +work, to produce something, in so far as I am a purposive being. Apart from +that, I live because I am living.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what’s your work? Getting so many more thousands of tons of +coal out of the earth every day. And when we’ve got all the coal we want, +and all the plush furniture, and pianofortes, and the rabbits are all stewed and +eaten, and we’re all warm and our bellies are filled and we’re +listening to the young lady performing on the pianoforte—what then? What +then, when you’ve made a real fair start with your material things?” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald sat laughing at the words and the mocking humour of the other man. +But he was cogitating too. +</p> + +<p> +“We haven’t got there yet,” he replied. “A good many +people are still waiting for the rabbit and the fire to cook it.” +</p> + +<p> +“So while you get the coal I must chase the rabbit?” said +Birkin, mocking at Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Something like that,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin watched him narrowly. He saw the perfect good-humoured callousness, +even strange, glistening malice, in Gerald, glistening through the plausible +ethics of productivity. +</p> + +<p> +“Gerald,” he said, “I rather hate you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know you do,” said Gerald. “Why do you?” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin mused inscrutably for some minutes. +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to know if you are conscious of hating me,” he +said at last. “Do you ever consciously detest me—hate me with mystic +hate? There are odd moments when I hate you starrily.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald was rather taken aback, even a little disconcerted. He did not quite +know what to say. +</p> + +<p> +“I may, of course, hate you sometimes,” he said. “But +I’m not aware of it—never acutely aware of it, that is.” +</p> + +<p> +“So much the worse,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald watched him with curious eyes. He could not quite make him out. +</p> + +<p> +“So much the worse, is it?” he repeated. +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence between the two men for some time, as the train ran on. +In Birkin’s face was a little irritable tension, a sharp knitting of the +brows, keen and difficult. Gerald watched him warily, carefully, rather +calculatingly, for he could not decide what he was after. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Birkin’s eyes looked straight and overpowering into those of +the other man. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think is the aim and object of your life, Gerald?” +he asked. +</p> + +<p> +Again Gerald was taken aback. He could not think what his friend was getting +at. Was he poking fun, or not? +</p> + +<p> +“At this moment, I couldn’t say off-hand,” he replied, +with faintly ironic humour. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think love is the be-all and the end-all of life?” +Birkin asked, with direct, attentive seriousness. +</p> + +<p> +“Of my own life?” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a really puzzled pause. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t say,” said Gerald. “It hasn’t been, +so far.” +</p> + +<p> +“What has your life been, so far?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—finding out things for myself—and getting +experiences—and making things <i>go</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin knitted his brows like sharply moulded steel. +</p> + +<p> +“I find,” he said, “that one needs some one <i>really</i> pure +single activity—I should call love a single pure activity. But I +<i>don’t</i> really love anybody—not now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you ever really loved anybody?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes and no,” replied Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Not finally?” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Finally—finally—no,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Nor I,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“And do you want to?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked with a long, twinkling, almost sardonic look into the eyes of +the other man. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I do—I want to love,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“You do?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. I want the finality of love.” +</p> + +<p> +“The finality of love,” repeated Gerald. And he waited for a +moment. +</p> + +<p> +“Just one woman?” he added. The evening light, flooding yellow +along the fields, lit up Birkin’s face with a tense, abstract +steadfastness. Gerald still could not make it out. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, one woman,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +But to Gerald it sounded as if he were insistent rather than confident. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe a woman, and nothing but a woman, will ever +make my life,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Not the centre and core of it—the love between you and a +woman?” asked Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald’s eyes narrowed with a queer dangerous smile as he watched the +other man. +</p> + +<p> +“I never quite feel it that way,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t? Then wherein does life centre, for you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know—that’s what I want somebody to tell +me. As far as I can make out, it doesn’t centre at all. It is artificially +held <i>together</i> by the social mechanism.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin pondered as if he would crack something. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” he said, “it just doesn’t centre. The old +ideals are dead as nails—nothing there. It seems to me there remains only +this perfect union with a woman—sort of ultimate marriage—and there +isn’t anything else.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you mean if there isn’t the woman, there’s +nothing?” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Pretty well that—seeing there’s no God.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then we’re hard put to it,” said Gerald. And he turned to +look out of the window at the flying, golden landscape. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin could not help seeing how beautiful and soldierly his face was, with +a certain courage to be indifferent. +</p> + +<p> +“You think its heavy odds against us?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“If we’ve got to make our life up out of a woman, one woman, +woman only, yes, I do,” said Gerald. “I don’t believe I shall +ever make up <i>my</i> life, at that rate.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin watched him almost angrily. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a born unbeliever,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I only feel what I feel,” said Gerald. And he looked again at +Birkin almost sardonically, with his blue, manly, sharp-lighted eyes. +Birkin’s eyes were at the moment full of anger. But swiftly they became +troubled, doubtful, then full of a warm, rich affectionateness and laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“It troubles me very much, Gerald,” he said, wrinkling his +brows. +</p> + +<p> +“I can see it does,” said Gerald, uncovering his mouth in a +manly, quick, soldierly laugh. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald was held unconsciously by the other man. He wanted to be near him, he +wanted to be within his sphere of influence. There was something very congenial +to him in Birkin. But yet, beyond this, he did not take much notice. He felt +that he, himself, Gerald, had harder and more durable truths than any the other +man knew. He felt himself older, more knowing. It was the quick-changing warmth +and venality and brilliant warm utterance he loved in his friend. It was the +rich play of words and quick interchange of feelings he enjoyed. The real +content of the words he never really considered: he himself knew better. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin knew this. He knew that Gerald wanted to be <i>fond</i> of him without +taking him seriously. And this made him go hard and cold. As the train ran on, +he sat looking at the land, and Gerald fell away, became as nothing to him. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked at the land, at the evening, and was thinking: “Well, if +mankind is destroyed, if our race is destroyed like Sodom, and there is this +beautiful evening with the luminous land and trees, I am satisfied. That which +informs it all is there, and can never be lost. After all, what is mankind but +just one expression of the incomprehensible. And if mankind passes away, it will +only mean that this particular expression is completed and done. That which is +expressed, and that which is to be expressed, cannot be diminished. There it is, +in the shining evening. Let mankind pass away—time it did. The creative +utterances will not cease, they will only be there. Humanity doesn’t +embody the utterance of the incomprehensible any more. Humanity is a dead +letter. There will be a new embodiment, in a new way. Let humanity disappear as +quick as possible.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald interrupted him by asking, +</p> + +<p> +“Where are you staying in London?” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked up. +</p> + +<p> +“With a man in Soho. I pay part of the rent of a flat, and stop there +when I like.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good idea—have a place more or less your own,” said +Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. But I don’t care for it much. I’m tired of the +people I am bound to find there.” +</p> + +<p> +“What kind of people?” +</p> + +<p> +“Art—music—London Bohemia—the most pettifogging +calculating Bohemia that ever reckoned its pennies. But there are a few decent +people, decent in some respects. They are really very thorough rejecters of the +world—perhaps they live only in the gesture of rejection and +negation—but negatively something, at any rate.” +</p> + +<p> +“What are they?—painters, musicians?” +</p> + +<p> +“Painters, musicians, writers—hangers-on, models, advanced young +people, anybody who is openly at outs with the conventions, and belongs to +nowhere particularly. They are often young fellows down from the University, and +girls who are living their own lives, as they say.” +</p> + +<p> +“All loose?” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin could see his curiosity roused. +</p> + +<p> +“In one way. Most bound, in another. For all their shockingness, all +on one note.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at Gerald, and saw how his blue eyes were lit up with a little +flame of curious desire. He saw too how good-looking he was. Gerald was +attractive, his blood seemed fluid and electric. His blue eyes burned with a +keen, yet cold light, there was a certain beauty, a beautiful passivity in all +his body, his moulding. +</p> + +<p> +“We might see something of each other—I am in London for two or +three days,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Birkin, “I don’t want to go to the +theatre, or the music hall—you’d better come round to the flat, and +see what you can make of Halliday and his crowd.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks—I should like to,” laughed Gerald. “What are +you doing tonight?” +</p> + +<p> +“I promised to meet Halliday at the Pompadour. It’s a bad place, +but there is nowhere else.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where is it?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Piccadilly Circus.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—well, shall I come round there?” +</p> + +<p> +“By all means, it might amuse you.” +</p> + +<p> +The evening was falling. They had passed Bedford. Birkin watched the +country, and was filled with a sort of hopelessness. He always felt this, on +approaching London. +</p> + +<p> +His dislike of mankind, of the mass of mankind, amounted almost to an +illness. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“‘Where the quiet coloured end of evening smiles <br /> +Miles and miles—’” <br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +he was murmuring to himself, like a man condemned to death. Gerald, who was +very subtly alert, wary in all his senses, leaned forward and asked smilingly: +</p> + +<p> +“What were you saying?” Birkin glanced at him, laughed, and +repeated: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“‘Where the quiet coloured end of evening smiles, <br /> +Miles and miles,<br /> +Over pastures where the something something sheep <br /> +Half asleep—’”<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Gerald also looked now at the country. And Birkin, who, for some reason was +now tired and dispirited, said to him: +</p> + +<p> +“I always feel doomed when the train is running into London. I feel +such a despair, so hopeless, as if it were the end of the world.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really!” said Gerald. “And does the end of the world +frighten you?” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin lifted his shoulders in a slow shrug. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” he said. “It does while it hangs +imminent and doesn’t fall. But people give me a bad feeling—very +bad.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a roused glad smile in Gerald’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Do they?” he said. And he watched the other man critically. +</p> + +<p> +In a few minutes the train was running through the disgrace of outspread +London. Everybody in the carriage was on the alert, waiting to escape. At last +they were under the huge arch of the station, in the tremendous shadow of the +town. Birkin shut himself together—he was in now. +</p> + +<p> +The two men went together in a taxi-cab. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you feel like one of the damned?” asked Birkin, as +they sat in a little, swiftly-running enclosure, and watched the hideous great +street. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” laughed Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“It is real death,” said Birkin. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br/> +CRÈME DE MENTHE</h2> + +<p> +They met again in the café several hours later. Gerald went through the push +doors into the large, lofty room where the faces and heads of the drinkers +showed dimly through the haze of smoke, reflected more dimly, and repeated ad +infinitum in the great mirrors on the walls, so that one seemed to enter a +vague, dim world of shadowy drinkers humming within an atmosphere of blue +tobacco smoke. There was, however, the red plush of the seats to give substance +within the bubble of pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald moved in his slow, observant, glistening-attentive motion down +between the tables and the people whose shadowy faces looked up as he passed. He +seemed to be entering in some strange element, passing into an illuminated new +region, among a host of licentious souls. He was pleased, and entertained. He +looked over all the dim, evanescent, strangely illuminated faces that bent +across the tables. Then he saw Birkin rise and signal to him. +</p> + +<p> +At Birkin’s table was a girl with dark, soft, fluffy hair cut short in +the artist fashion, hanging level and full almost like the Egyptian +princess’s. She was small and delicately made, with warm colouring and +large, dark hostile eyes. There was a delicacy, almost a beauty in all her form, +and at the same time a certain attractive grossness of spirit, that made a +little spark leap instantly alight in Gerald’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin, who looked muted, unreal, his presence left out, introduced her as +Miss Darrington. She gave her hand with a sudden, unwilling movement, looking +all the while at Gerald with a dark, exposed stare. A glow came over him as he +sat down. +</p> + +<p> +The waiter appeared. Gerald glanced at the glasses of the other two. Birkin +was drinking something green, Miss Darrington had a small liqueur glass that was +empty save for a tiny drop. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you have some more—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Brandy,” she said, sipping her last drop and putting down the +glass. The waiter disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said to Birkin. “He doesn’t know I’m +back. He’ll be terrified when he sees me here.” +</p> + +<p> +She spoke her r’s like w’s, lisping with a slightly babyish +pronunciation which was at once affected and true to her character. Her voice +was dull and toneless. +</p> + +<p> +“Where is he then?” asked Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s doing a private show at Lady Snellgrove’s,” +said the girl. “Warens is there too.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then,” said Birkin, in a dispassionate protective manner, +“what do you intend to do?” +</p> + +<p> +The girl paused sullenly. She hated the question. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t intend to do anything,” she replied. “I +shall look for some sittings tomorrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who shall you go to?” asked Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall go to Bentley’s first. But I believe he’s angwy +with me for running away.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is from the Madonna?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. And then if he doesn’t want me, I know I can get work with +Carmarthen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Carmarthen?” +</p> + +<p> +“Lord Carmarthen—he does photographs.” +</p> + +<p> +“Chiffon and shoulders—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. But he’s awfully decent.” There was a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“And what are you going to do about Julius?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing,” she said. “I shall just ignore him.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve done with him altogether?” But she turned aside +her face sullenly, and did not answer the question. +</p> + +<p> +Another young man came hurrying up to the table. +</p> + +<p> +“Hallo Birkin! Hallo <i>Pussum</i>, when did you come back?” he said +eagerly. +</p> + +<p> +“Today.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does Halliday know?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. I don’t care either.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha-ha! The wind still sits in that quarter, does it? Do you mind if I +come over to this table?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m talking to Wupert, do you mind?” she replied, coolly +and yet appealingly, like a child. +</p> + +<p> +“Open confession—good for the soul, eh?” said the young +man. “Well, so long.” +</p> + +<p> +And giving a sharp look at Birkin and at Gerald, the young man moved off, +with a swing of his coat skirts. +</p> + +<p> +All this time Gerald had been completely ignored. And yet he felt that the +girl was physically aware of his proximity. He waited, listened, and tried to +piece together the conversation. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you staying at the flat?” the girl asked, of Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“For three days,” replied Birkin. “And you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know yet. I can always go to Bertha’s.” +There was a silence. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly the girl turned to Gerald, and said, in a rather formal, polite +voice, with the distant manner of a woman who accepts her position as a social +inferior, yet assumes intimate <i>camaraderie</i> with the male she addresses: +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know London well?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can hardly say,” he laughed. “I’ve been up a good +many times, but I was never in this place before.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not an artist, then?” she said, in a tone that +placed him an outsider. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a soldier, and an explorer, and a Napoleon of +industry,” said Birkin, giving Gerald his credentials for Bohemia. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you a soldier?” asked the girl, with a cold yet lively +curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I resigned my commission,” said Gerald, “some years +ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“He was in the last war,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Were you really?” said the girl. +</p> + +<p> +“And then he explored the Amazon,” said Birkin, “and now +he is ruling over coal-mines.” +</p> + +<p> +The girl looked at Gerald with steady, calm curiosity. He laughed, hearing +himself described. He felt proud too, full of male strength. His blue, keen eyes +were lit up with laughter, his ruddy face, with its sharp fair hair, was full of +satisfaction, and glowing with life. He piqued her. +</p> + +<p> +“How long are you staying?” she asked him. +</p> + +<p> +“A day or two,” he replied. “But there is no particular +hurry.” +</p> + +<p> +Still she stared into his face with that slow, full gaze which was so +curious and so exciting to him. He was acutely and delightfully conscious of +himself, of his own attractiveness. He felt full of strength, able to give off a +sort of electric power. And he was aware of her dark, hot-looking eyes upon him. +She had beautiful eyes, dark, fully-opened, hot, naked in their looking at him. +And on them there seemed to float a film of disintegration, a sort of misery and +sullenness, like oil on water. She wore no hat in the heated café, her loose, +simple jumper was strung on a string round her neck. But it was made of rich +peach-coloured crêpe-de-chine, that hung heavily and softly from her young +throat and her slender wrists. Her appearance was simple and complete, really +beautiful, because of her regularity and form, her soft dark hair falling full +and level on either side of her head, her straight, small, softened features, +Egyptian in the slight fulness of their curves, her slender neck and the simple, +rich-coloured smock hanging on her slender shoulders. She was very still, almost +null, in her manner, apart and watchful. +</p> + +<p> +She appealed to Gerald strongly. He felt an awful, enjoyable power over her, +an instinctive cherishing very near to cruelty. For she was a victim. He felt +that she was in his power, and he was generous. The electricity was turgid and +voluptuously rich, in his limbs. He would be able to destroy her utterly in the +strength of his discharge. But she was waiting in her separation, given. +</p> + +<p> +They talked banalities for some time. Suddenly Birkin said: +</p> + +<p> +“There’s Julius!” and he half rose to his feet, motioning +to the newcomer. The girl, with a curious, almost evil motion, looked round over +her shoulder without moving her body. Gerald watched her dark, soft hair swing +over her ears. He felt her watching intensely the man who was approaching, so he +looked too. He saw a pale, full-built young man with rather long, solid fair +hair hanging from under his black hat, moving cumbrously down the room, his face +lit up with a smile at once naive and warm, and vapid. He approached towards +Birkin, with a haste of welcome. +</p> + +<p> +It was not till he was quite close that he perceived the girl. He recoiled, +went pale, and said, in a high squealing voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Pussum, what are <i>you</i> doing here?” +</p> + +<p> +The café looked up like animals when they hear a cry. Halliday hung +motionless, an almost imbecile smile flickering palely on his face. The girl +only stared at him with a black look in which flared an unfathomable hell of +knowledge, and a certain impotence. She was limited by him. +</p> + +<p> +“Why have you come back?” repeated Halliday, in the same high, +hysterical voice. “I told you not to come back.” +</p> + +<p> +The girl did not answer, only stared in the same viscous, heavy fashion, +straight at him, as he stood recoiled, as if for safety, against the next table. +</p> + +<p> +“You know you wanted her to come back—come and sit down,” +said Birkin to him. +</p> + +<p> +“No I didn’t want her to come back, and I told her not to come +back. What have you come for, Pussum?” +</p> + +<p> +“For nothing from <i>you</i>,” she said in a heavy voice of resentment. +</p> + +<p> +“Then why have you come back at <i>all?</i>” cried Halliday, his voice +rising to a kind of squeal. +</p> + +<p> +“She comes as she likes,” said Birkin. “Are you going to +sit down, or are you not?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I won’t sit down with Pussum,” cried Halliday. +</p> + +<p> +“I won’t hurt you, you needn’t be afraid,” she said +to him, very curtly, and yet with a sort of protectiveness towards him, in her +voice. +</p> + +<p> +Halliday came and sat at the table, putting his hand on his heart, and +crying: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it’s given me such a turn! Pussum, I wish you +wouldn’t do these things. Why did you come back?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not for anything from you,” she repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve said that before,” he cried in a high voice. +</p> + +<p> +She turned completely away from him, to Gerald Crich, whose eyes were +shining with a subtle amusement. +</p> + +<p> +“Were you ever vewy much afwaid of the savages?” she asked in +her calm, dull childish voice. +</p> + +<p> +“No—never very much afraid. On the whole they’re +harmless—they’re not born yet, you can’t feel really afraid of +them. You know you can manage them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you weally? Aren’t they very fierce?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not very. There aren’t many fierce things, as a matter of fact. +There aren’t many things, neither people nor animals, that have it in them +to be really dangerous.” +</p> + +<p> +“Except in herds,” interrupted Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t there really?” she said. “Oh, I thought +savages were all so dangerous, they’d have your life before you could look +round.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you?” he laughed. “They are over-rated, savages. +They’re too much like other people, not exciting, after the first +acquaintance.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it’s not so very wonderfully brave then, to be an +explorer?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. It’s more a question of hardships than of terrors.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! And weren’t you ever afraid?” +</p> + +<p> +“In my life? I don’t know. Yes, I’m afraid of some +things—of being shut up, locked up anywhere—or being fastened. +I’m afraid of being bound hand and foot.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him steadily with her dark eyes, that rested on him and roused +him so deeply, that it left his upper self quite calm. It was rather delicious, +to feel her drawing his self-revelations from him, as from the very innermost +dark marrow of his body. She wanted to know. And her dark eyes seemed to be +looking through into his naked organism. He felt, she was compelled to him, she +was fated to come into contact with him, must have the seeing him and knowing +him. And this roused a curious exultance. Also he felt, she must relinquish +herself into his hands, and be subject to him. She was so profane, slave-like, +watching him, absorbed by him. It was not that she was interested in what he +said; she was absorbed by his self-revelation, by <i>him</i>, she wanted the +secret of him, the experience of his male being. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald’s face was lit up with an uncanny smile, full of light and +rousedness, yet unconscious. He sat with his arms on the table, his sunbrowned, +rather sinister hands, that were animal and yet very shapely and attractive, +pushed forward towards her. And they fascinated her. And she knew, she watched +her own fascination. +</p> + +<p> +Other men had come to the table, to talk with Birkin and Halliday. Gerald +said in a low voice, apart, to Pussum: +</p> + +<p> +“Where have you come back from?” +</p> + +<p> +“From the country,” replied Pussum, in a very low, yet fully +resonant voice. Her face closed hard. Continually she glanced at Halliday, and +then a black flare came over her eyes. The heavy, fair young man ignored her +completely; he was really afraid of her. For some moments she would be unaware +of Gerald. He had not conquered her yet. +</p> + +<p> +“And what has Halliday to do with it?” he asked, his voice still +muted. +</p> + +<p> +She would not answer for some seconds. Then she said, unwillingly: +</p> + +<p> +“He made me go and live with him, and now he wants to throw me over. +And yet he won’t let me go to anybody else. He wants me to live hidden in +the country. And then he says I persecute him, that he can’t get rid of +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Doesn’t know his own mind,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“He hasn’t any mind, so he can’t know it,” she said. +“He waits for what somebody tells him to do. He never does anything he +wants to do himself—because he doesn’t know what he wants. +He’s a perfect baby.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked at Halliday for some moments, watching the soft, rather +degenerate face of the young man. Its very softness was an attraction; it was a +soft, warm, corrupt nature, into which one might plunge with gratification. +</p> + +<p> +“But he has no hold over you, has he?” Gerald asked. +</p> + +<p> +“You see he <i>made</i> me go and live with him, when I didn’t want +to,” she replied. “He came and cried to me, tears, you never saw so +many, saying <i>he couldn’t</i> bear it unless I went back to him. And he +wouldn’t go away, he would have stayed for ever. He made me go back. Then +every time he behaves in this fashion. And now I’m going to have a baby, +he wants to give me a hundred pounds and send me into the country, so that he +would never see me nor hear of me again. But I’m not going to do it, +after—” +</p> + +<p> +A queer look came over Gerald’s face. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you going to have a child?” he asked incredulous. It +seemed, to look at her, impossible, she was so young and so far in spirit from +any childbearing. +</p> + +<p> +She looked full into his face, and her dark, inchoate eyes had now a furtive +look, and a look of a knowledge of evil, dark and indomitable. A flame ran +secretly to his heart. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. “Isn’t it beastly?” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you want it?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t,” she replied emphatically. +</p> + +<p> +“But—” he said, “how long have you known?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ten weeks,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +All the time she kept her dark, inchoate eyes full upon him. He remained +silent, thinking. Then, switching off and becoming cold, he asked, in a voice +full of considerate kindness: +</p> + +<p> +“Is there anything we can eat here? Is there anything you would +like?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, “I should adore some oysters.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” he said. “We’ll have oysters.” +And he beckoned to the waiter. +</p> + +<p> +Halliday took no notice, until the little plate was set before her. Then +suddenly he cried: +</p> + +<p> +“Pussum, you can’t eat oysters when you’re drinking +brandy.” +</p> + +<p> +“What has it go to do with you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing, nothing,” he cried. “But you can’t eat +oysters when you’re drinking brandy.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not drinking brandy,” she replied, and she sprinkled +the last drops of her liqueur over his face. He gave an odd squeal. She sat +looking at him, as if indifferent. +</p> + +<p> +“Pussum, why do you do that?” he cried in panic. He gave Gerald +the impression that he was terrified of her, and that he loved his terror. He +seemed to relish his own horror and hatred of her, turn it over and extract +every flavour from it, in real panic. Gerald thought him a strange fool, and yet +piquant. +</p> + +<p> +“But Pussum,” said another man, in a very small, quick Eton +voice, “you promised not to hurt him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t hurt him,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“What will you drink?” the young man asked. He was dark, and +smooth-skinned, and full of a stealthy vigour. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t like porter, Maxim,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“You must ask for champagne,” came the whispering, gentlemanly +voice of the other. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald suddenly realised that this was a hint to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we have champagne?” he asked, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes please, dwy,” she lisped childishly. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald watched her eating the oysters. She was delicate and finicking in her +eating, her fingers were fine and seemed very sensitive in the tips, so she put +her food apart with fine, small motions, she ate carefully, delicately. It +pleased him very much to see her, and it irritated Birkin. They were all +drinking champagne. Maxim, the prim young Russian with the smooth, warm-coloured +face and black, oiled hair was the only one who seemed to be perfectly calm and +sober. Birkin was white and abstract, unnatural, Gerald was smiling with a +constant bright, amused, cold light in his eyes, leaning a little protectively +towards the Pussum, who was very handsome, and soft, unfolded like some red +lotus in dreadful flowering nakedness, vainglorious now, flushed with wine and +with the excitement of men. Halliday looked foolish. One glass of wine was +enough to make him drunk and giggling. Yet there was always a pleasant, warm +naïveté about him, that made him attractive. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not afwaid of anything except black-beetles,” said +the Pussum, looking up suddenly and staring with her black eyes, on which there +seemed an unseeing film of flame, fully upon Gerald. He laughed dangerously, +from the blood. Her childish speech caressed his nerves, and her burning, filmed +eyes, turned now full upon him, oblivious of all her antecedents, gave him a +sort of licence. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not,” she protested. “I’m not afraid of +other things. But black-beetles—ugh!” she shuddered convulsively, as +if the very thought were too much to bear. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean,” said Gerald, with the punctiliousness of a man +who has been drinking, “that you are afraid of the sight of a +black-beetle, or you are afraid of a black-beetle biting you, or doing you some +harm?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do they bite?” cried the girl. +</p> + +<p> +“How perfectly loathsome!” exclaimed Halliday. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” replied Gerald, looking round the table. +“Do black-beetles bite? But that isn’t the point. Are you afraid of +their biting, or is it a metaphysical antipathy?” +</p> + +<p> +The girl was looking full upon him all the time with inchoate eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I think they’re beastly, they’re horrid,” she +cried. “If I see one, it gives me the creeps all over. If one were to +crawl on me, I’m <i>sure</i> I should die—I’m sure I should.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope not,” whispered the young Russian. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure I should, Maxim,” she asseverated. +</p> + +<p> +“Then one won’t crawl on you,” said Gerald, smiling and +knowing. In some strange way he understood her. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s metaphysical, as Gerald says,” Birkin stated. +</p> + +<p> +There was a little pause of uneasiness. +</p> + +<p> +“And are you afraid of nothing else, Pussum?” asked the young +Russian, in his quick, hushed, elegant manner. +</p> + +<p> +“Not weally,” she said. “I am afwaid of some things, but +not weally the same. I’m not afwaid of <i>blood</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not afwaid of blood!” exclaimed a young man with a thick, pale, +jeering face, who had just come to the table and was drinking whisky. +</p> + +<p> +The Pussum turned on him a sulky look of dislike, low and ugly. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t you really afraid of blud?” the other persisted, a +sneer all over his face. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I’m not,” she retorted. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, have you ever seen blood, except in a dentist’s +spittoon?” jeered the young man. +</p> + +<p> +“I wasn’t speaking to you,” she replied rather superbly. +</p> + +<p> +“You can answer me, can’t you?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +For reply, she suddenly jabbed a knife across his thick, pale hand. He +started up with a vulgar curse. +</p> + +<p> +“Show’s what you are,” said the Pussum in contempt. +</p> + +<p> +“Curse you,” said the young man, standing by the table and +looking down at her with acrid malevolence. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop that,” said Gerald, in quick, instinctive command. +</p> + +<p> +The young man stood looking down at her with sardonic contempt, a cowed, +self-conscious look on his thick, pale face. The blood began to flow from his +hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, how horrible, take it away!” squealed Halliday, turning +green and averting his face. +</p> + +<p> +“D’you feel ill?” asked the sardonic young man, in some +concern. “Do you feel ill, Julius? Garn, it’s nothing, man, +don’t give her the pleasure of letting her think she’s performed a +feat—don’t give her the satisfaction, man—it’s just what +she wants.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” squealed Halliday. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s going to cat, Maxim,” said the Pussum warningly. The +suave young Russian rose and took Halliday by the arm, leading him away. Birkin, +white and diminished, looked on as if he were displeased. The wounded, sardonic +young man moved away, ignoring his bleeding hand in the most conspicuous +fashion. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s an awful coward, really,” said the Pussum to Gerald. +“He’s got such an influence over Julius.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who is he?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a Jew, really. I can’t bear him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, he’s quite unimportant. But what’s wrong with +Halliday?” +</p> + +<p> +“Julius’s the most awful coward you’ve ever seen,” +she cried. “He always faints if I lift a knife—he’s tewwified +of me.” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re all afwaid of me,” she said. “Only the Jew +thinks he’s going to show his courage. But he’s the biggest coward +of them all, really, because he’s afwaid what people will think about +him—and Julius doesn’t care about that.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’ve a lot of valour between them,” said Gerald +good-humouredly. +</p> + +<p> +The Pussum looked at him with a slow, slow smile. She was very handsome, +flushed, and confident in dreadful knowledge. Two little points of light glinted +on Gerald’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do they call you Pussum, because you’re like a cat?” +he asked her. +</p> + +<p> +“I expect so,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +The smile grew more intense on his face. +</p> + +<p> +“You are, rather; or a young, female panther.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh God, Gerald!” said Birkin, in some disgust. +</p> + +<p> +They both looked uneasily at Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re silent tonight, Wupert,” she said to him, with a +slight insolence, being safe with the other man. +</p> + +<p> +Halliday was coming back, looking forlorn and sick. +</p> + +<p> +“Pussum,” he said, “I wish you wouldn’t do these +things—Oh!” He sank in his chair with a groan. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better go home,” she said to him. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>will</i> go home,” he said. “But won’t you all come +along. Won’t you come round to the flat?” he said to Gerald. +“I should be so glad if you would. Do—that’ll be splendid. I +say?” He looked round for a waiter. “Get me a taxi.” Then he +groaned again. “Oh I do feel—perfectly ghastly! Pussum, you see what +you do to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why are you such an idiot?” she said with sullen calm. +</p> + +<p> +“But I’m not an idiot! Oh, how awful! Do come, everybody, it +will be so splendid. Pussum, you are coming. What? Oh but you <i>must</i> come, yes, +you must. What? Oh, my dear girl, don’t make a fuss now, I feel +perfectly—Oh, it’s so ghastly—Ho!—er! Oh!” +</p> + +<p> +“You know you can’t drink,” she said to him, coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you it isn’t drink—it’s your disgusting +behaviour, Pussum, it’s nothing else. Oh, how awful! Libidnikov, do let us +go.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s only drunk one glass—only one glass,” came the +rapid, hushed voice of the young Russian. +</p> + +<p> +They all moved off to the door. The girl kept near to Gerald, and seemed to +be at one in her motion with him. He was aware of this, and filled with +demon-satisfaction that his motion held good for two. He held her in the hollow +of his will, and she was soft, secret, invisible in her stirring there. +</p> + +<p> +They crowded five of them into the taxi-cab. Halliday lurched in first, and +dropped into his seat against the other window. Then the Pussum took her place, +and Gerald sat next to her. They heard the young Russian giving orders to the +driver, then they were all seated in the dark, crowded close together, Halliday +groaning and leaning out of the window. They felt the swift, muffled motion of +the car. +</p> + +<p> +The Pussum sat near to Gerald, and she seemed to become soft, subtly to +infuse herself into his bones, as if she were passing into him in a black, +electric flow. Her being suffused into his veins like a magnetic darkness, and +concentrated at the base of his spine like a fearful source of power. Meanwhile +her voice sounded out reedy and nonchalant, as she talked indifferently with +Birkin and with Maxim. Between her and Gerald was this silence and this black, +electric comprehension in the darkness. Then she found his hand, and grasped it +in her own firm, small clasp. It was so utterly dark, and yet such a naked +statement, that rapid vibrations ran through his blood and over his brain, he +was no longer responsible. Still her voice rang on like a bell, tinged with a +tone of mockery. And as she swung her head, her fine mane of hair just swept his +face, and all his nerves were on fire, as with a subtle friction of electricity. +But the great centre of his force held steady, a magnificent pride to him, at +the base of his spine. +</p> + +<p> +They arrived at a large block of buildings, went up in a lift, and presently +a door was being opened for them by a Hindu. Gerald looked in surprise, +wondering if he were a gentleman, one of the Hindus down from Oxford, perhaps. +But no, he was the man-servant. +</p> + +<p> +“Make tea, Hasan,” said Halliday. +</p> + +<p> +“There is a room for me?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +To both of which questions the man grinned, and murmured. +</p> + +<p> +He made Gerald uncertain, because, being tall and slender and reticent, he +looked like a gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +“Who is your servant?” he asked of Halliday. “He looks a +swell.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—that’s because he’s dressed in another +man’s clothes. He’s anything but a swell, really. We found him in +the road, starving. So I took him here, and another man gave him clothes. +He’s anything but what he seems to be—his only advantage is that he +can’t speak English and can’t understand it, so he’s perfectly +safe.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s very dirty,” said the young Russian swiftly and +silently. +</p> + +<p> +Directly, the man appeared in the doorway. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” said Halliday. +</p> + +<p> +The Hindu grinned, and murmured shyly: +</p> + +<p> +“Want to speak to master.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald watched curiously. The fellow in the doorway was goodlooking and +clean-limbed, his bearing was calm, he looked elegant, aristocratic. Yet he was +half a savage, grinning foolishly. Halliday went out into the corridor to speak +with him. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” they heard his voice. “What? What do you say? Tell +me again. What? Want money? Want <i>more</i> money? But what do you want money +for?” There was the confused sound of the Hindu’s talking, then +Halliday appeared in the room, smiling also foolishly, and saying: +</p> + +<p> +“He says he wants money to buy underclothing. Can anybody lend me a +shilling? Oh thanks, a shilling will do to buy all the underclothes he +wants.” He took the money from Gerald and went out into the passage again, +where they heard him saying, “You can’t want more money, you had +three and six yesterday. You mustn’t ask for any more. Bring the tea in +quickly.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked round the room. It was an ordinary London sitting-room in a +flat, evidently taken furnished, rather common and ugly. But there were several +negro statues, wood-carvings from West Africa, strange and disturbing, the +carved negroes looked almost like the fœtus of a human being. One was a woman +sitting naked in a strange posture, and looking tortured, her abdomen stuck out. +The young Russian explained that she was sitting in child-birth, clutching the +ends of the band that hung from her neck, one in each hand, so that she could +bear down, and help labour. The strange, transfixed, rudimentary face of the +woman again reminded Gerald of a fœtus, it was also rather wonderful, conveying +the suggestion of the extreme of physical sensation, beyond the limits of mental +consciousness. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t they rather obscene?” he asked, disapproving. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” murmured the other rapidly. “I have +never defined the obscene. I think they are very good.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald turned away. There were one or two new pictures in the room, in the +Futurist manner; there was a large piano. And these, with some ordinary London +lodging-house furniture of the better sort, completed the whole. +</p> + +<p> +The Pussum had taken off her hat and coat, and was seated on the sofa. She +was evidently quite at home in the house, but uncertain, suspended. She did not +quite know her position. Her alliance for the time being was with Gerald, and +she did not know how far this was admitted by any of the men. She was +considering how she should carry off the situation. She was determined to have +her experience. Now, at this eleventh hour, she was not to be baulked. Her face +was flushed as with battle, her eye was brooding but inevitable. +</p> + +<p> +The man came in with tea and a bottle of Kümmel. He set the tray on a little +table before the couch. +</p> + +<p> +“Pussum,” said Halliday, “pour out the tea.” +</p> + +<p> +She did not move. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you do it?” Halliday repeated, in a state of +nervous apprehension. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve not come back here as it was before,” she said. +“I only came because the others wanted me to, not for your sake.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Pussum, you know you are your own mistress. I don’t +want you to do anything but use the flat for your own convenience—you know +it, I’ve told you so many times.” +</p> + +<p> +She did not reply, but silently, reservedly reached for the tea-pot. They +all sat round and drank tea. Gerald could feel the electric connection between +him and her so strongly, as she sat there quiet and withheld, that another set +of conditions altogether had come to pass. Her silence and her immutability +perplexed him. <i>How</i> was he going to come to her? And yet he felt it quite +inevitable. He trusted completely to the current that held them. His perplexity +was only superficial, new conditions reigned, the old were surpassed; here one +did as one was possessed to do, no matter what it was. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin rose. It was nearly one o’clock. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going to bed,” he said. “Gerald, I’ll +ring you up in the morning at your place or you ring me up here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Right,” said Gerald, and Birkin went out. +</p> + +<p> +When he was well gone, Halliday said in a stimulated voice, to Gerald: +</p> + +<p> +“I say, won’t you stay here—oh do!” +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t put everybody up,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but I can, perfectly—there are three more beds besides +mine—do stay, won’t you. Everything is quite ready—there is +always somebody here—I always put people up—I love having the house +crowded.” +</p> + +<p> +“But there are only two rooms,” said the Pussum, in a cold, +hostile voice, “now Rupert’s here.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know there are only two rooms,” said Halliday, in his odd, +high way of speaking. “But what does that matter?” +</p> + +<p> +He was smiling rather foolishly, and he spoke eagerly, with an insinuating +determination. +</p> + +<p> +“Julius and I will share one room,” said the Russian in his +discreet, precise voice. Halliday and he were friends since Eton. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s very simple,” said Gerald, rising and pressing back +his arms, stretching himself. Then he went again to look at one of the pictures. +Every one of his limbs was turgid with electric force, and his back was tense +like a tiger’s, with slumbering fire. He was very proud. +</p> + +<p> +The Pussum rose. She gave a black look at Halliday, black and deadly, which +brought the rather foolishly pleased smile to that young man’s face. Then +she went out of the room, with a cold good-night to them all generally. +</p> + +<p> +There was a brief interval, they heard a door close, then Maxim said, in his +refined voice: +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all right.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked significantly at Gerald, and said again, with a silent nod: +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all right—you’re all right.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked at the smooth, ruddy, comely face, and at the strange, +significant eyes, and it seemed as if the voice of the young Russian, so small +and perfect, sounded in the blood rather than in the air. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I’m</i> all right then,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes! Yes! You’re all right,” said the Russian. +</p> + +<p> +Halliday continued to smile, and to say nothing. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly the Pussum appeared again in the door, her small, childish face +looking sullen and vindictive. +</p> + +<p> +“I know you want to catch me out,” came her cold, rather +resonant voice. “But I don’t care, I don’t care how much you +catch me out.” +</p> + +<p> +She turned and was gone again. She had been wearing a loose dressing-gown of +purple silk, tied round her waist. She looked so small and childish and +vulnerable, almost pitiful. And yet the black looks of her eyes made Gerald feel +drowned in some potent darkness that almost frightened him. +</p> + +<p> +The men lit another cigarette and talked casually. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br/> +FETISH</h2> + +<p> +In the morning Gerald woke late. He had slept heavily. Pussum was still +asleep, sleeping childishly and pathetically. There was something small and +curled up and defenceless about her, that roused an unsatisfied flame of passion +in the young man’s blood, a devouring avid pity. He looked at her again. +But it would be too cruel to wake her. He subdued himself, and went away. +</p> + +<p> +Hearing voices coming from the sitting-room, Halliday talking to Libidnikov, +he went to the door and glanced in. He had on a silk wrap of a beautiful bluish +colour, with an amethyst hem. +</p> + +<p> +To his surprise he saw the two young men by the fire, stark naked. Halliday +looked up, rather pleased. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-morning,” he said. “Oh—did you want +towels?” And stark naked he went out into the hall, striding a strange, +white figure between the unliving furniture. He came back with the towels, and +took his former position, crouching seated before the fire on the fender. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you love to feel the fire on your skin?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“It <i>is</i> rather pleasant,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“How perfectly splendid it must be to be in a climate where one could +do without clothing altogether,” said Halliday. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gerald, “if there weren’t so many things +that sting and bite.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a disadvantage,” murmured Maxim. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked at him, and with a slight revulsion saw the human animal, +golden skinned and bare, somehow humiliating. Halliday was different. He had a +rather heavy, slack, broken beauty, white and firm. He was like a Christ in a +Pietà. The animal was not there at all, only the heavy, broken beauty. And +Gerald realised how Halliday’s eyes were beautiful too, so blue and warm +and confused, broken also in their expression. The fireglow fell on his heavy, +rather bowed shoulders, he sat slackly crouched on the fender, his face was +uplifted, weak, perhaps slightly disintegrate, and yet with a moving beauty of +its own. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Maxim, “you’ve been in hot +countries where the people go about naked.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh really!” exclaimed Halliday. “Where?” +</p> + +<p> +“South America—Amazon,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but how perfectly splendid! It’s one of the things I want +most to do—to live from day to day without <i>ever</i> putting on any sort +of clothing whatever. If I could do that, I should feel I had lived.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why?” said Gerald. “I can’t see that it makes +so much difference.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I think it would be perfectly splendid. I’m sure life would +be entirely another thing—entirely different, and perfectly +wonderful.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why?” asked Gerald. “Why should it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—one would <i>feel</i> things instead of merely looking at them. +I should feel the air move against me, and feel the things I touched, instead +of having only to look at them. I’m sure life is all wrong because it has +become much too visual—we can neither hear nor feel nor understand, we can +only see. I’m sure that is entirely wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, that is true, that is true,” said the Russian. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald glanced at him, and saw him, his suave, golden coloured body with the +black hair growing fine and freely, like tendrils, and his limbs like smooth +plant-stems. He was so healthy and well-made, why did he make one ashamed, why +did one feel repelled? Why should Gerald even dislike it, why did it seem to him +to detract from his own dignity. Was that all a human being amounted to? So +uninspired! thought Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin suddenly appeared in the doorway, in white pyjamas and wet hair, and +a towel over his arm. He was aloof and white, and somehow evanescent. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s the bath-room now, if you want it,” he said +generally, and was going away again, when Gerald called: +</p> + +<p> +“I say, Rupert!” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” The single white figure appeared again, a presence in +the room. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think of that figure there? I want to know,” Gerald +asked. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin, white and strangely ghostly, went over to the carved figure of the +negro woman in labour. Her nude, protuberant body crouched in a strange, +clutching posture, her hands gripping the ends of the band, above her breast. +</p> + +<p> +“It is art,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Very beautiful, it’s very beautiful,” said the Russian. +</p> + +<p> +They all drew near to look. Gerald looked at the group of men, the Russian +golden and like a water-plant, Halliday tall and heavily, brokenly beautiful, +Birkin very white and indefinite, not to be assigned, as he looked closely at +the carven woman. Strangely elated, Gerald also lifted his eyes to the face of +the wooden figure. And his heart contracted. +</p> + +<p> +He saw vividly with his spirit the grey, forward-stretching face of the +negro woman, African and tense, abstracted in utter physical stress. It was a +terrible face, void, peaked, abstracted almost into meaninglessness by the +weight of sensation beneath. He saw the Pussum in it. As in a dream, he knew +her. +</p> + +<p> +“Why is it art?” Gerald asked, shocked, resentful. +</p> + +<p> +“It conveys a complete truth,” said Birkin. “It contains +the whole truth of that state, whatever you feel about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you can’t call it <i>high</i> art,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“High! There are centuries and hundreds of centuries of development in +a straight line, behind that carving; it is an awful pitch of culture, of a +definite sort.” +</p> + +<p> +“What culture?” Gerald asked, in opposition. He hated the sheer +African thing. +</p> + +<p> +“Pure culture in sensation, culture in the physical consciousness, +really ultimate <i>physical</i> consciousness, mindless, utterly sensual. It +is so sensual as to be final, supreme.” +</p> + +<p> +But Gerald resented it. He wanted to keep certain illusions, certain ideas +like clothing. +</p> + +<p> +“You like the wrong things, Rupert,” he said, “things +against yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I know, this isn’t everything,” Birkin replied, +moving away. +</p> + +<p> +When Gerald went back to his room from the bath, he also carried his +clothes. He was so conventional at home, that when he was really away, and on +the loose, as now, he enjoyed nothing so much as full outrageousness. So he +strode with his blue silk wrap over his arm and felt defiant. +</p> + +<p> +The Pussum lay in her bed, motionless, her round, dark eyes like black, +unhappy pools. He could only see the black, bottomless pools of her eyes. +Perhaps she suffered. The sensation of her inchoate suffering roused the old +sharp flame in him, a mordant pity, a passion almost of cruelty. +</p> + +<p> +“You are awake now,” he said to her. +</p> + +<p> +“What time is it?” came her muted voice. +</p> + +<p> +She seemed to flow back, almost like liquid, from his approach, to sink +helplessly away from him. Her inchoate look of a violated slave, whose +fulfilment lies in her further and further violation, made his nerves quiver +with acutely desirable sensation. After all, his was the only will, she was the +passive substance of his will. He tingled with the subtle, biting sensation. And +then he knew, he must go away from her, there must be pure separation between +them. +</p> + +<p> +It was a quiet and ordinary breakfast, the four men all looking very clean +and bathed. Gerald and the Russian were both correct and <i>comme il faut</i> +in appearance and manner, Birkin was gaunt and sick, and looked a failure in +his attempt to be a properly dressed man, like Gerald and Maxim. Halliday wore +tweeds and a green flannel shirt, and a rag of a tie, which was just right for +him. The Hindu brought in a great deal of soft toast, and looked exactly the +same as he had looked the night before, statically the same. +</p> + +<p> +At the end of the breakfast the Pussum appeared, in a purple silk wrap with +a shimmering sash. She had recovered herself somewhat, but was mute and lifeless +still. It was a torment to her when anybody spoke to her. Her face was like a +small, fine mask, sinister too, masked with unwilling suffering. It was almost +midday. Gerald rose and went away to his business, glad to get out. But he had +not finished. He was coming back again at evening, they were all dining +together, and he had booked seats for the party, excepting Birkin, at a +music-hall. +</p> + +<p> +At night they came back to the flat very late again, again flushed with +drink. Again the man-servant—who invariably disappeared between the hours +of ten and twelve at night—came in silently and inscrutably with tea, +bending in a slow, strange, leopard-like fashion to put the tray softly on the +table. His face was immutable, aristocratic-looking, tinged slightly with grey +under the skin; he was young and good-looking. But Birkin felt a slight +sickness, looking at him, and feeling the slight greyness as an ash or a +corruption, in the aristocratic inscrutability of expression a nauseating, +bestial stupidity. +</p> + +<p> +Again they talked cordially and rousedly together. But already a certain +friability was coming over the party, Birkin was mad with irritation, Halliday +was turning in an insane hatred against Gerald, the Pussum was becoming hard and +cold, like a flint knife, and Halliday was laying himself out to her. And her +intention, ultimately, was to capture Halliday, to have complete power over him. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning they all stalked and lounged about again. But Gerald could +feel a strange hostility to himself, in the air. It roused his obstinacy, and he +stood up against it. He hung on for two more days. The result was a nasty and +insane scene with Halliday on the fourth evening. Halliday turned with absurd +animosity upon Gerald, in the café. There was a row. Gerald was on the point of +knocking-in Halliday’s face; when he was filled with sudden disgust and +indifference, and he went away, leaving Halliday in a foolish state of gloating +triumph, the Pussum hard and established, and Maxim standing clear. Birkin was +absent, he had gone out of town again. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald was piqued because he had left without giving the Pussum money. It +was true, she did not care whether he gave her money or not, and he knew it. But +she would have been glad of ten pounds, and he would have been <i>very</i> glad +to give them to her. Now he felt in a false position. He went away chewing his +lips to get at the ends of his short clipped moustache. He knew the Pussum was +merely glad to be rid of him. She had got her Halliday whom she wanted. She wanted +him completely in her power. Then she would marry him. She wanted to marry him. +She had set her will on marrying Halliday. She never wanted to hear of Gerald +again; unless, perhaps, she were in difficulty; because after all, Gerald was +what she called a man, and these others, Halliday, Libidnikov, Birkin, the whole +Bohemian set, they were only half men. But it was half men she could deal with. +She felt sure of herself with them. The real men, like Gerald, put her in her +place too much. +</p> + +<p> +Still, she respected Gerald, she really respected him. She had managed to +get his address, so that she could appeal to him in time of distress. She knew +he wanted to give her money. She would perhaps write to him on that inevitable +rainy day. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br/> +BREADALBY</h2> + +<p> +Breadalby was a Georgian house with Corinthian pillars, standing among the +softer, greener hills of Derbyshire, not far from Cromford. In front, it looked +over a lawn, over a few trees, down to a string of fish-ponds in the hollow of +the silent park. At the back were trees, among which were to be found the +stables, and the big kitchen garden, behind which was a wood. +</p> + +<p> +It was a very quiet place, some miles from the high-road, back from the +Derwent Valley, outside the show scenery. Silent and forsaken, the golden stucco +showed between the trees, the house-front looked down the park, unchanged and +unchanging. +</p> + +<p> +Of late, however, Hermione had lived a good deal at the house. She had +turned away from London, away from Oxford, towards the silence of the country. +Her father was mostly absent, abroad, she was either alone in the house, with +her visitors, of whom there were always several, or she had with her her +brother, a bachelor, and a Liberal member of Parliament. He always came down +when the House was not sitting, seemed always to be present in Breadalby, +although he was most conscientious in his attendance to duty. +</p> + +<p> +The summer was just coming in when Ursula and Gudrun went to stay the second +time with Hermione. Coming along in the car, after they had entered the park, +they looked across the dip, where the fish-ponds lay in silence, at the pillared +front of the house, sunny and small like an English drawing of the old school, +on the brow of the green hill, against the trees. There were small figures on +the green lawn, women in lavender and yellow moving to the shade of the +enormous, beautifully balanced cedar tree. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it complete!” said Gudrun. “It is as final as +an old aquatint.” She spoke with some resentment in her voice, as if she +were captivated unwillingly, as if she must admire against her will. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you love it?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t <i>love</i> it, but in its way, I think it is quite +complete.” +</p> + +<p> +The motor-car ran down the hill and up again in one breath, and they were +curving to the side door. A parlour-maid appeared, and then Hermione, coming +forward with her pale face lifted, and her hands outstretched, advancing +straight to the newcomers, her voice singing: +</p> + +<p> +“Here you are—I’m so glad to see you—” she +kissed Gudrun—“so glad to see you—” she kissed Ursula +and remained with her arm round her. “Are you very tired?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all tired,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you tired, Gudrun?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all, thanks,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“No—” drawled Hermione. And she stood and looked at them. +The two girls were embarrassed because she would not move into the house, but +must have her little scene of welcome there on the path. The servants waited. +</p> + +<p> +“Come in,” said Hermione at last, having fully taken in the pair +of them. Gudrun was the more beautiful and attractive, she had decided again, +Ursula was more physical, more womanly. She admired Gudrun’s dress more. +It was of green poplin, with a loose coat above it, of broad, dark-green and +dark-brown stripes. The hat was of a pale, greenish straw, the colour of new +hay, and it had a plaited ribbon of black and orange, the stockings were dark +green, the shoes black. It was a good get-up, at once fashionable and +individual. Ursula, in dark blue, was more ordinary, though she also looked +well. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione herself wore a dress of prune-coloured silk, with coral beads and +coral coloured stockings. But her dress was both shabby and soiled, even rather +dirty. +</p> + +<p> +“You would like to see your rooms now, wouldn’t you! Yes. We +will go up now, shall we?” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was glad when she could be left alone in her room. Hermione lingered +so long, made such a stress on one. She stood so near to one, pressing herself +near upon one, in a way that was most embarrassing and oppressive. She seemed to +hinder one’s workings. +</p> + +<p> +Lunch was served on the lawn, under the great tree, whose thick, blackish +boughs came down close to the grass. There were present a young Italian woman, +slight and fashionable, a young, athletic-looking Miss Bradley, a learned, dry +Baronet of fifty, who was always making witticisms and laughing at them heartily +in a harsh, horse-laugh, there was Rupert Birkin, and then a woman secretary, a +Fräulein März, young and slim and pretty. +</p> + +<p> +The food was very good, that was one thing. Gudrun, critical of everything, +gave it her full approval. Ursula loved the situation, the white table by the +cedar tree, the scent of new sunshine, the little vision of the leafy park, with +far-off deer feeding peacefully. There seemed a magic circle drawn about the +place, shutting out the present, enclosing the delightful, precious past, trees +and deer and silence, like a dream. +</p> + +<p> +But in spirit she was unhappy. The talk went on like a rattle of small +artillery, always slightly sententious, with a sententiousness that was only +emphasised by the continual crackling of a witticism, the continual spatter of +verbal jest, designed to give a tone of flippancy to a stream of conversation +that was all critical and general, a canal of conversation rather than a stream. +</p> + +<p> +The attitude was mental and very wearying. Only the elderly sociologist, +whose mental fibre was so tough as to be insentient, seemed to be thoroughly +happy. Birkin was down in the mouth. Hermione appeared, with amazing +persistence, to wish to ridicule him and make him look ignominious in the eyes +of everybody. And it was surprising how she seemed to succeed, how helpless he +seemed against her. He looked completely insignificant. Ursula and Gudrun, both +very unused, were mostly silent, listening to the slow, rhapsodic sing-song of +Hermione, or the verbal sallies of Sir Joshua, or the prattle of Fräulein, or +the responses of the other two women. +</p> + +<p> +Luncheon was over, coffee was brought out on the grass, the party left the +table and sat about in lounge chairs, in the shade or in the sunshine as they +wished. Fräulein departed into the house, Hermione took up her embroidery, the +little Contessa took a book, Miss Bradley was weaving a basket out of fine +grass, and there they all were on the lawn in the early summer afternoon, +working leisurely and spattering with half-intellectual, deliberate talk. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly there was the sound of the brakes and the shutting off of a +motor-car. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s Salsie!” sang Hermione, in her slow, amusing +sing-song. And laying down her work, she rose slowly, and slowly passed over the +lawn, round the bushes, out of sight. +</p> + +<p> +“Who is it?” asked Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr Roddice—Miss Roddice’s brother—at least, I +suppose it’s he,” said Sir Joshua. +</p> + +<p> +“Salsie, yes, it is her brother,” said the little Contessa, +lifting her head for a moment from her book, and speaking as if to give +information, in her slightly deepened, guttural English. +</p> + +<p> +They all waited. And then round the bushes came the tall form of Alexander +Roddice, striding romantically like a Meredith hero who remembers Disraeli. He +was cordial with everybody, he was at once a host, with an easy, offhand +hospitality that he had learned for Hermione’s friends. He had just come +down from London, from the House. At once the atmosphere of the House of Commons +made itself felt over the lawn: the Home Secretary had said such and such a +thing, and he, Roddice, on the other hand, thought such and such a thing, and +had said so-and-so to the PM. +</p> + +<p> +Now Hermione came round the bushes with Gerald Crich. He had come along with +Alexander. Gerald was presented to everybody, was kept by Hermione for a few +moments in full view, then he was led away, still by Hermione. He was evidently +her guest of the moment. +</p> + +<p> +There had been a split in the Cabinet; the minister for Education had +resigned owing to adverse criticism. This started a conversation on education. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Hermione, lifting her face like a rhapsodist, +“there <i>can</i> be no reason, no <i>excuse</i> for education, except the +joy and beauty of knowledge in itself.” She seemed to rumble and ruminate +with subterranean thoughts for a minute, then she proceeded: “Vocational +education <i>isn’t</i> education, it is the close of education.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald, on the brink of discussion, sniffed the air with delight and +prepared for action. +</p> + +<p> +“Not necessarily,” he said. “But isn’t education +really like gymnastics, isn’t the end of education the production of a +well-trained, vigorous, energetic mind?” +</p> + +<p> +“Just as athletics produce a healthy body, ready for anything,” +cried Miss Bradley, in hearty accord. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked at her in silent loathing. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—” rumbled Hermione, “I don’t know. To me +the pleasure of knowing is so great, so <i>wonderful</i>—nothing has meant +so much to me in all life, as certain knowledge—no, I am +sure—nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“What knowledge, for example, Hermione?” asked Alexander. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione lifted her face and rumbled— +</p> + +<p> +“M—m—m—I don’t know . . . But one thing was +the stars, when I really understood something about the stars. One feels so +<i>uplifted</i>, so <i>unbounded</i> . . .” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked at her in a white fury. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want to feel unbounded for?” he said sarcastically. +“You don’t want to <i>be</i> unbounded.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione recoiled in offence. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but one does have that limitless feeling,” said Gerald. +“It’s like getting on top of the mountain and seeing the +Pacific.” +</p> + +<p> +“Silent upon a peak in Dariayn,” murmured the Italian, lifting +her face for a moment from her book. +</p> + +<p> +“Not necessarily in Dariayn,” said Gerald, while Ursula began to +laugh. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione waited for the dust to settle, and then she said, untouched: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it is the greatest thing in life—<i>to know</i>. It is really +to be happy, to be <i>free</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Knowledge is, of course, liberty,” said Mattheson. +</p> + +<p> +“In compressed tabloids,” said Birkin, looking at the dry, stiff +little body of the Baronet. Immediately Gudrun saw the famous sociologist as a +flat bottle, containing tabloids of compressed liberty. That pleased her. Sir +Joshua was labelled and placed forever in her mind. +</p> + +<p> +“What does that mean, Rupert?” sang Hermione, in a calm snub. +</p> + +<p> +“You can only have knowledge, strictly,” he replied, “of +things concluded, in the past. It’s like bottling the liberty of last +summer in the bottled gooseberries.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Can</i> one have knowledge only of the past?” asked the Baronet, +pointedly. “Could we call our knowledge of the laws of gravitation for +instance, knowledge of the past?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“There is a most beautiful thing in my book,” suddenly piped the +little Italian woman. “It says the man came to the door and threw his eyes +down the street.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a general laugh in the company. Miss Bradley went and looked over +the shoulder of the Contessa. +</p> + +<p> +“See!” said the Contessa. +</p> + +<p> +“Bazarov came to the door and threw his eyes hurriedly down the +street,” she read. +</p> + +<p> +Again there was a loud laugh, the most startling of which was the +Baronet’s, which rattled out like a clatter of falling stones. +</p> + +<p> +“What is the book?” asked Alexander, promptly. +</p> + +<p> +“Fathers and Sons, by Turgenev,” said the little foreigner, +pronouncing every syllable distinctly. She looked at the cover, to verify +herself. +</p> + +<p> +“An old American edition,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha!—of course—translated from the French,” said +Alexander, with a fine declamatory voice. “<i>Bazarov ouvra la porte et jeta +les yeux dans la rue.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +He looked brightly round the company. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder what the ‘hurriedly’ was,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +They all began to guess. +</p> + +<p> +And then, to the amazement of everybody, the maid came hurrying with a large +tea-tray. The afternoon had passed so swiftly. +</p> + +<p> +After tea, they were all gathered for a walk. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you like to come for a walk?” said Hermione to each of +them, one by one. And they all said yes, feeling somehow like prisoners +marshalled for exercise. Birkin only refused. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you come for a walk, Rupert?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, Hermione.” +</p> + +<p> +“But are you <i>sure?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite sure.” There was a second’s hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +“And why not?” sang Hermione’s question. It made her blood +run sharp, to be thwarted in even so trifling a matter. She intended them all to +walk with her in the park. +</p> + +<p> +“Because I don’t like trooping off in a gang,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Her voice rumbled in her throat for a moment. Then she said, with a curious +stray calm: +</p> + +<p> +“Then we’ll leave a little boy behind, if he’s +sulky.” +</p> + +<p> +And she looked really gay, while she insulted him. But it merely made him +stiff. +</p> + +<p> +She trailed off to the rest of the company, only turning to wave her +handkerchief to him, and to chuckle with laughter, singing out: +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye, good-bye, little boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye, impudent hag,” he said to himself. +</p> + +<p> +They all went through the park. Hermione wanted to show them the wild +daffodils on a little slope. “This way, this way,” sang her +leisurely voice at intervals. And they had all to come this way. The daffodils +were pretty, but who could see them? Ursula was stiff all over with resentment +by this time, resentment of the whole atmosphere. Gudrun, mocking and objective, +watched and registered everything. +</p> + +<p> +They looked at the shy deer, and Hermione talked to the stag, as if he too +were a boy she wanted to wheedle and fondle. He was male, so she must exert some +kind of power over him. They trailed home by the fish-ponds, and Hermione told +them about the quarrel of two male swans, who had striven for the love of the +one lady. She chuckled and laughed as she told how the ousted lover had sat with +his head buried under his wing, on the gravel. +</p> + +<p> +When they arrived back at the house, Hermione stood on the lawn and sang +out, in a strange, small, high voice that carried very far: +</p> + +<p> +“Rupert! Rupert!” The first syllable was high and slow, the +second dropped down. “Roo-o-opert.” +</p> + +<p> +But there was no answer. A maid appeared. +</p> + +<p> +“Where is Mr Birkin, Alice?” asked the mild straying voice of +Hermione. But under the straying voice, what a persistent, almost insane <i>will!</i> +</p> + +<p> +“I think he’s in his room, madam.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is he?” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione went slowly up the stairs, along the corridor, singing out in her +high, small call: +</p> + +<p> +“Ru-oo-pert! Ru-oo pert!” +</p> + +<p> +She came to his door, and tapped, still crying: “Roo-pert.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” sounded his voice at last. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you doing?” +</p> + +<p> +The question was mild and curious. +</p> + +<p> +There was no answer. Then he opened the door. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve come back,” said Hermione. “The daffodils are +<i>so</i> beautiful.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, “I’ve seen them.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him with her long, slow, impassive look, along her cheeks. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you?” she echoed. And she remained looking at him. She was +stimulated above all things by this conflict with him, when he was like a sulky +boy, helpless, and she had him safe at Breadalby. But underneath she knew the +split was coming, and her hatred of him was subconscious and intense. +</p> + +<p> +“What were you doing?” she reiterated, in her mild, indifferent +tone. He did not answer, and she made her way, almost unconsciously into his +room. He had taken a Chinese drawing of geese from the boudoir, and was copying +it, with much skill and vividness. +</p> + +<p> +“You are copying the drawing,” she said, standing near the +table, and looking down at his work. “Yes. How beautifully you do it! You +like it very much, don’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a marvellous drawing,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it? I’m so glad you like it, because I’ve always been +fond of it. The Chinese Ambassador gave it me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“But why do you copy it?” she asked, casual and sing-song. +“Why not do something original?” +</p> + +<p> +“I want to know it,” he replied. “One gets more of China, +copying this picture, than reading all the books.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what do you get?” +</p> + +<p> +She was at once roused, she laid as it were violent hands on him, to extract +his secrets from him. She <i>must</i> know. It was a dreadful tyranny, an obsession +in her, to know all he knew. For some time he was silent, hating to answer her. +Then, compelled, he began: +</p> + +<p> +“I know what centres they live from—what they perceive and +feel—the hot, stinging centrality of a goose in the flux of cold water and +mud—the curious bitter stinging heat of a goose’s blood, entering +their own blood like an inoculation of corruptive fire—fire of the +cold-burning mud—the lotus mystery.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione looked at him along her narrow, pallid cheeks. Her eyes were +strange and drugged, heavy under their heavy, drooping lids. Her thin bosom +shrugged convulsively. He stared back at her, devilish and unchanging. With +another strange, sick convulsion, she turned away, as if she were sick, could +feel dissolution setting-in in her body. For with her mind she was unable to +attend to his words, he caught her, as it were, beneath all her defences, and +destroyed her with some insidious occult potency. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, as if she did not know what she were saying. +“Yes,” and she swallowed, and tried to regain her mind. But she +could not, she was witless, decentralised. Use all her will as she might, she +could not recover. She suffered the ghastliness of dissolution, broken and gone +in a horrible corruption. And he stood and looked at her unmoved. She strayed +out, pallid and preyed-upon like a ghost, like one attacked by the +tomb-influences which dog us. And she was gone like a corpse, that has no +presence, no connection. He remained hard and vindictive. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione came down to dinner strange and sepulchral, her eyes heavy and full +of sepulchral darkness, strength. She had put on a dress of stiff old greenish +brocade, that fitted tight and made her look tall and rather terrible, ghastly. +In the gay light of the drawing-room she was uncanny and oppressive. But seated +in the half-light of the dining-room, sitting stiffly before the shaded candles +on the table, she seemed a power, a presence. She listened and attended with a +drugged attention. +</p> + +<p> +The party was gay and extravagant in appearance, everybody had put on +evening dress except Birkin and Joshua Mattheson. The little Italian Contessa +wore a dress of tissue, of orange and gold and black velvet in soft wide +stripes, Gudrun was emerald green with strange net-work, Ursula was in yellow +with dull silver veiling, Miss Bradley was of grey, crimson and jet, Fräulein +März wore pale blue. It gave Hermione a sudden convulsive sensation of pleasure, +to see these rich colours under the candle-light. She was aware of the talk +going on, ceaselessly, Joshua’s voice dominating; of the ceaseless +pitter-patter of women’s light laughter and responses; of the brilliant +colours and the white table and the shadow above and below; and she seemed in a +swoon of gratification, convulsed with pleasure and yet sick, like a <i>revenant</i>. +She took very little part in the conversation, yet she heard it all, it was all +hers. +</p> + +<p> +They all went together into the drawing-room, as if they were one family, +easily, without any attention to ceremony. Fräulein handed the coffee, everybody +smoked cigarettes, or else long warden pipes of white clay, of which a sheaf was +provided. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you smoke?—cigarettes or pipe?” asked Fräulein +prettily. There was a circle of people, Sir Joshua with his eighteenth-century +appearance, Gerald the amused, handsome young Englishman, Alexander tall and the +handsome politician, democratic and lucid, Hermione strange like a long +Cassandra, and the women lurid with colour, all dutifully smoking their long +white pipes, and sitting in a half-moon in the comfortable, soft-lighted +drawing-room, round the logs that flickered on the marble hearth. +</p> + +<p> +The talk was very often political or sociological, and interesting, +curiously anarchistic. There was an accumulation of powerful force in the room, +powerful and destructive. Everything seemed to be thrown into the melting pot, +and it seemed to Ursula they were all witches, helping the pot to bubble. There +was an elation and a satisfaction in it all, but it was cruelly exhausting for +the newcomers, this ruthless mental pressure, this powerful, consuming, +destructive mentality that emanated from Joshua and Hermione and Birkin and +dominated the rest. +</p> + +<p> +But a sickness, a fearful nausea gathered possession of Hermione. There was +a lull in the talk, as it was arrested by her unconscious but all-powerful will. +</p> + +<p> +“Salsie, won’t you play something?” said Hermione, +breaking off completely. “Won’t somebody dance? Gudrun, you will +dance, won’t you? I wish you would. <i>Anche tu, Palestra, +ballerai?—sì, per piacere.</i> You too, Ursula.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione rose and slowly pulled the gold-embroidered band that hung by the +mantel, clinging to it for a moment, then releasing it suddenly. Like a +priestess she looked, unconscious, sunk in a heavy half-trance. +</p> + +<p> +A servant came, and soon reappeared with armfuls of silk robes and shawls +and scarves, mostly oriental, things that Hermione, with her love for beautiful +extravagant dress, had collected gradually. +</p> + +<p> +“The three women will dance together,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“What shall it be?” asked Alexander, rising briskly. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Vergini Delle Rocchette</i>,” said the Contessa at once. +</p> + +<p> +“They are so languid,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“The three witches from Macbeth,” suggested Fräulein usefully. +It was finally decided to do Naomi and Ruth and Orpah. Ursula was Naomi, Gudrun +was Ruth, the Contessa was Orpah. The idea was to make a little ballet, in the +style of the Russian Ballet of Pavlova and Nijinsky. +</p> + +<p> +The Contessa was ready first, Alexander went to the piano, a space was +cleared. Orpah, in beautiful oriental clothes, began slowly to dance the death +of her husband. Then Ruth came, and they wept together, and lamented, then Naomi +came to comfort them. It was all done in dumb show, the women danced their +emotion in gesture and motion. The little drama went on for a quarter of an +hour. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was beautiful as Naomi. All her men were dead, it remained to her +only to stand alone in indomitable assertion, demanding nothing. Ruth, +woman-loving, loved her. Orpah, a vivid, sensational, subtle widow, would go +back to the former life, a repetition. The interplay between the women was real +and rather frightening. It was strange to see how Gudrun clung with heavy, +desperate passion to Ursula, yet smiled with subtle malevolence against her, how +Ursula accepted silently, unable to provide any more either for herself or for +the other, but dangerous and indomitable, refuting her grief. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione loved to watch. She could see the Contessa’s rapid, +stoat-like sensationalism, Gudrun’s ultimate but treacherous cleaving to +the woman in her sister, Ursula’s dangerous helplessness, as if she were +helplessly weighted, and unreleased. +</p> + +<p> +“That was very beautiful,” everybody cried with one accord. But +Hermione writhed in her soul, knowing what she could not know. She cried out for +more dancing, and it was her will that set the Contessa and Birkin moving +mockingly in Malbrouk. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald was excited by the desperate cleaving of Gudrun to Naomi. The essence +of that female, subterranean recklessness and mockery penetrated his blood. He +could not forget Gudrun’s lifted, offered, cleaving, reckless, yet withal +mocking weight. And Birkin, watching like a hermit crab from its hole, had seen +the brilliant frustration and helplessness of Ursula. She was rich, full of +dangerous power. She was like a strange unconscious bud of powerful womanhood. +He was unconsciously drawn to her. She was his future. +</p> + +<p> +Alexander played some Hungarian music, and they all danced, seized by the +spirit. Gerald was marvellously exhilarated at finding himself in motion, moving +towards Gudrun, dancing with feet that could not yet escape from the waltz and +the two-step, but feeling his force stir along his limbs and his body, out of +captivity. He did not know yet how to dance their convulsive, rag-time sort of +dancing, but he knew how to begin. Birkin, when he could get free from the +weight of the people present, whom he disliked, danced rapidly and with a real +gaiety. And how Hermione hated him for this irresponsible gaiety. +</p> + +<p> +“Now I see,” cried the Contessa excitedly, watching his purely +gay motion, which he had all to himself. “Mr Birkin, he is a +changer.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione looked at her slowly, and shuddered, knowing that only a foreigner +could have seen and have said this. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Cosa vuol’dire, Palestra?</i>” she asked, sing-song. +</p> + +<p> +“Look,” said the Contessa, in Italian. “He is not a man, +he is a chameleon, a creature of change.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is not a man, he is treacherous, not one of us,” said itself +over in Hermione’s consciousness. And her soul writhed in the black +subjugation to him, because of his power to escape, to exist, other than she +did, because he was not consistent, not a man, less than a man. She hated him in +a despair that shattered her and broke her down, so that she suffered sheer +dissolution like a corpse, and was unconscious of everything save the horrible +sickness of dissolution that was taking place within her, body and soul. +</p> + +<p> +The house being full, Gerald was given the smaller room, really the +dressing-room, communicating with Birkin’s bedroom. When they all took +their candles and mounted the stairs, where the lamps were burning subduedly, +Hermione captured Ursula and brought her into her own bedroom, to talk to her. A +sort of constraint came over Ursula in the big, strange bedroom. Hermione seemed +to be bearing down on her, awful and inchoate, making some appeal. They were +looking at some Indian silk shirts, gorgeous and sensual in themselves, their +shape, their almost corrupt gorgeousness. And Hermione came near, and her bosom +writhed, and Ursula was for a moment blank with panic. And for a moment +Hermione’s haggard eyes saw the fear on the face of the other, there was +again a sort of crash, a crashing down. And Ursula picked up a shirt of rich red +and blue silk, made for a young princess of fourteen, and was crying +mechanically: +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it wonderful—who would dare to put those two strong +colours together—” +</p> + +<p> +Then Hermione’s maid entered silently and Ursula, overcome with dread, +escaped, carried away by powerful impulse. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin went straight to bed. He was feeling happy, and sleepy. Since he had +danced he was happy. But Gerald would talk to him. Gerald, in evening dress, sat +on Birkin’s bed when the other lay down, and must talk. +</p> + +<p> +“Who are those two Brangwens?” Gerald asked. +</p> + +<p> +“They live in Beldover.” +</p> + +<p> +“In Beldover! Who are they then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Teachers in the Grammar School.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“They are!” exclaimed Gerald at length. “I thought I had +seen them before.” +</p> + +<p> +“It disappoints you?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Disappoints me! No—but how is it Hermione has them here?” +</p> + +<p> +“She knew Gudrun in London—that’s the younger one, the one +with the darker hair—she’s an artist—does sculpture and +modelling.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s not a teacher in the Grammar School, then—only the +other?” +</p> + +<p> +“Both—Gudrun art mistress, Ursula a class mistress.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what’s the father?” +</p> + +<p> +“Handicraft instructor in the schools.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really!” +</p> + +<p> +“Class-barriers are breaking down!” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald was always uneasy under the slightly jeering tone of the other. +</p> + +<p> +“That their father is handicraft instructor in a school! What does it +matter to me?” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin laughed. Gerald looked at his face, as it lay there laughing and +bitter and indifferent on the pillow, and he could not go away. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t suppose you will see very much more of Gudrun, at +least. She is a restless bird, she’ll be gone in a week or two,” +said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Where will she go?” +</p> + +<p> +“London, Paris, Rome—heaven knows. I always expect her to sheer +off to Damascus or San Francisco; she’s a bird of paradise. God knows what +she’s got to do with Beldover. It goes by contraries, like dreams.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald pondered for a few moments. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know her so well?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I knew her in London,” he replied, “in the Algernon +Strange set. She’ll know about Pussum and Libidnikov and the +rest—even if she doesn’t know them personally. She was never quite +that set—more conventional, in a way. I’ve known her for two years, +I suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +“And she makes money, apart from her teaching?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Some—irregularly. She can sell her models. She has a certain +<i>réclame</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“How much for?” +</p> + +<p> +“A guinea, ten guineas.” +</p> + +<p> +“And are they good? What are they?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think sometimes they are marvellously good. That is hers, those two +wagtails in Hermione’s boudoir—you’ve seen them—they are +carved in wood and painted.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought it was savage carving again.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, hers. That’s what they are—animals and birds, +sometimes odd small people in everyday dress, really rather wonderful when they +come off. They have a sort of funniness that is quite unconscious and +subtle.” +</p> + +<p> +“She might be a well-known artist one day?” mused Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“She might. But I think she won’t. She drops her art if anything +else catches her. Her contrariness prevents her taking it seriously—she +must never be too serious, she feels she might give herself away. And she +won’t give herself away—she’s always on the defensive. +That’s what I can’t stand about her type. By the way, how did things +go off with Pussum after I left you? I haven’t heard anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, rather disgusting. Halliday turned objectionable, and I only just +saved myself from jumping in his stomach, in a real old-fashioned row.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin was silent. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” he said, “Julius is somewhat insane. On the +one hand he’s had religious mania, and on the other, he is fascinated by +obscenity. Either he is a pure servant, washing the feet of Christ, or else he +is making obscene drawings of Jesus—action and reaction—and between +the two, nothing. He is really insane. He wants a pure lily, another girl, with +a baby face, on the one hand, and on the other, he <i>must</i> have the Pussum, +just to defile himself with her.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what I can’t make out,” said Gerald. +“Does he love her, the Pussum, or doesn’t he?” +</p> + +<p> +“He neither does nor doesn’t. She is the harlot, the actual +harlot of adultery to him. And he’s got a craving to throw himself into +the filth of her. Then he gets up and calls on the name of the lily of purity, +the baby-faced girl, and so enjoys himself all round. It’s the old +story—action and reaction, and nothing between.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” said Gerald, after a pause, “that he +does insult the Pussum so very much. She strikes me as being rather foul.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I thought you liked her,” exclaimed Birkin. “I always +felt fond of her. I never had anything to do with her, personally, that’s +true.” +</p> + +<p> +“I liked her all right, for a couple of days,” said Gerald. +“But a week of her would have turned me over. There’s a certain +smell about the skin of those women, that in the end is sickening beyond +words—even if you like it at first.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” said Birkin. Then he added, rather fretfully, +“But go to bed, Gerald. God knows what time it is.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked at his watch, and at length rose off the bed, and went to his +room. But he returned in a few minutes, in his shirt. +</p> + +<p> +“One thing,” he said, seating himself on the bed again. +“We finished up rather stormily, and I never had time to give her +anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“Money?” said Birkin. “She’ll get what she wants +from Halliday or from one of her acquaintances.” +</p> + +<p> +“But then,” said Gerald, “I’d rather give her her +dues and settle the account.” +</p> + +<p> +“She doesn’t care.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, perhaps not. But one feels the account is left open, and one +would rather it were closed.” +</p> + +<p> +“Would you?” said Birkin. He was looking at the white legs of +Gerald, as the latter sat on the side of the bed in his shirt. They were +white-skinned, full, muscular legs, handsome and decided. Yet they moved Birkin +with a sort of pathos, tenderness, as if they were childish. +</p> + +<p> +“I think I’d rather close the account,” said Gerald, +repeating himself vaguely. +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t matter one way or another,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“You always say it doesn’t matter,” said Gerald, a little +puzzled, looking down at the face of the other man affectionately. +</p> + +<p> +“Neither does it,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“But she was a decent sort, really—” +</p> + +<p> +“Render unto Cæsarina the things that are Cæsarina’s,” +said Birkin, turning aside. It seemed to him Gerald was talking for the sake of +talking. “Go away, it wearies me—it’s too late at +night,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you’d tell me something that <i>did</i> matter,” said +Gerald, looking down all the time at the face of the other man, waiting for +something. But Birkin turned his face aside. +</p> + +<p> +“All right then, go to sleep,” said Gerald, and he laid his hand +affectionately on the other man’s shoulder, and went away. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning when Gerald awoke and heard Birkin move, he called out: +“I still think I ought to give the Pussum ten pounds.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh God!” said Birkin, “don’t be so matter-of-fact. +Close the account in your own soul, if you like. It is there you can’t +close it.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know I can’t?” +</p> + +<p> +“Knowing you.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald meditated for some moments. +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to me the right thing to do, you know, with the Pussums, is +to pay them.” +</p> + +<p> +“And the right thing for mistresses: keep them. And the right thing +for wives: live under the same roof with them. <i>Integer vitae scelerisque +purus</i>—” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no need to be nasty about it,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“It bores me. I’m not interested in your peccadilloes.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I don’t care whether you are or not—I am.” +</p> + +<p> +The morning was again sunny. The maid had been in and brought the water, and +had drawn the curtains. Birkin, sitting up in bed, looked lazily and pleasantly +out on the park, that was so green and deserted, romantic, belonging to the +past. He was thinking how lovely, how sure, how formed, how final all the things +of the past were—the lovely accomplished past—this house, so still +and golden, the park slumbering its centuries of peace. And then, what a snare +and a delusion, this beauty of static things—what a horrible, dead prison +Breadalby really was, what an intolerable confinement, the peace! Yet it was +better than the sordid scrambling conflict of the present. If only one might +create the future after one’s own heart—for a little pure truth, a +little unflinching application of simple truth to life, the heart cried out +ceaselessly. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t see what you will leave me at all, to be interested +in,” came Gerald’s voice from the lower room. “Neither the +Pussums, nor the mines, nor anything else.” +</p> + +<p> +“You be interested in what you can, Gerald. Only I’m not +interested myself,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“What am I to do at all, then?” came Gerald’s voice. +</p> + +<p> +“What you like. What am I to do myself?” +</p> + +<p> +In the silence Birkin could feel Gerald musing this fact. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m blest if I know,” came the good-humoured answer. +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” said Birkin, “part of you wants the Pussum, and +nothing but the Pussum, part of you wants the mines, the business, and nothing +but the business—and there you are—all in bits—” +</p> + +<p> +“And part of me wants something else,” said Gerald, in a queer, +quiet, real voice. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” said Birkin, rather surprised. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what I hoped you could tell me,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence for some time. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t tell you—I can’t find my own way, let alone +yours. You might marry,” Birkin replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Who—the Pussum?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps,” said Birkin. And he rose and went to the window. +</p> + +<p> +“That is your panacea,” said Gerald. “But you +haven’t even tried it on yourself yet, and you are sick enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am,” said Birkin. “Still, I shall come right.” +</p> + +<p> +“Through marriage?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” Birkin answered obstinately. +</p> + +<p> +“And no,” added Gerald. “No, no, no, my boy.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence between them, and a strange tension of hostility. They +always kept a gap, a distance between them, they wanted always to be free each +of the other. Yet there was a curious heart-straining towards each other. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Salvator femininus</i>,” said Gerald, satirically. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“No reason at all,” said Gerald, “if it really works. But +whom will you marry?” +</p> + +<p> +“A woman,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Good,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin and Gerald were the last to come down to breakfast. Hermione liked +everybody to be early. She suffered when she felt her day was diminished, she +felt she had missed her life. She seemed to grip the hours by the throat, to +force her life from them. She was rather pale and ghastly, as if left behind, in +the morning. Yet she had her power, her will was strangely pervasive. With the +entrance of the two young men a sudden tension was felt. +</p> + +<p> +She lifted her face, and said, in her amused sing-song: +</p> + +<p> +“Good morning! Did you sleep well? I’m so glad.” +</p> + +<p> +And she turned away, ignoring them. Birkin, who knew her well, saw that she +intended to discount his existence. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you take what you want from the sideboard?” said +Alexander, in a voice slightly suggesting disapprobation. “I hope the +things aren’t cold. Oh no! Do you mind putting out the flame under the +chafing-dish, Rupert? Thank you.” +</p> + +<p> +Even Alexander was rather authoritative where Hermione was cool. He took his +tone from her, inevitably. Birkin sat down and looked at the table. He was so +used to this house, to this room, to this atmosphere, through years of intimacy, +and now he felt in complete opposition to it all, it had nothing to do with him. +How well he knew Hermione, as she sat there, erect and silent and somewhat +bemused, and yet so potent, so powerful! He knew her statically, so finally, +that it was almost like a madness. It was difficult to believe one was not mad, +that one was not a figure in the hall of kings in some Egyptian tomb, where the +dead all sat immemorial and tremendous. How utterly he knew Joshua Mattheson, +who was talking in his harsh, yet rather mincing voice, endlessly, endlessly, +always with a strong mentality working, always interesting, and yet always +known, everything he said known beforehand, however novel it was, and clever. +Alexander the up-to-date host, so bloodlessly free-and-easy, Fräulein so +prettily chiming in just as she should, the little Italian Countess taking +notice of everybody, only playing her little game, objective and cold, like a +weasel watching everything, and extracting her own amusement, never giving +herself in the slightest; then Miss Bradley, heavy and rather subservient, +treated with cool, almost amused contempt by Hermione, and therefore slighted by +everybody—how known it all was, like a game with the figures set out, the +same figures, the Queen of chess, the knights, the pawns, the same now as they +were hundreds of years ago, the same figures moving round in one of the +innumerable permutations that make up the game. But the game is known, its going +on is like a madness, it is so exhausted. +</p> + +<p> +There was Gerald, an amused look on his face; the game pleased him. There +was Gudrun, watching with steady, large, hostile eyes; the game fascinated her, +and she loathed it. There was Ursula, with a slightly startled look on her face, +as if she were hurt, and the pain were just outside her consciousness. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Birkin got up and went out. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s enough,” he said to himself involuntarily. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione knew his motion, though not in her consciousness. She lifted her +heavy eyes and saw him lapse suddenly away, on a sudden, unknown tide, and the +waves broke over her. Only her indomitable will remained static and mechanical, +she sat at the table making her musing, stray remarks. But the darkness had +covered her, she was like a ship that has gone down. It was finished for her +too, she was wrecked in the darkness. Yet the unfailing mechanism of her will +worked on, she had that activity. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we bathe this morning?” she said, suddenly looking at +them all. +</p> + +<p> +“Splendid,” said Joshua. “It is a perfect morning.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it is beautiful,” said Fräulein. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, let us bathe,” said the Italian woman. +</p> + +<p> +“We have no bathing suits,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Have mine,” said Alexander. “I must go to church and read +the lessons. They expect me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you a Christian?” asked the Italian Countess, with sudden +interest. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Alexander. “I’m not. But I believe in +keeping up the old institutions.” +</p> + +<p> +“They are so beautiful,” said Fräulein daintily. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, they are,” cried Miss Bradley. +</p> + +<p> +They all trailed out on to the lawn. It was a sunny, soft morning in early +summer, when life ran in the world subtly, like a reminiscence. The church bells +were ringing a little way off, not a cloud was in the sky, the swans were like +lilies on the water below, the peacocks walked with long, prancing steps across +the shadow and into the sunshine of the grass. One wanted to swoon into the +by-gone perfection of it all. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye,” called Alexander, waving his gloves cheerily, and he +disappeared behind the bushes, on his way to church. +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” said Hermione, “shall we all bathe?” +</p> + +<p> +“I won’t,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t want to?” said Hermione, looking at her slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“No. I don’t want to,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Nor I,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“What about my suit?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” laughed Hermione, with an odd, amused +intonation. “Will a handkerchief do—a large handkerchief?” +</p> + +<p> +“That will do,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Come along then,” sang Hermione. +</p> + +<p> +The first to run across the lawn was the little Italian, small and like a +cat, her white legs twinkling as she went, ducking slightly her head, that was +tied in a gold silk kerchief. She tripped through the gate and down the grass, +and stood, like a tiny figure of ivory and bronze, at the water’s edge, +having dropped off her towelling, watching the swans, which came up in surprise. +Then out ran Miss Bradley, like a large, soft plum in her dark-blue suit. Then +Gerald came, a scarlet silk kerchief round his loins, his towels over his arms. +He seemed to flaunt himself a little in the sun, lingering and laughing, +strolling easily, looking white but natural in his nakedness. Then came Sir +Joshua, in an overcoat, and lastly Hermione, striding with stiff grace from out +of a great mantle of purple silk, her head tied up in purple and gold. Handsome +was her stiff, long body, her straight-stepping white legs, there was a static +magnificence about her as she let the cloak float loosely away from her +striding. She crossed the lawn like some strange memory, and passed slowly and +statelily towards the water. +</p> + +<p> +There were three ponds, in terraces descending the valley, large and smooth +and beautiful, lying in the sun. The water ran over a little stone wall, over +small rocks, splashing down from one pond to the level below. The swans had gone +out on to the opposite bank, the reeds smelled sweet, a faint breeze touched the +skin. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald had dived in, after Sir Joshua, and had swum to the end of the pond. +There he climbed out and sat on the wall. There was a dive, and the little +Countess was swimming like a rat, to join him. They both sat in the sun, +laughing and crossing their arms on their breasts. Sir Joshua swam up to them, +and stood near them, up to his arm-pits in the water. Then Hermione and Miss +Bradley swam over, and they sat in a row on the embankment. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t they terrifying? Aren’t they really +terrifying?” said Gudrun. “Don’t they look saurian? They are +just like great lizards. Did you ever see anything like Sir Joshua? But really, +Ursula, he belongs to the primeval world, when great lizards crawled +about.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked in dismay on Sir Joshua, who stood up to the breast in the +water, his long, greyish hair washed down into his eyes, his neck set into +thick, crude shoulders. He was talking to Miss Bradley, who, seated on the bank +above, plump and big and wet, looked as if she might roll and slither in the +water almost like one of the slithering sealions in the Zoo. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula watched in silence. Gerald was laughing happily, between Hermione and +the Italian. He reminded her of Dionysos, because his hair was really yellow, +his figure so full and laughing. Hermione, in her large, stiff, sinister grace, +leaned near him, frightening, as if she were not responsible for what she might +do. He knew a certain danger in her, a convulsive madness. But he only laughed +the more, turning often to the little Countess, who was flashing up her face at +him. +</p> + +<p> +They all dropped into the water, and were swimming together like a shoal of +seals. Hermione was powerful and unconscious in the water, large and slow and +powerful. Palestra was quick and silent as a water rat, Gerald wavered and +flickered, a white natural shadow. Then, one after the other, they waded out, +and went up to the house. +</p> + +<p> +But Gerald lingered a moment to speak to Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t like the water?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him with a long, slow inscrutable look, as he stood before her +negligently, the water standing in beads all over his skin. +</p> + +<p> +“I like it very much,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +He paused, expecting some sort of explanation. +</p> + +<p> +“And you swim?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I swim.” +</p> + +<p> +Still he would not ask her why she would not go in then. He could feel +something ironic in her. He walked away, piqued for the first time. +</p> + +<p> +“Why wouldn’t you bathe?” he asked her again, later, when +he was once more the properly-dressed young Englishman. +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated a moment before answering, opposing his persistence. +</p> + +<p> +“Because I didn’t like the crowd,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed, her phrase seemed to re-echo in his consciousness. The flavour +of her slang was piquant to him. Whether he would or not, she signified the real +world to him. He wanted to come up to her standards, fulfil her expectations. He +knew that her criterion was the only one that mattered. The others were all +outsiders, instinctively, whatever they might be socially. And Gerald could not +help it, he was bound to strive to come up to her criterion, fulfil her idea of +a man and a human-being. +</p> + +<p> +After lunch, when all the others had withdrawn, Hermione and Gerald and +Birkin lingered, finishing their talk. There had been some discussion, on the +whole quite intellectual and artificial, about a new state, a new world of man. +Supposing this old social state <i>were</i> broken and destroyed, then, out of +the chaos, what then? +</p> + +<p> +The great social idea, said Sir Joshua, was the <i>social</i> equality of man. No, +said Gerald, the idea was, that every man was fit for his own little bit of a +task—let him do that, and then please himself. The unifying principle was +the work in hand. Only work, the business of production, held men together. It +was mechanical, but then society <i>was</i> a mechanism. Apart from work they were +isolated, free to do as they liked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” cried Gudrun. “Then we shan’t have names any +more—we shall be like the Germans, nothing but Herr Obermeister and Herr +Untermeister. I can imagine it—‘I am Mrs Colliery-Manager Crich—I am +Mrs Member-of-Parliament Roddice. I am Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen.’ Very pretty +that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Things would work very much better, Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen,” +said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“What things, Mr Colliery-Manager Crich? The relation between you and +me, <i>par exemple?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, for example,” cried the Italian. “That which is +between men and women—!” +</p> + +<p> +“That is non-social,” said Birkin, sarcastically. +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly,” said Gerald. “Between me and a woman, the +social question does not enter. It is my own affair.” +</p> + +<p> +“A ten-pound note on it,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t admit that a woman is a social being?” asked +Ursula of Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“She is both,” said Gerald. “She is a social being, as far +as society is concerned. But for her own private self, she is a free agent, it +is her own affair, what she does.” +</p> + +<p> +“But won’t it be rather difficult to arrange the two +halves?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” replied Gerald. “They arrange themselves +naturally—we see it now, everywhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you laugh so pleasantly till you’re out of the +wood,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald knitted his brows in momentary irritation. +</p> + +<p> +“Was I laughing?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>If</i>,” said Hermione at last, “we could only realise, that +in the <i>spirit</i> we are all one, all equal in the spirit, all brothers +there—the rest wouldn’t matter, there would be no more of this +carping and envy and this struggle for power, which destroys, only +destroys.” +</p> + +<p> +This speech was received in silence, and almost immediately the party rose +from the table. But when the others had gone, Birkin turned round in bitter +declamation, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“It is just the opposite, just the contrary, Hermione. We are all +different and unequal in spirit—it is only the <i>social</i> differences +that are based on accidental material conditions. We are all abstractly or +mathematically equal, if you like. Every man has hunger and thirst, two eyes, +one nose and two legs. We’re all the same in point of number. But +spiritually, there is pure difference and neither equality nor inequality counts. +It is upon these two bits of knowledge that you must found a state. Your democracy +is an absolute lie—your brotherhood of man is a pure falsity, if you apply +it further than the mathematical abstraction. We all drank milk first, we all eat +bread and meat, we all want to ride in motor-cars—therein lies the beginning +and the end of the brotherhood of man. But no equality. +</p> + +<p> +“But I, myself, who am myself, what have I to do with equality with +any other man or woman? In the spirit, I am as separate as one star is from +another, as different in quality and quantity. Establish a state on <i>that</i>. +One man isn’t any better than another, not because they are equal, but +because they are intrinsically <i>other</i>, that there is no term of comparison. +The minute you begin to compare, one man is seen to be far better than another, +all the inequality you can imagine is there by nature. I want every man to have +his share in the world’s goods, so that I am rid of his importunity, so +that I can tell him: ‘Now you’ve got what you want—you’ve got +your fair share of the world’s gear. Now, you one-mouthed fool, mind +yourself and don’t obstruct me.’” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione was looking at him with leering eyes, along her cheeks. He could +feel violent waves of hatred and loathing of all he said, coming out of her. It +was dynamic hatred and loathing, coming strong and black out of the +unconsciousness. She heard his words in her unconscious self, <i>consciously</i> +she was as if deafened, she paid no heed to them. +</p> + +<p> +“It <i>sounds</i> like megalomania, Rupert,” said Gerald, genially. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione gave a queer, grunting sound. Birkin stood back. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, let it,” he said suddenly, the whole tone gone out of his +voice, that had been so insistent, bearing everybody down. And he went away. +</p> + +<p> +But he felt, later, a little compunction. He had been violent, cruel with +poor Hermione. He wanted to recompense her, to make it up. He had hurt her, he +had been vindictive. He wanted to be on good terms with her again. +</p> + +<p> +He went into her boudoir, a remote and very cushiony place. She was sitting +at her table writing letters. She lifted her face abstractedly when he entered, +watched him go to the sofa, and sit down. Then she looked down at her paper +again. +</p> + +<p> +He took up a large volume which he had been reading before, and became +minutely attentive to his author. His back was towards Hermione. She could not +go on with her writing. Her whole mind was a chaos, darkness breaking in upon +it, and herself struggling to gain control with her will, as a swimmer struggles +with the swirling water. But in spite of her efforts she was borne down, +darkness seemed to break over her, she felt as if her heart was bursting. The +terrible tension grew stronger and stronger, it was most fearful agony, like +being walled up. +</p> + +<p> +And then she realised that his presence was the wall, his presence was +destroying her. Unless she could break out, she must die most fearfully, walled +up in horror. And he was the wall. She must break down the wall—she must +break him down before her, the awful obstruction of him who obstructed her life +to the last. It must be done, or she must perish most horribly. +</p> + +<p> +Terrible shocks ran over her body, like shocks of electricity, as if many +volts of electricity suddenly struck her down. She was aware of him sitting +silently there, an unthinkable evil obstruction. Only this blotted out her mind, +pressed out her very breathing, his silent, stooping back, the back of his head. +</p> + +<p> +A terrible voluptuous thrill ran down her arms—she was going to know +her voluptuous consummation. Her arms quivered and were strong, immeasurably and +irresistibly strong. What delight, what delight in strength, what delirium of +pleasure! She was going to have her consummation of voluptuous ecstasy at last. +It was coming! In utmost terror and agony, she knew it was upon her now, in +extremity of bliss. Her hand closed on a blue, beautiful ball of lapis lazuli +that stood on her desk for a paper-weight. She rolled it round in her hand as +she rose silently. Her heart was a pure flame in her breast, she was purely +unconscious in ecstasy. She moved towards him and stood behind him for a moment +in ecstasy. He, closed within the spell, remained motionless and unconscious. +</p> + +<p> +Then swiftly, in a flame that drenched down her body like fluid lightning +and gave her a perfect, unutterable consummation, unutterable satisfaction, she +brought down the ball of jewel stone with all her force, crash on his head. But +her fingers were in the way and deadened the blow. Nevertheless, down went his +head on the table on which his book lay, the stone slid aside and over his ear, +it was one convulsion of pure bliss for her, lit up by the crushed pain of her +fingers. But it was not somehow complete. She lifted her arm high to aim once +more, straight down on the head that lay dazed on the table. She must smash it, +it must be smashed before her ecstasy was consummated, fulfilled for ever. A +thousand lives, a thousand deaths mattered nothing now, only the fulfilment of +this perfect ecstasy. +</p> + +<p> +She was not swift, she could only move slowly. A strong spirit in him woke +him and made him lift his face and twist to look at her. Her arm was raised, the +hand clasping the ball of lapis lazuli. It was her left hand, he realised again +with horror that she was left-handed. Hurriedly, with a burrowing motion, he +covered his head under the thick volume of Thucydides, and the blow came down, +almost breaking his neck, and shattering his heart. +</p> + +<p> +He was shattered, but he was not afraid. Twisting round to face her he +pushed the table over and got away from her. He was like a flask that is smashed +to atoms, he seemed to himself that he was all fragments, smashed to bits. Yet +his movements were perfectly coherent and clear, his soul was entire and +unsurprised. +</p> + +<p> +“No you don’t, Hermione,” he said in a low voice. “I +don’t let you.” +</p> + +<p> +He saw her standing tall and livid and attentive, the stone clenched tense +in her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Stand away and let me go,” he said, drawing near to her. +</p> + +<p> +As if pressed back by some hand, she stood away, watching him all the time +without changing, like a neutralised angel confronting him. +</p> + +<p> +“It is not good,” he said, when he had gone past her. “It +isn’t I who will die. You hear?” +</p> + +<p> +He kept his face to her as he went out, lest she should strike again. While +he was on his guard, she dared not move. And he was on his guard, she was +powerless. So he had gone, and left her standing. +</p> + +<p> +She remained perfectly rigid, standing as she was for a long time. Then she +staggered to the couch and lay down, and went heavily to sleep. When she awoke, +she remembered what she had done, but it seemed to her, she had only hit him, as +any woman might do, because he tortured her. She was perfectly right. She knew +that, spiritually, she was right. In her own infallible purity, she had done +what must be done. She was right, she was pure. A drugged, almost sinister +religious expression became permanent on her face. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin, barely conscious, and yet perfectly direct in his motion, went out +of the house and straight across the park, to the open country, to the hills. +The brilliant day had become overcast, spots of rain were falling. He wandered +on to a wild valley-side, where were thickets of hazel, many flowers, tufts of +heather, and little clumps of young fir-trees, budding with soft paws. It was +rather wet everywhere, there was a stream running down at the bottom of the +valley, which was gloomy, or seemed gloomy. He was aware that he could not +regain his consciousness, that he was moving in a sort of darkness. +</p> + +<p> +Yet he wanted something. He was happy in the wet hillside, that was +overgrown and obscure with bushes and flowers. He wanted to touch them all, to +saturate himself with the touch of them all. He took off his clothes, and sat +down naked among the primroses, moving his feet softly among the primroses, his +legs, his knees, his arms right up to the arm-pits, lying down and letting them +touch his belly, his breasts. It was such a fine, cool, subtle touch all over +him, he seemed to saturate himself with their contact. +</p> + +<p> +But they were too soft. He went through the long grass to a clump of young +fir-trees, that were no higher than a man. The soft sharp boughs beat upon him, +as he moved in keen pangs against them, threw little cold showers of drops on +his belly, and beat his loins with their clusters of soft-sharp needles. There +was a thistle which pricked him vividly, but not too much, because all his +movements were too discriminate and soft. To lie down and roll in the sticky, +cool young hyacinths, to lie on one’s belly and cover one’s back +with handfuls of fine wet grass, soft as a breath, soft and more delicate and +more beautiful than the touch of any woman; and then to sting one’s thigh +against the living dark bristles of the fir-boughs; and then to feel the light +whip of the hazel on one’s shoulders, stinging, and then to clasp the +silvery birch-trunk against one’s breast, its smoothness, its hardness, +its vital knots and ridges—this was good, this was all very good, very +satisfying. Nothing else would do, nothing else would satisfy, except this +coolness and subtlety of vegetation travelling into one’s blood. How +fortunate he was, that there was this lovely, subtle, responsive vegetation, +waiting for him, as he waited for it; how fulfilled he was, how happy! +</p> + +<p> +As he dried himself a little with his handkerchief, he thought about +Hermione and the blow. He could feel a pain on the side of his head. But after +all, what did it matter? What did Hermione matter, what did people matter +altogether? There was this perfect cool loneliness, so lovely and fresh and +unexplored. Really, what a mistake he had made, thinking he wanted people, +thinking he wanted a woman. He did not want a woman—not in the least. The +leaves and the primroses and the trees, they were really lovely and cool and +desirable, they really came into the blood and were added on to him. He was +enrichened now immeasurably, and so glad. +</p> + +<p> +It was quite right of Hermione to want to kill him. What had he to do with +her? Why should he pretend to have anything to do with human beings at all? Here +was his world, he wanted nobody and nothing but the lovely, subtle, responsive +vegetation, and himself, his own living self. +</p> + +<p> +It was necessary to go back into the world. That was true. But that did not +matter, so one knew where one belonged. He knew now where he belonged. This was +his place, his marriage place. The world was extraneous. +</p> + +<p> +He climbed out of the valley, wondering if he were mad. But if so, he +preferred his own madness, to the regular sanity. He rejoiced in his own +madness, he was free. He did not want that old sanity of the world, which was +become so repulsive. He rejoiced in the new-found world of his madness. It was +so fresh and delicate and so satisfying. +</p> + +<p> +As for the certain grief he felt at the same time, in his soul, that was +only the remains of an old ethic, that bade a human being adhere to humanity. +But he was weary of the old ethic, of the human being, and of humanity. He loved +now the soft, delicate vegetation, that was so cool and perfect. He would +overlook the old grief, he would put away the old ethic, he would be free in his +new state. +</p> + +<p> +He was aware of the pain in his head becoming more and more difficult every +minute. He was walking now along the road to the nearest station. It was raining +and he had no hat. But then plenty of cranks went out nowadays without hats, in +the rain. +</p> + +<p> +He wondered again how much of his heaviness of heart, a certain depression, +was due to fear, fear lest anybody should have seen him naked lying against the +vegetation. What a dread he had of mankind, of other people! It amounted almost +to horror, to a sort of dream terror—his horror of being observed by some +other people. If he were on an island, like Alexander Selkirk, with only the +creatures and the trees, he would be free and glad, there would be none of this +heaviness, this misgiving. He could love the vegetation and be quite happy and +unquestioned, by himself. +</p> + +<p> +He had better send a note to Hermione: she might trouble about him, and he +did not want the onus of this. So at the station, he wrote saying: +</p> + + +<p class="letter"> +I will go on to town—I don’t want to come back to Breadalby for +the present. But it is quite all right—I don’t want you to mind +having biffed me, in the least. Tell the others it is just one of my moods. You +were quite right, to biff me—because I know you wanted to. So +there’s the end of it. +</p> + +<p> +In the train, however, he felt ill. Every motion was insufferable pain, and +he was sick. He dragged himself from the station into a cab, feeling his way +step by step, like a blind man, and held up only by a dim will. +</p> + +<p> +For a week or two he was ill, but he did not let Hermione know, and she +thought he was sulking; there was a complete estrangement between them. She +became rapt, abstracted in her conviction of exclusive righteousness. She lived +in and by her own self-esteem, conviction of her own rightness of spirit. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br/> +COAL-DUST</h2> + +<p> +Going home from school in the afternoon, the Brangwen girls descended the +hill between the picturesque cottages of Willey Green till they came to the +railway crossing. There they found the gate shut, because the colliery train was +rumbling nearer. They could hear the small locomotive panting hoarsely as it +advanced with caution between the embankments. The one-legged man in the little +signal-hut by the road stared out from his security, like a crab from a +snail-shell. +</p> + +<p> +Whilst the two girls waited, Gerald Crich trotted up on a red Arab mare. He +rode well and softly, pleased with the delicate quivering of the creature +between his knees. And he was very picturesque, at least in Gudrun’s eyes, +sitting soft and close on the slender red mare, whose long tail flowed on the +air. He saluted the two girls, and drew up at the crossing to wait for the gate, +looking down the railway for the approaching train. In spite of her ironic smile +at his picturesqueness, Gudrun liked to look at him. He was well-set and easy, +his face with its warm tan showed up his whitish, coarse moustache, and his blue +eyes were full of sharp light as he watched the distance. +</p> + +<p> +The locomotive chuffed slowly between the banks, hidden. The mare did not +like it. She began to wince away, as if hurt by the unknown noise. But Gerald +pulled her back and held her head to the gate. The sharp blasts of the chuffing +engine broke with more and more force on her. The repeated sharp blows of +unknown, terrifying noise struck through her till she was rocking with terror. +She recoiled like a spring let go. But a glistening, half-smiling look came into +Gerald’s face. He brought her back again, inevitably. +</p> + +<p> +The noise was released, the little locomotive with her clanking steel +connecting-rod emerged on the highroad, clanking sharply. The mare rebounded +like a drop of water from hot iron. Ursula and Gudrun pressed back into the +hedge, in fear. But Gerald was heavy on the mare, and forced her back. It seemed +as if he sank into her magnetically, and could thrust her back against herself. +</p> + +<p> +“The fool!” cried Ursula loudly. “Why doesn’t he +ride away till it’s gone by?” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was looking at him with black-dilated, spellbound eyes. But he sat +glistening and obstinate, forcing the wheeling mare, which spun and swerved like +a wind, and yet could not get out of the grasp of his will, nor escape from the +mad clamour of terror that resounded through her, as the trucks thumped slowly, +heavily, horrifying, one after the other, one pursuing the other, over the rails +of the crossing. +</p> + +<p> +The locomotive, as if wanting to see what could be done, put on the brakes, +and back came the trucks rebounding on the iron buffers, striking like horrible +cymbals, clashing nearer and nearer in frightful strident concussions. The mare +opened her mouth and rose slowly, as if lifted up on a wind of terror. Then +suddenly her fore feet struck out, as she convulsed herself utterly away from +the horror. Back she went, and the two girls clung to each other, feeling she +must fall backwards on top of him. But he leaned forward, his face shining with +fixed amusement, and at last he brought her down, sank her down, and was bearing +her back to the mark. But as strong as the pressure of his compulsion was the +repulsion of her utter terror, throwing her back away from the railway, so that +she spun round and round, on two legs, as if she were in the centre of some +whirlwind. It made Gudrun faint with poignant dizziness, which seemed to +penetrate to her heart. +</p> + +<p> +“No—! No—! Let her go! Let her go, you fool, you +<i>fool</i>—!” cried Ursula at the top of her voice, completely outside +herself. And Gudrun hated her bitterly for being outside herself. It was +unendurable that Ursula’s voice was so powerful and naked. +</p> + +<p> +A sharpened look came on Gerald’s face. He bit himself down on the +mare like a keen edge biting home, and <i>forced</i> her round. She roared as she +breathed, her nostrils were two wide, hot holes, her mouth was apart, her eyes +frenzied. It was a repulsive sight. But he held on her unrelaxed, with an almost +mechanical relentlessness, keen as a sword pressing in to her. Both man and +horse were sweating with violence. Yet he seemed calm as a ray of cold sunshine. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile the eternal trucks were rumbling on, very slowly, treading one +after the other, one after the other, like a disgusting dream that has no end. +The connecting chains were grinding and squeaking as the tension varied, the +mare pawed and struck away mechanically now, her terror fulfilled in her, for +now the man encompassed her; her paws were blind and pathetic as she beat the +air, the man closed round her, and brought her down, almost as if she were part +of his own physique. +</p> + +<p> +“And she’s bleeding! She’s bleeding!” cried Ursula, +frantic with opposition and hatred of Gerald. She alone understood him +perfectly, in pure opposition. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked and saw the trickles of blood on the sides of the mare, and +she turned white. And then on the very wound the bright spurs came down, +pressing relentlessly. The world reeled and passed into nothingness for Gudrun, +she could not know any more. +</p> + +<p> +When she recovered, her soul was calm and cold, without feeling. The trucks +were still rumbling by, and the man and the mare were still fighting. But she +herself was cold and separate, she had no more feeling for them. She was quite +hard and cold and indifferent. +</p> + +<p> +They could see the top of the hooded guard’s-van approaching, the +sound of the trucks was diminishing, there was hope of relief from the +intolerable noise. The heavy panting of the half-stunned mare sounded +automatically, the man seemed to be relaxing confidently, his will bright and +unstained. The guard’s-van came up, and passed slowly, the guard staring +out in his transition on the spectacle in the road. And, through the man in the +closed wagon, Gudrun could see the whole scene spectacularly, isolated and +momentary, like a vision isolated in eternity. +</p> + +<p> +Lovely, grateful silence seemed to trail behind the receding train. How +sweet the silence is! Ursula looked with hatred on the buffers of the +diminishing wagon. The gatekeeper stood ready at the door of his hut, to proceed +to open the gate. But Gudrun sprang suddenly forward, in front of the struggling +horse, threw off the latch and flung the gates asunder, throwing one-half to the +keeper, and running with the other half, forwards. Gerald suddenly let go the +horse and leaped forwards, almost on to Gudrun. She was not afraid. As he jerked +aside the mare’s head, Gudrun cried, in a strange, high voice, like a +gull, or like a witch screaming out from the side of the road: +</p> + +<p> +“I should think you’re proud.” +</p> + +<p> +The words were distinct and formed. The man, twisting aside on his dancing +horse, looked at her in some surprise, some wondering interest. Then the +mare’s hoofs had danced three times on the drum-like sleepers of the +crossing, and man and horse were bounding springily, unequally up the road. +</p> + +<p> +The two girls watched them go. The gate-keeper hobbled thudding over the +logs of the crossing, with his wooden leg. He had fastened the gate. Then he +also turned, and called to the girls: +</p> + +<p> +“A masterful young jockey, that; ’ll have his own road, if ever +anybody would.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” cried Ursula, in her hot, overbearing voice. “Why +couldn’t he take the horse away, till the trucks had gone by? He’s a +fool, and a bully. Does he think it’s manly, to torture a horse? +It’s a living thing, why should he bully it and torture it?” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause, then the gate-keeper shook his head, and replied: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it’s as nice a little mare as you could set eyes +on—beautiful little thing, beautiful. Now you couldn’t see his +father treat any animal like that—not you. They’re as different as +they welly can be, Gerald Crich and his father—two different men, +different made.” +</p> + +<p> +Then there was a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“But why does he do it?” cried Ursula, “why does he? Does +he think he’s grand, when he’s bullied a sensitive creature, ten +times as sensitive as himself?” +</p> + +<p> +Again there was a cautious pause. Then again the man shook his head, as if +he would say nothing, but would think the more. +</p> + +<p> +“I expect he’s got to train the mare to stand to +anything,” he replied. “A pure-bred Harab—not the sort of +breed as is used to round here—different sort from our sort altogether. +They say as he got her from Constantinople.” +</p> + +<p> +“He would!” said Ursula. “He’d better have left her +to the Turks, I’m sure they would have had more decency towards +her.” +</p> + +<p> +The man went in to drink his can of tea, the girls went on down the lane, +that was deep in soft black dust. Gudrun was as if numbed in her mind by the +sense of indomitable soft weight of the man, bearing down into the living body +of the horse: the strong, indomitable thighs of the blond man clenching the +palpitating body of the mare into pure control; a sort of soft white magnetic +domination from the loins and thighs and calves, enclosing and encompassing the +mare heavily into unutterable subordination, soft blood-subordination, terrible. +</p> + +<p> +On the left, as the girls walked silently, the coal-mine lifted its great +mounds and its patterned head-stocks, the black railway with the trucks at rest +looked like a harbour just below, a large bay of railroad with anchored wagons. +</p> + +<p> +Near the second level-crossing, that went over many bright rails, was a farm +belonging to the collieries, and a great round globe of iron, a disused boiler, +huge and rusty and perfectly round, stood silently in a paddock by the road. The +hens were pecking round it, some chickens were balanced on the drinking trough, +wagtails flew away in among trucks, from the water. +</p> + +<p> +On the other side of the wide crossing, by the road-side, was a heap of +pale-grey stones for mending the roads, and a cart standing, and a middle-aged +man with whiskers round his face was leaning on his shovel, talking to a young +man in gaiters, who stood by the horse’s head. Both men were facing the +crossing. +</p> + +<p> +They saw the two girls appear, small, brilliant figures in the near +distance, in the strong light of the late afternoon. Both wore light, gay summer +dresses, Ursula had an orange-coloured knitted coat, Gudrun a pale yellow, +Ursula wore canary yellow stockings, Gudrun bright rose, the figures of the two +women seemed to glitter in progress over the wide bay of the railway crossing, +white and orange and yellow and rose glittering in motion across a hot world +silted with coal-dust. +</p> + +<p> +The two men stood quite still in the heat, watching. The elder was a short, +hard-faced energetic man of middle age, the younger a labourer of twenty-three +or so. They stood in silence watching the advance of the sisters. They watched +whilst the girls drew near, and whilst they passed, and whilst they receded down +the dusty road, that had dwellings on one side, and dusty young corn on the +other. +</p> + +<p> +Then the elder man, with the whiskers round his face, said in a prurient +manner to the young man: +</p> + +<p> +“What price that, eh? She’ll do, won’t she?” +</p> + +<p> +“Which?” asked the young man, eagerly, with a laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“Her with the red stockings. What d’you say? I’d give my +week’s wages for five minutes; what!—just for five minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +Again the young man laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Your missis ’ud have summat to say to you,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun had turned round and looked at the two men. They were to her sinister +creatures, standing watching after her, by the heap of pale grey slag. She +loathed the man with whiskers round his face. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re first class, you are,” the man said to her, and to +the distance. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think it would be worth a week’s wages?” said the +younger man, musing. +</p> + +<p> +“Do I? I’d put ’em bloody-well down this +second—” +</p> + +<p> +The younger man looked after Gudrun and Ursula objectively, as if he wished +to calculate what there might be, that was worth his week’s wages. He +shook his head with fatal misgiving. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “It’s not worth that to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t?” said the old man. “By God, if it +isn’t to me!” +</p> + +<p> +And he went on shovelling his stones. +</p> + +<p> +The girls descended between the houses with slate roofs and blackish brick +walls. The heavy gold glamour of approaching sunset lay over all the colliery +district, and the ugliness overlaid with beauty was like a narcotic to the +senses. On the roads silted with black dust, the rich light fell more warmly, +more heavily, over all the amorphous squalor a kind of magic was cast, from the +glowing close of day. +</p> + +<p> +“It has a foul kind of beauty, this place,” said Gudrun, +evidently suffering from fascination. “Can’t you feel in some way, a +thick, hot attraction in it? I can. And it quite stupifies me.” +</p> + +<p> +They were passing between blocks of miners’ dwellings. In the back +yards of several dwellings, a miner could be seen washing himself in the open on +this hot evening, naked down to the loins, his great trousers of moleskin +slipping almost away. Miners already cleaned were sitting on their heels, with +their backs near the walls, talking and silent in pure physical well-being, +tired, and taking physical rest. Their voices sounded out with strong +intonation, and the broad dialect was curiously caressing to the blood. It +seemed to envelop Gudrun in a labourer’s caress, there was in the whole +atmosphere a resonance of physical men, a glamorous thickness of labour and +maleness, surcharged in the air. But it was universal in the district, and +therefore unnoticed by the inhabitants. +</p> + +<p> +To Gudrun, however, it was potent and half-repulsive. She could never tell +why Beldover was so utterly different from London and the south, why one’s +whole feelings were different, why one seemed to live in another sphere. Now she +realised that this was the world of powerful, underworld men who spent most of +their time in the darkness. In their voices she could hear the voluptuous +resonance of darkness, the strong, dangerous underworld, mindless, inhuman. They +sounded also like strange machines, heavy, oiled. The voluptuousness was like +that of machinery, cold and iron. +</p> + +<p> +It was the same every evening when she came home, she seemed to move through +a wave of disruptive force, that was given off from the presence of thousands of +vigorous, underworld, half-automatised colliers, and which went to the brain and +the heart, awaking a fatal desire, and a fatal callousness. +</p> + +<p> +There came over her a nostalgia for the place. She hated it, she knew how +utterly cut off it was, how hideous and how sickeningly mindless. Sometimes she +beat her wings like a new Daphne, turning not into a tree but a machine. And +yet, she was overcome by the nostalgia. She struggled to get more and more into +accord with the atmosphere of the place, she craved to get her satisfaction of +it. +</p> + +<p> +She felt herself drawn out at evening into the main street of the town, that +was uncreated and ugly, and yet surcharged with this same potent atmosphere of +intense, dark callousness. There were always miners about. They moved with their +strange, distorted dignity, a certain beauty, and unnatural stillness in their +bearing, a look of abstraction and half resignation in their pale, often gaunt +faces. They belonged to another world, they had a strange glamour, their voices +were full of an intolerable deep resonance, like a machine’s burring, a +music more maddening than the siren’s long ago. +</p> + +<p> +She found herself, with the rest of the common women, drawn out on Friday +evenings to the little market. Friday was pay-day for the colliers, and Friday +night was market night. Every woman was abroad, every man was out, shopping with +his wife, or gathering with his pals. The pavements were dark for miles around +with people coming in, the little market-place on the crown of the hill, and the +main street of Beldover were black with thickly-crowded men and women. +</p> + +<p> +It was dark, the market-place was hot with kerosene flares, which threw a +ruddy light on the grave faces of the purchasing wives, and on the pale abstract +faces of the men. The air was full of the sound of criers and of people talking, +thick streams of people moved on the pavements towards the solid crowd of the +market. The shops were blazing and packed with women, in the streets were men, +mostly men, miners of all ages. Money was spent with almost lavish freedom. +</p> + +<p> +The carts that came could not pass through. They had to wait, the driver +calling and shouting, till the dense crowd would make way. Everywhere, young +fellows from the outlying districts were making conversation with the girls, +standing in the road and at the corners. The doors of the public-houses were +open and full of light, men passed in and out in a continual stream, everywhere +men were calling out to one another, or crossing to meet one another, or +standing in little gangs and circles, discussing, endlessly discussing. The +sense of talk, buzzing, jarring, half-secret, the endless mining and political +wrangling, vibrated in the air like discordant machinery. And it was their +voices which affected Gudrun almost to swooning. They aroused a strange, +nostalgic ache of desire, something almost demoniacal, never to be fulfilled. +</p> + +<p> +Like any other common girl of the district, Gudrun strolled up and down, up +and down the length of the brilliant two-hundred paces of the pavement nearest +the market-place. She knew it was a vulgar thing to do; her father and mother +could not bear it; but the nostalgia came over her, she must be among the +people. Sometimes she sat among the louts in the cinema: rakish-looking, +unattractive louts they were. Yet she must be among them. +</p> + +<p> +And, like any other common lass, she found her ‘boy.’ It was an +electrician, one of the electricians introduced according to Gerald’s new +scheme. He was an earnest, clever man, a scientist with a passion for sociology. +He lived alone in a cottage, in lodgings, in Willey Green. He was a gentleman, +and sufficiently well-to-do. His landlady spread the reports about him; he <i>would</i> +have a large wooden tub in his bedroom, and every time he came in from work, he +<i>would</i> have pails and pails of water brought up, to bathe in, then he put on +clean shirt and under-clothing <i>every</i> day, and clean silk socks; fastidious and +exacting he was in these respects, but in every other way, most ordinary and +unassuming. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun knew all these things. The Brangwen’s house was one to which +the gossip came naturally and inevitably. Palmer was in the first place a friend +of Ursula’s. But in his pale, elegant, serious face there showed the same +nostalgia that Gudrun felt. He too must walk up and down the street on Friday +evening. So he walked with Gudrun, and a friendship was struck up between them. +But he was not in love with Gudrun; he <i>really</i> wanted Ursula, but for some +strange reason, nothing could happen between her and him. He liked to have +Gudrun about, as a fellow-mind—but that was all. And she had no real +feeling for him. He was a scientist, he had to have a woman to back him. But he +was really impersonal, he had the fineness of an elegant piece of machinery. He +was too cold, too destructive to care really for women, too great an egoist. He +was polarised by the men. Individually he detested and despised them. In the +mass they fascinated him, as machinery fascinated him. They were a new sort of +machinery to him—but incalculable, incalculable. +</p> + +<p> +So Gudrun strolled the streets with Palmer, or went to the cinema with him. +And his long, pale, rather elegant face flickered as he made his sarcastic +remarks. There they were, the two of them: two elegants in one sense: in the +other sense, two units, absolutely adhering to the people, teeming with the +distorted colliers. The same secret seemed to be working in the souls of all +alike, Gudrun, Palmer, the rakish young bloods, the gaunt, middle-aged men. All +had a secret sense of power, and of inexpressible destructiveness, and of fatal +half-heartedness, a sort of rottenness in the will. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes Gudrun would start aside, see it all, see how she was sinking in. +And then she was filled with a fury of contempt and anger. She felt she was +sinking into one mass with the rest—all so close and intermingled and +breathless. It was horrible. She stifled. She prepared for flight, feverishly +she flew to her work. But soon she let go. She started off into the +country—the darkish, glamorous country. The spell was beginning to work +again. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.<br/> +SKETCH-BOOK</h2> + +<p> +One morning the sisters were sketching by the side of Willey Water, at the +remote end of the lake. Gudrun had waded out to a gravelly shoal, and was seated +like a Buddhist, staring fixedly at the water-plants that rose succulent from +the mud of the low shores. What she could see was mud, soft, oozy, watery mud, +and from its festering chill, water-plants rose up, thick and cool and fleshy, +very straight and turgid, thrusting out their leaves at right angles, and having +dark lurid colours, dark green and blotches of black-purple and bronze. But she +could feel their turgid fleshy structure as in a sensuous vision, she <i>knew</i> how +they rose out of the mud, she <i>knew</i> how they thrust out from themselves, how they +stood stiff and succulent against the air. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was watching the butterflies, of which there were dozens near the +water, little blue ones suddenly snapping out of nothingness into a jewel-life, +a large black-and-red one standing upon a flower and breathing with his soft +wings, intoxicatingly, breathing pure, ethereal sunshine; two white ones +wrestling in the low air; there was a halo round them; ah, when they came +tumbling nearer they were orangetips, and it was the orange that had made the +halo. Ursula rose and drifted away, unconscious like the butterflies. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun, absorbed in a stupor of apprehension of surging water-plants, sat +crouched on the shoal, drawing, not looking up for a long time, and then staring +unconsciously, absorbedly at the rigid, naked, succulent stems. Her feet were +bare, her hat lay on the bank opposite. +</p> + +<p> +She started out of her trance, hearing the knocking of oars. She looked +round. There was a boat with a gaudy Japanese parasol, and a man in white, +rowing. The woman was Hermione, and the man was Gerald. She knew it instantly. +And instantly she perished in the keen <i>frisson</i> of anticipation, an electric +vibration in her veins, intense, much more intense than that which was always +humming low in the atmosphere of Beldover. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald was her escape from the heavy slough of the pale, underworld, +automatic colliers. He started out of the mud. He was master. She saw his back, +the movement of his white loins. But not that—it was the whiteness he +seemed to enclose as he bent forwards, rowing. He seemed to stoop to something. +His glistening, whitish hair seemed like the electricity of the sky. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s Gudrun,” came Hermione’s voice floating +distinct over the water. “We will go and speak to her. Do you mind?” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked round and saw the girl standing by the water’s edge, +looking at him. He pulled the boat towards her, magnetically, without thinking +of her. In his world, his conscious world, she was still nobody. He knew that +Hermione had a curious pleasure in treading down all the social differences, at +least apparently, and he left it to her. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, Gudrun?” sang Hermione, using the Christian name +in the fashionable manner. “What are you doing?” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, Hermione? I <i>was</i> sketching.” +</p> + +<p> +“Were you?” The boat drifted nearer, till the keel ground on the +bank. “May we see? I should like to <i>so</i> much.” +</p> + +<p> +It was no use resisting Hermione’s deliberate intention. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—” said Gudrun reluctantly, for she always hated to +have her unfinished work exposed—“there’s nothing in the least +interesting.” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t there? But let me see, will you?” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun reached out the sketch-book, Gerald stretched from the boat to take +it. And as he did so, he remembered Gudrun’s last words to him, and her +face lifted up to him as he sat on the swerving horse. An intensification of +pride went over his nerves, because he felt, in some way she was compelled by +him. The exchange of feeling between them was strong and apart from their +consciousness. +</p> + +<p> +And as if in a spell, Gudrun was aware of his body, stretching and surging +like the marsh-fire, stretching towards her, his hand coming straight forward +like a stem. Her voluptuous, acute apprehension of him made the blood faint in +her veins, her mind went dim and unconscious. And he rocked on the water +perfectly, like the rocking of phosphorescence. He looked round at the boat. It +was drifting off a little. He lifted the oar to bring it back. And the exquisite +pleasure of slowly arresting the boat, in the heavy-soft water, was complete as +a swoon. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>That’s</i> what you have done,” said Hermione, looking +searchingly at the plants on the shore, and comparing with Gudrun’s +drawing. Gudrun looked round in the direction of Hermione’s long, pointing +finger. “That is it, isn’t it?” repeated Hermione, needing +confirmation. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gudrun automatically, taking no real heed. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me look,” said Gerald, reaching forward for the book. But +Hermione ignored him, he must not presume, before she had finished. But he, his +will as unthwarted and as unflinching as hers, stretched forward till he touched +the book. A little shock, a storm of revulsion against him, shook Hermione +unconsciously. She released the book when he had not properly got it, and it +tumbled against the side of the boat and bounced into the water. +</p> + +<p> +“There!” sang Hermione, with a strange ring of malevolent +victory. “I’m so sorry, so awfully sorry. Can’t you get it, +Gerald?” +</p> + +<p> +This last was said in a note of anxious sneering that made Gerald’s +veins tingle with fine hate for her. He leaned far out of the boat, reaching +down into the water. He could feel his position was ridiculous, his loins +exposed behind him. +</p> + +<p> +“It is of no importance,” came the strong, clanging voice of +Gudrun. She seemed to touch him. But he reached further, the boat swayed +violently. Hermione, however, remained unperturbed. He grasped the book, under +the water, and brought it up, dripping. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m so dreadfully sorry—dreadfully sorry,” repeated +Hermione. “I’m afraid it was all my fault.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s of no importance—really, I assure you—it +doesn’t matter in the least,” said Gudrun loudly, with emphasis, her +face flushed scarlet. And she held out her hand impatiently for the wet book, to +have done with the scene. Gerald gave it to her. He was not quite himself. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m so dreadfully sorry,” repeated Hermione, till both +Gerald and Gudrun were exasperated. “Is there nothing that can be +done?” +</p> + +<p> +“In what way?” asked Gudrun, with cool irony. +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t we save the drawings?” +</p> + +<p> +There was a moment’s pause, wherein Gudrun made evident all her +refutation of Hermione’s persistence. +</p> + +<p> +“I assure you,” said Gudrun, with cutting distinctness, +“the drawings are quite as good as ever they were, for my purpose. I want +them only for reference.” +</p> + +<p> +“But can’t I give you a new book? I wish you’d let me do +that. I feel so truly sorry. I feel it was all my fault.” +</p> + +<p> +“As far as I saw,” said Gudrun, “it wasn’t your +fault at all. If there was any <i>fault</i>, it was Mr Crich’s. But the +whole thing is <i>entirely</i> trivial, and it really is ridiculous to take +any notice of it.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald watched Gudrun closely, whilst she repulsed Hermione. There was a +body of cold power in her. He watched her with an insight that amounted to +clairvoyance. He saw her a dangerous, hostile spirit, that could stand +undiminished and unabated. It was so finished, and of such perfect gesture, +moreover. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m awfully glad if it doesn’t matter,” he said; +“if there’s no real harm done.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked back at him, with her fine blue eyes, and signalled full into his +spirit, as she said, her voice ringing with intimacy almost caressive now it was +addressed to him: +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, it doesn’t matter in the <i>least</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +The bond was established between them, in that look, in her tone. In her +tone, she made the understanding clear—they were of the same kind, he and +she, a sort of diabolic freemasonry subsisted between them. Henceforward, she +knew, she had her power over him. Wherever they met, they would be secretly +associated. And he would be helpless in the association with her. Her soul +exulted. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye! I’m so glad you forgive me. Gooood-bye!” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione sang her farewell, and waved her hand. Gerald automatically took +the oar and pushed off. But he was looking all the time, with a glimmering, +subtly-smiling admiration in his eyes, at Gudrun, who stood on the shoal shaking +the wet book in her hand. She turned away and ignored the receding boat. But +Gerald looked back as he rowed, beholding her, forgetting what he was doing. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t we going too much to the left?” sang Hermione, as +she sat ignored under her coloured parasol. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked round without replying, the oars balanced and glancing in the +sun. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it’s all right,” he said good-humouredly, +beginning to row again without thinking of what he was doing. And Hermione +disliked him extremely for his good-humoured obliviousness, she was nullified, +she could not regain ascendancy. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br/> +AN ISLAND</h2> + +<p> +Meanwhile Ursula had wandered on from Willey Water along the course of the +bright little stream. The afternoon was full of larks’ singing. On the +bright hill-sides was a subdued smoulder of gorse. A few forget-me-nots flowered +by the water. There was a rousedness and a glancing everywhere. +</p> + +<p> +She strayed absorbedly on, over the brooks. She wanted to go to the +mill-pond above. The big mill-house was deserted, save for a labourer and his +wife who lived in the kitchen. So she passed through the empty farm-yard and +through the wilderness of a garden, and mounted the bank by the sluice. When she +got to the top, to see the old, velvety surface of the pond before her, she +noticed a man on the bank, tinkering with a punt. It was Birkin sawing and +hammering away. +</p> + +<p> +She stood at the head of the sluice, looking at him. He was unaware of +anybody’s presence. He looked very busy, like a wild animal, active and +intent. She felt she ought to go away, he would not want her. He seemed to be so +much occupied. But she did not want to go away. Therefore she moved along the +bank till he would look up. +</p> + +<p> +Which he soon did. The moment he saw her, he dropped his tools and came +forward, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do? I’m making the punt water-tight. Tell me if you +think it is right.” +</p> + +<p> +She went along with him. +</p> + +<p> +“You are your father’s daughter, so you can tell me if it will +do,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She bent to look at the patched punt. +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure I am my father’s daughter,” she said, fearful +of having to judge. “But I don’t know anything about carpentry. It +<i>looks</i> right, don’t you think?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I think. I hope it won’t let me to the bottom, +that’s all. Though even so, it isn’t a great matter, I should come +up again. Help me to get it into the water, will you?” +</p> + +<p> +With combined efforts they turned over the heavy punt and set it afloat. +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” he said, “I’ll try it and you can watch what +happens. Then if it carries, I’ll take you over to the island.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do,” she cried, watching anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +The pond was large, and had that perfect stillness and the dark lustre of +very deep water. There were two small islands overgrown with bushes and a few +trees, towards the middle. Birkin pushed himself off, and veered clumsily in the +pond. Luckily the punt drifted so that he could catch hold of a willow bough, +and pull it to the island. +</p> + +<p> +“Rather overgrown,” he said, looking into the interior, +“but very nice. I’ll come and fetch you. The boat leaks a +little.” +</p> + +<p> +In a moment he was with her again, and she stepped into the wet punt. +</p> + +<p> +“It’ll float us all right,” he said, and manœuvred again +to the island. +</p> + +<p> +They landed under a willow tree. She shrank from the little jungle of rank +plants before her, evil-smelling figwort and hemlock. But he explored into it. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall mow this down,” he said, “and then it will be +romantic—like Paul et Virginie.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, one could have lovely Watteau picnics here,” cried Ursula +with enthusiasm. +</p> + +<p> +His face darkened. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want Watteau picnics here,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Only your Virginie,” she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Virginie enough,” he smiled wryly. “No, I don’t +want her either.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula looked at him closely. She had not seen him since Breadalby. He was +very thin and hollow, with a ghastly look in his face. +</p> + +<p> +“You have been ill; haven’t you?” she asked, rather +repulsed. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he replied coldly. +</p> + +<p> +They had sat down under the willow tree, and were looking at the pond, from +their retreat on the island. +</p> + +<p> +“Has it made you frightened?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“What of?” he asked, turning his eyes to look at her. Something +in him, inhuman and unmitigated, disturbed her, and shook her out of her +ordinary self. +</p> + +<p> +“It <i>is</i> frightening to be very ill, isn’t it?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t pleasant,” he said. “Whether one is really +afraid of death, or not, I have never decided. In one mood, not a bit, in +another, very much.” +</p> + +<p> +“But doesn’t it make you feel ashamed? I think it makes one so +ashamed, to be ill—illness is so terribly humiliating, don’t you +think?” +</p> + +<p> +He considered for some minutes. +</p> + +<p> +“Maybe,” he said. “Though one knows all the time +one’s life isn’t really right, at the source. That’s the +humiliation. I don’t see that the illness counts so much, after that. One +is ill because one doesn’t live properly—can’t. It’s the +failure to live that makes one ill, and humiliates one.” +</p> + +<p> +“But do you fail to live?” she asked, almost jeering. +</p> + +<p> +“Why yes—I don’t make much of a success of my days. One +seems always to be bumping one’s nose against the blank wall ahead.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula laughed. She was frightened, and when she was frightened she always +laughed and pretended to be jaunty. +</p> + +<p> +“Your poor nose!” she said, looking at that feature of his face. +</p> + +<p> +“No wonder it’s ugly,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +She was silent for some minutes, struggling with her own self-deception. It +was an instinct in her, to deceive herself. +</p> + +<p> +“But <i>I’m</i> happy—I think life is <i>awfully</i> +jolly,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Good,” he answered, with a certain cold indifference. +</p> + +<p> +She reached for a bit of paper which had wrapped a small piece of chocolate +she had found in her pocket, and began making a boat. He watched her without +heeding her. There was something strangely pathetic and tender in her moving, +unconscious finger-tips, that were agitated and hurt, really. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>do</i> enjoy things—don’t you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes! But it infuriates me that I can’t get right, at the +really growing part of me. I feel all tangled and messed up, and I +<i>can’t</i> get straight anyhow. I don’t know what really to +<i>do</i>. One must do something somewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should you always be <i>doing?</i>” she retorted. “It is so +plebeian. I think it is much better to be really patrician, and to do nothing +but just be oneself, like a walking flower.” +</p> + +<p> +“I quite agree,” he said, “if one has burst into blossom. +But I can’t get my flower to blossom anyhow. Either it is blighted in the +bud, or has got the smother-fly, or it isn’t nourished. Curse it, it +isn’t even a bud. It is a contravened knot.” +</p> + +<p> +Again she laughed. He was so very fretful and exasperated. But she was +anxious and puzzled. How was one to get out, anyhow. There must be a way out +somewhere. +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence, wherein she wanted to cry. She reached for another bit +of chocolate paper, and began to fold another boat. +</p> + +<p> +“And why is it,” she asked at length, “that there is no +flowering, no dignity of human life now?” +</p> + +<p> +“The whole idea is dead. Humanity itself is dry-rotten, really. There +are myriads of human beings hanging on the bush—and they look very nice +and rosy, your healthy young men and women. But they are apples of Sodom, as a +matter of fact, Dead Sea Fruit, gall-apples. It isn’t true that they have +any significance—their insides are full of bitter, corrupt ash.” +</p> + +<p> +“But there <i>are</i> good people,” protested Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Good enough for the life of today. But mankind is a dead tree, +covered with fine brilliant galls of people.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula could not help stiffening herself against this, it was too +picturesque and final. But neither could she help making him go on. +</p> + +<p> +“And if it is so, <i>why</i> is it?” she asked, hostile. They were +rousing each other to a fine passion of opposition. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because they +won’t fall off the tree when they’re ripe. They hang on to their old +positions when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little +worms and dry-rot.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a long pause. His voice had become hot and very sarcastic. Ursula +was troubled and bewildered, they were both oblivious of everything but their +own immersion. +</p> + +<p> +“But even if everybody is wrong—where are <i>you</i> right?” +she cried, “where are you any better?” +</p> + +<p> +“I?—I’m not right,” he cried back. “At least +my only rightness lies in the fact that I know it. I detest what I am, +outwardly. I loathe myself as a human being. Humanity is a huge aggregate lie, +and a huge lie is less than a small truth. Humanity is less, far less than the +individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and +humanity is a tree of lies. And they say that love is the greatest thing; they +persist in <i>saying</i> this, the foul liars, and just look at what they do! +Look at all the millions of people who repeat every minute that love is the +greatest, and charity is the greatest—and see what they are doing all the +time. By their works ye shall know them, for dirty liars and cowards, who +daren’t stand by their own actions, much less by their own words.” +</p> + +<p> +“But,” said Ursula sadly, “that doesn’t alter the +fact that love is the greatest, does it? What they <i>do</i> doesn’t +alter the truth of what they say, does it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Completely, because if what they say <i>were</i> true, then they +couldn’t help fulfilling it. But they maintain a lie, and so they run amok +at last. It’s a lie to say that love is the greatest. You might as well +say that hate is the greatest, since the opposite of everything balances. What +people want is hate—hate and nothing but hate. And in the name of +righteousness and love, they get it. They distil themselves with nitroglycerine, +all the lot of them, out of very love. It’s the lie that kills. If we want +hate, let us have it—death, murder, torture, violent destruction—let +us have it: but not in the name of love. But I abhor humanity, I wish it was +swept away. It could go, and there would be no <i>absolute</i> loss, if every human +being perished tomorrow. The reality would be untouched. Nay, it would be +better. The real tree of life would then be rid of the most ghastly, heavy crop +of Dead Sea Fruit, the intolerable burden of myriad simulacra of people, an +infinite weight of mortal lies.” +</p> + +<p> +“So you’d like everybody in the world destroyed?” said +Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“I should indeed.” +</p> + +<p> +“And the world empty of people?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes truly. You yourself, don’t you find it a beautiful clean +thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting +up?” +</p> + +<p> +The pleasant sincerity of his voice made Ursula pause to consider her own +proposition. And really it <i>was</i> attractive: a clean, lovely, humanless world. +It was the <i>really</i> desirable. Her heart hesitated, and exulted. But still, +she was dissatisfied with <i>him</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” she objected, “you’d be dead yourself, so +what good would it do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I would die like a shot, to know that the earth would really be +cleaned of all the people. It is the most beautiful and freeing thought. Then +there would <i>never</i> be another foul humanity created, for a universal +defilement.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Ursula, “there would be nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“What! Nothing? Just because humanity was wiped out? You flatter +yourself. There’d be everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how, if there were no people?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think that creation depends on <i>man!</i> It merely doesn’t. +There are the trees and the grass and birds. I much prefer to think of the lark +rising up in the morning upon a humanless world. Man is a mistake, he must go. +There is the grass, and hares and adders, and the unseen hosts, actual angels +that go about freely when a dirty humanity doesn’t interrupt +them—and good pure-tissued demons: very nice.” +</p> + +<p> +It pleased Ursula, what he said, pleased her very much, as a phantasy. Of +course it was only a pleasant fancy. She herself knew too well the actuality of +humanity, its hideous actuality. She knew it could not disappear so cleanly and +conveniently. It had a long way to go yet, a long and hideous way. Her subtle, +feminine, demoniacal soul knew it well. +</p> + +<p> +“If only man was swept off the face of the earth, creation would go on +so marvellously, with a new start, non-human. Man is one of the mistakes of +creation—like the ichthyosauri. If only he were gone again, think what +lovely things would come out of the liberated days;—things straight out of +the fire.” +</p> + +<p> +“But man will never be gone,” she said, with insidious, +diabolical knowledge of the horrors of persistence. “The world will go +with him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah no,” he answered, “not so. I believe in the proud +angels and the demons that are our fore-runners. They will destroy us, because +we are not proud enough. The ichthyosauri were not proud: they crawled and +floundered as we do. And besides, look at elder-flowers and bluebells—they +are a sign that pure creation takes place—even the butterfly. But humanity +never gets beyond the caterpillar stage—it rots in the chrysalis, it never +will have wings. It is anti-creation, like monkeys and baboons.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula watched him as he talked. There seemed a certain impatient fury in +him, all the while, and at the same time a great amusement in everything, and a +final tolerance. And it was this tolerance she mistrusted, not the fury. She saw +that, all the while, in spite of himself, he would have to be trying to save the +world. And this knowledge, whilst it comforted her heart somewhere with a little +self-satisfaction, stability, yet filled her with a certain sharp contempt and +hate of him. She wanted him to herself, she hated the Salvator Mundi touch. It +was something diffuse and generalised about him, which she could not stand. He +would behave in the same way, say the same things, give himself as completely to +anybody who came along, anybody and everybody who liked to appeal to him. It was +despicable, a very insidious form of prostitution. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” she said, “you believe in individual love, even if +you don’t believe in loving humanity—?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe in love at all—that is, any more than I +believe in hate, or in grief. Love is one of the emotions like all the +others—and so it is all right whilst you feel it. But I can’t see how +it becomes an absolute. It is just part of human relationships, no more. And it +is only part of <i>any</i> human relationship. And why one should be required +<i>always</i> to feel it, any more than one always feels sorrow or distant joy, +I cannot conceive. Love isn’t a desideratum—it is an emotion you feel +or you don’t feel, according to circumstance.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why do you care about people at all?” she asked, “if +you don’t believe in love? Why do you bother about humanity?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do I? Because I can’t get away from it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Because you love it,” she persisted. +</p> + +<p> +It irritated him. +</p> + +<p> +“If I do love it,” he said, “it is my disease.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it is a disease you don’t want to be cured of,” she +said, with some cold sneering. +</p> + +<p> +He was silent now, feeling she wanted to insult him. +</p> + +<p> +“And if you don’t believe in love, what <i>do</i> you believe +in?” she asked mocking. “Simply in the end of the world, and +grass?” +</p> + +<p> +He was beginning to feel a fool. +</p> + +<p> +“I believe in the unseen hosts,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And nothing else? You believe in nothing visible, except grass and +birds? Your world is a poor show.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps it is,” he said, cool and superior now he was offended, +assuming a certain insufferable aloof superiority, and withdrawing into his +distance. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula disliked him. But also she felt she had lost something. She looked at +him as he sat crouched on the bank. There was a certain priggish Sunday-school +stiffness over him, priggish and detestable. And yet, at the same time, the +moulding of him was so quick and attractive, it gave such a great sense of +freedom: the moulding of his brows, his chin, his whole physique, something so +alive, somewhere, in spite of the look of sickness. +</p> + +<p> +And it was this duality in feeling which he created in her, that made a fine +hate of him quicken in her bowels. There was his wonderful, desirable +life-rapidity, the rare quality of an utterly desirable man: and there was at +the same time this ridiculous, mean effacement into a Salvator Mundi and a +Sunday-school teacher, a prig of the stiffest type. +</p> + +<p> +He looked up at her. He saw her face strangely enkindled, as if suffused +from within by a powerful sweet fire. His soul was arrested in wonder. She was +enkindled in her own living fire. Arrested in wonder and in pure, perfect +attraction, he moved towards her. She sat like a strange queen, almost +supernatural in her glowing smiling richness. +</p> + +<p> +“The point about love,” he said, his consciousness quickly +adjusting itself, “is that we hate the word because we have vulgarised it. +It ought to be prescribed, tabooed from utterance, for many years, till we get a +new, better idea.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a beam of understanding between them. +</p> + +<p> +“But it always means the same thing,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah God, no, let it not mean that any more,” he cried. +“Let the old meanings go.” +</p> + +<p> +“But still it is love,” she persisted. A strange, wicked yellow +light shone at him in her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +He hesitated, baffled, withdrawing. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “it isn’t. Spoken like that, never in +the world. You’ve no business to utter the word.” +</p> + +<p> +“I must leave it to you, to take it out of the Ark of the Covenant at +the right moment,” she mocked. +</p> + +<p> +Again they looked at each other. She suddenly sprang up, turned her back to +him, and walked away. He too rose slowly and went to the water’s edge, +where, crouching, he began to amuse himself unconsciously. Picking a daisy he +dropped it on the pond, so that the stem was a keel, the flower floated like a +little water lily, staring with its open face up to the sky. It turned slowly +round, in a slow, slow Dervish dance, as it veered away. +</p> + +<p> +He watched it, then dropped another daisy into the water, and after that +another, and sat watching them with bright, absolved eyes, crouching near on the +bank. Ursula turned to look. A strange feeling possessed her, as if something +were taking place. But it was all intangible. And some sort of control was being +put on her. She could not know. She could only watch the brilliant little discs +of the daisies veering slowly in travel on the dark, lustrous water. The little +flotilla was drifting into the light, a company of white specks in the distance. +</p> + +<p> +“Do let us go to the shore, to follow them,” she said, afraid of +being any longer imprisoned on the island. And they pushed off in the punt. +</p> + +<p> +She was glad to be on the free land again. She went along the bank towards +the sluice. The daisies were scattered broadcast on the pond, tiny radiant +things, like an exaltation, points of exaltation here and there. Why did they +move her so strongly and mystically? +</p> + +<p> +“Look,” he said, “your boat of purple paper is escorting +them, and they are a convoy of rafts.” +</p> + +<p> +Some of the daisies came slowly towards her, hesitating, making a shy bright +little cotillion on the dark clear water. Their gay bright candour moved her so +much as they came near, that she was almost in tears. +</p> + +<p> +“Why are they so lovely,” she cried. “Why do I think them +so lovely?” +</p> + +<p> +“They are nice flowers,” he said, her emotional tones putting a +constraint on him. +</p> + +<p> +“You know that a daisy is a company of florets, a concourse, become +individual. Don’t the botanists put it highest in the line of development? +I believe they do.” +</p> + +<p> +“The compositæ, yes, I think so,” said Ursula, who was never +very sure of anything. Things she knew perfectly well, at one moment, seemed to +become doubtful the next. +</p> + +<p> +“Explain it so, then,” he said. “The daisy is a perfect +little democracy, so it’s the highest of flowers, hence its charm.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she cried, “no—never. It isn’t +democratic.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he admitted. “It’s the golden mob of the +proletariat, surrounded by a showy white fence of the idle rich.” +</p> + +<p> +“How hateful—your hateful social orders!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Quite! It’s a daisy—we’ll leave it alone.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do. Let it be a dark horse for once,” she said: “if +anything can be a dark horse to you,” she added satirically. +</p> + +<p> +They stood aside, forgetful. As if a little stunned, they both were +motionless, barely conscious. The little conflict into which they had fallen had +torn their consciousness and left them like two impersonal forces, there in +contact. +</p> + +<p> +He became aware of the lapse. He wanted to say something, to get on to a new +more ordinary footing. +</p> + +<p> +“You know,” he said, “that I am having rooms here at the +mill? Don’t you think we can have some good times?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh are you?” she said, ignoring all his implication of admitted +intimacy. +</p> + +<p> +He adjusted himself at once, became normally distant. +</p> + +<p> +“If I find I can live sufficiently by myself,” he continued, +“I shall give up my work altogether. It has become dead to me. I +don’t believe in the humanity I pretend to be part of, I don’t care +a straw for the social ideals I live by, I hate the dying organic form of social +mankind—so it can’t be anything but trumpery, to work at education. +I shall drop it as soon as I am clear enough—tomorrow perhaps—and be +by myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you enough to live on?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—I’ve about four hundred a year. That makes it easy +for me.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“And what about Hermione?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s over, finally—a pure failure, and never could have +been anything else.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you still know each other?” +</p> + +<p> +“We could hardly pretend to be strangers, could we?” +</p> + +<p> +There was a stubborn pause. +</p> + +<p> +“But isn’t that a half-measure?” asked Ursula at length. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think so,” he said. “You’ll be able +to tell me if it is.” +</p> + +<p> +Again there was a pause of some minutes’ duration. He was thinking. +</p> + +<p> +“One must throw everything away, everything—let everything go, +to get the one last thing one wants,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“What thing?” she asked in challenge. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know—freedom together,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She had wanted him to say ‘love.’ +</p> + +<p> +There was heard a loud barking of the dogs below. He seemed disturbed by it. +She did not notice. Only she thought he seemed uneasy. +</p> + +<p> +“As a matter of fact,” he said, in rather a small voice, +“I believe that is Hermione come now, with Gerald Crich. She wanted to see +the rooms before they are furnished.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” said Ursula. “She will superintend the +furnishing for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Probably. Does it matter?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, I should think not,” said Ursula. “Though +personally, I can’t bear her. I think she is a lie, if you like, you who +are always talking about lies.” Then she ruminated for a moment, when she +broke out: “Yes, and I do mind if she furnishes your rooms—I do +mind. I mind that you keep her hanging on at all.” +</p> + +<p> +He was silent now, frowning. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps,” he said. “I don’t <i>want</i> her to furnish the +rooms here—and I don’t keep her hanging on. Only, I needn’t be +churlish to her, need I? At any rate, I shall have to go down and see them now. +You’ll come, won’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think so,” she said coldly and irresolutely. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you? Yes do. Come and see the rooms as well. Do +come.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br/> +CARPETING</h2> + +<p> +He set off down the bank, and she went unwillingly with him. Yet she would +not have stayed away, either. +</p> + +<p> +“We know each other well, you and I, already,” he said. She did +not answer. +</p> + +<p> +In the large darkish kitchen of the mill, the labourer’s wife was +talking shrilly to Hermione and Gerald, who stood, he in white and she in a +glistening bluish foulard, strangely luminous in the dusk of the room; whilst +from the cages on the walls, a dozen or more canaries sang at the top of their +voices. The cages were all placed round a small square window at the back, where +the sunshine came in, a beautiful beam, filtering through green leaves of a +tree. The voice of Mrs Salmon shrilled against the noise of the birds, which +rose ever more wild and triumphant, and the woman’s voice went up and up +against them, and the birds replied with wild animation. +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s Rupert!” shouted Gerald in the midst of the din. +He was suffering badly, being very sensitive in the ear. +</p> + +<p> +“O-o-h them birds, they won’t let you speak—!” +shrilled the labourer’s wife in disgust. “I’ll cover them +up.” +</p> + +<p> +And she darted here and there, throwing a duster, an apron, a towel, a +table-cloth over the cages of the birds. +</p> + +<p> +“Now will you stop it, and let a body speak for your row,” she +said, still in a voice that was too high. +</p> + +<p> +The party watched her. Soon the cages were covered, they had a strange +funereal look. But from under the towels odd defiant trills and bubblings still +shook out. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, they won’t go on,” said Mrs Salmon reassuringly. +“They’ll go to sleep now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really,” said Hermione, politely. +</p> + +<p> +“They will,” said Gerald. “They will go to sleep +automatically, now the impression of evening is produced.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are they so easily deceived?” cried Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes,” replied Gerald. “Don’t you know the story +of Fabre, who, when he was a boy, put a hen’s head under her wing, and she +straight away went to sleep? It’s quite true.” +</p> + +<p> +“And did that make him a naturalist?” asked Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Probably,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Ursula was peeping under one of the cloths. There sat the canary +in a corner, bunched and fluffed up for sleep. +</p> + +<p> +“How ridiculous!” she cried. “It really thinks the night +has come! How absurd! Really, how can one have any respect for a creature that +is so easily taken in!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” sang Hermione, coming also to look. She put her hand on +Ursula’s arm and chuckled a low laugh. “Yes, doesn’t he look +comical?” she chuckled. “Like a stupid husband.” +</p> + +<p> +Then, with her hand still on Ursula’s arm, she drew her away, saying, +in her mild sing-song: +</p> + +<p> +“How did you come here? We saw Gudrun too.” +</p> + +<p> +“I came to look at the pond,” said Ursula, “and I found Mr +Birkin there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you? This is quite a Brangwen land, isn’t it!” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid I hoped so,” said Ursula. “I ran here +for refuge, when I saw you down the lake, just putting off.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you! And now we’ve run you to earth.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione’s eyelids lifted with an uncanny movement, amused but +overwrought. She had always her strange, rapt look, unnatural and irresponsible. +</p> + +<p> +“I was going on,” said Ursula. “Mr Birkin wanted me to see +the rooms. Isn’t it delightful to live here? It is perfect.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Hermione, abstractedly. Then she turned right away +from Ursula, ceased to know her existence. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you feel, Rupert?” she sang in a new, affectionate tone, +to Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Were you quite comfortable?” The curious, sinister, rapt look +was on Hermione’s face, she shrugged her bosom in a convulsed movement, +and seemed like one half in a trance. +</p> + +<p> +“Quite comfortable,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +There was a long pause, whilst Hermione looked at him for a long time, from +under her heavy, drugged eyelids. +</p> + +<p> +“And you think you’ll be happy here?” she said at last. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure I shall.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure I shall do anything for him as I can,” said the +labourer’s wife. “And I’m sure our master will; so I <i>hope</i> +he’ll find himself comfortable.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione turned and looked at her slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you so much,” she said, and then she turned completely +away again. She recovered her position, and lifting her face towards him, and +addressing him exclusively, she said: +</p> + +<p> +“Have you measured the rooms?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “I’ve been mending the punt.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we do it now?” she said slowly, balanced and +dispassionate. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you got a tape measure, Mrs Salmon?” he said, turning to +the woman. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes sir, I think I can find one,” replied the woman, bustling +immediately to a basket. “This is the only one I’ve got, if it will +do.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione took it, though it was offered to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you so much,” she said. “It will do very nicely. +Thank you so much.” Then she turned to Birkin, saying with a little gay +movement: “Shall we do it now, Rupert?” +</p> + +<p> +“What about the others, they’ll be bored,” he said +reluctantly. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mind?” said Hermione, turning to Ursula and Gerald +vaguely. +</p> + +<p> +“Not in the least,” they replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Which room shall we do first?” she said, turning again to +Birkin, with the same gaiety, now she was going to <i>do</i> something with him. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll take them as they come,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Should I be getting your teas ready, while you do that?” said +the labourer’s wife, also gay because <i>she</i> had something to do. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you?” said Hermione, turning to her with the curious +motion of intimacy that seemed to envelop the woman, draw her almost to +Hermione’s breast, and which left the others standing apart. “I +should be so glad. Where shall we have it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where would you like it? Shall it be in here, or out on the +grass?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where shall we have tea?” sang Hermione to the company at +large. +</p> + +<p> +“On the bank by the pond. And <i>we’ll</i> carry the things up, +if you’ll just get them ready, Mrs Salmon,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” said the pleased woman. +</p> + +<p> +The party moved down the passage into the front room. It was empty, but +clean and sunny. There was a window looking on to the tangled front garden. +</p> + +<p> +“This is the dining-room,” said Hermione. “We’ll +measure it this way, Rupert—you go down there—” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t I do it for you,” said Gerald, coming to take the +end of the tape. +</p> + +<p> +“No, thank you,” cried Hermione, stooping to the ground in her +bluish, brilliant foulard. It was a great joy to her to <i>do</i> things, and +to have the ordering of the job, with Birkin. He obeyed her subduedly. Ursula +and Gerald looked on. It was a peculiarity of Hermione’s, that at every +moment, she had one intimate, and turned all the rest of those present into +onlookers. This raised her into a state of triumph. +</p> + +<p> +They measured and discussed in the dining-room, and Hermione decided what +the floor coverings must be. It sent her into a strange, convulsed anger, to be +thwarted. Birkin always let her have her way, for the moment. +</p> + +<p> +Then they moved across, through the hall, to the other front room, that was +a little smaller than the first. +</p> + +<p> +“This is the study,” said Hermione. “Rupert, I have a rug +that I want you to have for here. Will you let me give it to you? Do—I +want to give it you.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is it like?” he asked ungraciously. +</p> + +<p> +“You haven’t seen it. It is chiefly rose red, then blue, a +metallic, mid-blue, and a very soft dark blue. I think you would like it. Do you +think you would?” +</p> + +<p> +“It sounds very nice,” he replied. “What is it? Oriental? +With a pile?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Persian! It is made of camel’s hair, silky. I think it is +called Bergamos—twelve feet by seven—. Do you think it will +do?” +</p> + +<p> +“It would <i>do</i>,” he said. “But why should you give me an +expensive rug? I can manage perfectly well with my old Oxford Turkish.” +</p> + +<p> +“But may I give it to you? Do let me.” +</p> + +<p> +“How much did it cost?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t remember. It was quite cheap.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her, his face set. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to take it, Hermione,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Do let me give it to the rooms,” she said, going up to him and +putting her hand on his arm lightly, pleadingly. “I shall be so +disappointed.” +</p> + +<p> +“You know I don’t want you to give me things,” he repeated +helplessly. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to give you <i>things</i>,” she said teasingly. +“But will you have this?” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” he said, defeated, and she triumphed. +</p> + +<p> +They went upstairs. There were two bedrooms to correspond with the rooms +downstairs. One of them was half furnished, and Birkin had evidently slept +there. Hermione went round the room carefully, taking in every detail, as if +absorbing the evidence of his presence, in all the inanimate things. She felt +the bed and examined the coverings. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you <i>sure</i> you were quite comfortable?” she said, pressing +the pillow. +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly,” he replied coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“And were you warm? There is no down quilt. I am sure you need one. +You mustn’t have a great pressure of clothes.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got one,” he said. “It is coming down.” +</p> + +<p> +They measured the rooms, and lingered over every consideration. Ursula stood +at the window and watched the woman carrying the tea up the bank to the pond. +She hated the palaver Hermione made, she wanted to drink tea, she wanted +anything but this fuss and business. +</p> + +<p> +At last they all mounted the grassy bank, to the picnic. Hermione poured out +tea. She ignored now Ursula’s presence. And Ursula, recovering from her +ill-humour, turned to Gerald saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I hated you so much the other day, Mr Crich,” +</p> + +<p> +“What for?” said Gerald, wincing slightly away. +</p> + +<p> +“For treating your horse so badly. Oh, I hated you so much!” +</p> + +<p> +“What did he do?” sang Hermione. +</p> + +<p> +“He made his lovely sensitive Arab horse stand with him at the +railway-crossing whilst a horrible lot of trucks went by; and the poor thing, +she was in a perfect frenzy, a perfect agony. It was the most horrible sight you +can imagine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you do it, Gerald?” asked Hermione, calm and +interrogative. +</p> + +<p> +“She must learn to stand—what use is she to me in this country, +if she shies and goes off every time an engine whistles.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why inflict unnecessary torture?” said Ursula. “Why +make her stand all that time at the crossing? You might just as well have ridden +back up the road, and saved all that horror. Her sides were bleeding where you +had spurred her. It was too horrible—!” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald stiffened. +</p> + +<p> +“I have to use her,” he replied. “And if I’m going +to be sure of her at <i>all</i>, she’ll have to learn to stand noises.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should she?” cried Ursula in a passion. “She is a +living creature, why should she stand anything, just because you choose to make +her? She has as much right to her own being, as you have to yours.” +</p> + +<p> +“There I disagree,” said Gerald. “I consider that mare is +there for my use. Not because I bought her, but because that is the natural +order. It is more natural for a man to take a horse and use it as he likes, than +for him to go down on his knees to it, begging it to do as it wishes, and to +fulfil its own marvellous nature.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was just breaking out, when Hermione lifted her face and began, in +her musing sing-song: +</p> + +<p> +“I do think—I do really think we must have the <i>courage</i> to use +the lower animal life for our needs. I do think there is something wrong, when +we look on every living creature as if it were ourselves. I do feel, that it is +false to project our own feelings on every animate creature. It is a lack of +discrimination, a lack of criticism.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite,” said Birkin sharply. “Nothing is so detestable as +the maudlin attributing of human feelings and consciousness to animals.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Hermione, wearily, “we must really take a +position. Either we are going to use the animals, or they will use us.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a fact,” said Gerald. “A horse has got a +will like a man, though it has no <i>mind</i> strictly. And if your will isn’t +master, then the horse is master of you. And this is a thing I can’t help. +I can’t help being master of the horse.” +</p> + +<p> +“If only we could learn how to use our will,” said Hermione, +“we could do anything. The will can cure anything, and put anything right. +That I am convinced of—if only we use the will properly, +intelligibly.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean by using the will properly?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“A very great doctor taught me,” she said, addressing Ursula and +Gerald vaguely. “He told me for instance, that to cure oneself of a bad +habit, one should <i>force</i> oneself to do it, when one would not do it—make +oneself do it—and then the habit would disappear.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you mean?” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“If you bite your nails, for example. Then, when you don’t want +to bite your nails, bite them, make yourself bite them. And you would find the +habit was broken.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that so?” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. And in so many things, I have <i>made</i> myself well. I was a very +queer and nervous girl. And by learning to use my will, simply by using my will, +I <i>made</i> myself right.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula looked all the while at Hermione, as she spoke in her slow, +dispassionate, and yet strangely tense voice. A curious thrill went over the +younger woman. Some strange, dark, convulsive power was in Hermione, fascinating +and repelling. +</p> + +<p> +“It is fatal to use the will like that,” cried Birkin harshly, +“disgusting. Such a will is an obscenity.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione looked at him for a long time, with her shadowed, heavy eyes. Her +face was soft and pale and thin, almost phosphorescent, her jaw was lean. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure it isn’t,” she said at length. There +always seemed an interval, a strange split between what she seemed to feel and +experience, and what she actually said and thought. She seemed to catch her +thoughts at length from off the surface of a maelstrom of chaotic black emotions +and reactions, and Birkin was always filled with repulsion, she caught so +infallibly, her will never failed her. Her voice was always dispassionate and +tense, and perfectly confident. Yet she shuddered with a sense of nausea, a sort +of seasickness that always threatened to overwhelm her mind. But her mind +remained unbroken, her will was still perfect. It almost sent Birkin mad. But he +would never, never dare to break her will, and let loose the maelstrom of her +subconsciousness, and see her in her ultimate madness. Yet he was always +striking at her. +</p> + +<p> +“And of course,” he said to Gerald, “horses <i>haven’t</i> +got a complete will, like human beings. A horse has no <i>one</i> will. Every horse, +strictly, has two wills. With one will, it wants to put itself in the human +power completely—and with the other, it wants to be free, wild. The two +wills sometimes lock—you know that, if ever you’ve felt a horse +bolt, while you’ve been driving it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have felt a horse bolt while I was driving it,” said Gerald, +“but it didn’t make me know it had two wills. I only knew it was +frightened.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione had ceased to listen. She simply became oblivious when these +subjects were started. +</p> + +<p> +“Why should a horse want to put itself in the human power?” +asked Ursula. “That is quite incomprehensible to me. I don’t believe +it ever wanted it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes it did. It’s the last, perhaps highest, love-impulse: +resign your will to the higher being,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“What curious notions you have of love,” jeered Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside +her. With one will, she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she +wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I’m a bolter,” said Ursula, with a burst of +laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a dangerous thing to domesticate even horses, let alone +women,” said Birkin. “The dominant principle has some rare +antagonists.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good thing too,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Quite,” said Gerald, with a faint smile. “There’s +more fun.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione could bear no more. She rose, saying in her easy sing-song: +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t the evening beautiful! I get filled sometimes with such a +great sense of beauty, that I feel I can hardly bear it.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula, to whom she had appealed, rose with her, moved to the last +impersonal depths. And Birkin seemed to her almost a monster of hateful +arrogance. She went with Hermione along the bank of the pond, talking of +beautiful, soothing things, picking the gentle cowslips. +</p> + +<p> +“Wouldn’t you like a dress,” said Ursula to Hermione, +“of this yellow spotted with orange—a cotton dress?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Hermione, stopping and looking at the flower, +letting the thought come home to her and soothe her. “Wouldn’t it be +pretty? I should <i>love</i> it.” +</p> + +<p> +And she turned smiling to Ursula, in a feeling of real affection. +</p> + +<p> +But Gerald remained with Birkin, wanting to probe him to the bottom, to know +what he meant by the dual will in horses. A flicker of excitement danced on +Gerald’s face. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione and Ursula strayed on together, united in a sudden bond of deep +affection and closeness. +</p> + +<p> +“I really do not want to be forced into all this criticism and +analysis of life. I really <i>do</i> want to see things in their entirety, with their +beauty left to them, and their wholeness, their natural holiness. Don’t +you feel it, don’t you feel you <i>can’t</i> be tortured into any more +knowledge?” said Hermione, stopping in front of Ursula, and turning to her +with clenched fists thrust downwards. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Ursula. “I do. I am sick of all this poking +and prying.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m so glad you are. Sometimes,” said Hermione, again +stopping arrested in her progress and turning to Ursula, “sometimes I +wonder if I <i>ought</i> to submit to all this realisation, if I am not being weak +in rejecting it. But I feel I <i>can’t</i>—I <i>can’t</i>. It +seems to destroy <i>everything</i>. All the beauty and the—and the true +holiness is destroyed—and I feel I can’t live without them.” +</p> + +<p> +“And it would be simply wrong to live without them,” cried +Ursula. “No, it is so <i>irreverent</i> to think that everything must be realised +in the head. Really, something must be left to the Lord, there always is and +always will be.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Hermione, reassured like a child, “it should, +shouldn’t it? And Rupert—” she lifted her face to the sky, in +a muse—“he <i>can</i> only tear things to pieces. He really <i>is</i> +like a boy who must pull everything to pieces to see how it is made. And I +can’t think it is right—it does seem so irreverent, as you say.” +</p> + +<p> +“Like tearing open a bud to see what the flower will be like,” +said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. And that kills everything, doesn’t it? It doesn’t +allow any possibility of flowering.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course not,” said Ursula. “It is purely +destructive.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is, isn’t it!” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione looked long and slow at Ursula, seeming to accept confirmation from +her. Then the two women were silent. As soon as they were in accord, they began +mutually to mistrust each other. In spite of herself, Ursula felt herself +recoiling from Hermione. It was all she could do to restrain her revulsion. +</p> + +<p> +They returned to the men, like two conspirators who have withdrawn to come +to an agreement. Birkin looked up at them. Ursula hated him for his cold +watchfulness. But he said nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we be going?” said Hermione. “Rupert, you are +coming to Shortlands to dinner? Will you come at once, will you come now, with +us?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not dressed,” replied Birkin. “And you know +Gerald stickles for convention.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t stickle for it,” said Gerald. “But if +you’d got as sick as I have of rowdy go-as-you-please in the house, +you’d prefer it if people were peaceful and conventional, at least at +meals.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“But can’t we wait for you while you dress?” persisted +Hermione. +</p> + +<p> +“If you like.” +</p> + +<p> +He rose to go indoors. Ursula said she would take her leave. +</p> + +<p> +“Only,” she said, turning to Gerald, “I must say that, +however man is lord of the beast and the fowl, I still don’t think he has +any right to violate the feelings of the inferior creation. I still think it +would have been much more sensible and nice of you if you’d trotted back +up the road while the train went by, and been considerate.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see,” said Gerald, smiling, but somewhat annoyed. “I +must remember another time.” +</p> + +<p> +“They all think I’m an interfering female,” thought Ursula +to herself, as she went away. But she was in arms against them. +</p> + +<p> +She ran home plunged in thought. She had been very much moved by Hermione, +she had really come into contact with her, so that there was a sort of league +between the two women. And yet she could not bear her. But she put the thought +away. “She’s really good,” she said to herself. “She +really wants what is right.” And she tried to feel at one with Hermione, +and to shut off from Birkin. She was strictly hostile to him. But she was held +to him by some bond, some deep principle. This at once irritated her and saved +her. +</p> + +<p> +Only now and again, violent little shudders would come over her, out of her +subconsciousness, and she knew it was the fact that she had stated her challenge +to Birkin, and he had, consciously or unconsciously, accepted. It was a fight to +the death between them—or to new life: though in what the conflict lay, no +one could say. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br/> +MINO</h2> + +<p> +The days went by, and she received no sign. Was he going to ignore her, was +he going to take no further notice of her secret? A dreary weight of anxiety and +acrid bitterness settled on her. And yet Ursula knew she was only deceiving +herself, and that he <i>would</i> proceed. She said no word to anybody. +</p> + +<p> +Then, sure enough, there came a note from him, asking if she would come to +tea with Gudrun, to his rooms in town. +</p> + +<p> +“Why does he ask Gudrun as well?” she asked herself at once. +“Does he want to protect himself, or does he think I would not go +alone?” She was tormented by the thought that he wanted to protect +himself. But at the end of all, she only said to herself: +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want Gudrun to be there, because I want him to say +something more to me. So I shan’t tell Gudrun anything about it, and I +shall go alone. Then I shall know.” +</p> + +<p> +She found herself sitting on the tram-car, mounting up the hill going out of +the town, to the place where he had his lodging. She seemed to have passed into +a kind of dream world, absolved from the conditions of actuality. She watched +the sordid streets of the town go by beneath her, as if she were a spirit +disconnected from the material universe. What had it all to do with her? She was +palpitating and formless within the flux of the ghost life. She could not +consider any more, what anybody would say of her or think about her. People had +passed out of her range, she was absolved. She had fallen strange and dim, out +of the sheath of the material life, as a berry falls from the only world it has +ever known, down out of the sheath on to the real unknown. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin was standing in the middle of the room, when she was shown in by the +landlady. He too was moved outside himself. She saw him agitated and shaken, a +frail, unsubstantial body silent like the node of some violent force, that came +out from him and shook her almost into a swoon. +</p> + +<p> +“You are alone?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—Gudrun could not come.” +</p> + +<p> +He instantly guessed why. +</p> + +<p> +And they were both seated in silence, in the terrible tension of the room. +She was aware that it was a pleasant room, full of light and very restful in its +form—aware also of a fuchsia tree, with dangling scarlet and purple +flowers. +</p> + +<p> +“How nice the fuchsias are!” she said, to break the silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t they! Did you think I had forgotten what I said?” +</p> + +<p> +A swoon went over Ursula’s mind. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want you to remember it—if you don’t want +to,” she struggled to say, through the dark mist that covered her. +</p> + +<p> +There was silence for some moments. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “It isn’t that. Only—if we are +going to know each other, we must pledge ourselves for ever. If we are going to +make a relationship, even of friendship, there must be something final and +infallible about it.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a clang of mistrust and almost anger in his voice. She did not +answer. Her heart was too much contracted. She could not have spoken. +</p> + +<p> +Seeing she was not going to reply, he continued, almost bitterly, giving +himself away: +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t say it is love I have to offer—and it isn’t +love I want. It is something much more impersonal and harder—and +rarer.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence, out of which she said: +</p> + +<p> +“You mean you don’t love me?” +</p> + +<p> +She suffered furiously, saying that. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, if you like to put it like that. Though perhaps that isn’t +true. I don’t know. At any rate, I don’t feel the emotion of love +for you—no, and I don’t want to. Because it gives out in the last +issues.” +</p> + +<p> +“Love gives out in the last issues?” she asked, feeling numb to +the lips. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it does. At the very last, one is alone, beyond the influence of +love. There is a real impersonal me, that is beyond love, beyond any emotional +relationship. So it is with you. But we want to delude ourselves that love is +the root. It isn’t. It is only the branches. The root is beyond love, a +naked kind of isolation, an isolated me, that does <i>not</i> meet and mingle, +and never can.” +</p> + +<p> +She watched him with wide, troubled eyes. His face was incandescent in its +abstract earnestness. +</p> + +<p> +“And you mean you can’t love?” she asked, in trepidation. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, if you like. I have loved. But there is a beyond, where there is +not love.” +</p> + +<p> +She could not submit to this. She felt it swooning over her. But she could +not submit. +</p> + +<p> +“But how do you know—if you have never <i>really</i> loved?” +she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“It is true, what I say; there is a beyond, in you, in me, which is +further than love, beyond the scope, as stars are beyond the scope of vision, +some of them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then there is no love,” cried Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Ultimately, no, there is something else. But, ultimately, there <i>is</i> +no love.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was given over to this statement for some moments. Then she half rose +from her chair, saying, in a final, repellent voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Then let me go home—what am I doing here?” +</p> + +<p> +“There is the door,” he said. “You are a free +agent.” +</p> + +<p> +He was suspended finely and perfectly in this extremity. She hung motionless +for some seconds, then she sat down again. +</p> + +<p> +“If there is no love, what is there?” she cried, almost jeering. +</p> + +<p> +“Something,” he said, looking at her, battling with his soul, +with all his might. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +He was silent for a long time, unable to be in communication with her while +she was in this state of opposition. +</p> + +<p> +“There is,” he said, in a voice of pure abstraction; “a +final me which is stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a +final you. And it is there I would want to meet you—not in the emotional, +loving plane—but there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms of +agreement. There we are two stark, unknown beings, two utterly strange +creatures, I would want to approach you, and you me. And there could be no +obligation, because there is no standard for action there, because no +understanding has been reaped from that plane. It is quite inhuman,—so +there can be no calling to book, in any form whatsoever—because one is +outside the pale of all that is accepted, and nothing known applies. One can +only follow the impulse, taking that which lies in front, and responsible for +nothing, asked for nothing, giving nothing, only each taking according to the +primal desire.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula listened to this speech, her mind dumb and almost senseless, what he +said was so unexpected and so untoward. +</p> + +<p> +“It is just purely selfish,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“If it is pure, yes. But it isn’t selfish at all. Because I +don’t <i>know</i> what I want of you. I deliver <i>myself</i> over to the +unknown, in coming to you, I am without reserves or defences, stripped entirely, +into the unknown. Only there needs the pledge between us, that we will both cast +off everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that which is +perfectly ourselves can take place in us.” +</p> + +<p> +She pondered along her own line of thought. +</p> + +<p> +“But it is because you love me, that you want me?” she +persisted. +</p> + +<p> +“No it isn’t. It is because I believe in you—if I +<i>do</i> believe in you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t you sure?” she laughed, suddenly hurt. +</p> + +<p> +He was looking at her steadfastly, scarcely heeding what she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I must believe in you, or else I shouldn’t be here saying +this,” he replied. “But that is all the proof I have. I don’t +feel any very strong belief at this particular moment.” +</p> + +<p> +She disliked him for this sudden relapse into weariness and faithlessness. +</p> + +<p> +“But don’t you think me good-looking?” she persisted, in a +mocking voice. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her, to see if he felt that she was good-looking. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t <i>feel</i> that you’re good-looking,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Not even attractive?” she mocked, bitingly. +</p> + +<p> +He knitted his brows in sudden exasperation. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you see that it’s not a question of visual +appreciation in the least,” he cried. “I don’t <i>want</i> to +see you. I’ve seen plenty of women, I’m sick and weary of seeing +them. I want a woman I don’t see.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sorry I can’t oblige you by being invisible,” +she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, “you are invisible to me, if you +don’t force me to be visually aware of you. But I don’t want to see +you or hear you.” +</p> + +<p> +“What did you ask me to tea for, then?” she mocked. +</p> + +<p> +But he would take no notice of her. He was talking to himself. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to find you, where you don’t know your own existence, +the you that your common self denies utterly. But I don’t want your good +looks, and I don’t want your womanly feelings, and I don’t want your +thoughts nor opinions nor your ideas—they are all bagatelles to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are very conceited, Monsieur,” she mocked. “How do +you know what my womanly feelings are, or my thoughts or my ideas? You +don’t even know what I think of you now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nor do I care in the slightest.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think you are very silly. I think you want to tell me you love me, +and you go all this way round to do it.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” he said, looking up with sudden exasperation. +“Now go away then, and leave me alone. I don’t want any more of your +meretricious persiflage.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it really persiflage?” she mocked, her face really relaxing +into laughter. She interpreted it, that he had made a deep confession of love to +her. But he was so absurd in his words, also. +</p> + +<p> +They were silent for many minutes, she was pleased and elated like a child. +His concentration broke, he began to look at her simply and naturally. +</p> + +<p> +“What I want is a strange conjunction with you—” he said +quietly; “not meeting and mingling—you are quite right—but an +equilibrium, a pure balance of two single beings—as the stars balance each +other.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him. He was very earnest, and earnestness was always rather +ridiculous, commonplace, to her. It made her feel unfree and uncomfortable. Yet +she liked him so much. But why drag in the stars. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t this rather sudden?” she mocked. +</p> + +<p> +He began to laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“Best to read the terms of the contract, before we sign,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +A young grey cat that had been sleeping on the sofa jumped down and +stretched, rising on its long legs, and arching its slim back. Then it sat +considering for a moment, erect and kingly. And then, like a dart, it had shot +out of the room, through the open window-doors, and into the garden. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s he after?” said Birkin, rising. +</p> + +<p> +The young cat trotted lordly down the path, waving his tail. He was an +ordinary tabby with white paws, a slender young gentleman. A crouching, fluffy, +brownish-grey cat was stealing up the side of the fence. The Mino walked +statelily up to her, with manly nonchalance. She crouched before him and pressed +herself on the ground in humility, a fluffy soft outcast, looking up at him with +wild eyes that were green and lovely as great jewels. He looked casually down on +her. So she crept a few inches further, proceeding on her way to the back door, +crouching in a wonderful, soft, self-obliterating manner, and moving like a +shadow. +</p> + +<p> +He, going statelily on his slim legs, walked after her, then suddenly, for +pure excess, he gave her a light cuff with his paw on the side of her face. She +ran off a few steps, like a blown leaf along the ground, then crouched +unobtrusively, in submissive, wild patience. The Mino pretended to take no +notice of her. He blinked his eyes superbly at the landscape. In a minute she +drew herself together and moved softly, a fleecy brown-grey shadow, a few paces +forward. She began to quicken her pace, in a moment she would be gone like a +dream, when the young grey lord sprang before her, and gave her a light handsome +cuff. She subsided at once, submissively. +</p> + +<p> +“She is a wild cat,” said Birkin. “She has come in from +the woods.” +</p> + +<p> +The eyes of the stray cat flared round for a moment, like great green fires +staring at Birkin. Then she had rushed in a soft swift rush, half way down the +garden. There she paused to look round. The Mino turned his face in pure +superiority to his master, and slowly closed his eyes, standing in statuesque +young perfection. The wild cat’s round, green, wondering eyes were staring +all the while like uncanny fires. Then again, like a shadow, she slid towards +the kitchen. +</p> + +<p> +In a lovely springing leap, like a wind, the Mino was upon her, and had +boxed her twice, very definitely, with a white, delicate fist. She sank and slid +back, unquestioning. He walked after her, and cuffed her once or twice, +leisurely, with sudden little blows of his magic white paws. +</p> + +<p> +“Now why does he do that?” cried Ursula in indignation. +</p> + +<p> +“They are on intimate terms,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“And is that why he hits her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” laughed Birkin, “I think he wants to make it quite +obvious to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it horrid of him!” she cried; and going out into +the garden she called to the Mino: +</p> + +<p> +“Stop it, don’t bully. Stop hitting her.” +</p> + +<p> +The stray cat vanished like a swift, invisible shadow. The Mino glanced at +Ursula, then looked from her disdainfully to his master. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you a bully, Mino?” Birkin asked. +</p> + +<p> +The young slim cat looked at him, and slowly narrowed its eyes. Then it +glanced away at the landscape, looking into the distance as if completely +oblivious of the two human beings. +</p> + +<p> +“Mino,” said Ursula, “I don’t like you. You are a +bully like all males.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Birkin, “he is justified. He is not a bully. He +is only insisting to the poor stray that she shall acknowledge him as a sort of +fate, her own fate: because you can see she is fluffy and promiscuous as the +wind. I am with him entirely. He wants superfine stability.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I know!” cried Ursula. “He wants his own way—I +know what your fine words work down to—bossiness, I call it, +bossiness.” +</p> + +<p> +The young cat again glanced at Birkin in disdain of the noisy woman. +</p> + +<p> +“I quite agree with you, Miciotto,” said Birkin to the cat. +“Keep your male dignity, and your higher understanding.” +</p> + +<p> +Again the Mino narrowed his eyes as if he were looking at the sun. Then, +suddenly affecting to have no connection at all with the two people, he went +trotting off, with assumed spontaneity and gaiety, his tail erect, his white +feet blithe. +</p> + +<p> +“Now he will find the belle sauvage once more, and entertain her with +his superior wisdom,” laughed Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula looked at the man who stood in the garden with his hair blowing and +his eyes smiling ironically, and she cried: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh it makes me so cross, this assumption of male superiority! And it +is such a lie! One wouldn’t mind if there were any justification for +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“The wild cat,” said Birkin, “doesn’t mind. She +perceives that it is justified.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does she!” cried Ursula. “And tell it to the Horse +Marines.” +</p> + +<p> +“To them also.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is just like Gerald Crich with his horse—a lust for +bullying—a real <i>Wille zur Macht</i>—so base, so petty.” +</p> + +<p> +“I agree that the <i>Wille zur Macht</i> is a base and petty thing. But +with the Mino, it is the desire to bring this female cat into a pure stable +equilibrium, a transcendent and abiding <i>rapport</i> with the single male. +Whereas without him, as you see, she is a mere stray, a fluffy sporadic bit of +chaos. It is a <i>volonté de pouvoir</i>, if you like, a will to ability, +taking <i>pouvoir</i> as a verb.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah—! Sophistries! It’s the old Adam.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes. Adam kept Eve in the indestructible paradise, when he kept +her single with himself, like a star in its orbit.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—yes—” cried Ursula, pointing her finger at him. +“There you are—a star in its orbit! A satellite—a satellite of +Mars—that’s what she is to be! There—there—you’ve +given yourself away! You want a satellite, Mars and his satellite! You’ve +said it—you’ve said it—you’ve dished yourself!” +</p> + +<p> +He stood smiling in frustration and amusement and irritation and admiration +and love. She was so quick, and so lambent, like discernible fire, and so +vindictive, and so rich in her dangerous flamy sensitiveness. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve not said it at all,” he replied, “if you will +give me a chance to speak.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no!” she cried. “I won’t let you speak. +You’ve said it, a satellite, you’re not going to wriggle out of it. +You’ve said it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll never believe now that I <i>haven’t</i> said it,” +he answered. “I neither implied nor indicated nor mentioned a satellite, +nor intended a satellite, never.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You prevaricator!</i>” she cried, in real indignation. +</p> + +<p> +“Tea is ready, sir,” said the landlady from the doorway. +</p> + +<p> +They both looked at her, very much as the cats had looked at them, a little +while before. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you, Mrs Daykin.” +</p> + +<p> +An interrupted silence fell over the two of them, a moment of breach. +</p> + +<p> +“Come and have tea,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I should love it,” she replied, gathering herself +together. +</p> + +<p> +They sat facing each other across the tea table. +</p> + +<p> +“I did not say, nor imply, a satellite. I meant two single equal stars +balanced in conjunction—” +</p> + +<p> +“You gave yourself away, you gave away your little game +completely,” she cried, beginning at once to eat. He saw that she would +take no further heed of his expostulation, so he began to pour the tea. +</p> + +<p> +“What <i>good</i> things to eat!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Take your own sugar,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +He handed her her cup. He had everything so nice, such pretty cups and +plates, painted with mauve-lustre and green, also shapely bowls and glass +plates, and old spoons, on a woven cloth of pale grey and black and purple. It +was very rich and fine. But Ursula could see Hermione’s influence. +</p> + +<p> +“Your things are so lovely!” she said, almost angrily. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> like them. It gives me real pleasure to use things that are +attractive in themselves—pleasant things. And Mrs Daykin is good. She +thinks everything is wonderful, for my sake.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really,” said Ursula, “landladies are better than wives, +nowadays. They certainly <i>care</i> a great deal more. It is much more beautiful +and complete here now, than if you were married.” +</p> + +<p> +“But think of the emptiness within,” he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said. “I am jealous that men have such perfect +landladies and such beautiful lodgings. There is nothing left them to +desire.” +</p> + +<p> +“In the house-keeping way, we’ll hope not. It is disgusting, +people marrying for a home.” +</p> + +<p> +“Still,” said Ursula, “a man has very little need for a +woman now, has he?” +</p> + +<p> +“In outer things, maybe—except to share his bed and bear his +children. But essentially, there is just the same need as there ever was. Only +nobody takes the trouble to be essential.” +</p> + +<p> +“How essential?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I do think,” he said, “that the world is only held +together by the mystic conjunction, the ultimate unison between people—a +bond. And the immediate bond is between man and woman.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s such old hat,” said Ursula. “Why should +love be a bond? No, I’m not having any.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you are walking westward,” he said, “you forfeit the +northern and eastward and southern direction. If you admit a unison, you forfeit +all the possibilities of chaos.” +</p> + +<p> +“But love is freedom,” she declared. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t cant to me,” he replied. “Love is a direction +which excludes all other directions. It’s a freedom <i>together</i>, if you +like.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, “love includes everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sentimental cant,” he replied. “You want the state of +chaos, that’s all. It is ultimate nihilism, this freedom-in-love business, +this freedom which is love and love which is freedom. As a matter of fact, if +you enter into a pure unison, it is irrevocable, and it is never pure till it is +irrevocable. And when it is irrevocable, it is one way, like the path of a +star.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha!” she cried bitterly. “It is the old dead +morality.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “it is the law of creation. One is +committed. One must commit oneself to a conjunction with the other—for +ever. But it is not selfless—it is a maintaining of the self in mystic +balance and integrity—like a star balanced with another star.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t trust you when you drag in the stars,” she said. +“If you were quite true, it wouldn’t be necessary to be so +far-fetched.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t trust me then,” he said, angry. “It is enough +that I trust myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“And that is where you make another mistake,” she replied. +“You <i>don’t</i> trust yourself. You don’t fully believe yourself +what you are saying. You don’t really want this conjunction, otherwise you +wouldn’t talk so much about it, you’d get it.” +</p> + +<p> +He was suspended for a moment, arrested. +</p> + +<p> +“How?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“By just loving,” she retorted in defiance. +</p> + +<p> +He was still a moment, in anger. Then he said: +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you, I don’t believe in love like that. I tell you, you +want love to administer to your egoism, to subserve you. Love is a process of +subservience with you—and with everybody. I hate it.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she cried, pressing back her head like a cobra, her eyes +flashing. “It is a process of pride—I want to be proud—” +</p> + +<p> +“Proud and subservient, proud and subservient, I know you,” he +retorted dryly. “Proud and subservient, then subservient to the +proud—I know you and your love. It is a tick-tack, tick-tack, a dance of +opposites.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you sure?” she mocked wickedly, “what my love +is?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I am,” he retorted. +</p> + +<p> +“So cocksure!” she said. “How can anybody ever be right, +who is so cocksure? It shows you are wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +He was silent in chagrin. +</p> + +<p> +They had talked and struggled till they were both wearied out. +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me about yourself and your people,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +And she told him about the Brangwens, and about her mother, and about +Skrebensky, her first love, and about her later experiences. He sat very still, +watching her as she talked. And he seemed to listen with reverence. Her face was +beautiful and full of baffled light as she told him all the things that had hurt +her or perplexed her so deeply. He seemed to warm and comfort his soul at the +beautiful light of her nature. +</p> + +<p> +“If she <i>really</i> could pledge herself,” he thought to himself, +with passionate insistence but hardly any hope. Yet a curious little +irresponsible laughter appeared in his heart. +</p> + +<p> +“We have all suffered so much,” he mocked, ironically. +</p> + +<p> +She looked up at him, and a flash of wild gaiety went over her face, a +strange flash of yellow light coming from her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Haven’t we!” she cried, in a high, reckless cry. +“It is almost absurd, isn’t it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite absurd,” he said. “Suffering bores me, any +more.” +</p> + +<p> +“So it does me.” +</p> + +<p> +He was almost afraid of the mocking recklessness of her splendid face. Here +was one who would go to the whole lengths of heaven or hell, whichever she had +to go. And he mistrusted her, he was afraid of a woman capable of such abandon, +such dangerous thoroughness of destructivity. Yet he chuckled within himself +also. +</p> + +<p> +She came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, looking down at him +with strange golden-lighted eyes, very tender, but with a curious devilish look +lurking underneath. +</p> + +<p> +“Say you love me, say ‘my love’ to me,” she pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +He looked back into her eyes, and saw. His face flickered with sardonic +comprehension. +</p> + +<p> +“I love you right enough,” he said, grimly. “But I want it +to be something else.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why? But why?” she insisted, bending her wonderful luminous +face to him. “Why isn’t it enough?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because we can go one better,” he said, putting his arms round +her. +</p> + +<p> +“No, we can’t,” she said, in a strong, voluptuous voice of +yielding. “We can only love each other. Say ‘my love’ to me, +say it, say it.” +</p> + +<p> +She put her arms round his neck. He enfolded her, and kissed her subtly, +murmuring in a subtle voice of love, and irony, and submission: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,—my love, yes,—my love. Let love be enough then. I +love you then—I love you. I’m bored by the rest.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she murmured, nestling very sweet and close to him. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br/> +WATER-PARTY</h2> + +<p> +Every year Mr Crich gave a more or less public water-party on the lake. +There was a little pleasure-launch on Willey Water and several rowing boats, and +guests could take tea either in the marquee that was set up in the grounds of +the house, or they could picnic in the shade of the great walnut tree at the +boat-house by the lake. This year the staff of the Grammar-School was invited, +along with the chief officials of the firm. Gerald and the younger Criches did +not care for this party, but it had become customary now, and it pleased the +father, as being the only occasion when he could gather some people of the +district together in festivity with him. For he loved to give pleasures to his +dependents and to those poorer than himself. But his children preferred the +company of their own equals in wealth. They hated their inferiors’ +humility or gratitude or awkwardness. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless they were willing to attend at this festival, as they had done +almost since they were children, the more so, as they all felt a little guilty +now, and unwilling to thwart their father any more, since he was so ill in +health. Therefore, quite cheerfully Laura prepared to take her mother’s +place as hostess, and Gerald assumed responsibility for the amusements on the +water. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin had written to Ursula saying he expected to see her at the party, and +Gudrun, although she scorned the patronage of the Criches, would nevertheless +accompany her mother and father if the weather were fine. +</p> + +<p> +The day came blue and full of sunshine, with little wafts of wind. The +sisters both wore dresses of white crêpe, and hats of soft grass. But Gudrun had +a sash of brilliant black and pink and yellow colour wound broadly round her +waist, and she had pink silk stockings, and black and pink and yellow decoration +on the brim of her hat, weighing it down a little. She carried also a yellow +silk coat over her arm, so that she looked remarkable, like a painting from the +Salon. Her appearance was a sore trial to her father, who said angrily: +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think you might as well get yourself up for a +Christmas cracker, an’ ha’ done with it?” +</p> + +<p> +But Gudrun looked handsome and brilliant, and she wore her clothes in pure +defiance. When people stared at her, and giggled after her, she made a point of +saying loudly, to Ursula: +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Regarde, regarde ces gens-là! Ne sont-ils pas des hiboux +incroyables?</i>” And with the words of French in her mouth, she would look +over her shoulder at the giggling party. +</p> + +<p> +“No, really, it’s impossible!” Ursula would reply +distinctly. And so the two girls took it out of their universal enemy. But their +father became more and more enraged. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was all snowy white, save that her hat was pink, and entirely without +trimming, and her shoes were dark red, and she carried an orange-coloured coat. +And in this guise they were walking all the way to Shortlands, their father and +mother going in front. +</p> + +<p> +They were laughing at their mother, who, dressed in a summer material of +black and purple stripes, and wearing a hat of purple straw, was setting forth +with much more of the shyness and trepidation of a young girl than her daughters +ever felt, walking demurely beside her husband, who, as usual, looked rather +crumpled in his best suit, as if he were the father of a young family and had +been holding the baby whilst his wife got dressed. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at the young couple in front,” said Gudrun calmly. Ursula +looked at her mother and father, and was suddenly seized with uncontrollable +laughter. The two girls stood in the road and laughed till the tears ran down +their faces, as they caught sight again of the shy, unworldly couple of their +parents going on ahead. +</p> + +<p> +“We are roaring at you, mother,” called Ursula, helplessly +following after her parents. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs Brangwen turned round with a slightly puzzled, exasperated look. +“Oh indeed!” she said. “What is there so very funny about +<i>me</i>, I should like to know?” +</p> + +<p> +She could not understand that there could be anything amiss with her +appearance. She had a perfect calm sufficiency, an easy indifference to any +criticism whatsoever, as if she were beyond it. Her clothes were always rather +odd, and as a rule slip-shod, yet she wore them with a perfect ease and +satisfaction. Whatever she had on, so long as she was barely tidy, she was +right, beyond remark; such an aristocrat she was by instinct. +</p> + +<p> +“You look so stately, like a country Baroness,” said Ursula, +laughing with a little tenderness at her mother’s naive puzzled air. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Just</i> like a country Baroness!” chimed in Gudrun. Now the +mother’s natural hauteur became self-conscious, and the girls shrieked +again. +</p> + +<p> +“Go home, you pair of idiots, great giggling idiots!” cried the +father inflamed with irritation. +</p> + +<p> +“Mm-m-er!” booed Ursula, pulling a face at his crossness. +</p> + +<p> +The yellow lights danced in his eyes, he leaned forward in real rage. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be so silly as to take any notice of the great +gabies,” said Mrs Brangwen, turning on her way. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll see if I’m going to be followed by a pair of +giggling yelling jackanapes—” he cried vengefully. +</p> + +<p> +The girls stood still, laughing helplessly at his fury, upon the path beside +the hedge. +</p> + +<p> +“Why you’re as silly as they are, to take any notice,” +said Mrs Brangwen also becoming angry now he was really enraged. +</p> + +<p> +“There are some people coming, father,” cried Ursula, with +mocking warning. He glanced round quickly, and went on to join his wife, walking +stiff with rage. And the girls followed, weak with laughter. +</p> + +<p> +When the people had passed by, Brangwen cried in a loud, stupid voice: +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going back home if there’s any more of this. +I’m damned if I’m going to be made a fool of in this fashion, in the +public road.” +</p> + +<p> +He was really out of temper. At the sound of his blind, vindictive voice, +the laughter suddenly left the girls, and their hearts contracted with contempt. +They hated his words “in the public road.” What did they care for +the public road? But Gudrun was conciliatory. +</p> + +<p> +“But we weren’t laughing to <i>hurt</i> you,” she cried, with an +uncouth gentleness which made her parents uncomfortable. “We were laughing +because we’re fond of you.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll walk on in front, if they are <i>so</i> touchy,” said +Ursula, angry. And in this wise they arrived at Willey Water. The lake was blue +and fair, the meadows sloped down in sunshine on one side, the thick dark woods +dropped steeply on the other. The little pleasure-launch was fussing out from +the shore, twanging its music, crowded with people, flapping its paddles. Near +the boat-house was a throng of gaily-dressed persons, small in the distance. And +on the high-road, some of the common people were standing along the hedge, +looking at the festivity beyond, enviously, like souls not admitted to paradise. +</p> + +<p> +“My eye!” said Gudrun, <i>sotto voce</i>, looking at the motley of +guests, “there’s a pretty crowd if you like! Imagine yourself in the +midst of that, my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun’s apprehensive horror of people in the mass unnerved Ursula. +“It looks rather awful,” she said anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“And imagine what they’ll be like—<i>imagine!</i>” said +Gudrun, still in that unnerving, subdued voice. Yet she advanced determinedly. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose we can get away from them,” said Ursula anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“We’re in a pretty fix if we can’t,” said Gudrun. +Her extreme ironic loathing and apprehension was very trying to Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“We needn’t stay,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I certainly shan’t stay five minutes among that little +lot,” said Gudrun. They advanced nearer, till they saw policemen at the +gates. +</p> + +<p> +“Policemen to keep you in, too!” said Gudrun. “My word, +this is a beautiful affair.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’d better look after father and mother,” said Ursula +anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother’s <i>perfectly</i> capable of getting through this little +celebration,” said Gudrun with some contempt. +</p> + +<p> +But Ursula knew that her father felt uncouth and angry and unhappy, so she +was far from her ease. They waited outside the gate till their parents came up. +The tall, thin man in his crumpled clothes was unnerved and irritable as a boy, +finding himself on the brink of this social function. He did not feel a +gentleman, he did not feel anything except pure exasperation. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula took her place at his side, they gave their tickets to the policeman, +and passed in on to the grass, four abreast; the tall, hot, ruddy-dark man with +his narrow boyish brow drawn with irritation, the fresh-faced, easy woman, +perfectly collected though her hair was slipping on one side, then Gudrun, her +eyes round and dark and staring, her full soft face impassive, almost sulky, so +that she seemed to be backing away in antagonism even whilst she was advancing; +and then Ursula, with the odd, brilliant, dazzled look on her face, that always +came when she was in some false situation. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin was the good angel. He came smiling to them with his affected social +grace, that somehow was never <i>quite</i> right. But he took off his hat and smiled +at them with a real smile in his eyes, so that Brangwen cried out heartily in +relief: +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do? You’re better, are you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I’m better. How do you do, Mrs Brangwen? I know Gudrun and +Ursula very well.” +</p> + +<p> +His eyes smiled full of natural warmth. He had a soft, flattering manner +with women, particularly with women who were not young. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Mrs Brangwen, cool but yet gratified. “I have +heard them speak of you often enough.” +</p> + +<p> +He laughed. Gudrun looked aside, feeling she was being belittled. People +were standing about in groups, some women were sitting in the shade of the +walnut tree, with cups of tea in their hands, a waiter in evening dress was +hurrying round, some girls were simpering with parasols, some young men, who had +just come in from rowing, were sitting cross-legged on the grass, coatless, +their shirt-sleeves rolled up in manly fashion, their hands resting on their +white flannel trousers, their gaudy ties floating about, as they laughed and +tried to be witty with the young damsels. +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” thought Gudrun churlishly, “don’t they have +the manners to put their coats on, and not to assume such intimacy in their +appearance.” +</p> + +<p> +She abhorred the ordinary young man, with his hair plastered back, and his +easy-going chumminess. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione Roddice came up, in a handsome gown of white lace, trailing an +enormous silk shawl blotched with great embroidered flowers, and balancing an +enormous plain hat on her head. She looked striking, astonishing, almost +macabre, so tall, with the fringe of her great cream-coloured vividly-blotched +shawl trailing on the ground after her, her thick hair coming low over her eyes, +her face strange and long and pale, and the blotches of brilliant colour drawn +round her. +</p> + +<p> +“Doesn’t she look <i>weird!</i>” Gudrun heard some girls titter +behind her. And she could have killed them. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do!” sang Hermione, coming up very kindly, and +glancing slowly over Gudrun’s father and mother. It was a trying moment, +exasperating for Gudrun. Hermione was really so strongly entrenched in her class +superiority, she could come up and know people out of simple curiosity, as if +they were creatures on exhibition. Gudrun would do the same herself. But she +resented being in the position when somebody might do it to her. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione, very remarkable, and distinguishing the Brangwens very much, led +them along to where Laura Crich stood receiving the guests. +</p> + +<p> +“This is Mrs Brangwen,” sang Hermione, and Laura, who wore a +stiff embroidered linen dress, shook hands and said she was glad to see her. +Then Gerald came up, dressed in white, with a black and brown blazer, and +looking handsome. He too was introduced to the Brangwen parents, and immediately +he spoke to Mrs Brangwen as if she were a lady, and to Brangwen as if he were +<i>not</i> a gentleman. Gerald was so obvious in his demeanour. He had to shake hands +with his left hand, because he had hurt his right, and carried it, bandaged up, +in the pocket of his jacket. Gudrun was <i>very</i> thankful that none of her party +asked him what was the matter with the hand. +</p> + +<p> +The steam launch was fussing in, all its music jingling, people calling +excitedly from on board. Gerald went to see to the debarkation, Birkin was +getting tea for Mrs Brangwen, Brangwen had joined a Grammar-School group, +Hermione was sitting down by their mother, the girls went to the landing-stage +to watch the launch come in. +</p> + +<p> +She hooted and tooted gaily, then her paddles were silent, the ropes were +thrown ashore, she drifted in with a little bump. Immediately the passengers +crowded excitedly to come ashore. +</p> + +<p> +“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” shouted Gerald in sharp command. +</p> + +<p> +They must wait till the boat was tight on the ropes, till the small gangway +was put out. Then they streamed ashore, clamouring as if they had come from +America. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh it’s <i>so</i> nice!” the young girls were crying. +“It’s quite lovely.” +</p> + +<p> +The waiters from on board ran out to the boat-house with baskets, the +captain lounged on the little bridge. Seeing all safe, Gerald came to Gudrun and +Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“You wouldn’t care to go on board for the next trip, and have +tea there?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No thanks,” said Gudrun coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t care for the water?” +</p> + +<p> +“For the water? Yes, I like it very much.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her, his eyes searching. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t care for going on a launch, then?” +</p> + +<p> +She was slow in answering, and then she spoke slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said. “I can’t say that I do.” Her +colour was high, she seemed angry about something. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Un peu trop de monde</i>,” said Ursula, explaining. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh? <i>Trop de monde!</i>” He laughed shortly. “Yes +there’s a fair number of ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun turned on him brilliantly. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you ever been from Westminster Bridge to Richmond on one of the +Thames steamers?” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “I can’t say I have.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it’s one of the most <i>vile</i> experiences I’ve ever +had.” She spoke rapidly and excitedly, the colour high in her cheeks. +“There was absolutely nowhere to sit down, nowhere, a man just above sang +‘Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep’ the <i>whole</i> way; he was blind and +he had a small organ, one of those portable organs, and he expected money; so you can +imagine what <i>that</i> was like; there came a constant smell of luncheon from below, +and puffs of hot oily machinery; the journey took hours and hours and hours; and +for miles, literally for miles, dreadful boys ran with us on the shore, in that +<i>awful</i> Thames mud, going in <i>up to the waist</i>—they had their trousers +turned back, and they went up to their hips in that indescribable Thames mud, their +faces always turned to us, and screaming, exactly like carrion creatures, +screaming ‘’Ere y’are sir, ’ere y’are sir, ’ere +y’are sir,’ exactly like some foul carrion objects, perfectly obscene; and +paterfamilias on board, laughing when the boys went right down in that awful +mud, occasionally throwing them a ha’penny. And if you’d seen the +intent look on the faces of these boys, and the way they darted in the filth +when a coin was flung—really, no vulture or jackal could dream of +approaching them, for foulness. I <i>never</i> would go on a pleasure boat +again—never.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald watched her all the time she spoke, his eyes glittering with faint +rousedness. It was not so much what she said; it was she herself who roused him, +roused him with a small, vivid pricking. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” he said, “every civilised body is bound to +have its vermin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” cried Ursula. “I don’t have vermin.” +</p> + +<p> +“And it’s not that—it’s the <i>quality</i> of the whole +thing—paterfamilias laughing and thinking it sport, and throwing the +ha’pennies, and materfamilias spreading her fat little knees and eating, +continually eating—” replied Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Ursula. “It isn’t the boys so much who +are vermin; it’s the people themselves, the whole body politic, as you +call it.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind,” he said. “You shan’t go on the +launch.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun flushed quickly at his rebuke. +</p> + +<p> +There were a few moments of silence. Gerald, like a sentinel, was watching +the people who were going on to the boat. He was very good-looking and +self-contained, but his air of soldierly alertness was rather irritating. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you have tea here then, or go across to the house, where +there’s a tent on the lawn?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t we have a rowing boat, and get out?” asked Ursula, +who was always rushing in too fast. +</p> + +<p> +“To get out?” smiled Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” cried Gudrun, flushing at Ursula’s outspoken +rudeness, “we don’t know the people, we are almost <i>complete</i> +strangers here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I can soon set you up with a few acquaintances,” he said +easily. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked at him, to see if it were ill-meant. Then she smiled at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” she said, “you know what we mean. Can’t we go +up there, and explore that coast?” She pointed to a grove on the hillock +of the meadow-side, near the shore half way down the lake. “That looks +perfectly lovely. We might even bathe. Isn’t it beautiful in this light. +Really, it’s like one of the reaches of the Nile—as one imagines the +Nile.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald smiled at her factitious enthusiasm for the distant spot. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re sure it’s far enough off?” he asked +ironically, adding at once: “Yes, you might go there, if we could get a +boat. They seem to be all out.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked round the lake and counted the rowing boats on its surface. +</p> + +<p> +“How lovely it would be!” cried Ursula wistfully. +</p> + +<p> +“And don’t you want tea?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Gudrun, “we could just drink a cup, and be +off.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked from one to the other, smiling. He was somewhat offended—yet +sporting. +</p> + +<p> +“Can you manage a boat pretty well?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied Gudrun, coldly, “pretty well.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” cried Ursula. “We can both of us row like +water-spiders.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can? There’s a light little canoe of mine, that I +didn’t take out for fear somebody should drown themselves. Do you think +you’d be safe in that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh perfectly,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“What an angel!” cried Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t, for <i>my</i> sake, have an accident—because I’m +responsible for the water.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sure,” pledged Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Besides, we can both swim quite well,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—then I’ll get them to put you up a tea-basket, and +you can picnic all to yourselves,—that’s the idea, isn’t +it?” +</p> + +<p> +“How fearfully good! How frightfully nice if you could!” cried +Gudrun warmly, her colour flushing up again. It made the blood stir in his +veins, the subtle way she turned to him and infused her gratitude into his body. +</p> + +<p> +“Where’s Birkin?” he said, his eyes twinkling. “He +might help me to get it down.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what about your hand? Isn’t it hurt?” asked Gudrun, +rather muted, as if avoiding the intimacy. This was the first time the hurt had +been mentioned. The curious way she skirted round the subject sent a new, subtle +caress through his veins. He took his hand out of his pocket. It was bandaged. +He looked at it, then put it in his pocket again. Gudrun quivered at the sight +of the wrapped up paw. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I can manage with one hand. The canoe is as light as a +feather,” he said. “There’s Rupert!—Rupert!” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin turned from his social duties and came towards them. +</p> + +<p> +“What have you done to it?” asked Ursula, who had been aching to +put the question for the last half hour. +</p> + +<p> +“To my hand?” said Gerald. “I trapped it in some +machinery.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ugh!” said Ursula. “And did it hurt much?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. “It did at the time. It’s getting +better now. It crushed the fingers.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” cried Ursula, as if in pain, “I hate people who hurt +themselves. I can <i>feel</i> it.” And she shook her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +The two men carried down the slim brown boat, and set it on the water. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re quite sure you’ll be safe in it?” Gerald +asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Quite sure,” said Gudrun. “I wouldn’t be so mean as +to take it, if there was the slightest doubt. But I’ve had a canoe at +Arundel, and I assure you I’m perfectly safe.” +</p> + +<p> +So saying, having given her word like a man, she and Ursula entered the +frail craft, and pushed gently off. The two men stood watching them. Gudrun was +paddling. She knew the men were watching her, and it made her slow and rather +clumsy. The colour flew in her face like a flag. +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks awfully,” she called back to him, from the water, as the +boat slid away. “It’s lovely—like sitting in a leaf.” +</p> + +<p> +He laughed at the fancy. Her voice was shrill and strange, calling from the +distance. He watched her as she paddled away. There was something childlike +about her, trustful and deferential, like a child. He watched her all the while, +as she rowed. And to Gudrun it was a real delight, in make-belief, to be the +childlike, clinging woman to the man who stood there on the quay, so +good-looking and efficient in his white clothes, and moreover the most important +man she knew at the moment. She did not take any notice of the wavering, +indistinct, lambent Birkin, who stood at his side. One figure at a time occupied +the field of her attention. +</p> + +<p> +The boat rustled lightly along the water. They passed the bathers whose +striped tents stood between the willows of the meadow’s edge, and drew +along the open shore, past the meadows that sloped golden in the light of the +already late afternoon. Other boats were stealing under the wooded shore +opposite, they could hear people’s laughter and voices. But Gudrun rowed +on towards the clump of trees that balanced perfect in the distance, in the +golden light. +</p> + +<p> +The sisters found a little place where a tiny stream flowed into the lake, +with reeds and flowery marsh of pink willow herb, and a gravelly bank to the +side. Here they ran delicately ashore, with their frail boat, the two girls took +off their shoes and stockings and went through the water’s edge to the +grass. The tiny ripples of the lake were warm and clear, they lifted their boat +on to the bank, and looked round with joy. They were quite alone in a forsaken +little stream-mouth, and on the knoll just behind was the clump of trees. +</p> + +<p> +“We will bathe just for a moment,” said Ursula, “and then +we’ll have tea.” +</p> + +<p> +They looked round. Nobody could notice them, or could come up in time to see +them. In less than a minute Ursula had thrown off her clothes and had slipped +naked into the water, and was swimming out. Quickly, Gudrun joined her. They +swam silently and blissfully for a few minutes, circling round their little +stream-mouth. Then they slipped ashore and ran into the grove again, like +nymphs. +</p> + +<p> +“How lovely it is to be free,” said Ursula, running swiftly here +and there between the tree trunks, quite naked, her hair blowing loose. The +grove was of beech-trees, big and splendid, a steel-grey scaffolding of trunks +and boughs, with level sprays of strong green here and there, whilst through the +northern side the distance glimmered open as through a window. +</p> + +<p> +When they had run and danced themselves dry, the girls quickly dressed and +sat down to the fragrant tea. They sat on the northern side of the grove, in the +yellow sunshine facing the slope of the grassy hill, alone in a little wild +world of their own. The tea was hot and aromatic, there were delicious little +sandwiches of cucumber and of caviare, and winy cakes. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you happy, Prune?” cried Ursula in delight, looking at her +sister. +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula, I’m perfectly happy,” replied Gudrun gravely, +looking at the westering sun. +</p> + +<p> +“So am I.” +</p> + +<p> +When they were together, doing the things they enjoyed, the two sisters were +quite complete in a perfect world of their own. And this was one of the perfect +moments of freedom and delight, such as children alone know, when all seems a +perfect and blissful adventure. +</p> + +<p> +When they had finished tea, the two girls sat on, silent and serene. Then +Ursula, who had a beautiful strong voice, began to sing to herself, softly: +“Ännchen von Tharau.” Gudrun listened, as she sat beneath the trees, +and the yearning came into her heart. Ursula seemed so peaceful and sufficient +unto herself, sitting there unconsciously crooning her song, strong and +unquestioned at the centre of her own universe. And Gudrun felt herself outside. +Always this desolating, agonised feeling, that she was outside of life, an +onlooker, whilst Ursula was a partaker, caused Gudrun to suffer from a sense of +her own negation, and made her, that she must always demand the other to be +aware of her, to be in connection with her. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mind if I do Dalcroze to that tune, Hurtler?” she asked +in a curious muted tone, scarce moving her lips. +</p> + +<p> +“What did you say?” asked Ursula, looking up in peaceful +surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you sing while I do Dalcroze?” said Gudrun, suffering at +having to repeat herself. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula thought a moment, gathering her straying wits together. +</p> + +<p> +“While you do—?” she asked vaguely. +</p> + +<p> +“Dalcroze movements,” said Gudrun, suffering tortures of +self-consciousness, even because of her sister. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh Dalcroze! I couldn’t catch the name. <i>Do</i>—I should love +to see you,” cried Ursula, with childish surprised brightness. “What +shall I sing?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sing anything you like, and I’ll take the rhythm from +it.” +</p> + +<p> +But Ursula could not for her life think of anything to sing. However, she +suddenly began, in a laughing, teasing voice: +</p> + +<p> +“My love—is a high-born lady—” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun, looking as if some invisible chain weighed on her hands and feet, +began slowly to dance in the eurythmic manner, pulsing and fluttering +rhythmically with her feet, making slower, regular gestures with her hands and +arms, now spreading her arms wide, now raising them above her head, now flinging +them softly apart, and lifting her face, her feet all the time beating and +running to the measure of the song, as if it were some strange incantation, her +white, rapt form drifting here and there in a strange impulsive rhapsody, +seeming to be lifted on a breeze of incantation, shuddering with strange little +runs. Ursula sat on the grass, her mouth open in her singing, her eyes laughing +as if she thought it was a great joke, but a yellow light flashing up in them, +as she caught some of the unconscious ritualistic suggestion of the complex +shuddering and waving and drifting of her sister’s white form, that was +clutched in pure, mindless, tossing rhythm, and a will set powerful in a kind of +hypnotic influence. +</p> + +<p> +“My love is a high-born lady—She is-s-s—rather dark than +shady—” rang out Ursula’s laughing, satiric song, and quicker, +fiercer went Gudrun in the dance, stamping as if she were trying to throw off +some bond, flinging her hands suddenly and stamping again, then rushing with +face uplifted and throat full and beautiful, and eyes half closed, sightless. +The sun was low and yellow, sinking down, and in the sky floated a thin, +ineffectual moon. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was quite absorbed in her song, when suddenly Gudrun stopped and said +mildly, ironically: +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes?” said Ursula, opening her eyes out of the trance. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was standing still and pointing, a mocking smile on her face, towards +the side. +</p> + +<p> +“Ugh!” cried Ursula in sudden panic, starting to her feet. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re quite all right,” rang out Gudrun’s +sardonic voice. +</p> + +<p> +On the left stood a little cluster of Highland cattle, vividly coloured and +fleecy in the evening light, their horns branching into the sky, pushing forward +their muzzles inquisitively, to know what it was all about. Their eyes glittered +through their tangle of hair, their naked nostrils were full of shadow. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t they do anything?” cried Ursula in fear. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun, who was usually frightened of cattle, now shook her head in a queer, +half-doubtful, half-sardonic motion, a faint smile round her mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t they look charming, Ursula?” cried Gudrun, in a +high, strident voice, something like the scream of a seagull. +</p> + +<p> +“Charming,” cried Ursula in trepidation. “But won’t +they do anything to us?” +</p> + +<p> +Again Gudrun looked back at her sister with an enigmatic smile, and shook +her head. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure they won’t,” she said, as if she had to +convince herself also, and yet, as if she were confident of some secret power in +herself, and had to put it to the test. “Sit down and sing again,” +she called in her high, strident voice. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m frightened,” cried Ursula, in a pathetic voice, +watching the group of sturdy short cattle, that stood with their knees planted, +and watched with their dark, wicked eyes, through the matted fringe of their +hair. Nevertheless, she sank down again, in her former posture. +</p> + +<p> +“They are quite safe,” came Gudrun’s high call. +“Sing something, you’ve only to sing something.” +</p> + +<p> +It was evident she had a strange passion to dance before the sturdy, +handsome cattle. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula began to sing, in a false quavering voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Way down in Tennessee—” +</p> + +<p> +She sounded purely anxious. Nevertheless, Gudrun, with her arms outspread +and her face uplifted, went in a strange palpitating dance towards the cattle, +lifting her body towards them as if in a spell, her feet pulsing as if in some +little frenzy of unconscious sensation, her arms, her wrists, her hands +stretching and heaving and falling and reaching and reaching and falling, her +breasts lifted and shaken towards the cattle, her throat exposed as in some +voluptuous ecstasy towards them, whilst she drifted imperceptibly nearer, an +uncanny white figure, towards them, carried away in its own rapt trance, ebbing +in strange fluctuations upon the cattle, that waited, and ducked their heads a +little in sudden contraction from her, watching all the time as if hypnotised, +their bare horns branching in the clear light, as the white figure of the woman +ebbed upon them, in the slow, hypnotising convulsion of the dance. She could +feel them just in front of her, it was as if she had the electric pulse from +their breasts running into her hands. Soon she would touch them, actually touch +them. A terrible shiver of fear and pleasure went through her. And all the +while, Ursula, spell-bound, kept up her high-pitched thin, irrelevant song, +which pierced the fading evening like an incantation. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun could hear the cattle breathing heavily with helpless fear and +fascination. Oh, they were brave little beasts, these wild Scotch bullocks, wild +and fleecy. Suddenly one of them snorted, ducked its head, and backed. +</p> + +<p> +“Hue! Hi-eee!” came a sudden loud shout from the edge of the +grove. The cattle broke and fell back quite spontaneously, went running up the +hill, their fleece waving like fire to their motion. Gudrun stood suspended out +on the grass, Ursula rose to her feet. +</p> + +<p> +It was Gerald and Birkin come to find them, and Gerald had cried out to +frighten off the cattle. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think you’re doing?” he now called, in a +high, wondering vexed tone. +</p> + +<p> +“Why have you come?” came back Gudrun’s strident cry of +anger. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think you were doing?” Gerald repeated, +automatically. +</p> + +<p> +“We were doing eurythmics,” laughed Ursula, in a shaken voice. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun stood aloof looking at them with large dark eyes of resentment, +suspended for a few moments. Then she walked away up the hill, after the cattle, +which had gathered in a little, spell-bound cluster higher up. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are you going?” Gerald called after her. And he followed +her up the hill-side. The sun had gone behind the hill, and shadows were +clinging to the earth, the sky above was full of travelling light. +</p> + +<p> +“A poor song for a dance,” said Birkin to Ursula, standing +before her with a sardonic, flickering laugh on his face. And in another second, +he was singing softly to himself, and dancing a grotesque step-dance in front of +her, his limbs and body shaking loose, his face flickering palely, a constant +thing, whilst his feet beat a rapid mocking tattoo, and his body seemed to hang +all loose and quaking in between, like a shadow. +</p> + +<p> +“I think we’ve all gone mad,” she said, laughing rather +frightened. +</p> + +<p> +“Pity we aren’t madder,” he answered, as he kept up the +incessant shaking dance. Then suddenly he leaned up to her and kissed her +fingers lightly, putting his face to hers and looking into her eyes with a pale +grin. She stepped back, affronted. +</p> + +<p> +“Offended—?” he asked ironically, suddenly going quite +still and reserved again. “I thought you liked the light fantastic.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not like that,” she said, confused and bewildered, almost +affronted. Yet somewhere inside her she was fascinated by the sight of his +loose, vibrating body, perfectly abandoned to its own dropping and swinging, and +by the pallid, sardonic-smiling face above. Yet automatically she stiffened +herself away, and disapproved. It seemed almost an obscenity, in a man who +talked as a rule so very seriously. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not like that?” he mocked. And immediately he dropped again +into the incredibly rapid, slack-waggling dance, watching her malevolently. And +moving in the rapid, stationary dance, he came a little nearer, and reached +forward with an incredibly mocking, satiric gleam on his face, and would have +kissed her again, had she not started back. +</p> + +<p> +“No, don’t!” she cried, really afraid. +</p> + +<p> +“Cordelia after all,” he said satirically. She was stung, as if +this were an insult. She knew he intended it as such, and it bewildered her. +</p> + +<p> +“And you,” she cried in retort, “why do you always take +your soul in your mouth, so frightfully full?” +</p> + +<p> +“So that I can spit it out the more readily,” he said, pleased +by his own retort. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald Crich, his face narrowing to an intent gleam, followed up the hill +with quick strides, straight after Gudrun. The cattle stood with their noses +together on the brow of a slope, watching the scene below, the men in white +hovering about the white forms of the women, watching above all Gudrun, who was +advancing slowly towards them. She stood a moment, glancing back at Gerald, and +then at the cattle. +</p> + +<p> +Then in a sudden motion, she lifted her arms and rushed sheer upon the +long-horned bullocks, in shuddering irregular runs, pausing for a second and +looking at them, then lifting her hands and running forward with a flash, till +they ceased pawing the ground, and gave way, snorting with terror, lifting their +heads from the ground and flinging themselves away, galloping off into the +evening, becoming tiny in the distance, and still not stopping. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun remained staring after them, with a mask-like defiant face. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you want to drive them mad?” asked Gerald, coming up +with her. +</p> + +<p> +She took no notice of him, only averted her face from him. “It’s +not safe, you know,” he persisted. “They’re nasty, when they +do turn.” +</p> + +<p> +“Turn where? Turn away?” she mocked loudly. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “turn against you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Turn against <i>me?</i>” she mocked. +</p> + +<p> +He could make nothing of this. +</p> + +<p> +“Anyway, they gored one of the farmer’s cows to death, the other +day,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“What do I care?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> cared though,” he replied, “seeing that they’re +my cattle.” +</p> + +<p> +“How are they yours! You haven’t swallowed them. Give me one of +them now,” she said, holding out her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“You know where they are,” he said, pointing over the hill. +“You can have one if you’d like it sent to you later on.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him inscrutably. +</p> + +<p> +“You think I’m afraid of you and your cattle, don’t +you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +His eyes narrowed dangerously. There was a faint domineering smile on his +face. +</p> + +<p> +“Why should I think that?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She was watching him all the time with her dark, dilated, inchoate eyes. She +leaned forward and swung round her arm, catching him a light blow on the face +with the back of her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s why,” she said, mocking. +</p> + +<p> +And she felt in her soul an unconquerable desire for deep violence against +him. She shut off the fear and dismay that filled her conscious mind. She wanted +to do as she did, she was not going to be afraid. +</p> + +<p> +He recoiled from the slight blow on his face. He became deadly pale, and a +dangerous flame darkened his eyes. For some seconds he could not speak, his +lungs were so suffused with blood, his heart stretched almost to bursting with a +great gush of ungovernable emotion. It was as if some reservoir of black emotion +had burst within him, and swamped him. +</p> + +<p> +“You have struck the first blow,” he said at last, forcing the +words from his lungs, in a voice so soft and low, it sounded like a dream within +her, not spoken in the outer air. +</p> + +<p> +“And I shall strike the last,” she retorted involuntarily, with +confident assurance. He was silent, he did not contradict her. +</p> + +<p> +She stood negligently, staring away from him, into the distance. On the edge +of her consciousness the question was asking itself, automatically: +</p> + +<p> +“Why <i>are</i> you behaving in this <i>impossible</i> and ridiculous +fashion.” But she was sullen, she half shoved the question out of herself. +She could not get it clean away, so she felt self-conscious. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald, very pale, was watching her closely. His eyes were lit up with +intent lights, absorbed and gleaming. She turned suddenly on him. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s you who make me behave like this, you know,” she +said, almost suggestive. +</p> + +<p> +“I? How?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +But she turned away, and set off towards the lake. Below, on the water, +lanterns were coming alight, faint ghosts of warm flame floating in the pallor +of the first twilight. The earth was spread with darkness, like lacquer, +overhead was a pale sky, all primrose, and the lake was pale as milk in one +part. Away at the landing stage, tiniest points of coloured rays were stringing +themselves in the dusk. The launch was being illuminated. All round, shadow was +gathering from the trees. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald, white like a presence in his summer clothes, was following down the +open grassy slope. Gudrun waited for him to come up. Then she softly put out her +hand and touched him, saying softly: +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be angry with me.” +</p> + +<p> +A flame flew over him, and he was unconscious. Yet he stammered: +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not angry with you. I’m in love with you.” +</p> + +<p> +His mind was gone, he grasped for sufficient mechanical control, to save +himself. She laughed a silvery little mockery, yet intolerably caressive. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s one way of putting it,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +The terrible swooning burden on his mind, the awful swooning, the loss of +all his control, was too much for him. He grasped her arm in his one hand, as if +his hand were iron. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all right, then, is it?” he said, holding her +arrested. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at the face with the fixed eyes, set before her, and her blood +ran cold. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it’s all right,” she said softly, as if drugged, her +voice crooning and witch-like. +</p> + +<p> +He walked on beside her, a striding, mindless body. But he recovered a +little as he went. He suffered badly. He had killed his brother when a boy, and +was set apart, like Cain. +</p> + +<p> +They found Birkin and Ursula sitting together by the boats, talking and +laughing. Birkin had been teasing Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you smell this little marsh?” he said, sniffing the air. He +was very sensitive to scents, and quick in understanding them. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s rather nice,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he replied, “alarming.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why alarming?” she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“It seethes and seethes, a river of darkness,” he said, +“putting forth lilies and snakes, and the <i>ignis fatuus</i>, and rolling all +the time onward. That’s what we never take into count—that it rolls +onwards.” +</p> + +<p> +“What does?” +</p> + +<p> +“The other river, the black river. We always consider the silver river +of life, rolling on and quickening all the world to a brightness, on and on to +heaven, flowing into a bright eternal sea, a heaven of angels thronging. But the +other is our real reality—” +</p> + +<p> +“But what other? I don’t see any other,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“It is your reality, nevertheless,” he said; “that dark +river of dissolution. You see it rolls in us just as the other rolls—the +black river of corruption. And our flowers are of this—our sea-born +Aphrodite, all our white phosphorescent flowers of sensuous perfection, all our +reality, nowadays.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean that Aphrodite is really deathly?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean she is the flowering mystery of the death-process, yes,” +he replied. “When the stream of synthetic creation lapses, we find +ourselves part of the inverse process, the blood of destructive creation. +Aphrodite is born in the first spasm of universal dissolution—then the +snakes and swans and lotus—marsh-flowers—and Gudrun and +Gerald—born in the process of destructive creation.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you and me—?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Probably,” he replied. “In part, certainly. Whether we +are that, <i>in toto</i>, I don’t yet know.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean we are flowers of dissolution—<i>fleurs du mal?</i> I +don’t feel as if I were,” she protested. +</p> + +<p> +He was silent for a time. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t feel as if we were, <i>altogether</i>,” he replied. +“Some people are pure flowers of dark corruption—lilies. But there +ought to be some roses, warm and flamy. You know Herakleitos says ‘a dry soul is +best.’ I know so well what that means. Do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not sure,” Ursula replied. “But what if people +<i>are</i> all flowers of dissolution—when they’re flowers at +all—what difference does it make?” +</p> + +<p> +“No difference—and all the difference. Dissolution rolls on, +just as production does,” he said. “It is a progressive +process—and it ends in universal nothing—the end of the world, if +you like. But why isn’t the end of the world as good as the +beginning?” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose it isn’t,” said Ursula, rather angry. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, ultimately,” he said. “It means a new cycle of +creation after—but not for us. If it is the end, then we are of the +end—<i>fleurs du mal</i> if you like. If we are <i>fleurs du mal</i>, +we are not roses of happiness, and there you are.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I think I am,” said Ursula. “I think I am a rose of +happiness.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ready-made?” he asked ironically. +</p> + +<p> +“No—real,” she said, hurt. +</p> + +<p> +“If we are the end, we are not the beginning,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes we are,” she said. “The beginning comes out of the +end.” +</p> + +<p> +“After it, not out of it. After us, not out of us.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are a devil, you know, really,” she said. “You want +to destroy our hope. You <i>want</i> us to be deathly.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “I only want us to <i>know</i> what we are.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha!” she cried in anger. “You only want us to know +death.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re quite right,” said the soft voice of Gerald, out +of the dusk behind. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin rose. Gerald and Gudrun came up. They all began to smoke, in the +moments of silence. One after another, Birkin lighted their cigarettes. The +match flickered in the twilight, and they were all smoking peacefully by the +water-side. The lake was dim, the light dying from off it, in the midst of the +dark land. The air all round was intangible, neither here nor there, and there +was an unreal noise of banjoes, or suchlike music. +</p> + +<p> +As the golden swim of light overhead died out, the moon gained brightness, +and seemed to begin to smile forth her ascendancy. The dark woods on the +opposite shore melted into universal shadow. And amid this universal +under-shadow, there was a scattered intrusion of lights. Far down the lake were +fantastic pale strings of colour, like beads of wan fire, green and red and +yellow. The music came out in a little puff, as the launch, all illuminated, +veered into the great shadow, stirring her outlines of half-living lights, +puffing out her music in little drifts. +</p> + +<p> +All were lighting up. Here and there, close against the faint water, and at +the far end of the lake, where the water lay milky in the last whiteness of the +sky, and there was no shadow, solitary, frail flames of lanterns floated from +the unseen boats. There was a sound of oars, and a boat passed from the pallor +into the darkness under the wood, where her lanterns seemed to kindle into fire, +hanging in ruddy lovely globes. And again, in the lake, shadowy red gleams +hovered in reflection about the boat. Everywhere were these noiseless ruddy +creatures of fire drifting near the surface of the water, caught at by the +rarest, scarce visible reflections. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin brought the lanterns from the bigger boat, and the four shadowy white +figures gathered round, to light them. Ursula held up the first, Birkin lowered +the light from the rosy, glowing cup of his hands, into the depths of the +lantern. It was kindled, and they all stood back to look at the great blue moon +of light that hung from Ursula’s hand, casting a strange gleam on her +face. It flickered, and Birkin went bending over the well of light. His face +shone out like an apparition, so unconscious, and again, something demoniacal. +Ursula was dim and veiled, looming over him. +</p> + +<p> +“That is all right,” said his voice softly. +</p> + +<p> +She held up the lantern. It had a flight of storks streaming through a +turquoise sky of light, over a dark earth. +</p> + +<p> +“This is beautiful,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Lovely,” echoed Gudrun, who wanted to hold one also, and lift +it up full of beauty. +</p> + +<p> +“Light one for me,” she said. Gerald stood by her, +incapacitated. Birkin lit the lantern she held up. Her heart beat with anxiety, +to see how beautiful it would be. It was primrose yellow, with tall straight +flowers growing darkly from their dark leaves, lifting their heads into the +primrose day, while butterflies hovered about them, in the pure clear light. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun gave a little cry of excitement, as if pierced with delight. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it beautiful, oh, isn’t it beautiful!” +</p> + +<p> +Her soul was really pierced with beauty, she was translated beyond herself. +Gerald leaned near to her, into her zone of light, as if to see. He came close +to her, and stood touching her, looking with her at the primrose-shining globe. +And she turned her face to his, that was faintly bright in the light of the +lantern, and they stood together in one luminous union, close together and +ringed round with light, all the rest excluded. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked away, and went to light Ursula’s second lantern. It had +a pale ruddy sea-bottom, with black crabs and sea-weed moving sinuously under a +transparent sea, that passed into flamy ruddiness above. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got the heavens above, and the waters under the +earth,” said Birkin to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Anything but the earth itself,” she laughed, watching his live +hands that hovered to attend to the light. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m dying to see what my second one is,” cried Gudrun, in +a vibrating rather strident voice, that seemed to repel the others from her. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin went and kindled it. It was of a lovely deep blue colour, with a red +floor, and a great white cuttle-fish flowing in white soft streams all over it. +The cuttle-fish had a face that stared straight from the heart of the light, +very fixed and coldly intent. +</p> + +<p> +“How truly terrifying!” exclaimed Gudrun, in a voice of horror. +Gerald, at her side, gave a low laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“But isn’t it really fearful!” she cried in dismay. +</p> + +<p> +Again he laughed, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“Change it with Ursula, for the crabs.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was silent for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula,” she said, “could you bear to have this fearful +thing?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think the colouring is <i>lovely</i>,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“So do I,” said Gudrun. “But could you <i>bear</i> to have it +swinging to your boat? Don’t you want to destroy it <i>at once?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” said Ursula. “I don’t want to destroy +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well do you mind having it instead of the crabs? Are you sure you +don’t mind?” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun came forward to exchange lanterns. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Ursula, yielding up the crabs and receiving the +cuttle-fish. +</p> + +<p> +Yet she could not help feeling rather resentful at the way in which Gudrun +and Gerald should assume a right over her, a precedence. +</p> + +<p> +“Come then,” said Birkin. “I’ll put them on the +boats.” +</p> + +<p> +He and Ursula were moving away to the big boat. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you’ll row me back, Rupert,” said Gerald, out +of the pale shadow of the evening. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you go with Gudrun in the canoe?” said Birkin. +“It’ll be more interesting.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a moment’s pause. Birkin and Ursula stood dimly, with their +swinging lanterns, by the water’s edge. The world was all illusive. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that all right?” said Gudrun to him. +</p> + +<p> +“It’ll suit <i>me</i> very well,” he said. “But what about +you, and the rowing? I don’t see why you should pull me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” she said. “I can pull you as well as I could +pull Ursula.” +</p> + +<p> +By her tone he could tell she wanted to have him in the boat to herself, and +that she was subtly gratified that she should have power over them both. He gave +himself, in a strange, electric submission. +</p> + +<p> +She handed him the lanterns, whilst she went to fix the cane at the end of +the canoe. He followed after her, and stood with the lanterns dangling against +his white-flannelled thighs, emphasising the shadow around. +</p> + +<p> +“Kiss me before we go,” came his voice softly from out of the +shadow above. +</p> + +<p> +She stopped her work in real, momentary astonishment. +</p> + +<p> +“But why?” she exclaimed, in pure surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” he echoed, ironically. +</p> + +<p> +And she looked at him fixedly for some moments. Then she leaned forward and +kissed him, with a slow, luxurious kiss, lingering on the mouth. And then she +took the lanterns from him, while he stood swooning with the perfect fire that +burned in all his joints. +</p> + +<p> +They lifted the canoe into the water, Gudrun took her place, and Gerald +pushed off. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you sure you don’t hurt your hand, doing that?” she +asked, solicitous. “Because I could have done it <i>perfectly</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t hurt myself,” he said in a low, soft voice, that +caressed her with inexpressible beauty. +</p> + +<p> +And she watched him as he sat near her, very near to her, in the stern of +the canoe, his legs coming towards hers, his feet touching hers. And she paddled +softly, lingeringly, longing for him to say something meaningful to her. But he +remained silent. +</p> + +<p> +“You like this, do you?” she said, in a gentle, solicitous +voice. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed shortly. +</p> + +<p> +“There is a space between us,” he said, in the same low, +unconscious voice, as if something were speaking out of him. And she was as if +magically aware of their being balanced in separation, in the boat. She swooned +with acute comprehension and pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +“But I’m very near,” she said caressively, gaily. +</p> + +<p> +“Yet distant, distant,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Again she was silent with pleasure, before she answered, speaking with a +reedy, thrilled voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Yet we cannot very well change, whilst we are on the water.” +She caressed him subtly and strangely, having him completely at her mercy. +</p> + +<p> +A dozen or more boats on the lake swung their rosy and moon-like lanterns +low on the water, that reflected as from a fire. In the distance, the steamer +twanged and thrummed and washed with her faintly-splashing paddles, trailing her +strings of coloured lights, and occasionally lighting up the whole scene luridly +with an effusion of fireworks, Roman candles and sheafs of stars and other +simple effects, illuminating the surface of the water, and showing the boats +creeping round, low down. Then the lovely darkness fell again, the lanterns and +the little threaded lights glimmered softly, there was a muffled knocking of +oars and a waving of music. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun paddled almost imperceptibly. Gerald could see, not far ahead, the +rich blue and the rose globes of Ursula’s lanterns swaying softly cheek to +cheek as Birkin rowed, and iridescent, evanescent gleams chasing in the wake. He +was aware, too, of his own delicately coloured lights casting their softness +behind him. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun rested her paddle and looked round. The canoe lifted with the +lightest ebbing of the water. Gerald’s white knees were very near to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it beautiful!” she said softly, as if reverently. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him, as he leaned back against the faint crystal of the +lantern-light. She could see his face, although it was a pure shadow. But it was +a piece of twilight. And her breast was keen with passion for him, he was so +beautiful in his male stillness and mystery. It was a certain pure effluence of +maleness, like an aroma from his softly, firmly moulded contours, a certain rich +perfection of his presence, that touched her with an ecstasy, a thrill of pure +intoxication. She loved to look at him. For the present she did not want to +touch him, to know the further, satisfying substance of his living body. He was +purely intangible, yet so near. Her hands lay on the paddle like slumber, she +only wanted to see him, like a crystal shadow, to feel his essential presence. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said vaguely. “It is very beautiful.” +</p> + +<p> +He was listening to the faint near sounds, the dropping of water-drops from +the oar-blades, the slight drumming of the lanterns behind him, as they rubbed +against one another, the occasional rustling of Gudrun’s full skirt, an +alien land noise. His mind was almost submerged, he was almost transfused, +lapsed out for the first time in his life, into the things about him. For he +always kept such a keen attentiveness, concentrated and unyielding in himself. +Now he had let go, imperceptibly he was melting into oneness with the whole. It +was like pure, perfect sleep, his first great sleep of life. He had been so +insistent, so guarded, all his life. But here was sleep, and peace, and perfect +lapsing out. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I row to the landing-stage?” asked Gudrun wistfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Anywhere,” he answered. “Let it drift.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me then, if we are running into anything,” she replied, in +that very quiet, toneless voice of sheer intimacy. +</p> + +<p> +“The lights will show,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +So they drifted almost motionless, in silence. He wanted silence, pure and +whole. But she was uneasy yet for some word, for some assurance. +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody will miss you?” she asked, anxious for some +communication. +</p> + +<p> +“Miss me?” he echoed. “No! Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“I wondered if anybody would be looking for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should they look for me?” And then he remembered his +manners. “But perhaps you want to get back,” he said, in a changed +voice. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t want to get back,” she replied. “No, I +assure you.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re quite sure it’s all right for you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly all right.” +</p> + +<p> +And again they were still. The launch twanged and hooted, somebody was +singing. Then as if the night smashed, suddenly there was a great shout, a +confusion of shouting, warring on the water, then the horrid noise of paddles +reversed and churned violently. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald sat up, and Gudrun looked at him in fear. +</p> + +<p> +“Somebody in the water,” he said, angrily, and desperately, +looking keenly across the dusk. “Can you row up?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where, to the launch?” asked Gudrun, in nervous panic. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll tell me if I don’t steer straight,” she +said, in nervous apprehension. +</p> + +<p> +“You keep pretty level,” he said, and the canoe hastened +forward. +</p> + +<p> +The shouting and the noise continued, sounding horrid through the dusk, over +the surface of the water. +</p> + +<p> +“Wasn’t this <i>bound</i> to happen?” said Gudrun, with heavy +hateful irony. But he hardly heard, and she glanced over her shoulder to see her +way. The half-dark waters were sprinkled with lovely bubbles of swaying lights, +the launch did not look far off. She was rocking her lights in the early night. +Gudrun rowed as hard as she could. But now that it was a serious matter, she +seemed uncertain and clumsy in her stroke, it was difficult to paddle swiftly. +She glanced at his face. He was looking fixedly into the darkness, very keen and +alert and single in himself, instrumental. Her heart sank, she seemed to die a +death. “Of course,” she said to herself, “nobody will be +drowned. Of course they won’t. It would be too extravagant and +sensational.” But her heart was cold, because of his sharp impersonal +face. It was as if he belonged naturally to dread and catastrophe, as if he were +himself again. +</p> + +<p> +Then there came a child’s voice, a girl’s high, piercing shriek: +</p> + +<p> +“Di—Di—Di—Di—Oh Di—Oh Di—Oh +Di!” +</p> + +<p> +The blood ran cold in Gudrun’s veins. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s Diana, is it,” muttered Gerald. “The young +monkey, she’d have to be up to some of her tricks.” +</p> + +<p> +And he glanced again at the paddle, the boat was not going quickly enough +for him. It made Gudrun almost helpless at the rowing, this nervous stress. She +kept up with all her might. Still the voices were calling and answering. +</p> + +<p> +“Where, where? There you are—that’s it. Which? +No—No-o-o. Damn it all, here, <i>here</i>—” Boats were hurrying +from all directions to the scene, coloured lanterns could be seen waving close +to the surface of the lake, reflections swaying after them in uneven haste. +The steamer hooted again, for some unknown reason. Gudrun’s boat was +travelling quickly, the lanterns were swinging behind Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +And then again came the child’s high, screaming voice, with a note of +weeping and impatience in it now: +</p> + +<p> +“Di—Oh Di—Oh Di—Di—!” +</p> + +<p> +It was a terrible sound, coming through the obscure air of the evening. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d be better if you were in bed, Winnie,” Gerald +muttered to himself. +</p> + +<p> +He was stooping unlacing his shoes, pushing them off with the foot. Then he +threw his soft hat into the bottom of the boat. +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t go into the water with your hurt hand,” said +Gudrun, panting, in a low voice of horror. +</p> + +<p> +“What? It won’t hurt.” +</p> + +<p> +He had struggled out of his jacket, and had dropped it between his feet. He +sat bare-headed, all in white now. He felt the belt at his waist. They were +nearing the launch, which stood still big above them, her myriad lamps making +lovely darts, and sinuous running tongues of ugly red and green and yellow light +on the lustrous dark water, under the shadow. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh get her out! Oh Di, <i>darling!</i> Oh get her out! Oh Daddy, Oh +Daddy!” moaned the child’s voice, in distraction. Somebody was in +the water, with a life belt. Two boats paddled near, their lanterns swinging +ineffectually, the boats nosing round. +</p> + +<p> +“Hi there—Rockley!—hi there!” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr Gerald!” came the captain’s terrified voice. +“Miss Diana’s in the water.” +</p> + +<p> +“Anybody gone in for her?” came Gerald’s sharp voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Young Doctor Brindell, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where?” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t see no signs of them, sir. Everybody’s looking, but +there’s nothing so far.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a moment’s ominous pause. +</p> + +<p> +“Where did she go in?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think—about where that boat is,” came the uncertain +answer, “that one with red and green lights.” +</p> + +<p> +“Row there,” said Gerald quietly to Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Get her out, Gerald, oh get her out,” the child’s voice +was crying anxiously. He took no heed. +</p> + +<p> +“Lean back that way,” said Gerald to Gudrun, as he stood up in +the frail boat. “She won’t upset.” +</p> + +<p> +In another moment, he had dropped clean down, soft and plumb, into the +water. Gudrun was swaying violently in her boat, the agitated water shook with +transient lights, she realised that it was faintly moonlight, and that he was +gone. So it was possible to be gone. A terrible sense of fatality robbed her of +all feeling and thought. She knew he was gone out of the world, there was merely +the same world, and absence, his absence. The night seemed large and vacuous. +Lanterns swayed here and there, people were talking in an undertone on the +launch and in the boats. She could hear Winifred moaning: “<i>Oh do find her +Gerald, do find her</i>,” and someone trying to comfort the child. Gudrun +paddled aimlessly here and there. The terrible, massive, cold, boundless surface +of the water terrified her beyond words. Would he never come back? She felt she +must jump into the water too, to know the horror also. +</p> + +<p> +She started, hearing someone say: “There he is.” She saw the +movement of his swimming, like a water-rat. And she rowed involuntarily to him. +But he was near another boat, a bigger one. Still she rowed towards him. She +must be very near. She saw him—he looked like a seal. He looked like a +seal as he took hold of the side of the boat. His fair hair was washed down on +his round head, his face seemed to glisten suavely. She could hear him panting. +</p> + +<p> +Then he clambered into the boat. Oh, and the beauty of the subjection of his +loins, white and dimly luminous as he climbed over the side of the boat, made +her want to die, to die. The beauty of his dim and luminous loins as he climbed +into the boat, his back rounded and soft—ah, this was too much for her, +too final a vision. She knew it, and it was fatal. The terrible hopelessness of +fate, and of beauty, such beauty! +</p> + +<p> +He was not like a man to her, he was an incarnation, a great phase of life. +She saw him press the water out of his face, and look at the bandage on his +hand. And she knew it was all no good, and that she would never go beyond him, +he was the final approximation of life to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Put the lights out, we shall see better,” came his voice, +sudden and mechanical and belonging to the world of man. She could scarcely +believe there was a world of man. She leaned round and blew out her lanterns. +They were difficult to blow out. Everywhere the lights were gone save the +coloured points on the sides of the launch. The bluey-grey, early night spread +level around, the moon was overhead, there were shadows of boats here and there. +</p> + +<p> +Again there was a splash, and he was gone under. Gudrun sat, sick at heart, +frightened of the great, level surface of the water, so heavy and deadly. She +was so alone, with the level, unliving field of the water stretching beneath +her. It was not a good isolation, it was a terrible, cold separation of +suspense. She was suspended upon the surface of the insidious reality until such +time as she also should disappear beneath it. +</p> + +<p> +Then she knew, by a stirring of voices, that he had climbed out again, into +a boat. She sat wanting connection with him. Strenuously she claimed her +connection with him, across the invisible space of the water. But round her +heart was an isolation unbearable, through which nothing would penetrate. +</p> + +<p> +“Take the launch in. It’s no use keeping her there. Get lines +for the dragging,” came the decisive, instrumental voice, that was full of +the sound of the world. +</p> + +<p> +The launch began gradually to beat the waters. +</p> + +<p> +“Gerald! Gerald!” came the wild crying voice of Winifred. He did +not answer. Slowly the launch drifted round in a pathetic, clumsy circle, and +slunk away to the land, retreating into the dimness. The wash of her paddles +grew duller. Gudrun rocked in her light boat, and dipped the paddle +automatically to steady herself. +</p> + +<p> +“Gudrun?” called Ursula’s voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula!” +</p> + +<p> +The boats of the two sisters pulled together. +</p> + +<p> +“Where is Gerald?” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s dived again,” said Ursula plaintively. “And I +know he ought not, with his hurt hand and everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll take him in home this time,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +The boats swayed again from the wash of steamer. Gudrun and Ursula kept a +look-out for Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“There he is!” cried Ursula, who had the sharpest eyes. He had +not been long under. Birkin pulled towards him, Gudrun following. He swam +slowly, and caught hold of the boat with his wounded hand. It slipped, and he +sank back. +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you help him?” cried Ursula sharply. +</p> + +<p> +He came again, and Birkin leaned to help him in to the boat. Gudrun again +watched Gerald climb out of the water, but this time slowly, heavily, with the +blind clambering motions of an amphibious beast, clumsy. Again the moon shone +with faint luminosity on his white wet figure, on the stooping back and the +rounded loins. But it looked defeated now, his body, it clambered and fell with +slow clumsiness. He was breathing hoarsely too, like an animal that is +suffering. He sat slack and motionless in the boat, his head blunt and blind +like a seal’s, his whole appearance inhuman, unknowing. Gudrun shuddered +as she mechanically followed his boat. Birkin rowed without speaking to the +landing-stage. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are you going?” Gerald asked suddenly, as if just waking +up. +</p> + +<p> +“Home,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no!” said Gerald imperiously. “We can’t go home +while they’re in the water. Turn back again, I’m going to find +them.” The women were frightened, his voice was so imperative and +dangerous, almost mad, not to be opposed. +</p> + +<p> +“No!” said Birkin. “You can’t.” There was a +strange fluid compulsion in his voice. Gerald was silent in a battle of wills. +It was as if he would kill the other man. But Birkin rowed evenly and +unswerving, with an inhuman inevitability. +</p> + +<p> +“Why should you interfere?” said Gerald, in hate. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin did not answer. He rowed towards the land. And Gerald sat mute, like +a dumb beast, panting, his teeth chattering, his arms inert, his head like a +seal’s head. +</p> + +<p> +They came to the landing-stage. Wet and naked-looking, Gerald climbed up the +few steps. There stood his father, in the night. +</p> + +<p> +“Father!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes my boy? Go home and get those things off.” +</p> + +<p> +“We shan’t save them, father,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s hope yet, my boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid not. There’s no knowing where they are. You +can’t find them. And there’s a current, as cold as hell.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll let the water out,” said the father. “Go home +you and look to yourself. See that he’s looked after, Rupert,” he +added in a neutral voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Well father, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m afraid +it’s my fault. But it can’t be helped; I’ve done what I could +for the moment. I could go on diving, of course—not much, though—and +not much use—” +</p> + +<p> +He moved away barefoot, on the planks of the platform. Then he trod on +something sharp. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, you’ve got no shoes on,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“His shoes are here!” cried Gudrun from below. She was making +fast her boat. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald waited for them to be brought to him. Gudrun came with them. He +pulled them on his feet. +</p> + +<p> +“If you once die,” he said, “then when it’s over, +it’s finished. Why come to life again? There’s room under that water +there for thousands.” +</p> + +<p> +“Two is enough,” she said murmuring. +</p> + +<p> +He dragged on his second shoe. He was shivering violently, and his jaw shook +as he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s true,” he said, “maybe. But it’s +curious how much room there seems, a whole universe under there; and as cold as +hell, you’re as helpless as if your head was cut off.” He could +scarcely speak, he shook so violently. “There’s one thing about our +family, you know,” he continued. “Once anything goes wrong, it can +never be put right again—not with us. I’ve noticed it all my +life—you can’t put a thing right, once it has gone wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +They were walking across the high-road to the house. +</p> + +<p> +“And do you know, when you are down there, it is so cold, actually, +and so endless, so different really from what it is on top, so endless—you +wonder how it is so many are alive, why we’re up here. Are you going? I +shall see you again, shan’t I? Good-night, and thank you. Thank you very +much!” +</p> + +<p> +The two girls waited a while, to see if there were any hope. The moon shone +clearly overhead, with almost impertinent brightness, the small dark boats +clustered on the water, there were voices and subdued shouts. But it was all to +no purpose. Gudrun went home when Birkin returned. +</p> + +<p> +He was commissioned to open the sluice that let out the water from the lake, +which was pierced at one end, near the high-road, thus serving as a reservoir to +supply with water the distant mines, in case of necessity. “Come with +me,” he said to Ursula, “and then I will walk home with you, when +I’ve done this.” +</p> + +<p> +He called at the water-keeper’s cottage and took the key of the +sluice. They went through a little gate from the high-road, to the head of the +water, where was a great stone basin which received the overflow, and a flight +of stone steps descended into the depths of the water itself. At the head of the +steps was the lock of the sluice-gate. +</p> + +<p> +The night was silver-grey and perfect, save for the scattered restless sound +of voices. The grey sheen of the moonlight caught the stretch of water, dark +boats plashed and moved. But Ursula’s mind ceased to be receptive, +everything was unimportant and unreal. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin fixed the iron handle of the sluice, and turned it with a wrench. The +cogs began slowly to rise. He turned and turned, like a slave, his white figure +became distinct. Ursula looked away. She could not bear to see him winding +heavily and laboriously, bending and rising mechanically like a slave, turning +the handle. +</p> + +<p> +Then, a real shock to her, there came a loud splashing of water from out of +the dark, tree-filled hollow beyond the road, a splashing that deepened rapidly +to a harsh roar, and then became a heavy, booming noise of a great body of water +falling solidly all the time. It occupied the whole of the night, this great +steady booming of water, everything was drowned within it, drowned and lost. +Ursula seemed to have to struggle for her life. She put her hands over her ears, +and looked at the high bland moon. +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t we go now?” she cried to Birkin, who was watching +the water on the steps, to see if it would get any lower. It seemed to fascinate +him. He looked at her and nodded. +</p> + +<p> +The little dark boats had moved nearer, people were crowding curiously along +the hedge by the high-road, to see what was to be seen. Birkin and Ursula went +to the cottage with the key, then turned their backs on the lake. She was in +great haste. She could not bear the terrible crushing boom of the escaping +water. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think they are dead?” she cried in a high voice, to make +herself heard. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it horrible!” +</p> + +<p> +He paid no heed. They walked up the hill, further and further away from the +noise. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mind very much?” she asked him. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mind about the dead,” he said, “once they +are dead. The worst of it is, they cling on to the living, and won’t let +go.” +</p> + +<p> +She pondered for a time. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. “The <i>fact</i> of death doesn’t really +seem to matter much, does it?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “What does it matter if Diana Crich is +alive or dead?” +</p> + +<p> +“Doesn’t it?” she said, shocked. +</p> + +<p> +“No, why should it? Better she were dead—she’ll be much +more real. She’ll be positive in death. In life she was a fretting, +negated thing.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are rather horrible,” murmured Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“No! I’d rather Diana Crich were dead. Her living somehow, was +all wrong. As for the young man, poor devil—he’ll find his way out +quickly instead of slowly. Death is all right—nothing better.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet you don’t want to die,” she challenged him. +</p> + +<p> +He was silent for a time. Then he said, in a voice that was frightening to +her in its change: +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to be through with it—I should like to be through +with the death process.” +</p> + +<p> +“And aren’t you?” asked Ursula nervously. +</p> + +<p> +They walked on for some way in silence, under the trees. Then he said, +slowly, as if afraid: +</p> + +<p> +“There is life which belongs to death, and there is life which +isn’t death. One is tired of the life that belongs to death—our kind +of life. But whether it is finished, God knows. I want love that is like sleep, +like being born again, vulnerable as a baby that just comes into the +world.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula listened, half attentive, half avoiding what he said. She seemed to +catch the drift of his statement, and then she drew away. She wanted to hear, +but she did not want to be implicated. She was reluctant to yield there, where +he wanted her, to yield as it were her very identity. +</p> + +<p> +“Why should love be like sleep?” she asked sadly. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. So that it is like death—I <i>do</i> want to die +from this life—and yet it is more than life itself. One is delivered over +like a naked infant from the womb, all the old defences and the old body gone, +and new air around one, that has never been breathed before.” +</p> + +<p> +She listened, making out what he said. She knew, as well as he knew, that +words themselves do not convey meaning, that they are but a gesture we make, a +dumb show like any other. And she seemed to feel his gesture through her blood, +and she drew back, even though her desire sent her forward. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” she said gravely, “didn’t you say you wanted +something that was <i>not</i> love—something beyond love?” +</p> + +<p> +He turned in confusion. There was always confusion in speech. Yet it must be +spoken. Whichever way one moved, if one were to move forwards, one must break a +way through. And to know, to give utterance, was to break a way through the +walls of the prison as the infant in labour strives through the walls of the +womb. There is no new movement now, without the breaking through of the old +body, deliberately, in knowledge, in the struggle to get out. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want love,” he said. “I don’t want to +know you. I want to be gone out of myself, and you to be lost to yourself, so we +are found different. One shouldn’t talk when one is tired and wretched. +One Hamletises, and it seems a lie. Only believe me when I show you a bit of +healthy pride and insouciance. I hate myself serious.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why shouldn’t you be serious?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He thought for a minute, then he said, sulkily: +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know.” Then they walked on in silence, at outs. +He was vague and lost. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it strange,” she said, suddenly putting her hand on +his arm, with a loving impulse, “how we always talk like this! I suppose +we do love each other, in some way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” he said; “too much.” +</p> + +<p> +She laughed almost gaily. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d have to have it your own way, wouldn’t you?” +she teased. “You could never take it on trust.” +</p> + +<p> +He changed, laughed softly, and turned and took her in his arms, in the +middle of the road. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said softly. +</p> + +<p> +And he kissed her face and brow, slowly, gently, with a sort of delicate +happiness which surprised her extremely, and to which she could not respond. +They were soft, blind kisses, perfect in their stillness. Yet she held back from +them. It was like strange moths, very soft and silent, settling on her from the +darkness of her soul. She was uneasy. She drew away. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t somebody coming?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +So they looked down the dark road, then set off again walking towards +Beldover. Then suddenly, to show him she was no shallow prude, she stopped and +held him tight, hard against her, and covered his face with hard, fierce kisses +of passion. In spite of his otherness, the old blood beat up in him. +</p> + +<p> +“Not this, not this,” he whimpered to himself, as the first +perfect mood of softness and sleep-loveliness ebbed back away from the rushing +of passion that came up to his limbs and over his face as she drew him. And soon +he was a perfect hard flame of passionate desire for her. Yet in the small core +of the flame was an unyielding anguish of another thing. But this also was lost; +he only wanted her, with an extreme desire that seemed inevitable as death, +beyond question. +</p> + +<p> +Then, satisfied and shattered, fulfilled and destroyed, he went home away +from her, drifting vaguely through the darkness, lapsed into the old fire of +burning passion. Far away, far away, there seemed to be a small lament in the +darkness. But what did it matter? What did it matter, what did anything matter +save this ultimate and triumphant experience of physical passion, that had +blazed up anew like a new spell of life. “I was becoming quite dead-alive, +nothing but a word-bag,” he said in triumph, scorning his other self. Yet +somewhere far off and small, the other hovered. +</p> + +<p> +The men were still dragging the lake when he got back. He stood on the bank +and heard Gerald’s voice. The water was still booming in the night, the +moon was fair, the hills beyond were elusive. The lake was sinking. There came +the raw smell of the banks, in the night air. +</p> + +<p> +Up at Shortlands there were lights in the windows, as if nobody had gone to +bed. On the landing-stage was the old doctor, the father of the young man who +was lost. He stood quite silent, waiting. Birkin also stood and watched, Gerald +came up in a boat. +</p> + +<p> +“You still here, Rupert?” he said. “We can’t get +them. The bottom slopes, you know, very steep. The water lies between two very +sharp slopes, with little branch valleys, and God knows where the drift will +take you. It isn’t as if it was a level bottom. You never know where you +are, with the dragging.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is there any need for you to be working?” said Birkin. +“Wouldn’t it be much better if you went to bed?” +</p> + +<p> +“To bed! Good God, do you think I should sleep? We’ll find +’em, before I go away from here.” +</p> + +<p> +“But the men would find them just the same without you—why +should you insist?” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked up at him. Then he put his hand affectionately on +Birkin’s shoulder, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you bother about me, Rupert. If there’s +anybody’s health to think about, it’s yours, not mine. How do you +feel yourself?” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well. But you, you spoil your own chance of life—you waste +your best self.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald was silent for a moment. Then he said: +</p> + +<p> +“Waste it? What else is there to do with it?” +</p> + +<p> +“But leave this, won’t you? You force yourself into horrors, and +put a mill-stone of beastly memories round your neck. Come away now.” +</p> + +<p> +“A mill-stone of beastly memories!” Gerald repeated. Then he put +his hand again affectionately on Birkin’s shoulder. “God, +you’ve got such a telling way of putting things, Rupert, you have.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin’s heart sank. He was irritated and weary of having a telling +way of putting things. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you leave it? Come over to my place”—he urged +as one urges a drunken man. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Gerald coaxingly, his arm across the other +man’s shoulder. “Thanks very much, Rupert—I shall be glad to +come tomorrow, if that’ll do. You understand, don’t you? I want to +see this job through. But I’ll come tomorrow, right enough. Oh, I’d +rather come and have a chat with you than—than do anything else, I verily +believe. Yes, I would. You mean a lot to me, Rupert, more than you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do I mean, more than I know?” asked Birkin irritably. He +was acutely aware of Gerald’s hand on his shoulder. And he did not want +this altercation. He wanted the other man to come out of the ugly misery. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell you another time,” said Gerald coaxingly. +</p> + +<p> +“Come along with me now—I want you to come,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause, intense and real. Birkin wondered why his own heart beat +so heavily. Then Gerald’s fingers gripped hard and communicative into +Birkin’s shoulder, as he said: +</p> + +<p> +“No, I’ll see this job through, Rupert. Thank you—I know +what you mean. We’re all right, you know, you and me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I may be all right, but I’m sure you’re not, mucking +about here,” said Birkin. And he went away. +</p> + +<p> +The bodies of the dead were not recovered till towards dawn. Diana had her +arms tight round the neck of the young man, choking him. +</p> + +<p> +“She killed him,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +The moon sloped down the sky and sank at last. The lake was sunk to quarter +size, it had horrible raw banks of clay, that smelled of raw rottenish water. +Dawn roused faintly behind the eastern hill. The water still boomed through the +sluice. +</p> + +<p> +As the birds were whistling for the first morning, and the hills at the back +of the desolate lake stood radiant with the new mists, there was a straggling +procession up to Shortlands, men bearing the bodies on a stretcher, Gerald going +beside them, the two grey-bearded fathers following in silence. Indoors the +family was all sitting up, waiting. Somebody must go to tell the mother, in her +room. The doctor in secret struggled to bring back his son, till he himself was +exhausted. +</p> + +<p> +Over all the outlying district was a hush of dreadful excitement on that +Sunday morning. The colliery people felt as if this catastrophe had happened +directly to themselves, indeed they were more shocked and frightened than if +their own men had been killed. Such a tragedy in Shortlands, the high home of +the district! One of the young mistresses, persisting in dancing on the cabin +roof of the launch, wilful young madam, drowned in the midst of the festival, +with the young doctor! Everywhere on the Sunday morning, the colliers wandered +about, discussing the calamity. At all the Sunday dinners of the people, there +seemed a strange presence. It was as if the angel of death were very near, there +was a sense of the supernatural in the air. The men had excited, startled faces, +the women looked solemn, some of them had been crying. The children enjoyed the +excitement at first. There was an intensity in the air, almost magical. Did all +enjoy it? Did all enjoy the thrill? +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun had wild ideas of rushing to comfort Gerald. She was thinking all the +time of the perfect comforting, reassuring thing to say to him. She was shocked +and frightened, but she put that away, thinking of how she should deport herself +with Gerald: act her part. That was the real thrill: how she should act her +part. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was deeply and passionately in love with Birkin, and she was capable +of nothing. She was perfectly callous about all the talk of the accident, but +her estranged air looked like trouble. She merely sat by herself, whenever she +could, and longed to see him again. She wanted him to come to the +house,—she would not have it otherwise, he must come at once. She was +waiting for him. She stayed indoors all day, waiting for him to knock at the +door. Every minute, she glanced automatically at the window. He would be there. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.<br/> +SUNDAY EVENING</h2> + +<p> +As the day wore on, the life-blood seemed to ebb away from Ursula, and +within the emptiness a heavy despair gathered. Her passion seemed to bleed to +death, and there was nothing. She sat suspended in a state of complete nullity, +harder to bear than death. +</p> + +<p> +“Unless something happens,” she said to herself, in the perfect +lucidity of final suffering, “I shall die. I am at the end of my line of +life.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat crushed and obliterated in a darkness that was the border of death. +She realised how all her life she had been drawing nearer and nearer to this +brink, where there was no beyond, from which one had to leap like Sappho into +the unknown. The knowledge of the imminence of death was like a drug. Darkly, +without thinking at all, she knew that she was near to death. She had travelled +all her life along the line of fulfilment, and it was nearly concluded. She knew +all she had to know, she had experienced all she had to experience, she was +fulfilled in a kind of bitter ripeness, there remained only to fall from the +tree into death. And one must fulfil one’s development to the end, must +carry the adventure to its conclusion. And the next step was over the border +into death. So it was then! There was a certain peace in the knowledge. +</p> + +<p> +After all, when one was fulfilled, one was happiest in falling into death, +as a bitter fruit plunges in its ripeness downwards. Death is a great +consummation, a consummating experience. It is a development from life. That we +know, while we are yet living. What then need we think for further? One can +never see beyond the consummation. It is enough that death is a great and +conclusive experience. Why should we ask what comes after the experience, when +the experience is still unknown to us? Let us die, since the great experience is +the one that follows now upon all the rest, death, which is the next great +crisis in front of which we have arrived. If we wait, if we baulk the issue, we +do but hang about the gates in undignified uneasiness. There it is, in front of +us, as in front of Sappho, the illimitable space. Thereinto goes the journey. +Have we not the courage to go on with our journey, must we cry ‘I +daren’t’? On ahead we will go, into death, and whatever death may +mean. If a man can see the next step to be taken, why should he fear the next +but one? Why ask about the next but one? Of the next step we are certain. It is +the step into death. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall die—I shall quickly die,” said Ursula to herself, +clear as if in a trance, clear, calm, and certain beyond human certainty. But +somewhere behind, in the twilight, there was a bitter weeping and a +hopelessness. That must not be attended to. One must go where the unfaltering +spirit goes, there must be no baulking the issue, because of fear. No baulking +the issue, no listening to the lesser voices. If the deepest desire be now, to +go on into the unknown of death, shall one forfeit the deepest truth for one +more shallow? +</p> + +<p> +“Then let it end,” she said to herself. It was a decision. It +was not a question of taking one’s life—she would <i>never</i> kill +herself, that was repulsive and violent. It was a question of <i>knowing</i> +the nextcstep. And the next step led into the space of death. Did it?—or +was there—? +</p> + +<p> +Her thoughts drifted into unconsciousness, she sat as if asleep beside the +fire. And then the thought came back. The space of death! Could she give +herself to it? Ah yes—it was a sleep. She had had enough. So long she had +held out; and resisted. Now was the time to relinquish, not to resist any more. +</p> + +<p> +In a kind of spiritual trance, she yielded, she gave way, and all was dark. +She could feel, within the darkness, the terrible assertion of her body, the +unutterable anguish of dissolution, the only anguish that is too much, the +far-off, awful nausea of dissolution set in within the body. +</p> + +<p> +“Does the body correspond so immediately with the spirit?” she +asked herself. And she knew, with the clarity of ultimate knowledge, that the +body is only one of the manifestations of the spirit, the transmutation of the +integral spirit is the transmutation of the physical body as well. Unless I set +my will, unless I absolve myself from the rhythm of life, fix myself and remain +static, cut off from living, absolved within my own will. But better die than +live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions. To die is to move +on with the invisible. To die is also a joy, a joy of submitting to that which +is greater than the known, namely, the pure unknown. That is a joy. But to live +mechanised and cut off within the motion of the will, to live as an entity +absolved from the unknown, that is shameful and ignominious. There is no +ignominy in death. There is complete ignominy in an unreplenished, mechanised +life. Life indeed may be ignominious, shameful to the soul. But death is never a +shame. Death itself, like the illimitable space, is beyond our sullying. +</p> + +<p> +Tomorrow was Monday. Monday, the beginning of another school-week! Another +shameful, barren school-week, mere routine and mechanical activity. Was not the +adventure of death infinitely preferable? Was not death infinitely more lovely +and noble than such a life? A life of barren routine, without inner meaning, +without any real significance. How sordid life was, how it was a terrible shame +to the soul, to live now! How much cleaner and more dignified to be dead! One +could not bear any more of this shame of sordid routine and mechanical nullity. +One might come to fruit in death. She had had enough. For where was life to be +found? No flowers grow upon busy machinery, there is no sky to a routine, there +is no space to a rotary motion. And all life was a rotary motion, mechanised, +cut off from reality. There was nothing to look for from life—it was the +same in all countries and all peoples. The only window was death. One could look +out on to the great dark sky of death with elation, as one had looked out of the +classroom window as a child, and seen perfect freedom in the outside. Now one +was not a child, and one knew that the soul was a prisoner within this sordid +vast edifice of life, and there was no escape, save in death. +</p> + +<p> +But what a joy! What a gladness to think that whatever humanity did, it +could not seize hold of the kingdom of death, to nullify that. The sea they +turned into a murderous alley and a soiled road of commerce, disputed like the +dirty land of a city every inch of it. The air they claimed too, shared it up, +parcelled it out to certain owners, they trespassed in the air to fight for it. +Everything was gone, walled in, with spikes on top of the walls, and one must +ignominiously creep between the spiky walls through a labyrinth of life. +</p> + +<p> +But the great, dark, illimitable kingdom of death, there humanity was put to +scorn. So much they could do upon earth, the multifarious little gods that they +were. But the kingdom of death put them all to scorn, they dwindled into their +true vulgar silliness in face of it. +</p> + +<p> +How beautiful, how grand and perfect death was, how good to look forward to. +There one would wash off all the lies and ignominy and dirt that had been put +upon one here, a perfect bath of cleanness and glad refreshment, and go unknown, +unquestioned, unabased. After all, one was rich, if only in the promise of +perfect death. It was a gladness above all, that this remained to look forward +to, the pure inhuman otherness of death. +</p> + +<p> +Whatever life might be, it could not take away death, the inhuman +transcendent death. Oh, let us ask no question of it, what it is or is not. To +know is human, and in death we do not know, we are not human. And the joy of +this compensates for all the bitterness of knowledge and the sordidness of our +humanity. In death we shall not be human, and we shall not know. The promise of +this is our heritage, we look forward like heirs to their majority. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula sat quite still and quite forgotten, alone by the fire in the +drawing-room. The children were playing in the kitchen, all the others were gone +to church. And she was gone into the ultimate darkness of her own soul. +</p> + +<p> +She was startled by hearing the bell ring, away in the kitchen, the children +came scudding along the passage in delicious alarm. +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula, there’s somebody.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know. Don’t be silly,” she replied. She too was +startled, almost frightened. She dared hardly go to the door. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin stood on the threshold, his rain-coat turned up to his ears. He had +come now, now she was gone far away. She was aware of the rainy night behind +him. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh is it you?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad you are at home,” he said in a low voice, entering +the house. +</p> + +<p> +“They are all gone to church.” +</p> + +<p> +He took off his coat and hung it up. The children were peeping at him round +the corner. +</p> + +<p> +“Go and get undressed now, Billy and Dora,” said Ursula. +“Mother will be back soon, and she’ll be disappointed if +you’re not in bed.” +</p> + +<p> +The children, in a sudden angelic mood, retired without a word. Birkin and +Ursula went into the drawing-room. +</p> + +<p> +The fire burned low. He looked at her and wondered at the luminous delicacy +of her beauty, and the wide shining of her eyes. He watched from a distance, +with wonder in his heart, she seemed transfigured with light. +</p> + +<p> +“What have you been doing all day?” he asked her. +</p> + +<p> +“Only sitting about,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her. There was a change in her. But she was separate from him. +She remained apart, in a kind of brightness. They both sat silent in the soft +light of the lamp. He felt he ought to go away again, he ought not to have come. +Still he did not gather enough resolution to move. But he was <i>de trop</i>, +her mood was absent and separate. +</p> + +<p> +Then there came the voices of the two children calling shyly outside the +door, softly, with self-excited timidity: +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula! Ursula!” +</p> + +<p> +She rose and opened the door. On the threshold stood the two children in +their long nightgowns, with wide-eyed, angelic faces. They were being very good +for the moment, playing the rôle perfectly of two obedient children. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall you take us to bed!” said Billy, in a loud whisper. +</p> + +<p> +“Why you <i>are</i> angels tonight,” she said softly. +“Won’t you come and say good-night to Mr Birkin?” +</p> + +<p> +The children merged shyly into the room, on bare feet. Billy’s face +was wide and grinning, but there was a great solemnity of being good in his +round blue eyes. Dora, peeping from the floss of her fair hair, hung back like +some tiny Dryad, that has no soul. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you say good-night to me?” asked Birkin, in a voice that +was strangely soft and smooth. Dora drifted away at once, like a leaf lifted on +a breath of wind. But Billy went softly forward, slow and willing, lifting his +pinched-up mouth implicitly to be kissed. Ursula watched the full, gathered lips +of the man gently touch those of the boy, so gently. Then Birkin lifted his +fingers and touched the boy’s round, confiding cheek, with a faint touch +of love. Neither spoke. Billy seemed angelic like a cherub boy, or like an +acolyte, Birkin was a tall, grave angel looking down to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you going to be kissed?” Ursula broke in, speaking to the +little girl. But Dora edged away like a tiny Dryad that will not be touched. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you say good-night to Mr Birkin? Go, he’s waiting +for you,” said Ursula. But the girl-child only made a little motion away +from him. +</p> + +<p> +“Silly Dora, silly Dora!” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin felt some mistrust and antagonism in the small child. He could not +understand it. +</p> + +<p> +“Come then,” said Ursula. “Let us go before mother +comes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who’ll hear us say our prayers?” asked Billy anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Whom you like.” +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I will.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well Billy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it <i>whom</i> you like?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well what is <i>whom</i>?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the accusative of who.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a moment’s contemplative silence, then the confiding: +</p> + +<p> +“Is it?” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin smiled to himself as he sat by the fire. When Ursula came down he sat +motionless, with his arms on his knees. She saw him, how he was motionless and +ageless, like some crouching idol, some image of a deathly religion. He looked +round at her, and his face, very pale and unreal, seemed to gleam with a +whiteness almost phosphorescent. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you feel well?” she asked, in indefinable +repulsion. +</p> + +<p> +“I hadn’t thought about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But don’t you know without thinking about it?” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her, his eyes dark and swift, and he saw her revulsion. He did +not answer her question. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you know whether you are unwell or not, without thinking +about it?” she persisted. +</p> + +<p> +“Not always,” he said coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“But don’t you think that’s very wicked?” +</p> + +<p> +“Wicked?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. I think it’s <i>criminal</i> to have so little connection with +your own body that you don’t even know when you are ill.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her darkly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you stay in bed when you are seedy? You look +perfectly ghastly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Offensively so?” he asked ironically. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, quite offensive. Quite repelling.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!! Well that’s unfortunate.” +</p> + +<p> +“And it’s raining, and it’s a horrible night. Really, you +shouldn’t be forgiven for treating your body like it—you <i>ought</i> +to suffer, a man who takes as little notice of his body as that.” +</p> + +<p> +“—takes as little notice of his body as that,” he echoed +mechanically. +</p> + +<p> +This cut her short, and there was silence. +</p> + +<p> +The others came in from church, and the two had the girls to face, then the +mother and Gudrun, and then the father and the boy. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-evening,” said Brangwen, faintly surprised. “Came to +see me, did you?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Birkin, “not about anything, in particular, +that is. The day was dismal, and I thought you wouldn’t mind if I called +in.” +</p> + +<p> +“It <i>has</i> been a depressing day,” said Mrs Brangwen +sympathetically. At that moment the voices of the children were heard calling +from upstairs: “Mother! Mother!” She lifted her face and answered +mildly into the distance: “I shall come up to you in a minute, +Doysie.” Then to Birkin: “There is nothing fresh at Shortlands, I +suppose? Ah,” she sighed, “no, poor things, I should think +not.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve been over there today, I suppose?” asked the +father. +</p> + +<p> +“Gerald came round to tea with me, and I walked back with him. The +house is overexcited and unwholesome, I thought.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should think they were people who hadn’t much +restraint,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Or too much,” Birkin answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, I’m sure,” said Gudrun, almost vindictively, +“one or the other.” +</p> + +<p> +“They all feel they ought to behave in some unnatural fashion,” +said Birkin. “When people are in grief, they would do better to cover +their faces and keep in retirement, as in the old days.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly!” cried Gudrun, flushed and inflammable. “What +can be worse than this public grief—what is more horrible, more false! If +<i>grief</i> is not private, and hidden, what is?” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly,” he said. “I felt ashamed when I was there and +they were all going about in a lugubrious false way, feeling they must not be +natural or ordinary.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—” said Mrs Brangwen, offended at this criticism, +“it isn’t so easy to bear a trouble like that.” +</p> + +<p> +And she went upstairs to the children. +</p> + +<p> +He remained only a few minutes longer, then took his leave. When he was gone +Ursula felt such a poignant hatred of him, that all her brain seemed turned into +a sharp crystal of fine hatred. Her whole nature seemed sharpened and +intensified into a pure dart of hate. She could not imagine what it was. It +merely took hold of her, the most poignant and ultimate hatred, pure and clear +and beyond thought. She could not think of it at all, she was translated beyond +herself. It was like a possession. She felt she was possessed. And for several +days she went about possessed by this exquisite force of hatred against him. It +surpassed anything she had ever known before, it seemed to throw her out of the +world into some terrible region where nothing of her old life held good. She was +quite lost and dazed, really dead to her own life. +</p> + +<p> +It was so completely incomprehensible and irrational. She did not know <i>why</i> +she hated him, her hate was quite abstract. She had only realised with a shock +that stunned her, that she was overcome by this pure transportation. He was the +enemy, fine as a diamond, and as hard and jewel-like, the quintessence of all +that was inimical. +</p> + +<p> +She thought of his face, white and purely wrought, and of his eyes that had +such a dark, constant will of assertion, and she touched her own forehead, to +feel if she were mad, she was so transfigured in white flame of essential hate. +</p> + +<p> +It was not temporal, her hatred, she did not hate him for this or for that; +she did not want to do anything to him, to have any connection with him. Her +relation was ultimate and utterly beyond words, the hate was so pure and +gemlike. It was as if he were a beam of essential enmity, a beam of light that +did not only destroy her, but denied her altogether, revoked her whole world. +She saw him as a clear stroke of uttermost contradiction, a strange gem-like +being whose existence defined her own non-existence. When she heard he was ill +again, her hatred only intensified itself a few degrees, if that were possible. +It stunned her and annihilated her, but she could not escape it. She could not +escape this transfiguration of hatred that had come upon her. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.<br/> +MAN TO MAN</h2> + +<p> +He lay sick and unmoved, in pure opposition to everything. He knew how near +to breaking was the vessel that held his life. He knew also how strong and +durable it was. And he did not care. Better a thousand times take one’s +chance with death, than accept a life one did not want. But best of all to +persist and persist and persist for ever, till one were satisfied in life. +</p> + +<p> +He knew that Ursula was referred back to him. He knew his life rested with +her. But he would rather not live than accept the love she proffered. The old +way of love seemed a dreadful bondage, a sort of conscription. What it was in +him he did not know, but the thought of love, marriage, and children, and a life +lived together, in the horrible privacy of domestic and connubial satisfaction, +was repulsive. He wanted something clearer, more open, cooler, as it were. The +hot narrow intimacy between man and wife was abhorrent. The way they shut their +doors, these married people, and shut themselves in to their own exclusive +alliance with each other, even in love, disgusted him. It was a whole community +of mistrustful couples insulated in private houses or private rooms, always in +couples, and no further life, no further immediate, no disinterested +relationship admitted: a kaleidoscope of couples, disjoined, separatist, +meaningless entities of married couples. True, he hated promiscuity even worse +than marriage, and a liaison was only another kind of coupling, reactionary from +the legal marriage. Reaction was a greater bore than action. +</p> + +<p> +On the whole, he hated sex, it was such a limitation. It was sex that turned +a man into a broken half of a couple, the woman into the other broken half. And +he wanted to be single in himself, the woman single in herself. He wanted sex to +revert to the level of the other appetites, to be regarded as a functional +process, not as a fulfilment. He believed in sex marriage. But beyond this, he +wanted a further conjunction, where man had being and woman had being, two pure +beings, each constituting the freedom of the other, balancing each other like +two poles of one force, like two angels, or two demons. +</p> + +<p> +He wanted so much to be free, not under the compulsion of any need for +unification, or tortured by unsatisfied desire. Desire and aspiration should +find their object without all this torture, as now, in a world of plenty of +water, simple thirst is inconsiderable, satisfied almost unconsciously. And he +wanted to be with Ursula as free as with himself, single and clear and cool, yet +balanced, polarised with her. The merging, the clutching, the mingling of love +was become madly abhorrent to him. +</p> + +<p> +But it seemed to him, woman was always so horrible and clutching, she had +such a lust for possession, a greed of self-importance in love. She wanted to +have, to own, to control, to be dominant. Everything must be referred back to +her, to Woman, the Great Mother of everything, out of whom proceeded everything +and to whom everything must finally be rendered up. +</p> + +<p> +It filled him with almost insane fury, this calm assumption of the Magna +Mater, that all was hers, because she had borne it. Man was hers because she had +borne him. A Mater Dolorosa, she had borne him, a Magna Mater, she now claimed +him again, soul and body, sex, meaning, and all. He had a horror of the Magna +Mater, she was detestable. +</p> + +<p> +She was on a very high horse again, was woman, the Great Mother. Did he not +know it in Hermione. Hermione, the humble, the subservient, what was she all the +while but the Mater Dolorosa, in her subservience, claiming with horrible, +insidious arrogance and female tyranny, her own again, claiming back the man she +had borne in suffering. By her very suffering and humility she bound her son +with chains, she held him her everlasting prisoner. +</p> + +<p> +And Ursula, Ursula was the same—or the inverse. She too was the awful, +arrogant queen of life, as if she were a queen bee on whom all the rest +depended. He saw the yellow flare in her eyes, he knew the unthinkable +overweening assumption of primacy in her. She was unconscious of it herself. She +was only too ready to knock her head on the ground before a man. But this was +only when she was so certain of her man, that she could worship him as a woman +worships her own infant, with a worship of perfect possession. +</p> + +<p> +It was intolerable, this possession at the hands of woman. Always a man must +be considered as the broken off fragment of a woman, and the sex was the still +aching scar of the laceration. Man must be added on to a woman, before he had +any real place or wholeness. +</p> + +<p> +And why? Why should we consider ourselves, men and women, as broken +fragments of one whole? It is not true. We are not broken fragments of one +whole. Rather we are the singling away into purity and clear being, of things +that were mixed. Rather the sex is that which remains in us of the mixed, the +unresolved. And passion is the further separating of this mixture, that which is +manly being taken into the being of the man, that which is womanly passing to +the woman, till the two are clear and whole as angels, the admixture of sex in +the highest sense surpassed, leaving two single beings constellated together +like two stars. +</p> + +<p> +In the old age, before sex was, we were mixed, each one a mixture. The +process of singling into individuality resulted into the great polarisation of +sex. The womanly drew to one side, the manly to the other. But the separation +was imperfect even them. And so our world-cycle passes. There is now to come the +new day, when we are beings each of us, fulfilled in difference. The man is pure +man, the woman pure woman, they are perfectly polarised. But there is no longer +any of the horrible merging, mingling self-abnegation of love. There is only the +pure duality of polarisation, each one free from any contamination of the other. +In each, the individual is primal, sex is subordinate, but perfectly polarised. +Each has a single, separate being, with its own laws. The man has his pure +freedom, the woman hers. Each acknowledges the perfection of the polarised +sex-circuit. Each admits the different nature in the other. +</p> + +<p> +So Birkin meditated whilst he was ill. He liked sometimes to be ill enough +to take to his bed. For then he got better very quickly, and things came to him +clear and sure. +</p> + +<p> +Whilst he was laid up, Gerald came to see him. The two men had a deep, +uneasy feeling for each other. Gerald’s eyes were quick and restless, his +whole manner tense and impatient, he seemed strung up to some activity. +According to conventionality, he wore black clothes, he looked formal, handsome +and <i>comme il faut</i>. His hair was fair almost to whiteness, sharp like splinters +of light, his face was keen and ruddy, his body seemed full of northern energy. +Gerald really loved Birkin, though he never quite believed in him. Birkin was +too unreal;—clever, whimsical, wonderful, but not practical enough. Gerald +felt that his own understanding was much sounder and safer. Birkin was +delightful, a wonderful spirit, but after all, not to be taken seriously, not +quite to be counted as a man among men. +</p> + +<p> +“Why are you laid up again?” he asked kindly, taking the sick +man’s hand. It was always Gerald who was protective, offering the warm +shelter of his physical strength. +</p> + +<p> +“For my sins, I suppose,” Birkin said, smiling a little +ironically. +</p> + +<p> +“For your sins? Yes, probably that is so. You should sin less, and +keep better in health?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better teach me.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at Gerald with ironic eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“How are things with you?” asked Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“With me?” Gerald looked at Birkin, saw he was serious, and a +warm light came into his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know that they’re any different. I don’t +see how they could be. There’s nothing to change.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you are conducting the business as successfully as ever, +and ignoring the demand of the soul.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it,” said Gerald. “At least as far as the +business is concerned. I couldn’t say about the soul, I’am +sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Surely you don’t expect me to?” laughed Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“No. How are the rest of your affairs progressing, apart from the +business?” +</p> + +<p> +“The rest of my affairs? What are those? I couldn’t say; I +don’t know what you refer to.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you do,” said Birkin. “Are you gloomy or cheerful? +And what about Gudrun Brangwen?” +</p> + +<p> +“What about her?” A confused look came over Gerald. +“Well,” he added, “I don’t know. I can only tell you she +gave me a hit over the face last time I saw her.” +</p> + +<p> +“A hit over the face! What for?” +</p> + +<p> +“That I couldn’t tell you, either.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really! But when?” +</p> + +<p> +“The night of the party—when Diana was drowned. She was driving +the cattle up the hill, and I went after her—you remember.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I remember. But what made her do that? You didn’t +definitely ask her for it, I suppose?” +</p> + +<p> +“I? No, not that I know of. I merely said to her, that it was +dangerous to drive those Highland bullocks—as it <i>is</i>. She turned in +such a way, and said—‘I suppose you think I’m afraid of you and +your cattle, don’t you?’ So I asked her ‘why,’ and for +answer she flung me a back-hander across the face.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin laughed quickly, as if it pleased him. Gerald looked at him, +wondering, and began to laugh as well, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t laugh at the time, I assure you. I was never so taken +aback in my life.” +</p> + +<p> +“And weren’t you furious?” +</p> + +<p> +“Furious? I should think I was. I’d have murdered her for two +pins.” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” ejaculated Birkin. “Poor Gudrun, +wouldn’t she suffer afterwards for having given herself away!” He +was hugely delighted. +</p> + +<p> +“Would she suffer?” asked Gerald, also amused now. +</p> + +<p> +Both men smiled in malice and amusement. +</p> + +<p> +“Badly, I should think; seeing how self-conscious she is.” +</p> + +<p> +“She is self-conscious, is she? Then what made her do it? For I +certainly think it was quite uncalled-for, and quite unjustified.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose it was a sudden impulse.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but how do you account for her having such an impulse? I’d +done her no harm.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“The Amazon suddenly came up in her, I suppose,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” replied Gerald, “I’d rather it had been the +Orinoco.” +</p> + +<p> +They both laughed at the poor joke. Gerald was thinking how Gudrun had said +she would strike the last blow too. But some reserve made him keep this back +from Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“And you resent it?” Birkin asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t resent it. I don’t care a tinker’s curse +about it.” He was silent a moment, then he added, laughing. “No, +I’ll see it through, that’s all. She seemed sorry afterwards.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did she? You’ve not met since that night?” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald’s face clouded. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “We’ve been—you can imagine how +it’s been, since the accident.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Is it calming down?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. It’s a shock, of course. But I don’t +believe mother minds. I really don’t believe she takes any notice. And +what’s so funny, she used to be all for the children—nothing +mattered, nothing whatever mattered but the children. And now, she doesn’t +take any more notice than if it was one of the servants.” +</p> + +<p> +“No? Did it upset <i>you</i> very much?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a shock. But I don’t feel it very much, really. I +don’t feel any different. We’ve all got to die, and it doesn’t +seem to make any great difference, anyhow, whether you die or not. I can’t +feel any <i>grief</i>, you know. It leaves me cold. I can’t quite account +for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t care if you die or not?” asked Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked at him with eyes blue as the blue-fibred steel of a weapon. He +felt awkward, but indifferent. As a matter of fact, he did care terribly, with a +great fear. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” he said, “I don’t want to die, why should I? +But I never trouble. The question doesn’t seem to be on the carpet for me +at all. It doesn’t interest me, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Timor mortis conturbat me</i>,” quoted Birkin, +adding—“No, death doesn’t really seem the point any more. It +curiously doesn’t concern one. It’s like an ordinary +tomorrow.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked closely at his friend. The eyes of the two men met, and an +unspoken understanding was exchanged. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald narrowed his eyes, his face was cool and unscrupulous as he looked at +Birkin, impersonally, with a vision that ended in a point in space, strangely +keen-eyed and yet blind. +</p> + +<p> +“If death isn’t the point,” he said, in a strangely +abstract, cold, fine voice—“what is?” He sounded as if he had +been found out. +</p> + +<p> +“What is?” re-echoed Birkin. And there was a mocking silence. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s long way to go, after the point of intrinsic death, +before we disappear,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“There is,” said Gerald. “But what sort of way?” He +seemed to press the other man for knowledge which he himself knew far better +than Birkin did. +</p> + +<p> +“Right down the slopes of degeneration—mystic, universal +degeneration. There are many stages of pure degradation to go through: agelong. +We live on long after our death, and progressively, in progressive +devolution.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald listened with a faint, fine smile on his face, all the time, as if, +somewhere, he knew so much better than Birkin, all about this: as if his own +knowledge were direct and personal, whereas Birkin’s was a matter of +observation and inference, not quite hitting the nail on the head:—though +aiming near enough at it. But he was not going to give himself away. If Birkin +could get at the secrets, let him. Gerald would never help him. Gerald would be +a dark horse to the end. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” he said, with a startling change of conversation, +“it is father who really feels it. It will finish him. For him the world +collapses. All his care now is for Winnie—he must save Winnie. He says she +ought to be sent away to school, but she won’t hear of it, and he’ll +never do it. Of course she <i>is</i> in rather a queer way. We’re all of us +curiously bad at living. We can do things—but we can’t get on with +life at all. It’s curious—a family failing.” +</p> + +<p> +“She oughtn’t to be sent away to school,” said Birkin, who +was considering a new proposition. +</p> + +<p> +“She oughtn’t. Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s a queer child—a special child, more special even +than you. And in my opinion special children should never be sent away to +school. Only moderately ordinary children should be sent to school—so it +seems to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m inclined to think just the opposite. I think it would +probably make her more normal if she went away and mixed with other +children.” +</p> + +<p> +“She wouldn’t mix, you see. <i>You</i> never really mixed, did you? +And she wouldn’t be willing even to pretend to. She’s proud, and +solitary, and naturally apart. If she has a single nature, why do you want to +make her gregarious?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t want to make her anything. But I think school would +be good for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Was it good for you?” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald’s eyes narrowed uglily. School had been torture to him. Yet he +had not questioned whether one should go through this torture. He seemed to +believe in education through subjection and torment. +</p> + +<p> +“I hated it at the time, but I can see it was necessary,” he +said. “It brought me into line a bit—and you can’t live unless +you do come into line somewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Birkin, “I begin to think that you +can’t live unless you keep entirely out of the line. It’s no good +trying to toe the line, when your one impulse is to smash up the line. Winnie is +a special nature, and for special natures you must give a special world.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but where’s your special world?” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Make it. Instead of chopping yourself down to fit the world, chop the +world down to fit yourself. As a matter of fact, two exceptional people make +another world. You and I, we make another, separate world. You don’t +<i>want</i> a world same as your brothers-in-law. It’s just the special +quality you value. Do you <i>want</i> to be normal or ordinary! It’s a lie. +You want to be free and extraordinary, in an extraordinary world of liberty.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked at Birkin with subtle eyes of knowledge. But he would never +openly admit what he felt. He knew more than Birkin, in one direction—much +more. And this gave him his gentle love for the other man, as if Birkin were in +some way young, innocent, child-like: so amazingly clever, but incurably +innocent. +</p> + +<p> +“Yet you are so banal as to consider me chiefly a freak,” said +Birkin pointedly. +</p> + +<p> +“A freak!” exclaimed Gerald, startled. And his face opened +suddenly, as if lighted with simplicity, as when a flower opens out of the +cunning bud. “No—I never consider you a freak.” And he watched +the other man with strange eyes, that Birkin could not understand. “I +feel,” Gerald continued, “that there is always an element of +uncertainty about you—perhaps you are uncertain about yourself. But +I’m never sure of you. You can go away and change as easily as if you had +no soul.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at Birkin with penetrating eyes. Birkin was amazed. He thought he +had all the soul in the world. He stared in amazement. And Gerald, watching, saw +the amazing attractive goodliness of his eyes, a young, spontaneous goodness +that attracted the other man infinitely, yet filled him with bitter chagrin, +because he mistrusted it so much. He knew Birkin could do without +him—could forget, and not suffer. This was always present in +Gerald’s consciousness, filling him with bitter unbelief: this +consciousness of the young, animal-like spontaneity of detachment. It seemed +almost like hypocrisy and lying, sometimes, oh, often, on Birkin’s part, +to talk so deeply and importantly. +</p> + +<p> +Quite other things were going through Birkin’s mind. Suddenly he saw +himself confronted with another problem—the problem of love and eternal +conjunction between two men. Of course this was necessary—it had been a +necessity inside himself all his life—to love a man purely and fully. Of +course he had been loving Gerald all along, and all along denying it. +</p> + +<p> +He lay in the bed and wondered, whilst his friend sat beside him, lost in +brooding. Each man was gone in his own thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +“You know how the old German knights used to swear a +<i>Blutbruderschaft</i>,” he said to Gerald, with quite a new happy activity +in his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Make a little wound in their arms, and rub each other’s blood +into the cut?” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—and swear to be true to each other, of one blood, all their +lives. That is what we ought to do. No wounds, that is obsolete. But we ought to +swear to love each other, you and I, implicitly, and perfectly, finally, without +any possibility of going back on it.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at Gerald with clear, happy eyes of discovery. Gerald looked down +at him, attracted, so deeply bondaged in fascinated attraction, that he was +mistrustful, resenting the bondage, hating the attraction. +</p> + +<p> +“We will swear to each other, one day, shall we?” pleaded +Birkin. “We will swear to stand by each other—be true to each +other—ultimately—infallibly—given to each other, +organically—without possibility of taking back.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin sought hard to express himself. But Gerald hardly listened. His face +shone with a certain luminous pleasure. He was pleased. But he kept his reserve. +He held himself back. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we swear to each other, one day?” said Birkin, putting +out his hand towards Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald just touched the extended fine, living hand, as if withheld and +afraid. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll leave it till I understand it better,” he said, in +a voice of excuse. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin watched him. A little sharp disappointment, perhaps a touch of +contempt came into his heart. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. “You must tell me what you think, later. +You know what I mean? Not sloppy emotionalism. An impersonal union that leaves +one free.” +</p> + +<p> +They lapsed both into silence. Birkin was looking at Gerald all the time. He +seemed now to see, not the physical, animal man, which he usually saw in Gerald, +and which usually he liked so much, but the man himself, complete, and as if +fated, doomed, limited. This strange sense of fatality in Gerald, as if he were +limited to one form of existence, one knowledge, one activity, a sort of fatal +halfness, which to himself seemed wholeness, always overcame Birkin after their +moments of passionate approach, and filled him with a sort of contempt, or +boredom. It was the insistence on the limitation which so bored Birkin in +Gerald. Gerald could never fly away from himself, in real indifferent gaiety. He +had a clog, a sort of monomania. +</p> + +<p> +There was silence for a time. Then Birkin said, in a lighter tone, letting +the stress of the contact pass: +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you get a good governess for Winifred?—somebody +exceptional?” +</p> + +<p> +“Hermione Roddice suggested we should ask Gudrun to teach her to draw +and to model in clay. You know Winnie is astonishingly clever with that +plasticine stuff. Hermione declares she is an artist.” Gerald spoke in the +usual animated, chatty manner, as if nothing unusual had passed. But +Birkin’s manner was full of reminder. +</p> + +<p> +“Really! I didn’t know that. Oh well then, if Gudrun <i>would</i> teach +her, it would be perfect—couldn’t be anything better—if +Winifred is an artist. Because Gudrun somewhere is one. And every true artist is +the salvation of every other.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought they got on so badly, as a rule.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps. But only artists produce for each other the world that is +fit to live in. If you can arrange <i>that</i> for Winifred, it is perfect.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you think she wouldn’t come?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. Gudrun is rather self-opinionated. She +won’t go cheap anywhere. Or if she does, she’ll pretty soon take +herself back. So whether she would condescend to do private teaching, +particularly here, in Beldover, I don’t know. But it would be just the +thing. Winifred has got a special nature. And if you can put into her way the +means of being self-sufficient, that is the best thing possible. She’ll +never get on with the ordinary life. You find it difficult enough yourself, and +she is several skins thinner than you are. It is awful to think what her life +will be like unless she does find a means of expression, some way of fulfilment. +You can see what mere leaving it to fate brings. You can see how much marriage +is to be trusted to—look at your own mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think mother is abnormal?” +</p> + +<p> +“No! I think she only wanted something more, or other than the common +run of life. And not getting it, she has gone wrong perhaps.” +</p> + +<p> +“After producing a brood of wrong children,” said Gerald +gloomily. +</p> + +<p> +“No more wrong than any of the rest of us,” Birkin replied. +“The most normal people have the worst subterranean selves, take them one +by one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sometimes I think it is a curse to be alive,” said Gerald with +sudden impotent anger. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Birkin, “why not! Let it be a curse sometimes +to be alive—at other times it is anything but a curse. You’ve got +plenty of zest in it really.” +</p> + +<p> +“Less than you’d think,” said Gerald, revealing a strange +poverty in his look at the other man. +</p> + +<p> +There was silence, each thinking his own thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see what she has to distinguish between teaching at the +Grammar School, and coming to teach Win,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“The difference between a public servant and a private one. The only +nobleman today, king and only aristocrat, is the public, the public. You are +quite willing to serve the public—but to be a private tutor—” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to serve either—” +</p> + +<p> +“No! And Gudrun will probably feel the same.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald thought for a few minutes. Then he said: +</p> + +<p> +“At all events, father won’t make her feel like a private +servant. He will be fussy and greatful enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“So he ought. And so ought all of you. Do you think you can hire a +woman like Gudrun Brangwen with money? She is your equal like +anything—probably your superior.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is she?” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, and if you haven’t the guts to know it, I hope +she’ll leave you to your own devices.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevertheless,” said Gerald, “if she is my equal, I wish +she weren’t a teacher, because I don’t think teachers as a rule are +my equal.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nor do I, damn them. But am I a teacher because I teach, or a parson +because I preach?” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald laughed. He was always uneasy on this score. He did not <i>want</i> to claim +social superiority, yet he <i>would</i> not claim intrinsic personal superiority, +because he would never base his standard of values on pure being. So he wobbled +upon a tacit assumption of social standing. No, Birkin wanted him to accept the +fact of intrinsic difference between human beings, which he did not intend to +accept. It was against his social honour, his principle. He rose to go. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been neglecting my business all this while,” he said +smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“I ought to have reminded you before,” Birkin replied, laughing +and mocking. +</p> + +<p> +“I knew you’d say something like that,” laughed Gerald, +rather uneasily. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Rupert. It wouldn’t do for us all to be like you +are—we should soon be in the cart. When I am above the world, I shall +ignore all businesses.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, we’re not in the cart now,” said Birkin, +satirically. +</p> + +<p> +“Not as much as you make out. At any rate, we have enough to eat and +drink—” +</p> + +<p> +“And be satisfied,” added Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald came near the bed and stood looking down at Birkin whose throat was +exposed, whose tossed hair fell attractively on the warm brow, above the eyes +that were so unchallenged and still in the satirical face. Gerald, full-limbed +and turgid with energy, stood unwilling to go, he was held by the presence of +the other man. He had not the power to go away. +</p> + +<p> +“So,” said Birkin. “Good-bye.” And he reached out +his hand from under the bed-clothes, smiling with a glimmering look. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye,” said Gerald, taking the warm hand of his friend in a +firm grasp. “I shall come again. I miss you down at the mill.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll be there in a few days,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +The eyes of the two men met again. Gerald’s, that were keen as a +hawk’s, were suffused now with warm light and with unadmitted love, Birkin +looked back as out of a darkness, unsounded and unknown, yet with a kind of +warmth, that seemed to flow over Gerald’s brain like a fertile sleep. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye then. There’s nothing I can do for you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing, thanks.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin watched the black-clothed form of the other man move out of the door, +the bright head was gone, he turned over to sleep. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.<br/> +THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE</h2> + +<p> +In Beldover, there was both for Ursula and for Gudrun an interval. It seemed +to Ursula as if Birkin had gone out of her for the time, he had lost his +significance, he scarcely mattered in her world. She had her own friends, her +own activities, her own life. She turned back to the old ways with zest, away +from him. +</p> + +<p> +And Gudrun, after feeling every moment in all her veins conscious of Gerald +Crich, connected even physically with him, was now almost indifferent to the +thought of him. She was nursing new schemes for going away and trying a new form +of life. All the time, there was something in her urging her to avoid the final +establishing of a relationship with Gerald. She felt it would be wiser and +better to have no more than a casual acquaintance with him. +</p> + +<p> +She had a scheme for going to St Petersburg, where she had a friend who was +a sculptor like herself, and who lived with a wealthy Russian whose hobby was +jewel-making. The emotional, rather rootless life of the Russians appealed to +her. She did not want to go to Paris. Paris was dry, and essentially boring. She +would like to go to Rome, Munich, Vienna, or to St Petersburg or Moscow. She had +a friend in St Petersburg and a friend in Munich. To each of these she wrote, +asking about rooms. +</p> + +<p> +She had a certain amount of money. She had come home partly to save, and now +she had sold several pieces of work, she had been praised in various shows. She +knew she could become quite the “go’ if she went to London. But she +knew London, she wanted something else. She had seventy pounds, of which nobody +knew anything. She would move soon, as soon as she heard from her friends. Her +nature, in spite of her apparent placidity and calm, was profoundly restless. +</p> + +<p> +The sisters happened to call in a cottage in Willey Green to buy honey. Mrs +Kirk, a stout, pale, sharp-nosed woman, sly, honied, with something shrewish and +cat-like beneath, asked the girls into her too cosy, too tidy kitchen. There was +a cat-like comfort and cleanliness everywhere. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Miss Brangwen,” she said, in her slightly whining, +insinuating voice, “and how do you like being back in the old place, +then?” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun, whom she addressed, hated her at once. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care for it,” she replied abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t? Ay, well, I suppose you found a difference from +London. You like life, and big, grand places. Some of us has to be content with +Willey Green and Beldover. And what do you think of our Grammar School, as +there’s so much talk about?” +</p> + +<p> +“What do I think of it?” Gudrun looked round at her slowly. +“Do you mean, do I think it’s a good school?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. What is your opinion of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>do</i> think it’s a good school.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was very cold and repelling. She knew the common people hated the +school. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, you do, then! I’ve heard so much, one way and the other. +It’s nice to know what those that’s in it feel. But opinions vary, +don’t they? Mr Crich up at Highclose is all for it. Ay, poor man, +I’m afraid he’s not long for this world. He’s very +poorly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is he worse?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, yes—since they lost Miss Diana. He’s gone off to a +shadow. Poor man, he’s had a world of trouble.” +</p> + +<p> +“Has he?” asked Gudrun, faintly ironic. +</p> + +<p> +“He has, a world of trouble. And as nice and kind a gentleman as ever +you could wish to meet. His children don’t take after him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose they take after their mother?” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“In many ways.” Mrs Krik lowered her voice a little. “She +was a proud haughty lady when she came into these parts—my word, she was +that! She mustn’t be looked at, and it was worth your life to speak to +her.” The woman made a dry, sly face. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you know her when she was first married?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I knew her. I nursed three of her children. And proper little +terrors they were, little fiends—that Gerald was a demon if ever there was +one, a proper demon, ay, at six months old.” A curious malicious, sly tone +came into the woman’s voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Really,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“That wilful, masterful—he’d mastered one nurse at six +months. Kick, and scream, and struggle like a demon. Many’s the time +I’ve pinched his little bottom for him, when he was a child in arms. Ay, +and he’d have been better if he’d had it pinched oftener. But she +wouldn’t have them corrected—no-o, wouldn’t hear of it. I can +remember the rows she had with Mr Crich, my word. When he’d got worked up, +properly worked up till he could stand no more, he’d lock the study door +and whip them. But she paced up and down all the while like a tiger outside, +like a tiger, with very murder in her face. She had a face that could <i>look</i> +death. And when the door was opened, she’d go in with her hands +lifted—‘What have you been doing to <i>my</i> children, you coward.’ +She was like one out of her mind. I believe he was frightened of her; he had to be +driven mad before he’d lift a finger. Didn’t the servants have a life +of it! And didn’t we used to be thankful when one of them caught it. They +were the torment of your life.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really!” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“In every possible way. If you wouldn’t let them smash their +pots on the table, if you wouldn’t let them drag the kitten about with a +string round its neck, if you wouldn’t give them whatever they asked for, +every mortal thing—then there was a shine on, and their mother coming in +asking—‘What’s the matter with him? What have you done to him? What +is it, Darling?’ And then she’d turn on you as if she’d trample you +under her feet. But she didn’t trample on me. I was the only one that +could do anything with her demons—for she wasn’t going to be +bothered with them herself. No, <i>she</i> took no trouble for them. But they must +just have their way, they mustn’t be spoken to. And Master Gerald was the +beauty. I left when he was a year and a half, I could stand no more. But I +pinched his little bottom for him when he was in arms, I did, when there was no +holding him, and I’m not sorry I did—” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun went away in fury and loathing. The phrase, “I pinched his +little bottom for him,” sent her into a white, stony fury. She could not +bear it, she wanted to have the woman taken out at once and strangled. And yet +there the phrase was lodged in her mind for ever, beyond escape. She felt, one +day, she would <i>have</i> to tell him, to see how he took it. And she loathed +herself for the thought. +</p> + +<p> +But at Shortlands the life-long struggle was coming to a close. The father +was ill and was going to die. He had bad internal pains, which took away all his +attentive life, and left him with only a vestige of his consciousness. More and +more a silence came over him, he was less and less acutely aware of his +surroundings. The pain seemed to absorb his activity. He knew it was there, he +knew it would come again. It was like something lurking in the darkness within +him. And he had not the power, or the will, to seek it out and to know it. There +it remained in the darkness, the great pain, tearing him at times, and then +being silent. And when it tore him he crouched in silent subjection under it, +and when it left him alone again, he refused to know of it. It was within the +darkness, let it remain unknown. So he never admitted it, except in a secret +corner of himself, where all his never-revealed fears and secrets were +accumulated. For the rest, he had a pain, it went away, it made no difference. +It even stimulated him, excited him. +</p> + +<p> +But it gradually absorbed his life. Gradually it drew away all his +potentiality, it bled him into the dark, it weaned him of life and drew him away +into the darkness. And in this twilight of his life little remained visible to +him. The business, his work, that was gone entirely. His public interests had +disappeared as if they had never been. Even his family had become extraneous to +him, he could only remember, in some slight non-essential part of himself, that +such and such were his children. But it was historical fact, not vital to him. +He had to make an effort to know their relation to him. Even his wife barely +existed. She indeed was like the darkness, like the pain within him. By some +strange association, the darkness that contained the pain and the darkness that +contained his wife were identical. All his thoughts and understandings became +blurred and fused, and now his wife and the consuming pain were the same dark +secret power against him, that he never faced. He never drove the dread out of +its lair within him. He only knew that there was a dark place, and something +inhabiting this darkness which issued from time to time and rent him. But he +dared not penetrate and drive the beast into the open. He had rather ignore its +existence. Only, in his vague way, the dread was his wife, the destroyer, and it +was the pain, the destruction, a darkness which was one and both. +</p> + +<p> +He very rarely saw his wife. She kept her room. Only occasionally she came +forth, with her head stretched forward, and in her low, possessed voice, she +asked him how he was. And he answered her, in the habit of more than thirty +years: “Well, I don’t think I’m any the worse, dear.” +But he was frightened of her, underneath this safeguard of habit, frightened +almost to the verge of death. +</p> + +<p> +But all his life, he had been so constant to his lights, he had never broken +down. He would die even now without breaking down, without knowing what his +feelings were, towards her. All his life, he had said: “Poor Christiana, +she has such a strong temper.” With unbroken will, he had stood by this +position with regard to her, he had substituted pity for all his hostility, pity +had been his shield and his safeguard, and his infallible weapon. And still, in +his consciousness, he was sorry for her, her nature was so violent and so +impatient. +</p> + +<p> +But now his pity, with his life, was wearing thin, and the dread almost +amounting to horror, was rising into being. But before the armour of his pity +really broke, he would die, as an insect when its shell is cracked. This was his +final resource. Others would live on, and know the living death, the ensuing +process of hopeless chaos. He would not. He denied death its victory. +</p> + +<p> +He had been so constant to his lights, so constant to charity, and to his +love for his neighbour. Perhaps he had loved his neighbour even better than +himself—which is going one further than the commandment. Always, this +flame had burned in his heart, sustaining him through everything, the welfare of +the people. He was a large employer of labour, he was a great mine-owner. And he +had never lost this from his heart, that in Christ he was one with his workmen. +Nay, he had felt inferior to them, as if they through poverty and labour were +nearer to God than he. He had always the unacknowledged belief, that it was his +workmen, the miners, who held in their hands the means of salvation. To move +nearer to God, he must move towards his miners, his life must gravitate towards +theirs. They were, unconsciously, his idol, his God made manifest. In them he +worshipped the highest, the great, sympathetic, mindless Godhead of humanity. +</p> + +<p> +And all the while, his wife had opposed him like one of the great demons of +hell. Strange, like a bird of prey, with the fascinating beauty and abstraction +of a hawk, she had beat against the bars of his philanthropy, and like a hawk in +a cage, she had sunk into silence. By force of circumstance, because all the +world combined to make the cage unbreakable, he had been too strong for her, he +had kept her prisoner. And because she was his prisoner, his passion for her had +always remained keen as death. He had always loved her, loved her with +intensity. Within the cage, she was denied nothing, she was given all licence. +</p> + +<p> +But she had gone almost mad. Of wild and overweening temper, she could not +bear the humiliation of her husband’s soft, half-appealing kindness to +everybody. He was not deceived by the poor. He knew they came and sponged on +him, and whined to him, the worse sort; the majority, luckily for him, were much +too proud to ask for anything, much too independent to come knocking at his +door. But in Beldover, as everywhere else, there were the whining, parasitic, +foul human beings who come crawling after charity, and feeding on the living +body of the public like lice. A kind of fire would go over Christiana +Crich’s brain, as she saw two more pale-faced, creeping women in +objectionable black clothes, cringing lugubriously up the drive to the door. She +wanted to set the dogs on them, “Hi Rip! Hi Ring! Ranger! At ’em +boys, set ’em off.” But Crowther, the butler, with all the rest of +the servants, was Mr Crich’s man. Nevertheless, when her husband was away, +she would come down like a wolf on the crawling supplicants: +</p> + +<p> +“What do you people want? There is nothing for you here. You have no +business on the drive at all. Simpson, drive them away and let no more of them +through the gate.” +</p> + +<p> +The servants had to obey her. And she would stand watching with an eye like +the eagle’s, whilst the groom in clumsy confusion drove the lugubrious +persons down the drive, as if they were rusty fowls, scuttling before him. +</p> + +<p> +But they learned to know, from the lodge-keeper, when Mrs Crich was away, +and they timed their visits. How many times, in the first years, would Crowther +knock softly at the door: “Person to see you, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“What name?” +</p> + +<p> +“Grocock, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do they want?” The question was half impatient, half +gratified. He liked hearing appeals to his charity. +</p> + +<p> +“About a child, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Show them into the library, and tell them they shouldn’t come +after eleven o’clock in the morning.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you get up from dinner?—send them off,” his wife +would say abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I can’t do that. It’s no trouble just to hear what +they have to say.” +</p> + +<p> +“How many more have been here today? Why don’t you establish +open house for them? They would soon oust me and the children.” +</p> + +<p> +“You know dear, it doesn’t hurt me to hear what they have to +say. And if they really are in trouble—well, it is my duty to help them +out of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s your duty to invite all the rats in the world to gnaw at +your bones.” +</p> + +<p> +“Come, Christiana, it isn’t like that. Don’t be +uncharitable.” +</p> + +<p> +But she suddenly swept out of the room, and out to the study. There sat the +meagre charity-seekers, looking as if they were at the doctor’s. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr Crich can’t see you. He can’t see you at this hour. Do +you think he is your property, that you can come whenever you like? You must go +away, there is nothing for you here.” +</p> + +<p> +The poor people rose in confusion. But Mr Crich, pale and black-bearded and +deprecating, came behind her, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I don’t like you coming as late as this. I’ll hear +any of you in the morning part of the day, but I can’t really do with you +after. What’s amiss then, Gittens. How is your Missis?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, she’s sunk very low, Mester Crich, she’s +a’most gone, she is—” +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes, it seemed to Mrs Crich as if her husband were some subtle funeral +bird, feeding on the miseries of the people. It seemed to her he was never +satisfied unless there was some sordid tale being poured out to him, which he +drank in with a sort of mournful, sympathetic satisfaction. He would have no +<i>raison d’être</i> if there were no lugubrious miseries in the world, +as an undertaker would have no meaning if there were no funerals. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs Crich recoiled back upon herself, she recoiled away from this world of +creeping democracy. A band of tight, baleful exclusion fastened round her heart, +her isolation was fierce and hard, her antagonism was passive but terribly pure, +like that of a hawk in a cage. As the years went on, she lost more and more +count of the world, she seemed rapt in some glittering abstraction, almost +purely unconscious. She would wander about the house and about the surrounding +country, staring keenly and seeing nothing. She rarely spoke, she had no +connection with the world. And she did not even think. She was consumed in a +fierce tension of opposition, like the negative pole of a magnet. +</p> + +<p> +And she bore many children. For, as time went on, she never opposed her +husband in word or deed. She took no notice of him, externally. She submitted to +him, let him take what he wanted and do as he wanted with her. She was like a +hawk that sullenly submits to everything. The relation between her and her +husband was wordless and unknown, but it was deep, awful, a relation of utter +inter-destruction. And he, who triumphed in the world, he became more and more +hollow in his vitality, the vitality was bled from within him, as by some +hæmorrhage. She was hulked like a hawk in a cage, but her heart was fierce and +undiminished within her, though her mind was destroyed. +</p> + +<p> +So to the last he would go to her and hold her in his arms sometimes, before +his strength was all gone. The terrible white, destructive light that burned in +her eyes only excited and roused him. Till he was bled to death, and then he +dreaded her more than anything. But he always said to himself, how happy he had +been, how he had loved her with a pure and consuming love ever since he had +known her. And he thought of her as pure, chaste; the white flame which was +known to him alone, the flame of her sex, was a white flower of snow to his +mind. She was a wonderful white snow-flower, which he had desired infinitely. +And now he was dying with all his ideas and interpretations intact. They would +only collapse when the breath left his body. Till then they would be pure truths +for him. Only death would show the perfect completeness of the lie. Till death, +she was his white snow-flower. He had subdued her, and her subjugation was to +him an infinite chastity in her, a virginity which he could never break, and +which dominated him as by a spell. +</p> + +<p> +She had let go the outer world, but within herself she was unbroken and +unimpaired. She only sat in her room like a moping, dishevelled hawk, +motionless, mindless. Her children, for whom she had been so fierce in her +youth, now meant scarcely anything to her. She had lost all that, she was quite +by herself. Only Gerald, the gleaming, had some existence for her. But of late +years, since he had become head of the business, he too was forgotten. Whereas +the father, now he was dying, turned for compassion to Gerald. There had always +been opposition between the two of them. Gerald had feared and despised his +father, and to a great extent had avoided him all through boyhood and young +manhood. And the father had felt very often a real dislike of his eldest son, +which, never wanting to give way to, he had refused to acknowledge. He had +ignored Gerald as much as possible, leaving him alone. +</p> + +<p> +Since, however, Gerald had come home and assumed responsibility in the firm, +and had proved such a wonderful director, the father, tired and weary of all +outside concerns, had put all his trust of these things in his son, implicitly, +leaving everything to him, and assuming a rather touching dependence on the +young enemy. This immediately roused a poignant pity and allegiance in +Gerald’s heart, always shadowed by contempt and by unadmitted enmity. For +Gerald was in reaction against Charity; and yet he was dominated by it, it +assumed supremacy in the inner life, and he could not confute it. So he was +partly subject to that which his father stood for, but he was in reaction +against it. Now he could not save himself. A certain pity and grief and +tenderness for his father overcame him, in spite of the deeper, more sullen +hostility. +</p> + +<p> +The father won shelter from Gerald through compassion. But for love he had +Winifred. She was his youngest child, she was the only one of his children whom +he had ever closely loved. And her he loved with all the great, overweening, +sheltering love of a dying man. He wanted to shelter her infinitely, infinitely, +to wrap her in warmth and love and shelter, perfectly. If he could save her she +should never know one pain, one grief, one hurt. He had been so right all his +life, so constant in his kindness and his goodness. And this was his last +passionate righteousness, his love for the child Winifred. Some things troubled +him yet. The world had passed away from him, as his strength ebbed. There were +no more poor and injured and humble to protect and succour. These were all lost +to him. There were no more sons and daughters to trouble him, and to weigh on +him as an unnatural responsibility. These too had faded out of reality. All these +things had fallen out of his hands, and left him free. +</p> + +<p> +There remained the covert fear and horror of his wife, as she sat mindless +and strange in her room, or as she came forth with slow, prowling step, her head +bent forward. But this he put away. Even his life-long righteousness, however, +would not quite deliver him from the inner horror. Still, he could keep it +sufficiently at bay. It would never break forth openly. Death would come first. +</p> + +<p> +Then there was Winifred! If only he could be sure about her, if only he +could be sure. Since the death of Diana, and the development of his illness, his +craving for surety with regard to Winifred amounted almost to obsession. It was +as if, even dying, he must have some anxiety, some responsibility of love, of +Charity, upon his heart. +</p> + +<p> +She was an odd, sensitive, inflammable child, having her father’s dark +hair and quiet bearing, but being quite detached, momentaneous. She was like a +changeling indeed, as if her feelings did not matter to her, really. She often +seemed to be talking and playing like the gayest and most childish of children, +she was full of the warmest, most delightful affection for a few +things—for her father, and for her animals in particular. But if she heard +that her beloved kitten Leo had been run over by the motor-car she put her head +on one side, and replied, with a faint contraction like resentment on her face: +“Has he?” Then she took no more notice. She only disliked the +servant who would force bad news on her, and wanted her to be sorry. She wished +not to know, and that seemed her chief motive. She avoided her mother, and most +of the members of her family. She <i>loved</i> her Daddy, because he wanted her always +to be happy, and because he seemed to become young again, and irresponsible in +her presence. She liked Gerald, because he was so self-contained. She loved +people who would make life a game for her. She had an amazing instinctive +critical faculty, and was a pure anarchist, a pure aristocrat at once. For she +accepted her equals wherever she found them, and she ignored with blithe +indifference her inferiors, whether they were her brothers and sisters, or +whether they were wealthy guests of the house, or whether they were the common +people or the servants. She was quite single and by herself, deriving from +nobody. It was as if she were cut off from all purpose or continuity, and +existed simply moment by moment. +</p> + +<p> +The father, as by some strange final illusion, felt as if all his fate +depended on his ensuring to Winifred her happiness. She who could never suffer, +because she never formed vital connections, she who could lose the dearest +things of her life and be just the same the next day, the whole memory dropped +out, as if deliberately, she whose will was so strangely and easily free, +anarchistic, almost nihilistic, who like a soulless bird flits on its own will, +without attachment or responsibility beyond the moment, who in her every motion +snapped the threads of serious relationship with blithe, free hands, really +nihilistic, because never troubled, she must be the object of her father’s +final passionate solicitude. +</p> + +<p> +When Mr Crich heard that Gudrun Brangwen might come to help Winifred with +her drawing and modelling he saw a road to salvation for his child. He believed +that Winifred had talent, he had seen Gudrun, he knew that she was an +exceptional person. He could give Winifred into her hands as into the hands of a +right being. Here was a direction and a positive force to be lent to his child, +he need not leave her directionless and defenceless. If he could but graft the +girl on to some tree of utterance before he died, he would have fulfilled his +responsibility. And here it could be done. He did not hesitate to appeal to +Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, as the father drifted more and more out of life, Gerald +experienced more and more a sense of exposure. His father after all had stood +for the living world to him. Whilst his father lived Gerald was not responsible +for the world. But now his father was passing away, Gerald found himself left +exposed and unready before the storm of living, like the mutinous first mate of +a ship that has lost his captain, and who sees only a terrible chaos in front of +him. He did not inherit an established order and a living idea. The whole +unifying idea of mankind seemed to be dying with his father, the centralising +force that had held the whole together seemed to collapse with his father, the +parts were ready to go asunder in terrible disintegration. Gerald was as if left +on board of a ship that was going asunder beneath his feet, he was in charge of +a vessel whose timbers were all coming apart. +</p> + +<p> +He knew that all his life he had been wrenching at the frame of life to +break it apart. And now, with something of the terror of a destructive child, he +saw himself on the point of inheriting his own destruction. And during the last +months, under the influence of death, and of Birkin’s talk, and of +Gudrun’s penetrating being, he had lost entirely that mechanical certainty +that had been his triumph. Sometimes spasms of hatred came over him, against +Birkin and Gudrun and that whole set. He wanted to go back to the dullest +conservatism, to the most stupid of conventional people. He wanted to revert to +the strictest Toryism. But the desire did not last long enough to carry him into +action. +</p> + +<p> +During his childhood and his boyhood he had wanted a sort of savagedom. The +days of Homer were his ideal, when a man was chief of an army of heroes, or +spent his years in wonderful Odyssey. He hated remorselessly the circumstances +of his own life, so much that he never really saw Beldover and the colliery +valley. He turned his face entirely away from the blackened mining region that +stretched away on the right hand of Shortlands, he turned entirely to the +country and the woods beyond Willey Water. It was true that the panting and +rattling of the coal mines could always be heard at Shortlands. But from his +earliest childhood, Gerald had paid no heed to this. He had ignored the whole of +the industrial sea which surged in coal-blackened tides against the grounds of +the house. The world was really a wilderness where one hunted and swam and rode. +He rebelled against all authority. Life was a condition of savage freedom. +</p> + +<p> +Then he had been sent away to school, which was so much death to him. He +refused to go to Oxford, choosing a German university. He had spent a certain +time at Bonn, at Berlin, and at Frankfurt. There, a curiosity had been aroused +in his mind. He wanted to see and to know, in a curious objective fashion, as if +it were an amusement to him. Then he must try war. Then he must travel into the +savage regions that had so attracted him. +</p> + +<p> +The result was, he found humanity very much alike everywhere, and to a mind +like his, curious and cold, the savage was duller, less exciting than the +European. So he took hold of all kinds of sociological ideas, and ideas of +reform. But they never went more than skin-deep, they were never more than a +mental amusement. Their interest lay chiefly in the reaction against the +positive order, the destructive reaction. +</p> + +<p> +He discovered at last a real adventure in the coal-mines. His father asked +him to help in the firm. Gerald had been educated in the science of mining, and +it had never interested him. Now, suddenly, with a sort of exultation, he laid +hold of the world. +</p> + +<p> +There was impressed photographically on his consciousness the great +industry. Suddenly, it was real, he was part of it. Down the valley ran the +colliery railway, linking mine with mine. Down the railway ran the trains, short +trains of heavily laden trucks, long trains of empty wagons, each one bearing in +big white letters the initials: +</p> + +<p> +“C. B. & Co.” +</p> + +<p> +These white letters on all the wagons he had seen since his first childhood, +and it was as if he had never seen them, they were so familiar, and so ignored. +Now at last he saw his own name written on the wall. Now he had a vision of +power. +</p> + +<p> +So many wagons, bearing his initial, running all over the country. He saw +them as he entered London in the train, he saw them at Dover. So far his power +ramified. He looked at Beldover, at Selby, at Whatmore, at Lethley Bank, the +great colliery villages which depended entirely on his mines. They were hideous +and sordid, during his childhood they had been sores in his consciousness. And +now he saw them with pride. Four raw new towns, and many ugly industrial hamlets +were crowded under his dependence. He saw the stream of miners flowing along the +causeways from the mines at the end of the afternoon, thousands of blackened, +slightly distorted human beings with red mouths, all moving subjugate to his +will. He pushed slowly in his motor-car through the little market-top on Friday +nights in Beldover, through a solid mass of human beings that were making their +purchases and doing their weekly spending. They were all subordinate to him. +They were ugly and uncouth, but they were his instruments. He was the God of the +machine. They made way for his motor-car automatically, slowly. +</p> + +<p> +He did not care whether they made way with alacrity, or grudgingly. He did +not care what they thought of him. His vision had suddenly crystallised. +Suddenly he had conceived the pure instrumentality of mankind. There had been so +much humanitarianism, so much talk of sufferings and feelings. It was +ridiculous. The sufferings and feelings of individuals did not matter in the +least. They were mere conditions, like the weather. What mattered was the pure +instrumentality of the individual. As a man as of a knife: does it cut well? +Nothing else mattered. +</p> + +<p> +Everything in the world has its function, and is good or not good in so far +as it fulfils this function more or less perfectly. Was a miner a good miner? +Then he was complete. Was a manager a good manager? That was enough. Gerald +himself, who was responsible for all this industry, was he a good director? If +he were, he had fulfilled his life. The rest was by-play. +</p> + +<p> +The mines were there, they were old. They were giving out, it did not pay to +work the seams. There was talk of closing down two of them. It was at this point +that Gerald arrived on the scene. +</p> + +<p> +He looked around. There lay the mines. They were old, obsolete. They were +like old lions, no more good. He looked again. Pah! the mines were nothing but +the clumsy efforts of impure minds. There they lay, abortions of a half-trained +mind. Let the idea of them be swept away. He cleared his brain of them, and +thought only of the coal in the under earth. How much was there? +</p> + +<p> +There was plenty of coal. The old workings could not get at it, that was +all. Then break the neck of the old workings. The coal lay there in its seams, +even though the seams were thin. There it lay, inert matter, as it had always +lain, since the beginning of time, subject to the will of man. The will of man +was the determining factor. Man was the archgod of earth. His mind was obedient +to serve his will. Man’s will was the absolute, the only absolute. +</p> + +<p> +And it was his will to subjugate Matter to his own ends. The subjugation +itself was the point, the fight was the be-all, the fruits of victory were mere +results. It was not for the sake of money that Gerald took over the mines. He +did not care about money, fundamentally. He was neither ostentatious nor +luxurious, neither did he care about social position, not finally. What he +wanted was the pure fulfilment of his own will in the struggle with the natural +conditions. His will was now, to take the coal out of the earth, profitably. The +profit was merely the condition of victory, but the victory itself lay in the +feat achieved. He vibrated with zest before the challenge. Every day he was in +the mines, examining, testing, he consulted experts, he gradually gathered the +whole situation into his mind, as a general grasps the plan of his campaign. +</p> + +<p> +Then there was need for a complete break. The mines were run on an old +system, an obsolete idea. The initial idea had been, to obtain as much money +from the earth as would make the owners comfortably rich, would allow the +workmen sufficient wages and good conditions, and would increase the wealth of +the country altogether. Gerald’s father, following in the second +generation, having a sufficient fortune, had thought only of the men. The mines, +for him, were primarily great fields to produce bread and plenty for all the +hundreds of human beings gathered about them. He had lived and striven with his +fellow owners to benefit the men every time. And the men had been benefited in +their fashion. There were few poor, and few needy. All was plenty, because the +mines were good and easy to work. And the miners, in those days, finding +themselves richer than they might have expected, felt glad and triumphant. They +thought themselves well-off, they congratulated themselves on their +good-fortune, they remembered how their fathers had starved and suffered, and +they felt that better times had come. They were grateful to those others, the +pioneers, the new owners, who had opened out the pits, and let forth this stream +of plenty. +</p> + +<p> +But man is never satisfied, and so the miners, from gratitude to their +owners, passed on to murmuring. Their sufficiency decreased with knowledge, they +wanted more. Why should the master be so out-of-all-proportion rich? +</p> + +<p> +There was a crisis when Gerald was a boy, when the Masters’ Federation +closed down the mines because the men would not accept a reduction. This +lock-out had forced home the new conditions to Thomas Crich. Belonging to the +Federation, he had been compelled by his honour to close the pits against his +men. He, the father, the Patriarch, was forced to deny the means of life to his +sons, his people. He, the rich man who would hardly enter heaven because of his +possessions, must now turn upon the poor, upon those who were nearer Christ than +himself, those who were humble and despised and closer to perfection, those who +were manly and noble in their labours, and must say to them: “Ye shall +neither labour nor eat bread.” +</p> + +<p> +It was this recognition of the state of war which really broke his heart. He +wanted his industry to be run on love. Oh, he wanted love to be the directing +power even of the mines. And now, from under the cloak of love, the sword was +cynically drawn, the sword of mechanical necessity. +</p> + +<p> +This really broke his heart. He must have the illusion and now the illusion +was destroyed. The men were not against <i>him</i>, but they were against the masters. +It was war, and willy nilly he found himself on the wrong side, in his own +conscience. Seething masses of miners met daily, carried away by a new religious +impulse. The idea flew through them: “All men are equal on earth,” +and they would carry the idea to its material fulfilment. After all, is it not +the teaching of Christ? And what is an idea, if not the germ of action in the +material world. “All men are equal in spirit, they are all sons of God. +Whence then this obvious <i>disquality</i>?” It was a religious creed pushed to +its material conclusion. Thomas Crich at least had no answer. He could but +admit, according to his sincere tenets, that the disquality was wrong. But he +could not give up his goods, which were the stuff of disquality. So the men +would fight for their rights. The last impulses of the last religious passion +left on earth, the passion for equality, inspired them. +</p> + +<p> +Seething mobs of men marched about, their faces lighted up as for holy war, +with a smoke of cupidity. How disentangle the passion for equality from the +passion of cupidity, when begins the fight for equality of possessions? But the +God was the machine. Each man claimed equality in the Godhead of the great +productive machine. Every man equally was part of this Godhead. But somehow, +somewhere, Thomas Crich knew this was false. When the machine is the Godhead, +and production or work is worship, then the most mechanical mind is purest and +highest, the representative of God on earth. And the rest are subordinate, each +according to his degree. +</p> + +<p> +Riots broke out, Whatmore pit-head was in flames. This was the pit furthest +in the country, near the woods. Soldiers came. From the windows of Shortlands, +on that fatal day, could be seen the flare of fire in the sky not far off, and +now the little colliery train, with the workmen’s carriages which were +used to convey the miners to the distant Whatmore, was crossing the valley full +of soldiers, full of redcoats. Then there was the far-off sound of firing, then +the later news that the mob was dispersed, one man was shot dead, the fire was +put out. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald, who was a boy, was filled with the wildest excitement and delight. +He longed to go with the soldiers to shoot the men. But he was not allowed to go +out of the lodge gates. At the gates were stationed sentries with guns. Gerald +stood near them in delight, whilst gangs of derisive miners strolled up and down +the lanes, calling and jeering: +</p> + +<p> +“Now then, three ha’porth o’ coppers, let’s see thee +shoot thy gun.” Insults were chalked on the walls and the fences, the +servants left. +</p> + +<p> +And all this while Thomas Crich was breaking his heart, and giving away +hundreds of pounds in charity. Everywhere there was free food, a surfeit of free +food. Anybody could have bread for asking, and a loaf cost only +three-ha’pence. Every day there was a free tea somewhere, the children had +never had so many treats in their lives. On Friday afternoon great basketfuls of +buns and cakes were taken into the schools, and great pitchers of milk, the +schoolchildren had what they wanted. They were sick with eating too much cake +and milk. +</p> + +<p> +And then it came to an end, and the men went back to work. But it was never +the same as before. There was a new situation created, a new idea reigned. Even +in the machine, there should be equality. No part should be subordinate to any +other part: all should be equal. The instinct for chaos had entered. Mystic +equality lies in abstraction, not in having or in doing, which are processes. In +function and process, one man, one part, must of necessity be subordinate to +another. It is a condition of being. But the desire for chaos had risen, and the +idea of mechanical equality was the weapon of disruption which should execute +the will of man, the will for chaos. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald was a boy at the time of the strike, but he longed to be a man, to +fight the colliers. The father however was trapped between two half-truths, and +broken. He wanted to be a pure Christian, one and equal with all men. He even +wanted to give away all he had, to the poor. Yet he was a great promoter of +industry, and he knew perfectly that he must keep his goods and keep his +authority. This was as divine a necessity in him, as the need to give away all +he possessed—more divine, even, since this was the necessity he acted +upon. Yet because he did <i>not</i> act on the other ideal, it dominated him, he was +dying of chagrin because he must forfeit it. He wanted to be a father of loving +kindness and sacrificial benevolence. The colliers shouted to him about his +thousands a year. They would not be deceived. +</p> + +<p> +When Gerald grew up in the ways of the world, he shifted the position. He +did not care about the equality. The whole Christian attitude of love and +self-sacrifice was old hat. He knew that position and authority were the right +thing in the world, and it was useless to cant about it. They were the right +thing, for the simple reason that they were functionally necessary. They were +not the be-all and the end-all. It was like being part of a machine. He himself +happened to be a controlling, central part, the masses of men were the parts +variously controlled. This was merely as it happened. As well get excited +because a central hub drives a hundred outer wheels or because the whole +universe wheels round the sun. After all, it would be mere silliness to say that +the moon and the earth and Saturn and Jupiter and Venus have just as much right +to be the centre of the universe, each of them separately, as the sun. Such an +assertion is made merely in the desire of chaos. +</p> + +<p> +Without bothering to <i>think</i> to a conclusion, Gerald jumped to a conclusion. +He abandoned the whole democratic-equality problem as a problem of silliness. +What mattered was the great social productive machine. Let that work perfectly, +let it produce a sufficiency of everything, let every man be given a rational +portion, greater or less according to his functional degree or magnitude, and +then, provision made, let the devil supervene, let every man look after his own +amusements and appetites, so long as he interfered with nobody. +</p> + +<p> +So Gerald set himself to work, to put the great industry in order. In his +travels, and in his accompanying readings, he had come to the conclusion that +the essential secret of life was harmony. He did not define to himself at all +clearly what harmony was. The word pleased him, he felt he had come to his own +conclusions. And he proceeded to put his philosophy into practice by forcing +order into the established world, translating the mystic word harmony into the +practical word organisation. +</p> + +<p> +Immediately he <i>saw</i> the firm, he realised what he could do. He had a fight to +fight with Matter, with the earth and the coal it enclosed. This was the sole +idea, to turn upon the inanimate matter of the underground, and reduce it to his +will. And for this fight with matter, one must have perfect instruments in +perfect organisation, a mechanism so subtle and harmonious in its workings that +it represents the single mind of man, and by its relentless repetition of given +movement, will accomplish a purpose irresistibly, inhumanly. It was this inhuman +principle in the mechanism he wanted to construct that inspired Gerald with an +almost religious exaltation. He, the man, could interpose a perfect, changeless, +godlike medium between himself and the Matter he had to subjugate. There were +two opposites, his will and the resistant Matter of the earth. And between these +he could establish the very expression of his will, the incarnation of his +power, a great and perfect machine, a system, an activity of pure order, pure +mechanical repetition, repetition <i>ad infinitum</i>, hence eternal and infinite. +He found his eternal and his infinite in the pure machine-principle of perfect +co-ordination into one pure, complex, infinitely repeated motion, like the +spinning of a wheel; but a productive spinning, as the revolving of the universe +may be called a productive spinning, a productive repetition through eternity, +to infinity. And this is the God-motion, this productive repetition <i>ad +infinitum</i>. And Gerald was the God of the machine, <i>Deus ex Machina</i>. +And the whole productive will of man was the Godhead. +</p> + +<p> +He had his life-work now, to extend over the earth a great and perfect +system in which the will of man ran smooth and unthwarted, timeless, a Godhead +in process. He had to begin with the mines. The terms were given: first the +resistant Matter of the underground; then the instruments of its subjugation, +instruments human and metallic; and finally his own pure will, his own mind. It +would need a marvellous adjustment of myriad instruments, human, animal, +metallic, kinetic, dynamic, a marvellous casting of myriad tiny wholes into one +great perfect entirety. And then, in this case there was perfection attained, +the will of the highest was perfectly fulfilled, the will of mankind was +perfectly enacted; for was not mankind mystically contra-distinguished against +inanimate Matter, was not the history of mankind just the history of the +conquest of the one by the other? +</p> + +<p> +The miners were overreached. While they were still in the toils of divine +equality of man, Gerald had passed on, granted essentially their case, and +proceeded in his quality of human being to fulfil the will of mankind as a +whole. He merely represented the miners in a higher sense when he perceived that +the only way to fulfil perfectly the will of man was to establish the perfect, +inhuman machine. But he represented them very essentially, they were far behind, +out of date, squabbling for their material equality. The desire had already +transmuted into this new and greater desire, for a perfect intervening mechanism +between man and Matter, the desire to translate the Godhead into pure mechanism. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as Gerald entered the firm, the convulsion of death ran through the +old system. He had all his life been tortured by a furious and destructive +demon, which possessed him sometimes like an insanity. This temper now entered +like a virus into the firm, and there were cruel eruptions. Terrible and inhuman +were his examinations into every detail; there was no privacy he would spare, no +old sentiment but he would turn it over. The old grey managers, the old grey +clerks, the doddering old pensioners, he looked at them, and removed them as so +much lumber. The whole concern seemed like a hospital of invalid employees. He +had no emotional qualms. He arranged what pensions were necessary, he looked for +efficient substitutes, and when these were found, he substituted them for the +old hands. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve a pitiful letter here from Letherington,” his father +would say, in a tone of deprecation and appeal. “Don’t you think the +poor fellow might keep on a little longer. I always fancied he did very +well.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got a man in his place now, father. He’ll be happier +out of it, believe me. You think his allowance is plenty, don’t +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is not the allowance that he wants, poor man. He feels it very +much, that he is superannuated. Says he thought he had twenty more years of work +in him yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not of this kind of work I want. He doesn’t understand.” +</p> + +<p> +The father sighed. He wanted not to know any more. He believed the pits +would have to be overhauled if they were to go on working. And after all, it +would be worst in the long run for everybody, if they must close down. So he +could make no answer to the appeals of his old and trusty servants, he could +only repeat “Gerald says.” +</p> + +<p> +So the father drew more and more out of the light. The whole frame of the +real life was broken for him. He had been right according to his lights. And his +lights had been those of the great religion. Yet they seemed to have become +obsolete, to be superseded in the world. He could not understand. He only +withdrew with his lights into an inner room, into the silence. The beautiful +candles of belief, that would not do to light the world any more, they would +still burn sweetly and sufficiently in the inner room of his soul, and in the +silence of his retirement. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald rushed into the reform of the firm, beginning with the office. It was +needful to economise severely, to make possible the great alterations he must +introduce. +</p> + +<p> +“What are these widows’ coals?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“We have always allowed all widows of men who worked for the firm a +load of coals every three months.” +</p> + +<p> +“They must pay cost price henceforward. The firm is not a charity +institution, as everybody seems to think.” +</p> + +<p> +Widows, these stock figures of sentimental humanitarianism, he felt a +dislike at the thought of them. They were almost repulsive. Why were they not +immolated on the pyre of the husband, like the sati in India? At any rate, let +them pay the cost of their coals. +</p> + +<p> +In a thousand ways he cut down the expenditure, in ways so fine as to be +hardly noticeable to the men. The miners must pay for the cartage of their +coals, heavy cartage too; they must pay for their tools, for the sharpening, for +the care of lamps, for the many trifling things that made the bill of charges +against every man mount up to a shilling or so in the week. It was not grasped +very definitely by the miners, though they were sore enough. But it saved +hundreds of pounds every week for the firm. +</p> + +<p> +Gradually Gerald got hold of everything. And then began the great reform. +Expert engineers were introduced in every department. An enormous electric plant +was installed, both for lighting and for haulage underground, and for power. The +electricity was carried into every mine. New machinery was brought from America, +such as the miners had never seen before, great iron men, as the cutting +machines were called, and unusual appliances. The working of the pits was +thoroughly changed, all the control was taken out of the hands of the miners, +the butty system was abolished. Everything was run on the most accurate and +delicate scientific method, educated and expert men were in control everywhere, +the miners were reduced to mere mechanical instruments. They had to work hard, +much harder than before, the work was terrible and heart-breaking in its +mechanicalness. +</p> + +<p> +But they submitted to it all. The joy went out of their lives, the hope +seemed to perish as they became more and more mechanised. And yet they accepted +the new conditions. They even got a further satisfaction out of them. At first +they hated Gerald Crich, they swore to do something to him, to murder him. But +as time went on, they accepted everything with some fatal satisfaction. Gerald +was their high priest, he represented the religion they really felt. His father +was forgotten already. There was a new world, a new order, strict, terrible, +inhuman, but satisfying in its very destructiveness. The men were satisfied to +belong to the great and wonderful machine, even whilst it destroyed them. It was +what they wanted. It was the highest that man had produced, the most wonderful +and superhuman. They were exalted by belonging to this great and superhuman +system which was beyond feeling or reason, something really godlike. Their +hearts died within them, but their souls were satisfied. It was what they +wanted. Otherwise Gerald could never have done what he did. He was just ahead of +them in giving them what they wanted, this participation in a great and perfect +system that subjected life to pure mathematical principles. This was a sort of +freedom, the sort they really wanted. It was the first great step in undoing, +the first great phase of chaos, the substitution of the mechanical principle for +the organic, the destruction of the organic purpose, the organic unity, and the +subordination of every organic unit to the great mechanical purpose. It was pure +organic disintegration and pure mechanical organisation. This is the first and +finest state of chaos. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald was satisfied. He knew the colliers said they hated him. But he had +long ceased to hate them. When they streamed past him at evening, their heavy +boots slurring on the pavement wearily, their shoulders slightly distorted, they +took no notice of him, they gave him no greeting whatever, they passed in a +grey-black stream of unemotional acceptance. They were not important to him, +save as instruments, nor he to them, save as a supreme instrument of control. As +miners they had their being, he had his being as director. He admired their +qualities. But as men, personalities, they were just accidents, sporadic little +unimportant phenomena. And tacitly, the men agreed to this. For Gerald agreed to +it in himself. +</p> + +<p> +He had succeeded. He had converted the industry into a new and terrible +purity. There was a greater output of coal than ever, the wonderful and delicate +system ran almost perfectly. He had a set of really clever engineers, both +mining and electrical, and they did not cost much. A highly educated man cost +very little more than a workman. His managers, who were all rare men, were no +more expensive than the old bungling fools of his father’s days, who were +merely colliers promoted. His chief manager, who had twelve hundred a year, +saved the firm at least five thousand. The whole system was now so perfect that +Gerald was hardly necessary any more. +</p> + +<p> +It was so perfect that sometimes a strange fear came over him, and he did +not know what to do. He went on for some years in a sort of trance of activity. +What he was doing seemed supreme, he was almost like a divinity. He was a pure +and exalted activity. +</p> + +<p> +But now he had succeeded—he had finally succeeded. And once or twice +lately, when he was alone in the evening and had nothing to do, he had suddenly +stood up in terror, not knowing what he was. And he went to the mirror and +looked long and closely at his own face, at his own eyes, seeking for something. +He was afraid, in mortal dry fear, but he knew not what of. He looked at his own +face. There it was, shapely and healthy and the same as ever, yet somehow, it +was not real, it was a mask. He dared not touch it, for fear it should prove to +be only a composition mask. His eyes were blue and keen as ever, and as firm in +their sockets. Yet he was not sure that they were not blue false bubbles that +would burst in a moment and leave clear annihilation. He could see the darkness +in them, as if they were only bubbles of darkness. He was afraid that one day he +would break down and be a purely meaningless babble lapping round a darkness. +</p> + +<p> +But his will yet held good, he was able to go away and read, and think about +things. He liked to read books about the primitive man, books of anthropology, +and also works of speculative philosophy. His mind was very active. But it was +like a bubble floating in the darkness. At any moment it might burst and leave +him in chaos. He would not die. He knew that. He would go on living, but the +meaning would have collapsed out of him, his divine reason would be gone. In a +strangely indifferent, sterile way, he was frightened. But he could not react +even to the fear. It was as if his centres of feeling were drying up. He +remained calm, calculative and healthy, and quite freely deliberate, even whilst +he felt, with faint, small but final sterile horror, that his mystic reason was +breaking, giving way now, at this crisis. +</p> + +<p> +And it was a strain. He knew there was no equilibrium. He would have to go +in some direction, shortly, to find relief. Only Birkin kept the fear definitely +off him, saved him his quick sufficiency in life, by the odd mobility and +changeableness which seemed to contain the quintessence of faith. But then +Gerald must always come away from Birkin, as from a Church service, back to the +outside real world of work and life. There it was, it did not alter, and words +were futilities. He had to keep himself in reckoning with the world of work and +material life. And it became more and more difficult, such a strange pressure +was upon him, as if the very middle of him were a vacuum, and outside were an +awful tension. +</p> + +<p> +He had found his most satisfactory relief in women. After a debauch with +some desperate woman, he went on quite easy and forgetful. The devil of it was, +it was so hard to keep up his interest in women nowadays. He didn’t care +about them any more. A Pussum was all right in her way, but she was an +exceptional case, and even she mattered extremely little. No, women, in that +sense, were useless to him any more. He felt that his <i>mind</i> needed acute +stimulation, before he could be physically roused. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.<br/> +RABBIT</h2> + +<p> +Gudrun knew that it was a critical thing for her to go to Shortlands. She +knew it was equivalent to accepting Gerald Crich as a lover. And though she hung +back, disliking the condition, yet she knew she would go on. She equivocated. +She said to herself, in torment recalling the blow and the kiss, “after +all, what is it? What is a kiss? What even is a blow? It is an instant, vanished +at once. I can go to Shortlands just for a time, before I go away, if only to +see what it is like.” For she had an insatiable curiosity to see and to +know everything. +</p> + +<p> +She also wanted to know what Winifred was really like. Having heard the +child calling from the steamer in the night, she felt some mysterious connection +with her. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun talked with the father in the library. Then he sent for his daughter. +She came accompanied by Mademoiselle. +</p> + +<p> +“Winnie, this is Miss Brangwen, who will be so kind as to help you +with your drawing and making models of your animals,” said the father. +</p> + +<p> +The child looked at Gudrun for a moment with interest, before she came forward and +with face averted offered her hand. There was a complete <i>sang-froid</i> and +indifference under Winifred’s childish reserve, a certain irresponsible +callousness. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do?” said the child, not lifting her face. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do?” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +Then Winifred stood aside, and Gudrun was introduced to Mademoiselle. +</p> + +<p> +“You have a fine day for your walk,” said Mademoiselle, in a +bright manner. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Quite</i> fine,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +Winifred was watching from her distance. She was as if amused, but rather +unsure as yet what this new person was like. She saw so many new persons, and so +few who became real to her. Mademoiselle was of no count whatever, the child +merely put up with her, calmly and easily, accepting her little authority with +faint scorn, compliant out of childish arrogance of indifference. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Winifred,” said the father, “aren’t you glad +Miss Brangwen has come? She makes animals and birds in wood and in clay, that +the people in London write about in the papers, praising them to the +skies.” +</p> + +<p> +Winifred smiled slightly. +</p> + +<p> +“Who told you, Daddie?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Who told me? Hermione told me, and Rupert Birkin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know them?” Winifred asked of Gudrun, turning to her +with faint challenge. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +Winifred readjusted herself a little. She had been ready to accept Gudrun as +a sort of servant. Now she saw it was on terms of friendship they were intended +to meet. She was rather glad. She had so many half inferiors, whom she tolerated +with perfect good-humour. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was very calm. She also did not take these things very seriously. A +new occasion was mostly spectacular to her. However, Winifred was a detached, +ironic child, she would never attach herself. Gudrun liked her and was intrigued +by her. The first meetings went off with a certain humiliating clumsiness. +Neither Winifred nor her instructress had any social grace. +</p> + +<p> +Soon, however, they met in a kind of make-belief world. Winifred did not +notice human beings unless they were like herself, playful and slightly mocking. +She would accept nothing but the world of amusement, and the serious people of +her life were the animals she had for pets. On those she lavished, almost +ironically, her affection and her companionship. To the rest of the human scheme +she submitted with a faint bored indifference. +</p> + +<p> +She had a pekinese dog called Looloo, which she loved. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us draw Looloo,” said Gudrun, “and see if we can get +his Looliness, shall we?” +</p> + +<p> +“Darling!” cried Winifred, rushing to the dog, that sat with +contemplative sadness on the hearth, and kissing its bulging brow. +“Darling one, will you be drawn? Shall its mummy draw its portrait?” +Then she chuckled gleefully, and turning to Gudrun, said: “Oh +let’s!” +</p> + +<p> +They proceeded to get pencils and paper, and were ready. +</p> + +<p> +“Beautifullest,” cried Winifred, hugging the dog, “sit +still while its mummy draws its beautiful portrait.” The dog looked up at +her with grievous resignation in its large, prominent eyes. She kissed it +fervently, and said: “I wonder what mine will be like. It’s sure to +be awful.” +</p> + +<p> +As she sketched she chuckled to herself, and cried out at times: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh darling, you’re so beautiful!” +</p> + +<p> +And again chuckling, she rushed to embrace the dog, in penitence, as if she +were doing him some subtle injury. He sat all the time with the resignation and +fretfulness of ages on his dark velvety face. She drew slowly, with a wicked +concentration in her eyes, her head on one side, an intense stillness over her. +She was as if working the spell of some enchantment. Suddenly she had finished. +She looked at the dog, and then at her drawing, and then cried, with real grief +for the dog, and at the same time with a wicked exultation: +</p> + +<p> +“My beautiful, why did they?” +</p> + +<p> +She took her paper to the dog, and held it under his nose. He turned his +head aside as in chagrin and mortification, and she impulsively kissed his +velvety bulging forehead. +</p> + +<p> +“’s a Loolie, ’s a little Loozie! Look at his portrait, +darling, look at his portrait, that his mother has done of him.” She +looked at her paper and chuckled. Then, kissing the dog once more, she rose and +came gravely to Gudrun, offering her the paper. +</p> + +<p> +It was a grotesque little diagram of a grotesque little animal, so wicked +and so comical, a slow smile came over Gudrun’s face, unconsciously. And +at her side Winifred chuckled with glee, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t like him, is it? He’s much lovelier than that. +He’s <i>so</i> beautiful-mmm, Looloo, my sweet darling.” And she +flew off to embrace the chagrined little dog. He looked up at her with reproachful, +saturnine eyes, vanquished in his extreme agedness of being. Then she flew back +to her drawing, and chuckled with satisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t like him, is it?” she said to Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it’s very like him,” Gudrun replied. +</p> + +<p> +The child treasured her drawing, carried it about with her, and showed it, +with a silent embarrassment, to everybody. +</p> + +<p> +“Look,” she said, thrusting the paper into her father’s +hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Why that’s Looloo!” he exclaimed. And he looked down in +surprise, hearing the almost inhuman chuckle of the child at his side. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald was away from home when Gudrun first came to Shortlands. But the +first morning he came back he watched for her. It was a sunny, soft morning, and +he lingered in the garden paths, looking at the flowers that had come out during +his absence. He was clean and fit as ever, shaven, his fair hair scrupulously +parted at the side, bright in the sunshine, his short, fair moustache closely +clipped, his eyes with their humorous kind twinkle, which was so deceptive. He +was dressed in black, his clothes sat well on his well-nourished body. Yet as he +lingered before the flower-beds in the morning sunshine, there was a certain +isolation, a fear about him, as of something wanting. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun came up quickly, unseen. She was dressed in blue, with woollen yellow +stockings, like the Bluecoat boys. He glanced up in surprise. Her stockings +always disconcerted him, the pale-yellow stockings and the heavy heavy black +shoes. Winifred, who had been playing about the garden with Mademoiselle and the +dogs, came flitting towards Gudrun. The child wore a dress of black-and-white +stripes. Her hair was rather short, cut round and hanging level in her neck. +</p> + +<p> +“We’re going to do Bismarck, aren’t we?” she said, +linking her hand through Gudrun’s arm. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, we’re going to do Bismarck. Do you want to?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes-oh I do! I want most awfully to do Bismarck. He looks <i>so</i> +splendid this morning, so <i>fierce</i>. He’s almost as big as a lion.” +And the child chuckled sardonically at her own hyperbole. “He’s a real +king, he really is.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Bonjour, Mademoiselle,</i>” said the little French governess, +wavering up with a slight bow, a bow of the sort that Gudrun loathed, insolent. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Winifred veut tant faire le portrait de Bismarck—! Oh, mais toute la +matiné</i>e—‘We will do Bismarck this morning!’—<i>Bismarck, +Bismarck, toujours Bismarck! C’est un lapin, n’est-ce pas, +mademoiselle?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Oui, c’est un grand lapin blanc et noir. Vous ne l’avez +pas vu?</i>” said Gudrun in her good, but rather heavy French. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Non, mademoiselle, Winifred n’a jamais voulu me le faire voir. +Tant de fois je le lui ai demandé, ‘Qu’est ce donc que ce Bismarck, +Winifred?’ Mais elle n’a pas voulu me le dire. Son Bismarck, c’etait +un mystère.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Oui, c’est un mystère, vraiment un mystère!</i> Miss Brangwen, say +that Bismarck is a mystery,” cried Winifred. +</p> + +<p> +“Bismarck, is a mystery, <i>Bismarck, c’est un mystère, der +Bismarck, er ist ein Wunder</i>,” said Gudrun, in mocking incantation. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Ja, er ist ein Wunder</i>,” repeated Winifred, with odd +seriousness, under which lay a wicked chuckle. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Ist er auch ein Wunder?</i>” came the slightly insolent sneering +of Mademoiselle. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Doch!</i>” said Winifred briefly, indifferent. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Doch ist er nicht ein König.</i> Beesmarck, he was not a king, Winifred, +as you have said. He was only—<i>il n’était que chancelier.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Qu’est ce qu’un chancelier?</i>” said Winifred, with +slightly contemptuous indifference. +</p> + +<p> +“A <i>chancelier</i> is a chancellor, and a chancellor is, I believe, +a sort of judge,” said Gerald coming up and shaking hands with Gudrun. +“You’ll have made a song of Bismarck soon,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +Mademoiselle waited, and discreetly made her inclination, and her greeting. +</p> + +<p> +“So they wouldn’t let you see Bismarck, Mademoiselle?” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Non, Monsieur.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, very mean of them. What are you going to do to him, Miss +Brangwen? I want him sent to the kitchen and cooked.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” cried Winifred. +</p> + +<p> +“We’re going to draw him,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Draw him and quarter him and dish him up,” he said, being +purposely fatuous. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” cried Winifred with emphasis, chuckling. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun detected the tang of mockery in him, and she looked up and smiled +into his face. He felt his nerves caressed. Their eyes met in knowledge. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you like Shortlands?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, very much,” she said, with nonchalance. +</p> + +<p> +“Glad you do. Have you noticed these flowers?” +</p> + +<p> +He led her along the path. She followed intently. Winifred came, and the +governess lingered in the rear. They stopped before some veined salpiglossis +flowers. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t they wonderful?” she cried, looking at them +absorbedly. Strange how her reverential, almost ecstatic admiration of the +flowers caressed his nerves. She stooped down, and touched the trumpets, with +infinitely fine and delicate-touching finger-tips. It filled him with ease to +see her. When she rose, her eyes, hot with the beauty of the flowers, looked +into his. +</p> + +<p> +“What are they?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Sort of petunia, I suppose,” he answered. “I don’t +really know them.” +</p> + +<p> +“They are quite strangers to me,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +They stood together in a false intimacy, a nervous contact. And he was in +love with her. +</p> + +<p> +She was aware of Mademoiselle standing near, like a little French beetle, +observant and calculating. She moved away with Winifred, saying they would go to +find Bismarck. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald watched them go, looking all the while at the soft, full, still body +of Gudrun, in its silky cashmere. How silky and rich and soft her body must be. +An excess of appreciation came over his mind, she was the all-desirable, the +all-beautiful. He wanted only to come to her, nothing more. He was only this, +this being that should come to her, and be given to her. +</p> + +<p> +At the same time he was finely and acutely aware of Mademoiselle’s +neat, brittle finality of form. She was like some elegant beetle with thin +ankles, perched on her high heels, her glossy black dress perfectly correct, her +dark hair done high and admirably. How repulsive her completeness and her +finality was! He loathed her. +</p> + +<p> +Yet he did admire her. She was perfectly correct. And it did rather annoy +him, that Gudrun came dressed in startling colours, like a macaw, when the +family was in mourning. Like a macaw she was! He watched the lingering way she +took her feet from the ground. And her ankles were pale yellow, and her dress a +deep blue. Yet it pleased him. It pleased him very much. He felt the challenge +in her very attire—she challenged the whole world. And he smiled as to the +note of a trumpet. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun and Winifred went through the house to the back, where were the +stables and the out-buildings. Everywhere was still and deserted. Mr Crich had +gone out for a short drive, the stableman had just led round Gerald’s +horse. The two girls went to the hutch that stood in a corner, and looked at the +great black-and-white rabbit. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t he beautiful! Oh, do look at him listening! Doesn’t +he look silly!” she laughed quickly, then added “Oh, do let’s +do him listening, do let us, he listens with so much of himself;—don’t +you darling Bismarck?” +</p> + +<p> +“Can we take him out?” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s very strong. He really is extremely strong.” She +looked at Gudrun, her head on one side, in odd calculating mistrust. +</p> + +<p> +“But we’ll try, shall we?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, if you like. But he’s a fearful kicker!” +</p> + +<p> +They took the key to unlock the door. The rabbit exploded in a wild rush +round the hutch. +</p> + +<p> +“He scratches most awfully sometimes,” cried Winifred in +excitement. “Oh do look at him, isn’t he wonderful!” The +rabbit tore round the hutch in a hurry. “Bismarck!” cried the child, +in rousing excitement. “How <i>dreadful</i> you are! You are beastly.” +Winifred looked up at Gudrun with some misgiving in her wild excitement. Gudrun +smiled sardonically with her mouth. Winifred made a strange crooning noise of +unaccountable excitement. “Now he’s still!” she cried, seeing +the rabbit settled down in a far corner of the hutch. “Shall we take him +now?” she whispered excitedly, mysteriously, looking up at Gudrun and +edging very close. “Shall we get him now?—” she chuckled wickedly +to herself. +</p> + +<p> +They unlocked the door of the hutch. Gudrun thrust in her arm and seized the +great, lusty rabbit as it crouched still, she grasped its long ears. It set its +four feet flat, and thrust back. There was a long scraping sound as it was +hauled forward, and in another instant it was in mid-air, lunging wildly, its +body flying like a spring coiled and released, as it lashed out, suspended from +the ears. Gudrun held the black-and-white tempest at arms’ length, +averting her face. But the rabbit was magically strong, it was all she could do +to keep her grasp. She almost lost her presence of mind. +</p> + +<p> +“Bismarck, Bismarck, you are behaving terribly,” said Winifred +in a rather frightened voice, “Oh, do put him down, he’s +beastly.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun stood for a moment astounded by the thunder-storm that had sprung +into being in her grip. Then her colour came up, a heavy rage came over her like +a cloud. She stood shaken as a house in a storm, and utterly overcome. Her heart +was arrested with fury at the mindlessness and the bestial stupidity of this +struggle, her wrists were badly scored by the claws of the beast, a heavy +cruelty welled up in her. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald came round as she was trying to capture the flying rabbit under her +arm. He saw, with subtle recognition, her sullen passion of cruelty. +</p> + +<p> +“You should let one of the men do that for you,” he said +hurrying up. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, he’s <i>so</i> horrid!” cried Winifred, almost frantic. +</p> + +<p> +He held out his nervous, sinewy hand and took the rabbit by the ears, from +Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s most <i>fearfully</i> strong,” she cried, in a high voice, +like the crying a seagull, strange and vindictive. +</p> + +<p> +The rabbit made itself into a ball in the air, and lashed out, flinging +itself into a bow. It really seemed demoniacal. Gudrun saw Gerald’s body +tighten, saw a sharp blindness come into his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I know these beggars of old,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The long, demon-like beast lashed out again, spread on the air as if it were +flying, looking something like a dragon, then closing up again, inconceivably +powerful and explosive. The man’s body, strung to its efforts, vibrated +strongly. Then a sudden sharp, white-edged wrath came up in him. Swift as +lightning he drew back and brought his free hand down like a hawk on the neck of +the rabbit. Simultaneously, there came the unearthly abhorrent scream of a +rabbit in the fear of death. It made one immense writhe, tore his wrists and his +sleeves in a final convulsion, all its belly flashed white in a whirlwind of +paws, and then he had slung it round and had it under his arm, fast. It cowered +and skulked. His face was gleaming with a smile. +</p> + +<p> +“You wouldn’t think there was all that force in a rabbit,” +he said, looking at Gudrun. And he saw her eyes black as night in her pallid +face, she looked almost unearthly. The scream of the rabbit, after the violent +tussle, seemed to have torn the veil of her consciousness. He looked at her, and +the whitish, electric gleam in his face intensified. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t really like him,” Winifred was crooning. “I +don’t care for him as I do for Loozie. He’s hateful really.” +</p> + +<p> +A smile twisted Gudrun’s face, as she recovered. She knew she was +revealed. “Don’t they make the most fearful noise when they +scream?” she cried, the high note in her voice, like a seagull’s +cry. +</p> + +<p> +“Abominable,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“He shouldn’t be so silly when he has to be taken out,” +Winifred was saying, putting out her hand and touching the rabbit tentatively, +as it skulked under his arm, motionless as if it were dead. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s not dead, is he Gerald?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No, he ought to be,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, he ought!” cried the child, with a sudden flush of +amusement. And she touched the rabbit with more confidence. “His heart is +beating <i>so</i> fast. Isn’t he funny? He really is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where do you want him?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“In the little green court,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked at Gerald with strange, darkened eyes, strained with +underworld knowledge, almost supplicating, like those of a creature which is at +his mercy, yet which is his ultimate victor. He did not know what to say to her. +He felt the mutual hellish recognition. And he felt he ought to say something, +to cover it. He had the power of lightning in his nerves, she seemed like a soft +recipient of his magical, hideous white fire. He was unconfident, he had qualms +of fear. +</p> + +<p> +“Did he hurt you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s an insensible beast,” he said, turning his face +away. +</p> + +<p> +They came to the little court, which was shut in by old red walls in whose +crevices wall-flowers were growing. The grass was soft and fine and old, a level +floor carpeting the court, the sky was blue overhead. Gerald tossed the rabbit +down. It crouched still and would not move. Gudrun watched it with faint horror. +</p> + +<p> +“Why doesn’t it move?” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s skulking,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She looked up at him, and a slight sinister smile contracted her white face. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it a <i>fool!</i>” she cried. “Isn’t it a +sickening <i>fool?</i>” The vindictive mockery in her voice made his brain +quiver. Glancing up at him, into his eyes, she revealed again the mocking, +white-cruel recognition. There was a league between them, abhorrent to them +both. They were implicated with each other in abhorrent mysteries. +</p> + +<p> +“How many scratches have you?” he asked, showing his hard +forearm, white and hard and torn in red gashes. +</p> + +<p> +“How really vile!” she cried, flushing with a sinister vision. +“Mine is nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +She lifted her arm and showed a deep red score down the silken white flesh. +</p> + +<p> +“What a devil!” he exclaimed. But it was as if he had had +knowledge of her in the long red rent of her forearm, so silken and soft. He did +not want to touch her. He would have to make himself touch her, deliberately. +The long, shallow red rip seemed torn across his own brain, tearing the surface +of his ultimate consciousness, letting through the forever unconscious, +unthinkable red ether of the beyond, the obscene beyond. +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t hurt you very much, does it?” he asked, +solicitous. +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all,” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +And suddenly the rabbit, which had been crouching as if it were a flower, so +still and soft, suddenly burst into life. Round and round the court it went, as +if shot from a gun, round and round like a furry meteorite, in a tense hard +circle that seemed to bind their brains. They all stood in amazement, smiling +uncannily, as if the rabbit were obeying some unknown incantation. Round and +round it flew, on the grass under the old red walls like a storm. +</p> + +<p> +And then quite suddenly it settled down, hobbled among the grass, and sat +considering, its nose twitching like a bit of fluff in the wind. After having +considered for a few minutes, a soft bunch with a black, open eye, which perhaps +was looking at them, perhaps was not, it hobbled calmly forward and began to +nibble the grass with that mean motion of a rabbit’s quick eating. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s mad,” said Gudrun. “It is most decidedly +mad.” +</p> + +<p> +He laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“The question is,” he said, “what is madness? I +don’t suppose it is rabbit-mad.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think it is?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No. That’s what it is to be a rabbit.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a queer, faint, obscene smile over his face. She looked at him and +saw him, and knew that he was initiate as she was initiate. This thwarted her, +and contravened her, for the moment. +</p> + +<p> +“God be praised we aren’t rabbits,” she said, in a high, +shrill voice. +</p> + +<p> +The smile intensified a little, on his face. +</p> + +<p> +“Not rabbits?” he said, looking at her fixedly. +</p> + +<p> +Slowly her face relaxed into a smile of obscene recognition. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah Gerald,” she said, in a strong, slow, almost man-like way. +“—All that, and more.” Her eyes looked up at him with shocking +nonchalance. +</p> + +<p> +He felt again as if she had torn him across the breast, dully, finally. He +turned aside. +</p> + +<p> +“Eat, eat my darling!” Winifred was softly conjuring the rabbit, +and creeping forward to touch it. It hobbled away from her. “Let its +mother stroke its fur then, darling, because it is so mysterious—” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.<br/> +MOONY</h2> + +<p> +After his illness Birkin went to the south of France for a time. He did not +write, nobody heard anything of him. Ursula, left alone, felt as if everything +were lapsing out. There seemed to be no hope in the world. One was a tiny little +rock with the tide of nothingness rising higher and higher She herself was real, +and only herself—just like a rock in a wash of flood-water. The rest was +all nothingness. She was hard and indifferent, isolated in herself. +</p> + +<p> +There was nothing for it now, but contemptuous, resistant indifference. All +the world was lapsing into a grey wish-wash of nothingness, she had no contact +and no connection anywhere. She despised and detested the whole show. From the +bottom of her heart, from the bottom of her soul, she despised and detested +people, adult people. She loved only children and animals: children she loved +passionately, but coldly. They made her want to hug them, to protect them, to +give them life. But this very love, based on pity and despair, was only a +bondage and a pain to her. She loved best of all the animals, that were single +and unsocial as she herself was. She loved the horses and cows in the field. +Each was single and to itself, magical. It was not referred away to some +detestable social principle. It was incapable of soulfulness and tragedy, which +she detested so profoundly. +</p> + +<p> +She could be very pleasant and flattering, almost subservient, to people she +met. But no one was taken in. Instinctively each felt her contemptuous mockery +of the human being in himself, or herself. She had a profound grudge against the +human being. That which the word “human” stood for was despicable +and repugnant to her. +</p> + +<p> +Mostly her heart was closed in this hidden, unconscious strain of +contemptuous ridicule. She thought she loved, she thought she was full of love. +This was her idea of herself. But the strange brightness of her presence, a +marvellous radiance of intrinsic vitality, was a luminousness of supreme +repudiation, nothing but repudiation. +</p> + +<p> +Yet, at moments, she yielded and softened, she wanted pure love, only pure +love. This other, this state of constant unfailing repudiation, was a strain, a +suffering also. A terrible desire for pure love overcame her again. +</p> + +<p> +She went out one evening, numbed by this constant essential suffering. Those +who are timed for destruction must die now. The knowledge of this reached a +finality, a finishing in her. And the finality released her. If fate would carry +off in death or downfall all those who were timed to go, why need she trouble, +why repudiate any further. She was free of it all, she could seek a new union +elsewhere. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula set off to Willey Green, towards the mill. She came to Willey Water. +It was almost full again, after its period of emptiness. Then she turned off +through the woods. The night had fallen, it was dark. But she forgot to be +afraid, she who had such great sources of fear. Among the trees, far from any +human beings, there was a sort of magic peace. The more one could find a pure +loneliness, with no taint of people, the better one felt. She was in reality +terrified, horrified in her apprehension of people. +</p> + +<p> +She started, noticing something on her right hand, between the tree trunks. +It was like a great presence, watching her, dodging her. She started violently. +It was only the moon, risen through the thin trees. But it seemed so mysterious, +with its white and deathly smile. And there was no avoiding it. Night or day, +one could not escape the sinister face, triumphant and radiant like this moon, +with a high smile. She hurried on, cowering from the white planet. She would +just see the pond at the mill before she went home. +</p> + +<p> +Not wanting to go through the yard, because of the dogs, she turned off +along the hill-side to descend on the pond from above. The moon was transcendent +over the bare, open space, she suffered from being exposed to it. There was a +glimmer of nightly rabbits across the ground. The night was as clear as crystal, +and very still. She could hear a distant coughing of a sheep. +</p> + +<p> +So she swerved down to the steep, tree-hidden bank above the pond, where the +alders twisted their roots. She was glad to pass into the shade out of the moon. +There she stood, at the top of the fallen-away bank, her hand on the rough trunk +of a tree, looking at the water, that was perfect in its stillness, floating the +moon upon it. But for some reason she disliked it. It did not give her anything. +She listened for the hoarse rustle of the sluice. And she wished for something +else out of the night, she wanted another night, not this moon-brilliant +hardness. She could feel her soul crying out in her, lamenting desolately. +</p> + +<p> +She saw a shadow moving by the water. It would be Birkin. He had come back +then, unawares. She accepted it without remark, nothing mattered to her. She sat +down among the roots of the alder tree, dim and veiled, hearing the sound of the +sluice like dew distilling audibly into the night. The islands were dark and +half revealed, the reeds were dark also, only some of them had a little frail +fire of reflection. A fish leaped secretly, revealing the light in the pond. +This fire of the chill night breaking constantly on to the pure darkness, +repelled her. She wished it were perfectly dark, perfectly, and noiseless and +without motion. Birkin, small and dark also, his hair tinged with moonlight, +wandered nearer. He was quite near, and yet he did not exist in her. He did not +know she was there. Supposing he did something he would not wish to be seen +doing, thinking he was quite private? But there, what did it matter? What did +the small privacies matter? How could it matter, what he did? How can there be +any secrets, we are all the same organisms? How can there be any secrecy, when +everything is known to all of us? +</p> + +<p> +He was touching unconsciously the dead husks of flowers as he passed by, and +talking disconnectedly to himself. +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t go away,” he was saying. “There <i>is</i> no +away. You only withdraw upon yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +He threw a dead flower-husk on to the water. +</p> + +<p> +“An antiphony—they lie, and you sing back to them. There +wouldn’t have to be any truth, if there weren’t any lies. Then one +needn’t assert anything—” +</p> + +<p> +He stood still, looking at the water, and throwing upon it the husks of the +flowers. +</p> + +<p> +“Cybele—curse her! The accursed Syria Dea! Does one begrudge it +her? What else is there—?” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula wanted to laugh loudly and hysterically, hearing his isolated voice +speaking out. It was so ridiculous. +</p> + +<p> +He stood staring at the water. Then he stooped and picked up a stone, which +he threw sharply at the pond. Ursula was aware of the bright moon leaping and +swaying, all distorted, in her eyes. It seemed to shoot out arms of fire like a +cuttle-fish, like a luminous polyp, palpitating strongly before her. +</p> + +<p> +And his shadow on the border of the pond, was watching for a few moments, +then he stooped and groped on the ground. Then again there was a burst of sound, +and a burst of brilliant light, the moon had exploded on the water, and was +flying asunder in flakes of white and dangerous fire. Rapidly, like white birds, +the fires all broken rose across the pond, fleeing in clamorous confusion, +battling with the flock of dark waves that were forcing their way in. The +furthest waves of light, fleeing out, seemed to be clamouring against the shore +for escape, the waves of darkness came in heavily, running under towards the +centre. But at the centre, the heart of all, was still a vivid, incandescent +quivering of a white moon not quite destroyed, a white body of fire writhing and +striving and not even now broken open, not yet violated. It seemed to be drawing +itself together with strange, violent pangs, in blind effort. It was getting +stronger, it was re-asserting itself, the inviolable moon. And the rays were +hastening in in thin lines of light, to return to the strengthened moon, that +shook upon the water in triumphant reassumption. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin stood and watched, motionless, till the pond was almost calm, the +moon was almost serene. Then, satisfied of so much, he looked for more stones. +She felt his invisible tenacity. And in a moment again, the broken lights +scattered in explosion over her face, dazzling her; and then, almost +immediately, came the second shot. The moon leapt up white and burst through the +air. Darts of bright light shot asunder, darkness swept over the centre. There +was no moon, only a battlefield of broken lights and shadows, running close +together. Shadows, dark and heavy, struck again and again across the place where +the heart of the moon had been, obliterating it altogether. The white fragments +pulsed up and down, and could not find where to go, apart and brilliant on the +water like the petals of a rose that a wind has blown far and wide. +</p> + +<p> +Yet again, they were flickering their way to the centre, finding the path +blindly, enviously. And again, all was still, as Birkin and Ursula watched. The +waters were loud on the shore. He saw the moon regathering itself insidiously, +saw the heart of the rose intertwining vigorously and blindly, calling back the +scattered fragments, winning home the fragments, in a pulse and in effort of +return. +</p> + +<p> +And he was not satisfied. Like a madness, he must go on. He got large +stones, and threw them, one after the other, at the white-burning centre of the +moon, till there was nothing but a rocking of hollow noise, and a pond surged +up, no moon any more, only a few broken flakes tangled and glittering broadcast +in the darkness, without aim or meaning, a darkened confusion, like a black and +white kaleidoscope tossed at random. The hollow night was rocking and crashing +with noise, and from the sluice came sharp, regular flashes of sound. Flakes of +light appeared here and there, glittering tormented among the shadows, far off, +in strange places; among the dripping shadow of the willow on the island. Birkin +stood and listened and was satisfied. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was dazed, her mind was all gone. She felt she had fallen to the +ground and was spilled out, like water on the earth. Motionless and spent she +remained in the gloom. Though even now she was aware, unseeing, that in the +darkness was a little tumult of ebbing flakes of light, a cluster dancing +secretly in a round, twining and coming steadily together. They were gathering a +heart again, they were coming once more into being. Gradually the fragments +caught together re-united, heaving, rocking, dancing, falling back as in panic, +but working their way home again persistently, making semblance of fleeing away +when they had advanced, but always flickering nearer, a little closer to the +mark, the cluster growing mysteriously larger and brighter, as gleam after gleam +fell in with the whole, until a ragged rose, a distorted, frayed moon was +shaking upon the waters again, re-asserted, renewed, trying to recover from its +convulsion, to get over the disfigurement and the agitation, to be whole and +composed, at peace. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin lingered vaguely by the water. Ursula was afraid that he would stone +the moon again. She slipped from her seat and went down to him, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“You won’t throw stones at it any more, will you?” +</p> + +<p> +“How long have you been there?” +</p> + +<p> +“All the time. You won’t throw any more stones, will you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted to see if I could make it be quite gone off the pond,” +he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it was horrible, really. Why should you hate the moon? It +hasn’t done you any harm, has it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Was it hate?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +And they were silent for a few minutes. +</p> + +<p> +“When did you come back?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Today.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you never write?” +</p> + +<p> +“I could find nothing to say.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why was there nothing to say?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. Why are there no daffodils now?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +Again there was a space of silence. Ursula looked at the moon. It had +gathered itself together, and was quivering slightly. +</p> + +<p> +“Was it good for you, to be alone?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps. Not that I know much. But I got over a good deal. Did you do +anything important?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. I looked at England, and thought I’d done with it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why England?” he asked in surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know, it came like that.” +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t a question of nations,” he said. “France +is far worse.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I know. I felt I’d done with it all.” +</p> + +<p> +They went and sat down on the roots of the trees, in the shadow. And being +silent, he remembered the beauty of her eyes, which were sometimes filled with +light, like spring, suffused with wonderful promise. So he said to her, slowly, +with difficulty: +</p> + +<p> +“There is a golden light in you, which I wish you would give +me.” It was as if he had been thinking of this for some time. +</p> + +<p> +She was startled, she seemed to leap clear of him. Yet also she was pleased. +</p> + +<p> +“What kind of a light,” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +But he was shy, and did not say any more. So the moment passed for this +time. And gradually a feeling of sorrow came over her. +</p> + +<p> +“My life is unfulfilled,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he answered briefly, not wanting to hear this. +</p> + +<p> +“And I feel as if nobody could ever really love me,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +But he did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +“You think, don’t you,” she said slowly, “that I +only want physical things? It isn’t true. I want you to serve my +spirit.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know you do. I know you don’t want physical things by +themselves. But, I want you to give me—to give your spirit to +me—that golden light which is you—which you don’t +know—give it me—” +</p> + +<p> +After a moment’s silence she replied: +</p> + +<p> +“But how can I, you don’t love me! You only want your own ends. +You don’t want to serve <i>me</i>, and yet you want me to serve you. It +is so one-sided!” +</p> + +<p> +It was a great effort to him to maintain this conversation, and to press for +the thing he wanted from her, the surrender of her spirit. +</p> + +<p> +“It is different,” he said. “The two kinds of service are +so different. I serve you in another way—not through +<i>yourself</i>—somewhere else. But I want us to be together without bothering +about ourselves—to be really together because we <i>are</i> together, as if it +were a phenomenon, not a not a thing we have to maintain by our own +effort.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, pondering. “You are just egocentric. You +never have any enthusiasm, you never come out with any spark towards me. You +want yourself, really, and your own affairs. And you want me just to be there, +to serve you.” +</p> + +<p> +But this only made him shut off from her. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah well,” he said, “words make no matter, any way. The +thing <i>is</i> between us, or it isn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t even love me,” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“I do,” he said angrily. “But I want—” His +mind saw again the lovely golden light of spring transfused through her eyes, as +through some wonderful window. And he wanted her to be with him there, in this +world of proud indifference. But what was the good of telling her he wanted this +company in proud indifference. What was the good of talking, any way? It must +happen beyond the sound of words. It was merely ruinous to try to work her by +conviction. This was a paradisal bird that could never be netted, it must fly by +itself to the heart. +</p> + +<p> +“I always think I am going to be loved—and then I am let down. +You <i>don’t</i> love me, you know. You don’t want to serve me. You +only want yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +A shiver of rage went over his veins, at this repeated: “You +don’t want to serve me.” All the paradisal disappeared from him. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, irritated, “I don’t want to serve +you, because there is nothing there to serve. What you want me to serve, is +nothing, mere nothing. It isn’t even you, it is your mere female quality. +And I wouldn’t give a straw for your female ego—it’s a rag +doll.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha!” she laughed in mockery. “That’s all you think +of me, is it? And then you have the impudence to say you love me.” +</p> + +<p> +She rose in anger, to go home. +</p> + +<p> +You want the paradisal unknowing,” she said, turning round on him as +he still sat half-visible in the shadow. “I know what that means, thank +you. You want me to be your thing, never to criticise you or to have anything to +say for myself. You want me to be a mere <i>thing</i> for you! No thank you! +<i>If</i> you want that, there are plenty of women who will give it to you. There +are plenty of women who will lie down for you to walk over them—<i>go</i> +to them then, if that’s what you want—go to them.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, outspoken with anger. “I want you to drop +your assertive <i>will</i>, your frightened apprehensive self-insistence, that is +what I want. I want you to trust yourself so implicitly, that you can let yourself +go.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let myself go!” she re-echoed in mockery. “I can let +myself go, easily enough. It is you who can’t let yourself go, it is you +who hang on to yourself as if it were your only treasure. <i>You—you</i> +are the Sunday school teacher—<i>You</i>—you preacher.” +</p> + +<p> +The amount of truth that was in this made him stiff and unheeding of her. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mean let yourself go in the Dionysic ecstatic +way,” he said. “I know you can do that. But I hate ecstasy, Dionysic +or any other. It’s like going round in a squirrel cage. I want you not to +care about yourself, just to be there and not to care about yourself, not to +insist—be glad and sure and indifferent.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who insists?” she mocked. “Who is it that keeps on +insisting? It isn’t <i>me!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +There was a weary, mocking bitterness in her voice. He was silent for some +time. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” he said. “While ever either of us insists to the +other, we are all wrong. But there we are, the accord doesn’t come.” +</p> + +<p> +They sat in stillness under the shadow of the trees by the bank. The night +was white around them, they were in the darkness, barely conscious. +</p> + +<p> +Gradually, the stillness and peace came over them. She put her hand +tentatively on his. Their hands clasped softly and silently, in peace. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you really love me?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“I call that your war-cry,” he replied, amused. +</p> + +<p> +“Why!” she cried, amused and really wondering. +</p> + +<p> +“Your insistence—Your war-cry—“A Brangwen, A +Brangwen”—an old battle-cry. Yours is, ‘Do you love me? Yield knave, or +die.’” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, pleading, “not like that. Not like that. +But I must know that you love me, mustn’t I?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then, know it and have done with it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I do. I love you, and I know it’s final. It is final, so +why say any more about it.” +</p> + +<p> +She was silent for some moments, in delight and doubt. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you sure?” she said, nestling happily near to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Quite sure—so now have done—accept it and have +done.” +</p> + +<p> +She was nestled quite close to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Have done with what?” she murmured, happily. +</p> + +<p> +“With bothering,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She clung nearer to him. He held her close, and kissed her softly, gently. +It was such peace and heavenly freedom, just to fold her and kiss her gently, +and not to have any thoughts or any desires or any will, just to be still with +her, to be perfectly still and together, in a peace that was not sleep, but +content in bliss. To be content in bliss, without desire or insistence anywhere, +this was heaven: to be together in happy stillness. +</p> + +<p> +For a long time she nestled to him, and he kissed her softly, her hair, her +face, her ears, gently, softly, like dew falling. But this warm breath on her +ears disturbed her again, kindled the old destructive fires. She cleaved to him, +and he could feel his blood changing like quicksilver. +</p> + +<p> +“But we’ll be still, shall we?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, as if submissively. +</p> + +<p> +And she continued to nestle against him. +</p> + +<p> +But in a little while she drew away and looked at him. +</p> + +<p> +“I must be going home,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Must you—how sad,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +She leaned forward and put up her mouth to be kissed. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you really sad?” she murmured, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, “I wish we could stay as we were, +always.” +</p> + +<p> +“Always! Do you?” she murmured, as he kissed her. And then, out +of a full throat, she crooned “Kiss me! Kiss me!” And she cleaved +close to him. He kissed her many times. But he too had his idea and his will. He +wanted only gentle communion, no other, no passion now. So that soon she drew +away, put on her hat and went home. +</p> + +<p> +The next day however, he felt wistful and yearning. He thought he had been +wrong, perhaps. Perhaps he had been wrong to go to her with an idea of what he +wanted. Was it really only an idea, or was it the interpretation of a profound +yearning? If the latter, how was it he was always talking about sensual +fulfilment? The two did not agree very well. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly he found himself face to face with a situation. It was as simple as +this: fatally simple. On the one hand, he knew he did not want a further sensual +experience—something deeper, darker, than ordinary life could give. He +remembered the African fetishes he had seen at Halliday’s so often. There +came back to him one, a statuette about two feet high, a tall, slim, elegant +figure from West Africa, in dark wood, glossy and suave. It was a woman, with +hair dressed high, like a melon-shaped dome. He remembered her vividly: she was +one of his soul’s intimates. Her body was long and elegant, her face was +crushed tiny like a beetle’s, she had rows of round heavy collars, like a +column of quoits, on her neck. He remembered her: her astonishing cultured +elegance, her diminished, beetle face, the astounding long elegant body, on +short, ugly legs, with such protuberant buttocks, so weighty and unexpected +below her slim long loins. She knew what he himself did not know. She had +thousands of years of purely sensual, purely unspiritual knowledge behind her. +It must have been thousands of years since her race had died, mystically: that +is, since the relation between the senses and the outspoken mind had broken, +leaving the experience all in one sort, mystically sensual. Thousands of years +ago, that which was imminent in himself must have taken place in these Africans: +the goodness, the holiness, the desire for creation and productive happiness +must have lapsed, leaving the single impulse for knowledge in one sort, mindless +progressive knowledge through the senses, knowledge arrested and ending in the +senses, mystic knowledge in disintegration and dissolution, knowledge such as +the beetles have, which live purely within the world of corruption and cold +dissolution. This was why her face looked like a beetle’s: this was why +the Egyptians worshipped the ball-rolling scarab: because of the principle of +knowledge in dissolution and corruption. +</p> + +<p> +There is a long way we can travel, after the death-break: after that point +when the soul in intense suffering breaks, breaks away from its organic hold +like a leaf that falls. We fall from the connection with life and hope, we lapse +from pure integral being, from creation and liberty, and we fall into the long, +long African process of purely sensual understanding, knowledge in the mystery +of dissolution. +</p> + +<p> +He realised now that this is a long process—thousands of years it +takes, after the death of the creative spirit. He realised that there were great +mysteries to be unsealed, sensual, mindless, dreadful mysteries, far beyond the +phallic cult. How far, in their inverted culture, had these West Africans gone +beyond phallic knowledge? Very, very far. Birkin recalled again the female +figure: the elongated, long, long body, the curious unexpected heavy buttocks, +the long, imprisoned neck, the face with tiny features like a beetle’s. +This was far beyond any phallic knowledge, sensual subtle realities far beyond +the scope of phallic investigation. +</p> + +<p> +There remained this way, this awful African process, to be fulfilled. It +would be done differently by the white races. The white races, having the arctic +north behind them, the vast abstraction of ice and snow, would fulfil a mystery +of ice-destructive knowledge, snow-abstract annihilation. Whereas the West +Africans, controlled by the burning death-abstraction of the Sahara, had been +fulfilled in sun-destruction, the putrescent mystery of sun-rays. +</p> + +<p> +Was this then all that remained? Was there left now nothing but to break off +from the happy creative being, was the time up? Is our day of creative life +finished? Does there remain to us only the strange, awful afterwards of the +knowledge in dissolution, the African knowledge, but different in us, who are +blond and blue-eyed from the north? +</p> + +<p> +Birkin thought of Gerald. He was one of these strange white wonderful demons +from the north, fulfilled in the destructive frost mystery. And was he fated to +pass away in this knowledge, this one process of frost-knowledge, death by +perfect cold? Was he a messenger, an omen of the universal dissolution into +whiteness and snow? +</p> + +<p> +Birkin was frightened. He was tired too, when he had reached this length of +speculation. Suddenly his strange, strained attention gave way, he could not +attend to these mysteries any more. There was another way, the way of freedom. +There was the paradisal entry into pure, single being, the individual soul +taking precedence over love and desire for union, stronger than any pangs of +emotion, a lovely state of free proud singleness, which accepted the obligation +of the permanent connection with others, and with the other, submits to the yoke +and leash of love, but never forfeits its own proud individual singleness, even +while it loves and yields. +</p> + +<p> +There was the other way, the remaining way. And he must run to follow it. He +thought of Ursula, how sensitive and delicate she really was, her skin so +over-fine, as if one skin were wanting. She was really so marvellously gentle +and sensitive. Why did he ever forget it? He must go to her at once. He must ask +her to marry him. They must marry at once, and so make a definite pledge, enter +into a definite communion. He must set out at once and ask her, this moment. +There was no moment to spare. +</p> + +<p> +He drifted on swiftly to Beldover, half-unconscious of his own movement. He +saw the town on the slope of the hill, not straggling, but as if walled-in with +the straight, final streets of miners’ dwellings, making a great square, +and it looked like Jerusalem to his fancy. The world was all strange and +transcendent. +</p> + +<p> +Rosalind opened the door to him. She started slightly, as a young girl will, +and said: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I’ll tell father.” +</p> + +<p> +With which she disappeared, leaving Birkin in the hall, looking at some +reproductions from Picasso, lately introduced by Gudrun. He was admiring the +almost wizard, sensuous apprehension of the earth, when Will Brangwen appeared, +rolling down his shirt sleeves. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Brangwen, “I’ll get a coat.” And +he too disappeared for a moment. Then he returned, and opened the door of the +drawing-room, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“You must excuse me, I was just doing a bit of work in the shed. Come +inside, will you.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin entered and sat down. He looked at the bright, reddish face of the +other man, at the narrow brow and the very bright eyes, and at the rather +sensual lips that unrolled wide and expansive under the black cropped moustache. +How curious it was that this was a human being! What Brangwen thought himself to +be, how meaningless it was, confronted with the reality of him. Birkin could see +only a strange, inexplicable, almost patternless collection of passions and +desires and suppressions and traditions and mechanical ideas, all cast unfused +and disunited into this slender, bright-faced man of nearly fifty, who was as +unresolved now as he was at twenty, and as uncreated. How could he be the parent +of Ursula, when he was not created himself. He was not a parent. A slip of +living flesh had been transmitted through him, but the spirit had not come from +him. The spirit had not come from any ancestor, it had come out of the unknown. +A child is the child of the mystery, or it is uncreated. +</p> + +<p> +“The weather’s not so bad as it has been,” said Brangwen, +after waiting a moment. There was no connection between the two men. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Birkin. “It was full moon two days ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! You believe in the moon then, affecting the weather?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t think I do. I don’t really know enough about +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You know what they say? The moon and the weather may change together, +but the change of the moon won’t change the weather.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that it?” said Birkin. “I hadn’t heard +it.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. Then Birkin said: +</p> + +<p> +“Am I hindering you? I called to see Ursula, really. Is she at +home?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe she is. I believe she’s gone to the +library. I’ll just see.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin could hear him enquiring in the dining-room. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, coming back. “But she won’t be long. +You wanted to speak to her?” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked across at the other man with curious calm, clear eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I wanted to ask her to +marry me.” +</p> + +<p> +A point of light came on the golden-brown eyes of the elder man. +</p> + +<p> +“O-oh?” he said, looking at Birkin, then dropping his eyes +before the calm, steadily watching look of the other: “Was she expecting +you then?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“No? I didn’t know anything of this sort was on +foot—” Brangwen smiled awkwardly. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked back at him, and said to himself: “I wonder why it +should be ‘on foot’!” Aloud he said: +</p> + +<p> +“No, it’s perhaps rather sudden.” At which, thinking of +his relationship with Ursula, he added—“but I don’t +know—” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite sudden, is it? Oh!” said Brangwen, rather baffled and +annoyed. +</p> + +<p> +“In one way,” replied Birkin, “—not in +another.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a moment’s pause, after which Brangwen said: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, she pleases herself—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes!” said Birkin, calmly. +</p> + +<p> +A vibration came into Brangwen’s strong voice, as he replied: +</p> + +<p> +“Though I shouldn’t want her to be in too big a hurry, either. +It’s no good looking round afterwards, when it’s too late.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it need never be too late,” said Birkin, “as far as +that goes.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you mean?” asked the father. +</p> + +<p> +“If one repents being married, the marriage is at an end,” said +Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“You think so?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, well that may be your way of looking at it.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin, in silence, thought to himself: “So it may. As for <i>your</i> +way of looking at it, William Brangwen, it needs a little explaining.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose,” said Brangwen, “you know what sort of people +we are? What sort of a bringing-up she’s had?” +</p> + +<p> +“‘She’,” thought Birkin to himself, remembering his +childhood’s corrections, “is the cat’s mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do I know what sort of a bringing-up she’s had?” he said +aloud. +</p> + +<p> +He seemed to annoy Brangwen intentionally. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “she’s had everything that’s +right for a girl to have—as far as possible, as far as we could give it +her.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure she has,” said Birkin, which caused a perilous +full-stop. The father was becoming exasperated. There was something naturally +irritant to him in Birkin’s mere presence. +</p> + +<p> +“And I don’t want to see her going back on it all,” he +said, in a clanging voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +This monosyllable exploded in Brangwen’s brain like a shot. +</p> + +<p> +“Why! <i>I</i> don’t believe in your new-fangled ways and new-fangled +ideas—in and out like a frog in a gallipot. It would never do for +me.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin watched him with steady emotionless eyes. The radical antagnoism in +the two men was rousing. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but are my ways and ideas new-fangled?” asked Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Are they?” Brangwen caught himself up. “I’m not +speaking of you in particular,” he said. “What I mean is that my +children have been brought up to think and do according to the religion I was +brought up in myself, and I don’t want to see them going away from +<i>that</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a dangerous pause. +</p> + +<p> +“And beyond that—?” asked Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +The father hesitated, he was in a nasty position. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh? What do you mean? All I want to say is that my +daughter”—he tailed off into silence, overcome by futility. He knew +that in some way he was off the track. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Birkin, “I don’t want to hurt +anybody or influence anybody. Ursula does exactly as she pleases.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a complete silence, because of the utter failure in mutual +understanding. Birkin felt bored. Her father was not a coherent human being, he +was a roomful of old echoes. The eyes of the younger man rested on the face of +the elder. Brangwen looked up, and saw Birkin looking at him. His face was +covered with inarticulate anger and humiliation and sense of inferiority in +strength. +</p> + +<p> +“And as for beliefs, that’s one thing,” he said. +“But I’d rather see my daughters dead tomorrow than that they should +be at the beck and call of the first man that likes to come and whistle for +them.” +</p> + +<p> +A queer painful light came into Birkin’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“As to that,” he said, “I only know that it’s much +more likely that it’s I who am at the beck and call of the woman, than she +at mine.” +</p> + +<p> +Again there was a pause. The father was somewhat bewildered. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” he said, “she’ll please herself—she +always has done. I’ve done my best for them, but that doesn’t +matter. They’ve got themselves to please, and if they can help it +they’ll please nobody <i>but</i> themselves. But she’s a right to consider +her mother, and me as well—” +</p> + +<p> +Brangwen was thinking his own thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +“And I tell you this much, I would rather bury them, than see them +getting into a lot of loose ways such as you see everywhere nowadays. I’d +rather bury them—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes but, you see,” said Birkin slowly, rather wearily, bored +again by this new turn, “they won’t give either you or me the chance +to bury them, because they’re not to be buried.” +</p> + +<p> +Brangwen looked at him in a sudden flare of impotent anger. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, Mr Birkin,” he said, “I don’t know what +you’ve come here for, and I don’t know what you’re asking for. +But my daughters are my daughters—and it’s my business to look after +them while I can.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin’s brows knitted suddenly, his eyes concentrated in mockery. But +he remained perfectly stiff and still. There was a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve nothing against your marrying Ursula,” Brangwen +began at length. “It’s got nothing to do with me, she’ll do as +she likes, me or no me.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin turned away, looking out of the window and letting go his +consciousness. After all, what good was this? It was hopeless to keep it up. He +would sit on till Ursula came home, then speak to her, then go away. He would +not accept trouble at the hands of her father. It was all unnecessary, and he +himself need not have provoked it. +</p> + +<p> +The two men sat in complete silence, Birkin almost unconscious of his own +whereabouts. He had come to ask her to marry him—well then, he would wait +on, and ask her. As for what she said, whether she accepted or not, he did not +think about it. He would say what he had come to say, and that was all he was +conscious of. He accepted the complete insignificance of this household, for +him. But everything now was as if fated. He could see one thing ahead, and no +more. From the rest, he was absolved entirely for the time being. It had to be +left to fate and chance to resolve the issues. +</p> + +<p> +At length they heard the gate. They saw her coming up the steps with a +bundle of books under her arm. Her face was bright and abstracted as usual, with +the abstraction, that look of being not quite <i>there</i>, not quite present to the +facts of reality, that galled her father so much. She had a maddening faculty of +assuming a light of her own, which excluded the reality, and within which she +looked radiant as if in sunshine. +</p> + +<p> +They heard her go into the dining-room, and drop her armful of books on the +table. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you bring me that Girl’s Own?” cried Rosalind. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I brought it. But I forgot which one it was you wanted.” +</p> + +<p> +“You would,” cried Rosalind angrily. “It’s right for +a wonder.” +</p> + +<p> +Then they heard her say something in a lowered tone. +</p> + +<p> +“Where?” cried Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +Again her sister’s voice was muffled. +</p> + +<p> +Brangwen opened the door, and called, in his strong, brazen voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula.” +</p> + +<p> +She appeared in a moment, wearing her hat. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh how do you do!” she cried, seeing Birkin, and all dazzled as +if taken by surprise. He wondered at her, knowing she was aware of his presence. +She had her queer, radiant, breathless manner, as if confused by the actual +world, unreal to it, having a complete bright world of her self alone. +</p> + +<p> +“Have I interrupted a conversation?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No, only a complete silence,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Ursula, vaguely, absent. Their presence was not vital +to her, she was withheld, she did not take them in. It was a subtle insult that +never failed to exasperate her father. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr Birkin came to speak to <i>you</i>, not to me,” said her father. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, did he!” she exclaimed vaguely, as if it did not concern +her. Then, recollecting herself, she turned to him rather radiantly, but still +quite superficially, and said: “Was it anything special?” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope so,” he said, ironically. +</p> + +<p> +“—To propose to you, according to all accounts,” said her +father. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” mocked her father, imitating her. “Have you nothing +more to say?” +</p> + +<p> +She winced as if violated. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you really come to propose to me?” she asked of Birkin, as +if it were a joke. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. “I suppose I came to propose.” He +seemed to fight shy of the last word. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you?” she cried, with her vague radiance. He might have +been saying anything whatsoever. She seemed pleased. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he answered. “I wanted to—I wanted you to +agree to marry me.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him. His eyes were flickering with mixed lights, wanting +something of her, yet not wanting it. She shrank a little, as if she were +exposed to his eyes, and as if it were a pain to her. She darkened, her soul +clouded over, she turned aside. She had been driven out of her own radiant, +single world. And she dreaded contact, it was almost unnatural to her at these +times. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said vaguely, in a doubting, absent voice. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin’s heart contracted swiftly, in a sudden fire of bitterness. It +all meant nothing to her. He had been mistaken again. She was in some +self-satisfied world of her own. He and his hopes were accidentals, violations +to her. It drove her father to a pitch of mad exasperation. He had had to put up +with this all his life, from her. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, what do you say?” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +She winced. Then she glanced down at her father, half-frightened, and she +said: +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t speak, did I?” as if she were afraid she might +have committed herself. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said her father, exasperated. “But you needn’t +look like an idiot. You’ve got your wits, haven’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +She ebbed away in silent hostility. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got my wits, what does that mean?” she repeated, in +a sullen voice of antagonism. +</p> + +<p> +“You heard what was asked you, didn’t you?” cried her +father in anger. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course I heard.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then, can’t you answer?” thundered her father. +</p> + +<p> +“Why should I?” +</p> + +<p> +At the impertinence of this retort, he went stiff. But he said nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Birkin, to help out the occasion, +“there’s no need to answer at once. You can say when you +like.” +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes flashed with a powerful light. +</p> + +<p> +“Why should I say anything?” she cried. “You do this off +your <i>own</i> bat, it has nothing to do with me. Why do you both want to bully +me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Bully you! Bully you!” cried her father, in bitter, rancorous +anger. “Bully you! Why, it’s a pity you can’t be bullied into +some sense and decency. Bully you! <i>You’ll</i> see to that, you self-willed +creature.” +</p> + +<p> +She stood suspended in the middle of the room, her face glimmering and +dangerous. She was set in satisfied defiance. Birkin looked up at her. He too +was angry. +</p> + +<p> +“But none is bullying you,” he said, in a very soft dangerous +voice also. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” she cried. “You both want to force me into +something.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is an illusion of yours,” he said ironically. +</p> + +<p> +“Illusion!” cried her father. “A self-opinionated fool, +that’s what she is.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin rose, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“However, we’ll leave it for the time being.” +</p> + +<p> +And without another word, he walked out of the house. +</p> + +<p> +“You fool! You fool!” her father cried to her, with extreme +bitterness. She left the room, and went upstairs, singing to herself. But she +was terribly fluttered, as after some dreadful fight. From her window, she could +see Birkin going up the road. He went in such a blithe drift of rage, that her +mind wondered over him. He was ridiculous, but she was afraid of him. She was as +if escaped from some danger. +</p> + +<p> +Her father sat below, powerless in humiliation and chagrin. It was as if he +were possessed with all the devils, after one of these unaccountable conflicts +with Ursula. He hated her as if his only reality were in hating her to the last +degree. He had all hell in his heart. But he went away, to escape himself. He +knew he must despair, yield, give in to despair, and have done. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula’s face closed, she completed herself against them all. +Recoiling upon herself, she became hard and self-completed, like a jewel. She +was bright and invulnerable, quite free and happy, perfectly liberated in her +self-possession. Her father had to learn not to see her blithe obliviousness, or +it would have sent him mad. She was so radiant with all things, in her +possession of perfect hostility. +</p> + +<p> +She would go on now for days like this, in this bright frank state of +seemingly pure spontaneity, so essentially oblivious of the existence of +anything but herself, but so ready and facile in her interest. Ah it was a +bitter thing for a man to be near her, and her father cursed his fatherhood. But +he must learn not to see her, not to know. +</p> + +<p> +She was perfectly stable in resistance when she was in this state: so bright +and radiant and attractive in her pure opposition, so very pure, and yet +mistrusted by everybody, disliked on every hand. It was her voice, curiously +clear and repellent, that gave her away. Only Gudrun was in accord with her. It +was at these times that the intimacy between the two sisters was most complete, +as if their intelligence were one. They felt a strong, bright bond of +understanding between them, surpassing everything else. And during all these +days of blind bright abstraction and intimacy of his two daughters, the father +seemed to breathe an air of death, as if he were destroyed in his very being. He +was irritable to madness, he could not rest, his daughters seemed to be +destroying him. But he was inarticulate and helpless against them. He was forced +to breathe the air of his own death. He cursed them in his soul, and only +wanted, that they should be removed from him. +</p> + +<p> +They continued radiant in their easy female transcendancy, beautiful to look +at. They exchanged confidences, they were intimate in their revelations to the +last degree, giving each other at last every secret. They withheld nothing, they +told everything, till they were over the border of evil. And they armed each +other with knowledge, they extracted the subtlest flavours from the apple of +knowledge. It was curious how their knowledge was complementary, that of each to +that of the other. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula saw her men as sons, pitied their yearning and admired their courage, +and wondered over them as a mother wonders over her child, with a certain +delight in their novelty. But to Gudrun, they were the opposite camp. She feared +them and despised them, and respected their activities even overmuch. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” she said easily, “there is a quality of life +in Birkin which is quite remarkable. There is an extraordinary rich spring of +life in him, really amazing, the way he can give himself to things. But there +are so many things in life that he simply doesn’t know. Either he is not +aware of their existence at all, or he dismisses them as merely +negligible—things which are vital to the other person. In a way, he is not +clever enough, he is too intense in spots.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” cried Ursula, “too much of a preacher. He is really +a priest.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly! He can’t hear what anybody else has to say—he +simply cannot hear. His own voice is so loud.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. He cries you down.” +</p> + +<p> +“He cries you down,” repeated Gudrun. “And by mere force +of violence. And of course it is hopeless. Nobody is convinced by violence. It +makes talking to him impossible—and living with him I should think would +be more than impossible.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t think one could live with him’ asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it would be too wearing, too exhausting. One would be shouted +down every time, and rushed into his way without any choice. He would want to +control you entirely. He cannot allow that there is any other mind than his own. +And then the real clumsiness of his mind is its lack of self-criticism. No, I +think it would be perfectly intolerable.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” assented Ursula vaguely. She only half agreed with +Gudrun. “The nuisance is,” she said, “that one would find +almost any man intolerable after a fortnight.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s perfectly dreadful,” said Gudrun. “But +Birkin—he is too positive. He couldn’t bear it if you called your +soul your own. Of him that is strictly true.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Ursula. “You must have <i>his</i> soul.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly! And what can you conceive more deadly?” This was all +so true, that Ursula felt jarred to the bottom of her soul with ugly distaste. +</p> + +<p> +She went on, with the discord jarring and jolting through her, in the most +barren of misery. +</p> + +<p> +Then there started a revulsion from Gudrun. She finished life off so +thoroughly, she made things so ugly and so final. As a matter of fact, even if +it were as Gudrun said, about Birkin, other things were true as well. But Gudrun +would draw two lines under him and cross him out like an account that is +settled. There he was, summed up, paid for, settled, done with. And it was such +a lie. This finality of Gudrun’s, this dispatching of people and things in +a sentence, it was all such a lie. Ursula began to revolt from her sister. +</p> + +<p> +One day as they were walking along the lane, they saw a robin sitting on the +top twig of a bush, singing shrilly. The sisters stood to look at him. An +ironical smile flickered on Gudrun’s face. +</p> + +<p> +“Doesn’t he feel important?” smiled Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Doesn’t he!” exclaimed Ursula, with a little ironical +grimace. “Isn’t he a little Lloyd George of the air!” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t he! Little Lloyd George of the air! That’s just +what they are,” cried Gudrun in delight. Then for days, Ursula saw the +persistent, obtrusive birds as stout, short politicians lifting up their voices +from the platform, little men who must make themselves heard at any cost. +</p> + +<p> +But even from this there came the revulsion. Some yellowhammers suddenly +shot along the road in front of her. And they looked to her so uncanny and +inhuman, like flaring yellow barbs shooting through the air on some weird, +living errand, that she said to herself: “After all, it is impudence to +call them little Lloyd Georges. They are really unknown to us, they are the +unknown forces. It is impudence to look at them as if they were the same as +human beings. They are of another world. How stupid anthropomorphism is! Gudrun +is really impudent, insolent, making herself the measure of everything, making +everything come down to human standards. Rupert is quite right, human beings are +boring, painting the universe with their own image. The universe is non-human, +thank God.” It seemed to her irreverence, destructive of all true life, to +make little Lloyd Georges of the birds. It was such a lie towards the robins, +and such a defamation. Yet she had done it herself. But under Gudrun’s +influence: so she exonerated herself. +</p> + +<p> +So she withdrew away from Gudrun and from that which she stood for, she +turned in spirit towards Birkin again. She had not seen him since the fiasco of +his proposal. She did not want to, because she did not want the question of her +acceptance thrust upon her. She knew what Birkin meant when he asked her to +marry him; vaguely, without putting it into speech, she knew. She knew what kind +of love, what kind of surrender he wanted. And she was not at all sure that this +was the kind of love that she herself wanted. She was not at all sure that it +was this mutual unison in separateness that she wanted. She wanted unspeakable +intimacies. She wanted to have him, utterly, finally to have him as her own, oh, +so unspeakably, in intimacy. To drink him down—ah, like a life-draught. +She made great professions, to herself, of her willingness to warm his +foot-soles between her breasts, after the fashion of the nauseous Meredith poem. +But only on condition that he, her lover, loved her absolutely, with complete +self-abandon. And subtly enough, she knew he would never abandon himself +<i>finally</i> to her. He did not believe in final self-abandonment. He said it +openly. It was his challenge. She was prepared to fight him for it. For she +believed in an absolute surrender to love. She believed that love far surpassed +the individual. He said the individual was <i>more</i> than love, or than any +relationship. For him, the bright, single soul accepted love as one of its +conditions, a condition of its own equilibrium. She believed that love was +<i>everything</i>. Man must render himself up to her. He must be quaffed to the +dregs by her. Let him be <i>her man</i> utterly, and she in return would be his +humble slave—whether she wanted it or not. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX.<br/> +GLADIATORIAL</h2> + +<p> +After the fiasco of the proposal, Birkin had hurried blindly away from +Beldover, in a whirl of fury. He felt he had been a complete fool, that the +whole scene had been a farce of the first water. But that did not trouble him at +all. He was deeply, mockingly angry that Ursula persisted always in this old +cry: “Why do you want to bully me?” and in her bright, insolent +abstraction. +</p> + +<p> +He went straight to Shortlands. There he found Gerald standing with his back +to the fire, in the library, as motionless as a man is, who is completely and +emptily restless, utterly hollow. He had done all the work he wanted to +do—and now there was nothing. He could go out in the car, he could run to +town. But he did not want to go out in the car, he did not want to run to town, +he did not want to call on the Thirlbys. He was suspended motionless, in an +agony of inertia, like a machine that is without power. +</p> + +<p> +This was very bitter to Gerald, who had never known what boredom was, who +had gone from activity to activity, never at a loss. Now, gradually, everything +seemed to be stopping in him. He did not want any more to do the things that +offered. Something dead within him just refused to respond to any suggestion. He +cast over in his mind, what it would be possible to do, to save himself from +this misery of nothingness, relieve the stress of this hollowness. And there +were only three things left, that would rouse him, make him live. One was to +drink or smoke hashish, the other was to be soothed by Birkin, and the third was +women. And there was no one for the moment to drink with. Nor was there a woman. +And he knew Birkin was out. So there was nothing to do but to bear the stress of +his own emptiness. +</p> + +<p> +When he saw Birkin his face lit up in a sudden, wonderful smile. +</p> + +<p> +“By God, Rupert,” he said, “I’d just come to the +conclusion that nothing in the world mattered except somebody to take the edge +off one’s being alone: the right somebody.” +</p> + +<p> +The smile in his eyes was very astonishing, as he looked at the other man. +It was the pure gleam of relief. His face was pallid and even haggard. +</p> + +<p> +“The right woman, I suppose you mean,” said Birkin spitefully. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, for choice. Failing that, an amusing man.” +</p> + +<p> +He laughed as he said it. Birkin sat down near the fire. +</p> + +<p> +“What were you doing?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I? Nothing. I’m in a bad way just now, everything’s on +edge, and I can neither work nor play. I don’t know whether it’s a +sign of old age, I’m sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean you are bored?” +</p> + +<p> +“Bored, I don’t know. I can’t apply myself. And I feel the +devil is either very present inside me, or dead.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin glanced up and looked in his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“You should try hitting something,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps,” he said. “So long as it was something worth +hitting.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite!” said Birkin, in his soft voice. There was a long pause +during which each could feel the presence of the other. +</p> + +<p> +“One has to wait,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah God! Waiting! What are we waiting for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Some old Johnny says there are three cures for <i>ennui</i>, sleep, drink, +and travel,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“All cold eggs,” said Gerald. “In sleep, you dream, in +drink you curse, and in travel you yell at a porter. No, work and love are the +two. When you’re not at work you should be in love.” +</p> + +<p> +“Be it then,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Give me the object,” said Gerald. “The possibilities of +love exhaust themselves.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do they? And then what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you die,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“So you ought,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see it,” replied Gerald. He took his hands out of +his trousers pockets, and reached for a cigarette. He was tense and nervous. He +lit the cigarette over a lamp, reaching forward and drawing steadily. He was +dressed for dinner, as usual in the evening, although he was alone. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a third one even to your two,” said Birkin. +“Work, love, and fighting. You forget the fight.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose I do,” said Gerald. “Did you ever do any +boxing—?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t think I did,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay—” Gerald lifted his head and blew the smoke slowly +into the air. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing. I thought we might have a round. It is perhaps true, that I +want something to hit. It’s a suggestion.” +</p> + +<p> +“So you think you might as well hit me?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“You? Well! Perhaps—! In a friendly kind of way, of +course.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite!” said Birkin, bitingly. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald stood leaning back against the mantel-piece. He looked down at +Birkin, and his eyes flashed with a sort of terror like the eyes of a stallion, +that are bloodshot and overwrought, turned glancing backwards in a stiff terror. +</p> + +<p> +“I fell that if I don’t watch myself, I shall find myself doing +something silly,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not do it?” said Birkin coldly. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald listened with quick impatience. He kept glancing down at Birkin, as +if looking for something from the other man. +</p> + +<p> +“I used to do some Japanese wrestling,” said Birkin. “A +Jap lived in the same house with me in Heidelberg, and he taught me a little. +But I was never much good at it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You did!” exclaimed Gerald. “That’s one of the +things I’ve never ever seen done. You mean jiu-jitsu, I suppose?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. But I am no good at those things—they don’t interest +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“They don’t? They do me. What’s the start?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll show you what I can, if you like,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“You will?” A queer, smiling look tightened Gerald’s face +for a moment, as he said, “Well, I’d like it very much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then we’ll try jiu-jitsu. Only you can’t do much in a +starched shirt.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then let us strip, and do it properly. Hold a minute—” He +rang the bell, and waited for the butler. +</p> + +<p> +“Bring a couple of sandwiches and a syphon,” he said to the man, +“and then don’t trouble me any more tonight—or let anybody +else.” +</p> + +<p> +The man went. Gerald turned to Birkin with his eyes lighted. +</p> + +<p> +“And you used to wrestle with a Jap?” he said. “Did you +strip?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sometimes.” +</p> + +<p> +“You did! What was he like then, as a wrestler?” +</p> + +<p> +“Good, I believe. I am no judge. He was very quick and slippery and +full of electric fire. It is a remarkable thing, what a curious sort of fluid +force they seem to have in them, those people—not like a human grip—like +a polyp—” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald nodded. +</p> + +<p> +“I should imagine so,” he said, “to look at them. They +repel me, rather.” +</p> + +<p> +“Repel and attract, both. They are very repulsive when they are cold, +and they look grey. But when they are hot and roused, there is a definite +attraction—a curious kind of full electric fluid—like eels.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—yes—probably.” +</p> + +<p> +The man brought in the tray and set it down. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t come in any more,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +The door closed. +</p> + +<p> +“Well then,” said Gerald; “shall we strip and begin? Will +you have a drink first?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t want one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Neither do I.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald fastened the door and pushed the furniture aside. The room was large, +there was plenty of space, it was thickly carpeted. Then he quickly threw off +his clothes, and waited for Birkin. The latter, white and thin, came over to +him. Birkin was more a presence than a visible object, Gerald was aware of him +completely, but not really visually. Whereas Gerald himself was concrete and +noticeable, a piece of pure final substance. +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” said Birkin, “I will show you what I learned, and +what I remember. You let me take you so—” And his hands closed on +the naked body of the other man. In another moment, he had Gerald swung over +lightly and balanced against his knee, head downwards. Relaxed, Gerald sprang to +his feet with eyes glittering. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s smart,” he said. “Now try again.” +</p> + +<p> +So the two men began to struggle together. They were very dissimilar. Birkin +was tall and narrow, his bones were very thin and fine. Gerald was much heavier +and more plastic. His bones were strong and round, his limbs were rounded, all +his contours were beautifully and fully moulded. He seemed to stand with a +proper, rich weight on the face of the earth, whilst Birkin seemed to have the +centre of gravitation in his own middle. And Gerald had a rich, frictional kind +of strength, rather mechanical, but sudden and invincible, whereas Birkin was +abstract as to be almost intangible. He impinged invisibly upon the other man, +scarcely seeming to touch him, like a garment, and then suddenly piercing in a +tense fine grip that seemed to penetrate into the very quick of Gerald’s +being. +</p> + +<p> +They stopped, they discussed methods, they practised grips and throws, they +became accustomed to each other, to each other’s rhythm, they got a kind +of mutual physical understanding. And then again they had a real struggle. They +seemed to drive their white flesh deeper and deeper against each other, as if +they would break into a oneness. Birkin had a great subtle energy, that would +press upon the other man with an uncanny force, weigh him like a spell put upon +him. Then it would pass, and Gerald would heave free, with white, heaving, +dazzling movements. +</p> + +<p> +So the two men entwined and wrestled with each other, working nearer and +nearer. Both were white and clear, but Gerald flushed smart red where he was +touched, and Birkin remained white and tense. He seemed to penetrate into +Gerald’s more solid, more diffuse bulk, to interfuse his body through the +body of the other, as if to bring it subtly into subjection, always seizing with +some rapid necromantic fore-knowledge every motion of the other flesh, +converting and counteracting it, playing upon the limbs and trunk of Gerald like +some hard wind. It was as if Birkin’s whole physical intelligence +interpenetrated into Gerald’s body, as if his fine, sublimated energy +entered into the flesh of the fuller man, like some potency, casting a fine net, +a prison, through the muscles into the very depths of Gerald’s physical +being. +</p> + +<p> +So they wrestled swiftly, rapturously, intent and mindless at last, two +essential white figures working into a tighter closer oneness of struggle, with +a strange, octopus-like knotting and flashing of limbs in the subdued light of +the room; a tense white knot of flesh gripped in silence between the walls of +old brown books. Now and again came a sharp gasp of breath, or a sound like a +sigh, then the rapid thudding of movement on the thickly-carpeted floor, then +the strange sound of flesh escaping under flesh. Often, in the white interlaced +knot of violent living being that swayed silently, there was no head to be seen, +only the swift, tight limbs, the solid white backs, the physical junction of two +bodies clinched into oneness. Then would appear the gleaming, ruffled head of +Gerald, as the struggle changed, then for a moment the dun-coloured, shadow-like +head of the other man would lift up from the conflict, the eyes wide and +dreadful and sightless. +</p> + +<p> +At length Gerald lay back inert on the carpet, his breast rising in great +slow panting, whilst Birkin kneeled over him, almost unconscious. Birkin was +much more exhausted. He caught little, short breaths, he could scarcely breathe +any more. The earth seemed to tilt and sway, and a complete darkness was coming +over his mind. He did not know what happened. He slid forward quite unconscious, +over Gerald, and Gerald did not notice. Then he was half-conscious again, aware +only of the strange tilting and sliding of the world. The world was sliding, +everything was sliding off into the darkness. And he was sliding, endlessly, +endlessly away. +</p> + +<p> +He came to consciousness again, hearing an immense knocking outside. What +could be happening, what was it, the great hammer-stroke resounding through the +house? He did not know. And then it came to him that it was his own heart +beating. But that seemed impossible, the noise was outside. No, it was inside +himself, it was his own heart. And the beating was painful, so strained, +surcharged. He wondered if Gerald heard it. He did not know whether he were +standing or lying or falling. +</p> + +<p> +When he realised that he had fallen prostrate upon Gerald’s body he +wondered, he was surprised. But he sat up, steadying himself with his hand and +waiting for his heart to become stiller and less painful. It hurt very much, and +took away his consciousness. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald however was still less conscious than Birkin. They waited dimly, in a +sort of not-being, for many uncounted, unknown minutes. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course—” panted Gerald, “I didn’t have to +be rough—with you—I had to keep back—my force—” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin heard the sound as if his own spirit stood behind him, outside him, +and listened to it. His body was in a trance of exhaustion, his spirit heard +thinly. His body could not answer. Only he knew his heart was getting quieter. +He was divided entirely between his spirit, which stood outside, and knew, and +his body, that was a plunging, unconscious stroke of blood. +</p> + +<p> +“I could have thrown you—using violence—” panted +Gerald. “But you beat me right enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Birkin, hardening his throat and producing the words +in the tension there, “you’re much stronger than I—you could +beat me—easily.” +</p> + +<p> +Then he relaxed again to the terrible plunging of his heart and his blood. +</p> + +<p> +“It surprised me,” panted Gerald, “what strength +you’ve got. Almost supernatural.” +</p> + +<p> +“For a moment,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +He still heard as if it were his own disembodied spirit hearing, standing at +some distance behind him. It drew nearer however, his spirit. And the violent +striking of blood in his chest was sinking quieter, allowing his mind to come +back. He realised that he was leaning with all his weight on the soft body of +the other man. It startled him, because he thought he had withdrawn. He +recovered himself, and sat up. But he was still vague and unestablished. He put +out his hand to steady himself. It touched the hand of Gerald, that was lying +out on the floor. And Gerald’s hand closed warm and sudden over +Birkin’s, they remained exhausted and breathless, the one hand clasped +closely over the other. It was Birkin whose hand, in swift response, had closed +in a strong, warm clasp over the hand of the other. Gerald’s clasp had +been sudden and momentaneous. +</p> + +<p> +The normal consciousness however was returning, ebbing back. Birkin could +breathe almost naturally again. Gerald’s hand slowly withdrew, Birkin +slowly, dazedly rose to his feet and went towards the table. He poured out a +whiskey and soda. Gerald also came for a drink. +</p> + +<p> +“It was a real set-to, wasn’t it?” said Birkin, looking at +Gerald with darkened eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“God, yes,” said Gerald. He looked at the delicate body of the +other man, and added: “It wasn’t too much for you, was it?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. One ought to wrestle and strive and be physically close. It makes +one sane.” +</p> + +<p> +“You do think so?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do. Don’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +There were long spaces of silence between their words. The wrestling had +some deep meaning to them—an unfinished meaning. +</p> + +<p> +“We are mentally, spiritually intimate, therefore we should be more or +less physically intimate too—it is more whole.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly it is,” said Gerald. Then he laughed pleasantly, +adding: “It’s rather wonderful to me.” He stretched out his +arms handsomely. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Birkin. “I don’t know why one should +have to justify oneself.” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +The two men began to dress. +</p> + +<p> +“I think also that you are beautiful,” said Birkin to Gerald, +“and that is enjoyable too. One should enjoy what is given.” +</p> + +<p> +“You think I am beautiful—how do you mean, physically?” +asked Gerald, his eyes glistening. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. You have a northern kind of beauty, like light refracted from +snow—and a beautiful, plastic form. Yes, that is there to enjoy as well. +We should enjoy everything.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald laughed in his throat, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“That’s certainly one way of looking at it. I can say this much, +I feel better. It has certainly helped me. Is this the Bruderschaft you +wanted?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps. Do you think this pledges anything?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” laughed Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“At any rate, one feels freer and more open now—and that is what +we want.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +They drew to the fire, with the decanters and the glasses and the food. +</p> + +<p> +“I always eat a little before I go to bed,” said Gerald. +“I sleep better.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should not sleep so well,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“No? There you are, we are not alike. I’ll put a dressing-gown +on.” Birkin remained alone, looking at the fire. His mind had reverted to +Ursula. She seemed to return again into his consciousness. Gerald came down +wearing a gown of broad-barred, thick black-and-green silk, brilliant and +striking. +</p> + +<p> +“You are very fine,” said Birkin, looking at the full robe. +</p> + +<p> +“It was a caftan in Bokhara,” said Gerald. “I like +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I like it too.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin was silent, thinking how scrupulous Gerald was in his attire, how +expensive too. He wore silk socks, and studs of fine workmanship, and silk +underclothing, and silk braces. Curious! This was another of the differences +between them. Birkin was careless and unimaginative about his own appearance. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course you,” said Gerald, as if he had been thinking; +“there’s something curious about you. You’re curiously strong. +One doesn’t expect it, it is rather surprising.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin laughed. He was looking at the handsome figure of the other man, +blond and comely in the rich robe, and he was half thinking of the difference +between it and himself—so different; as far, perhaps, apart as man from +woman, yet in another direction. But really it was Ursula, it was the woman who +was gaining ascendance over Birkin’s being, at this moment. Gerald was +becoming dim again, lapsing out of him. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know,” he said suddenly, “I went and proposed to +Ursula Brangwen tonight, that she should marry me.” +</p> + +<p> +He saw the blank shining wonder come over Gerald’s face. +</p> + +<p> +“You did?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Almost formally—speaking first to her father, as it should +be, in the world—though that was accident—or mischief.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald only stared in wonder, as if he did not grasp. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mean to say that you seriously went and asked her +father to let you marry her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Birkin, “I did.” +</p> + +<p> +“What, had you spoken to her before about it, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not a word. I suddenly thought I would go there and ask +her—and her father happened to come instead of her—so I asked him +first.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you could have her?” concluded Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Ye-es, that.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you didn’t speak to her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. She came in afterwards. So it was put to her as well.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was! And what did she say then? You’re an engaged +man?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,—she only said she didn’t want to be bullied into +answering.” +</p> + +<p> +“She what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Said she didn’t want to be bullied into answering.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Said she didn’t want to be bullied into answering!’ Why, what +did she mean by that?” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin raised his shoulders. “Can’t say,” he answered. +“Didn’t want to be bothered just then, I suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +“But is this really so? And what did you do then?” +</p> + +<p> +“I walked out of the house and came here.” +</p> + +<p> +“You came straight here?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald stared in amazement and amusement. He could not take it in. +</p> + +<p> +“But is this really true, as you say it now?” +</p> + +<p> +“Word for word.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is?” +</p> + +<p> +He leaned back in his chair, filled with delight and amusement. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, that’s good,” he said. “And so you came here +to wrestle with your good angel, did you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Did I?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it looks like it. Isn’t that what you did?” +</p> + +<p> +Now Birkin could not follow Gerald’s meaning. +</p> + +<p> +“And what’s going to happen?” said Gerald. +“You’re going to keep open the proposition, so to speak?” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose so. I vowed to myself I would see them all to the devil. +But I suppose I shall ask her again, in a little while.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald watched him steadily. +</p> + +<p> +“So you’re fond of her then?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I think—I love her,” said Birkin, his face going very +still and fixed. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald glistened for a moment with pleasure, as if it were something done +specially to please him. Then his face assumed a fitting gravity, and he nodded +his head slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“You know,” he said, “I always believed in love—true +love. But where does one find it nowadays?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Very rarely,” said Gerald. Then, after a pause, +“I’ve never felt it myself—not what I should call love. +I’ve gone after women—and been keen enough over some of them. But +I’ve never felt <i>love</i>. I don’t believe I’ve ever felt +as much <i>love</i> for a woman, as I have for you—not <i>love</i>. You +understand what I mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. I’m sure you’ve never loved a woman.” +</p> + +<p> +“You feel that, do you? And do you think I ever shall? You understand +what I mean?” He put his hand to his breast, closing his fist there, as if +he would draw something out. “I mean that—that I can’t express +what it is, but I know it.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, then?” asked Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“You see, I can’t put it into words. I mean, at any rate, +something abiding, something that can’t change—” +</p> + +<p> +His eyes were bright and puzzled. +</p> + +<p> +“Now do you think I shall ever feel that for a woman?” he said, +anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked at him, and shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” he said. “I could not say.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald had been on the <i>qui vive</i>, as awaiting his fate. Now he drew back +in his chair. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “and neither do I, and neither do I.” +</p> + +<p> +“We are different, you and I,” said Birkin. “I can’t +tell your life.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Gerald, “no more can I. But I tell you—I +begin to doubt it!” +</p> + +<p> +“That you will ever love a woman?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—yes—what you would truly call love—” +</p> + +<p> +“You doubt it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—I begin to.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a long pause. +</p> + +<p> +“Life has all kinds of things,” said Birkin. “There +isn’t only one road.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I believe that too. I believe it. And mind you, I don’t +care how it is with me—I don’t care how it is—so long as I +don’t feel—” he paused, and a blank, barren look passed over +his face, to express his feeling—“so long as I feel I’ve +<i>lived</i>, somehow—and I don’t care how it is—but I want to +feel that—” +</p> + +<p> +“Fulfilled,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“We-ell, perhaps it is fulfilled; I don’t use the same words as +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is the same.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.<br/> +THRESHOLD</h2> + +<p> +Gudrun was away in London, having a little show of her work, with a friend, +and looking round, preparing for flight from Beldover. Come what might she would +be on the wing in a very short time. She received a letter from Winifred Crich, +ornamented with drawings. +</p> + +<p> +“Father also has been to London, to be examined by the doctors. It +made him very tired. They say he must rest a very great deal, so he is mostly in +bed. He brought me a lovely tropical parrot in faience, of Dresden ware, also a +man ploughing, and two mice climbing up a stalk, also in faience. The mice were +Copenhagen ware. They are the best, but mice don’t shine so much, +otherwise they are very good, their tails are slim and long. They all shine +nearly like glass. Of course it is the glaze, but I don’t like it. Gerald +likes the man ploughing the best, his trousers are torn, he is ploughing with an +ox, being I suppose a German peasant. It is all grey and white, white shirt and +grey trousers, but very shiny and clean. Mr Birkin likes the girl best, under +the hawthorn blossom, with a lamb, and with daffodils painted on her skirts, in +the drawing room. But that is silly, because the lamb is not a real lamb, and +she is silly too. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear Miss Brangwen, are you coming back soon, you are very much +missed here. I enclose a drawing of father sitting up in bed. He says he hopes +you are not going to forsake us. Oh dear Miss Brangwen, I am sure you +won’t. Do come back and draw the ferrets, they are the most lovely noble +darlings in the world. We might carve them in holly-wood, playing against a +background of green leaves. Oh do let us, for they are most beautiful. +</p> + +<p> +“Father says we might have a studio. Gerald says we could easily have +a beautiful one over the stables, it would only need windows to be put in the +slant of the roof, which is a simple matter. Then you could stay here all day +and work, and we could live in the studio, like two real artists, like the man +in the picture in the hall, with the frying-pan and the walls all covered with +drawings. I long to be free, to live the free life of an artist. Even Gerald +told father that only an artist is free, because he lives in a creative world of +his own—” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun caught the drift of the family intentions, in this letter. Gerald +wanted her to be attached to the household at Shortlands, he was using Winifred +as his stalking-horse. The father thought only of his child, he saw a rock of +salvation in Gudrun. And Gudrun admired him for his perspicacity. The child, +moreover, was really exceptional. Gudrun was quite content. She was quite +willing, given a studio, to spend her days at Shortlands. She disliked the +Grammar School already thoroughly, she wanted to be free. If a studio were +provided, she would be free to go on with her work, she would await the turn of +events with complete serenity. And she was really interested in Winifred, she +would be quite glad to understand the girl. +</p> + +<p> +So there was quite a little festivity on Winifred’s account, the day +Gudrun returned to Shortlands. +</p> + +<p> +“You should make a bunch of flowers to give to Miss Brangwen when she +arrives,” Gerald said smiling to his sister. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” cried Winifred, “it’s silly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all. It is a very charming and ordinary attention.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it is silly,” protested Winifred, with all the extreme +<i>mauvaise honte</i> of her years. Nevertheless, the idea appealed to her. She +wanted very much to carry it out. She flitted round the green-houses and the +conservatory looking wistfully at the flowers on their stems. And the more she +looked, the more she <i>longed</i> to have a bunch of the blossoms she saw, the +more fascinated she became with her little vision of ceremony, and the more +consumedly shy and self-conscious she grew, till she was almost beside herself. +She could not get the idea out of her mind. It was as if some haunting challenge +prompted her, and she had not enough courage to take it up. So again she drifted +into the green-houses, looking at the lovely roses in their pots, and at the +virginal cyclamens, and at the mystic white clusters of a creeper. The beauty, +oh the beauty of them, and oh the paradisal bliss, if she should have a perfect +bouquet and could give it to Gudrun the next day. Her passion and her complete +indecision almost made her ill. +</p> + +<p> +At last she slid to her father’s side. +</p> + +<p> +“Daddie—” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“What, my precious?” +</p> + +<p> +But she hung back, the tears almost coming to her eyes, in her sensitive +confusion. Her father looked at her, and his heart ran hot with tenderness, an +anguish of poignant love. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want to say to me, my love?” +</p> + +<p> +“Daddie—!” her eyes smiled +laconically—“isn’t it silly if I give Miss Brangwen some +flowers when she comes?” +</p> + +<p> +The sick man looked at the bright, knowing eyes of his child, and his heart +burned with love. +</p> + +<p> +“No, darling, that’s not silly. It’s what they do to +queens.” +</p> + +<p> +This was not very reassuring to Winifred. She half suspected that queens in +themselves were a silliness. Yet she so wanted her little romantic occasion. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I then?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Give Miss Brangwen some flowers? Do, Birdie. Tell Wilson I say you +are to have what you want.” +</p> + +<p> +The child smiled a small, subtle, unconscious smile to herself, in +anticipation of her way. +</p> + +<p> +“But I won’t get them till tomorrow,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Not till tomorrow, Birdie. Give me a kiss then—” +</p> + +<p> +Winifred silently kissed the sick man, and drifted out of the room. She +again went the round of the green-houses and the conservatory, informing the +gardener, in her high, peremptory, simple fashion, of what she wanted, telling +him all the blooms she had selected. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want these for?” Wilson asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I want them,” she said. She wished servants did not ask +questions. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, you’ve said as much. But what do you want them for, for +decoration, or to send away, or what?” +</p> + +<p> +“I want them for a presentation bouquet.” +</p> + +<p> +“A presentation bouquet! Who’s coming then?—the Duchess of +Portland?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, not her? Well you’ll have a rare poppy-show if you put all +the things you’ve mentioned into your bouquet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I want a rare poppy-show.” +</p> + +<p> +“You do! Then there’s no more to be said.” +</p> + +<p> +The next day Winifred, in a dress of silvery velvet, and holding a gaudy +bunch of flowers in her hand, waited with keen impatience in the schoolroom, +looking down the drive for Gudrun’s arrival. It was a wet morning. Under +her nose was the strange fragrance of hot-house flowers, the bunch was like a +little fire to her, she seemed to have a strange new fire in her heart. This +slight sense of romance stirred her like an intoxicant. +</p> + +<p> +At last she saw Gudrun coming, and she ran downstairs to warn her father and +Gerald. They, laughing at her anxiety and gravity, came with her into the hall. +The man-servant came hastening to the door, and there he was, relieving Gudrun +of her umbrella, and then of her raincoat. The welcoming party hung back till +their visitor entered the hall. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was flushed with the rain, her hair was blown in loose little curls, +she was like a flower just opened in the rain, the heart of the blossom just +newly visible, seeming to emit a warmth of retained sunshine. Gerald winced in +spirit, seeing her so beautiful and unknown. She was wearing a soft blue dress, +and her stockings were of dark red. +</p> + +<p> +Winifred advanced with odd, stately formality. +</p> + +<p> +“We are so glad you’ve come back,” she said. “These +are your flowers.” She presented the bouquet. +</p> + +<p> +“Mine!” cried Gudrun. She was suspended for a moment, then a +vivid flush went over her, she was as if blinded for a moment with a flame of +pleasure. Then her eyes, strange and flaming, lifted and looked at the father, +and at Gerald. And again Gerald shrank in spirit, as if it would be more than he +could bear, as her hot, exposed eyes rested on him. There was something so +revealed, she was revealed beyond bearing, to his eyes. He turned his face +aside. And he felt he would not be able to avert her. And he writhed under the +imprisonment. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun put her face into the flowers. +</p> + +<p> +“But how beautiful they are!” she said, in a muffled voice. +Then, with a strange, suddenly revealed passion, she stooped and kissed +Winifred. +</p> + +<p> +Mr Crich went forward with his hand held out to her. +</p> + +<p> +“I was afraid you were going to run away from us,” he said, +playfully. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked up at him with a luminous, roguish, unknown face. +</p> + +<p> +“Really!” she replied. “No, I didn’t want to stay in +London.” Her voice seemed to imply that she was glad to get back to +Shortlands, her tone was warm and subtly caressing. +</p> + +<p> +“That is a good thing,” smiled the father. “You see you +are very welcome here among us.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun only looked into his face with dark-blue, warm, shy eyes. She was +unconsciously carried away by her own power. +</p> + +<p> +“And you look as if you came home in every possible triumph,” Mr +Crich continued, holding her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, glowing strangely. “I haven’t had +any triumph till I came here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, come, come! We’re not going to hear any of those tales. +Haven’t we read notices in the newspaper, Gerald?” +</p> + +<p> +“You came off pretty well,” said Gerald to her, shaking hands. +“Did you sell anything?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, “not much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Just as well,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She wondered what he meant. But she was all aglow with her reception, +carried away by this little flattering ceremonial on her behalf. +</p> + +<p> +“Winifred,” said the father, “have you a pair of shoes for +Miss Brangwen? You had better change at once—” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun went out with her bouquet in her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Quite a remarkable young woman,” said the father to Gerald, +when she had gone. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied Gerald briefly, as if he did not like the +observation. +</p> + +<p> +Mr Crich liked Gudrun to sit with him for half an hour. Usually he was ashy +and wretched, with all the life gnawed out of him. But as soon as he rallied, he +liked to make believe that he was just as before, quite well and in the midst of +life—not of the outer world, but in the midst of a strong essential life. +And to this belief, Gudrun contributed perfectly. With her, he could get by +stimulation those precious half-hours of strength and exaltation and pure +freedom, when he seemed to live more than he had ever lived. +</p> + +<p> +She came to him as he lay propped up in the library. His face was like +yellow wax, his eyes darkened, as it were sightless. His black beard, now +streaked with grey, seemed to spring out of the waxy flesh of a corpse. Yet the +atmosphere about him was energetic and playful. Gudrun subscribed to this, +perfectly. To her fancy, he was just an ordinary man. Only his rather terrible +appearance was photographed upon her soul, away beneath her consciousness. She +knew that, in spite of his playfulness, his eyes could not change from their +darkened vacancy, they were the eyes of a man who is dead. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, this is Miss Brangwen,” he said, suddenly rousing as she +entered, announced by the man-servant. “Thomas, put Miss Brangwen a chair +here—that’s right.” He looked at her soft, fresh face with +pleasure. It gave him the illusion of life. “Now, you will have a glass of +sherry and a little piece of cake. Thomas—” +</p> + +<p> +“No thank you,” said Gudrun. And as soon as she had said it, her +heart sank horribly. The sick man seemed to fall into a gap of death, at her +contradiction. She ought to play up to him, not to contravene him. In an instant +she was smiling her rather roguish smile. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t like sherry very much,” she said. “But I +like almost anything else.” +</p> + +<p> +The sick man caught at this straw instantly. +</p> + +<p> +“Not sherry! No! Something else! What then? What is there, +Thomas?” +</p> + +<p> +“Port wine—curacçao—” +</p> + +<p> +“I would love some curaçao—” said Gudrun, looking at the +sick man confidingly. +</p> + +<p> +“You would. Well then Thomas, curaçao—and a little cake, or a +biscuit?” +</p> + +<p> +“A biscuit,” said Gudrun. She did not want anything, but she was +wise. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +He waited till she was settled with her little glass and her biscuit. Then +he was satisfied. +</p> + +<p> +“You have heard the plan,” he said with some excitement, +“for a studio for Winifred, over the stables?” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” exclaimed Gudrun, in mock wonder. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!—I thought Winnie wrote it to you, in her letter!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—yes—of course. But I thought perhaps it was only her +own little idea—” Gudrun smiled subtly, indulgently. The sick man +smiled also, elated. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no. It is a real project. There is a good room under the roof of +the stables—with sloping rafters. We had thought of converting it into a +studio.” +</p> + +<p> +“How <i>very</i> nice that would be!” cried Gudrun, with excited +warmth. The thought of the rafters stirred her. +</p> + +<p> +“You think it would? Well, it can be done.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how perfectly splendid for Winifred! Of course, it is just what +is needed, if she is to work at all seriously. One must have one’s +workshop, otherwise one never ceases to be an amateur.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that so? Yes. Of course, I should like you to share it with +Winifred.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you <i>so</i> much.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun knew all these things already, but she must look shy and very +grateful, as if overcome. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, what I should like best, would be if you could give up +your work at the Grammar School, and just avail yourself of the studio, and work +there—well, as much or as little as you liked—” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at Gudrun with dark, vacant eyes. She looked back at him as if +full of gratitude. These phrases of a dying man were so complete and natural, +coming like echoes through his dead mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“And as to your earnings—you don’t mind taking from me +what you have taken from the Education Committee, do you? I don’t want you +to be a loser.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Gudrun, “if I can have the studio and work +there, I can earn money enough, really I can.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, pleased to be the benefactor, “we can see +about all that. You wouldn’t mind spending your days here?” +</p> + +<p> +“If there were a studio to work in,” said Gudrun, “I could +ask for nothing better.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that so?” +</p> + +<p> +He was really very pleased. But already he was getting tired. She could see +the grey, awful semi-consciousness of mere pain and dissolution coming over him +again, the torture coming into the vacancy of his darkened eyes. It was not over +yet, this process of death. She rose softly saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps you will sleep. I must look for Winifred.” +</p> + +<p> +She went out, telling the nurse that she had left him. Day by day the tissue +of the sick man was further and further reduced, nearer and nearer the process +came, towards the last knot which held the human being in its unity. But this +knot was hard and unrelaxed, the will of the dying man never gave way. He might +be dead in nine-tenths, yet the remaining tenth remained unchanged, till it too +was torn apart. With his will he held the unit of himself firm, but the circle +of his power was ever and ever reduced, it would be reduced to a point at last, +then swept away. +</p> + +<p> +To adhere to life, he must adhere to human relationships, and he caught at +every straw. Winifred, the butler, the nurse, Gudrun, these were the people who +meant all to him, in these last resources. Gerald, in his father’s +presence, stiffened with repulsion. It was so, to a less degree, with all the +other children except Winifred. They could not see anything but the death, when +they looked at their father. It was as if some subterranean dislike overcame +them. They could not see the familiar face, hear the familiar voice. They were +overwhelmed by the antipathy of visible and audible death. Gerald could not +breathe in his father’s presence. He must get out at once. And so, in the +same way, the father could not bear the presence of his son. It sent a final +irritation through the soul of the dying man. +</p> + +<p> +The studio was made ready, Gudrun and Winifred moved in. They enjoyed so +much the ordering and the appointing of it. And now they need hardly be in the +house at all. They had their meals in the studio, they lived there safely. For +the house was becoming dreadful. There were two nurses in white, flitting +silently about, like heralds of death. The father was confined to his bed, there +was a come and go of <i>sotto voce</i> sisters and brothers and children. +</p> + +<p> +Winifred was her father’s constant visitor. Every morning, after +breakfast, she went into his room when he was washed and propped up in bed, to +spend half an hour with him. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you better, Daddie?” she asked him invariably. +</p> + +<p> +And invariably he answered: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I think I’m a little better, pet.” +</p> + +<p> +She held his hand in both her own, lovingly and protectively. And this was +very dear to him. +</p> + +<p> +She ran in again as a rule at lunch time, to tell him the course of events, +and every evening, when the curtains were drawn, and his room was cosy, she +spent a long time with him. Gudrun was gone home, Winifred was alone in the +house: she liked best to be with her father. They talked and prattled at random, +he always as if he were well, just the same as when he was going about. So that +Winifred, with a child’s subtle instinct for avoiding the painful things, +behaved as if nothing serious was the matter. Instinctively, she withheld her +attention, and was happy. Yet in her remoter soul, she knew as well as the +adults knew: perhaps better. +</p> + +<p> +Her father was quite well in his make-belief with her. But when she went +away, he relapsed under the misery of his dissolution. But still there were +these bright moments, though as his strength waned, his faculty for attention +grew weaker, and the nurse had to send Winifred away, to save him from +exhaustion. +</p> + +<p> +He never admitted that he was going to die. He knew it was so, he knew it +was the end. Yet even to himself he did not admit it. He hated the fact, +mortally. His will was rigid. He could not bear being overcome by death. For +him, there was no death. And yet, at times, he felt a great need to cry out and +to wail and complain. He would have liked to cry aloud to Gerald, so that his +son should be horrified out of his composure. Gerald was instinctively aware of +this, and he recoiled, to avoid any such thing. This uncleanness of death +repelled him too much. One should die quickly, like the Romans, one should be +master of one’s fate in dying as in living. He was convulsed in the clasp +of this death of his father’s, as in the coils of the great serpent of +Laocoön. The great serpent had got the father, and the son was dragged into the +embrace of horrifying death along with him. He resisted always. And in some +strange way, he was a tower of strength to his father. +</p> + +<p> +The last time the dying man asked to see Gudrun he was grey with near death. +Yet he must see someone, he must, in the intervals of consciousness, catch into +connection with the living world, lest he should have to accept his own +situation. Fortunately he was most of his time dazed and half gone. And he spent +many hours dimly thinking of the past, as it were, dimly re-living his old +experiences. But there were times even to the end when he was capable of +realising what was happening to him in the present, the death that was on him. +And these were the times when he called in outside help, no matter whose. For to +realise this death that he was dying was a death beyond death, never to be +borne. It was an admission never to be made. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was shocked by his appearance, and by the darkened, almost +disintegrated eyes, that still were unconquered and firm. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said in his weakened voice, “and how are you +and Winifred getting on?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, very well indeed,” replied Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +There were slight dead gaps in the conversation, as if the ideas called up +were only elusive straws floating on the dark chaos of the sick man’s +dying. +</p> + +<p> +“The studio answers all right?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Splendid. It couldn’t be more beautiful and perfect,” +said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +She waited for what he would say next. +</p> + +<p> +“And you think Winifred has the makings of a sculptor?” +</p> + +<p> +It was strange how hollow the words were, meaningless. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure she has. She will do good things one day.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! Then her life won’t be altogether wasted, you think?” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was rather surprised. +</p> + +<p> +“Sure it won’t!” she exclaimed softly. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s right.” +</p> + +<p> +Again Gudrun waited for what he would say. +</p> + +<p> +“You find life pleasant, it is good to live, isn’t it?” he +asked, with a pitiful faint smile that was almost too much for Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she smiled—she would lie at random—“I +get a pretty good time I believe.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s right. A happy nature is a great asset.” +</p> + +<p> +Again Gudrun smiled, though her soul was dry with repulsion. Did one have to +die like this—having the life extracted forcibly from one, whilst one +smiled and made conversation to the end? Was there no other way? Must one go +through all the horror of this victory over death, the triumph of the integral +will, that would not be broken till it disappeared utterly? One must, it was the +only way. She admired the self-possession and the control of the dying man +exceedingly. But she loathed the death itself. She was glad the everyday world +held good, and she need not recognise anything beyond. +</p> + +<p> +“You are quite all right here?—nothing we can do for +you?—nothing you find wrong in your position?” +</p> + +<p> +“Except that you are too good to me,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, well, the fault of that lies with yourself,” he said, and +he felt a little exultation, that he had made this speech. +</p> + +<p> +He was still so strong and living! But the nausea of death began to creep +back on him, in reaction. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun went away, back to Winifred. Mademoiselle had left, Gudrun stayed a +good deal at Shortlands, and a tutor came in to carry on Winifred’s +education. But he did not live in the house, he was connected with the Grammar +School. +</p> + +<p> +One day, Gudrun was to drive with Winifred and Gerald and Birkin to town, in +the car. It was a dark, showery day. Winifred and Gudrun were ready and waiting +at the door. Winifred was very quiet, but Gudrun had not noticed. Suddenly the +child asked, in a voice of unconcern: +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think my father’s going to die, Miss Brangwen?” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun started. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you truly?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody knows for certain. He <i>may</i> die, of course.” +</p> + +<p> +The child pondered a few moments, then she asked: +</p> + +<p> +“But do you <i>think</i> he will die?” +</p> + +<p> +It was put almost like a question in geography or science, insistent, as if +she would force an admission from the adult. The watchful, slightly triumphant +child was almost diabolical. +</p> + +<p> +“Do I think he will die?” repeated Gudrun. “Yes, I +do.” +</p> + +<p> +But Winifred’s large eyes were fixed on her, and the girl did not +move. +</p> + +<p> +“He is very ill,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +A small smile came over Winifred’s face, subtle and sceptical. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> don’t believe he will,” the child asserted, mockingly, +and she moved away into the drive. Gudrun watched the isolated figure, and her +heart stood still. Winifred was playing with a little rivulet of water, +absorbedly as if nothing had been said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve made a proper dam,” she said, out of the moist +distance. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald came to the door from out of the hall behind. +</p> + +<p> +“It is just as well she doesn’t choose to believe it,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked at him. Their eyes met; and they exchanged a sardonic +understanding. +</p> + +<p> +“Just as well,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her again, and a fire flickered up in his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Best to dance while Rome burns, since it must burn, don’t you +think?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She was rather taken aback. But, gathering herself together, she replied: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—better dance than wail, certainly.” +</p> + +<p> +“So I think.” +</p> + +<p> +And they both felt the subterranean desire to let go, to fling away +everything, and lapse into a sheer unrestraint, brutal and licentious. A strange +black passion surged up pure in Gudrun. She felt strong. She felt her hands so +strong, as if she could tear the world asunder with them. She remembered the +abandonments of Roman licence, and her heart grew hot. She knew she wanted this +herself also—or something, something equivalent. Ah, if that which was +unknown and suppressed in her were once let loose, what an orgiastic and +satisfying event it would be. And she wanted it, she trembled slightly from the +proximity of the man, who stood just behind her, suggestive of the same black +licentiousness that rose in herself. She wanted it with him, this unacknowledged +frenzy. For a moment the clear perception of this preoccupied her, distinct and +perfect in its final reality. Then she shut it off completely, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“We might as well go down to the lodge after Winifred—we can get +in the car there.” +</p> + +<p> +“So we can,” he answered, going with her. +</p> + +<p> +They found Winifred at the lodge admiring the litter of purebred white +puppies. The girl looked up, and there was a rather ugly, unseeing cast in her +eyes as she turned to Gerald and Gudrun. She did not want to see them. +</p> + +<p> +“Look!” she cried. “Three new puppies! Marshall says this +one seems perfect. Isn’t it a sweetling? But it isn’t so nice as its +mother.” She turned to caress the fine white bull-terrier bitch that stood +uneasily near her. +</p> + +<p> +“My dearest Lady Crich,” she said, “you are beautiful as +an angel on earth. Angel—angel—don’t you think she’s +good enough and beautiful enough to go to heaven, Gudrun? They will be in +heaven, won’t they—and <i>especially</i> my darling Lady Crich! +Mrs Marshall, I say!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Miss Winifred?” said the woman, appearing at the door. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh do call this one Lady Winifred, if she turns out perfect, will +you? Do tell Marshall to call it Lady Winifred.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell him—but I’m afraid that’s a +gentleman puppy, Miss Winifred.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh <i>no!</i>” There was the sound of a car. “There’s +Rupert!” cried the child, and she ran to the gate. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin, driving his car, pulled up outside the lodge gate. +</p> + +<p> +“We’re ready!” cried Winifred. “I want to sit in +front with you, Rupert. May I?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid you’ll fidget about and fall out,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +“No I won’t. I do want to sit in front next to you. It makes my +feet so lovely and warm, from the engines.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin helped her up, amused at sending Gerald to sit by Gudrun in the body +of the car. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you any news, Rupert?” Gerald called, as they rushed along +the lanes. +</p> + +<p> +“News?” exclaimed Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” Gerald looked at Gudrun, who sat by his side, and he +said, his eyes narrowly laughing, “I want to know whether I ought to +congratulate him, but I can’t get anything definite out of him.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun flushed deeply. +</p> + +<p> +“Congratulate him on what?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“There was some mention of an engagement—at least, he said +something to me about it.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun flushed darkly. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean with Ursula?” she said, in challenge. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. That is so, isn’t it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think there’s any engagement,” said Gudrun, +coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“That so? Still no developments, Rupert?” he called. +</p> + +<p> +“Where? Matrimonial? No.” +</p> + +<p> +“How’s that?” called Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin glanced quickly round. There was irritation in his eyes also. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” he replied. “What do you think of it, +Gudrun?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” she cried, determined to fling her stone also into the +pool, since they had begun, “I don’t think she wants an engagement. +Naturally, she’s a bird that prefers the bush.” Gudrun’s voice +was clear and gong-like. It reminded Rupert of her father’s, so strong and +vibrant. +</p> + +<p> +“And I,” said Birkin, his face playful but yet determined, +“I want a binding contract, and am not keen on love, particularly free +love.” +</p> + +<p> +They were both amused. <i>Why</i> this public avowal? Gerald seemed suspended a +moment, in amusement. +</p> + +<p> +“Love isn’t good enough for you?” he called. +</p> + +<p> +“No!” shouted Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha, well that’s being over-refined,” said Gerald, and the +car ran through the mud. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter, really?” said Gerald, turning to +Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +This was an assumption of a sort of intimacy that irritated Gudrun almost +like an affront. It seemed to her that Gerald was deliberately insulting her, +and infringing on the decent privacy of them all. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” she said, in her high, repellent voice. +“Don’t ask me!—I know nothing about <i>ultimate</i> marriage, +I assure you: or even penultimate.” +</p> + +<p> +“Only the ordinary unwarrantable brand!” replied Gerald. +“Just so—same here. I am no expert on marriage, and degrees of +ultimateness. It seems to be a bee that buzzes loudly in Rupert’s +bonnet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly! But that is his trouble, exactly! Instead of wanting a woman +for herself, he wants his <i>ideas</i> fulfilled. Which, when it comes to actual +practice, is not good enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no. Best go slap for what’s womanly in woman, like a bull at +a gate.” Then he seemed to glimmer in himself. “You think love is +the ticket, do you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly, while it lasts—you only can’t insist on +permanency,” came Gudrun’s voice, strident above the noise. +</p> + +<p> +“Marriage or no marriage, ultimate or penultimate or just +so-so?—take the love as you find it.” +</p> + +<p> +“As you please, or as you don’t please,” she echoed. +“Marriage is a social arrangement, I take it, and has nothing to do with +the question of love.” +</p> + +<p> +His eyes were flickering on her all the time. She felt as is he were kissing +her freely and malevolently. It made the colour burn in her cheeks, but her +heart was quite firm and unfailing. +</p> + +<p> +“You think Rupert is off his head a bit?” Gerald asked. +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes flashed with acknowledgment. +</p> + +<p> +“As regards a woman, yes,” she said, “I do. There <i>is</i> such +a thing as two people being in love for the whole of their lives—perhaps. +But marriage is neither here nor there, even then. If they are in love, well and +good. If not—why break eggs about it!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gerald. “That’s how it strikes me. But +what about Rupert?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t make out—neither can he nor anybody. He seems to +think that if you marry you can get through marriage into a third heaven, or +something—all very vague.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very! And who wants a third heaven? As a matter of fact, Rupert has a +great yearning to be <i>safe</i>—to tie himself to the mast.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. It seems to me he’s mistaken there too,” said +Gudrun. “I’m sure a mistress is more likely to be faithful than a +wife—just because she is her <i>own</i> mistress. No—he says he believes +that a man and wife can go further than any other two beings—but <i>where</i>, +is not explained. They can know each other, heavenly and hellish, but particularly +hellish, so perfectly that they go beyond heaven and hell—into—there +it all breaks down—into nowhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“Into Paradise, he says,” laughed Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun shrugged her shoulders. “<i>Je m’en fiche</i> of your +Paradise!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Not being a Mohammedan,” said Gerald. Birkin sat motionless, +driving the car, quite unconscious of what they said. And Gudrun, sitting +immediately behind him, felt a sort of ironic pleasure in thus exposing him. +</p> + +<p> +“He says,” she added, with a grimace of irony, “that you +can find an eternal equilibrium in marriage, if you accept the unison, and still +leave yourself separate, don’t try to fuse.” +</p> + +<p> +“Doesn’t inspire me,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s just it,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“I believe in love, in a real <i>abandon</i>, if you’re capable of +it,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“So do I,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“And so does Rupert, too—though he is always shouting.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Gudrun. “He won’t abandon himself to the +other person. You can’t be sure of him. That’s the trouble I +think.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet he wants marriage! Marriage—<i>et puis?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Le paradis!</i>” mocked Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin, as he drove, felt a creeping of the spine, as if somebody was +threatening his neck. But he shrugged with indifference. It began to rain. Here +was a change. He stopped the car and got down to put up the hood. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.<br/> +WOMAN TO WOMAN</h2> + +<p> +They came to the town, and left Gerald at the railway station. Gudrun and +Winifred were to come to tea with Birkin, who expected Ursula also. In the +afternoon, however, the first person to turn up was Hermione. Birkin was out, so +she went in the drawing-room, looking at his books and papers, and playing on +the piano. Then Ursula arrived. She was surprised, unpleasantly so, to see +Hermione, of whom she had heard nothing for some time. +</p> + +<p> +“It is a surprise to see you,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Hermione—“I’ve been away at +Aix—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, for your health?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +The two women looked at each other. Ursula resented Hermione’s long, +grave, downward-looking face. There was something of the stupidity and the +unenlightened self-esteem of a horse in it. “She’s got a +horse-face,” Ursula said to herself, “she runs between +blinkers.” It did seem as if Hermione, like the moon, had only one side to +her penny. There was no obverse. She stared out all the time on the narrow, but +to her, complete world of the extant consciousness. In the darkness, she did not +exist. Like the moon, one half of her was lost to life. Her self was all in her +head, she did not know what it was spontaneously to run or move, like a fish in +the water, or a weasel on the grass. She must always <i>know</i>. +</p> + +<p> +But Ursula only suffered from Hermione’s one-sidedness. She only felt +Hermione’s cool evidence, which seemed to put her down as nothing. +Hermione, who brooded and brooded till she was exhausted with the ache of her +effort at consciousness, spent and ashen in her body, who gained so slowly and +with such effort her final and barren conclusions of knowledge, was apt, in the +presence of other women, whom she thought simply female, to wear the conclusions +of her bitter assurance like jewels which conferred on her an unquestionable +distinction, established her in a higher order of life. She was apt, mentally, +to condescend to women such as Ursula, whom she regarded as purely emotional. +Poor Hermione, it was her one possession, this aching certainty of hers, it was +her only justification. She must be confident here, for God knows, she felt +rejected and deficient enough elsewhere. In the life of thought, of the spirit, +she was one of the elect. And she wanted to be universal. But there was a +devastating cynicism at the bottom of her. She did not believe in her own +universals—they were sham. She did not believe in the inner life—it +was a trick, not a reality. She did not believe in the spiritual world—it +was an affectation. In the last resort, she believed in Mammon, the flesh, and +the devil—these at least were not sham. She was a priestess without +belief, without conviction, suckled in a creed outworn, and condemned to the +reiteration of mysteries that were not divine to her. Yet there was no escape. +She was a leaf upon a dying tree. What help was there then, but to fight still +for the old, withered truths, to die for the old, outworn belief, to be a sacred +and inviolate priestess of desecrated mysteries? The old great truths <i>had</i> +been true. And she was a leaf of the old great tree of knowledge that was withering +now. To the old and last truth then she must be faithful even though cynicism +and mockery took place at the bottom of her soul. +</p> + +<p> +“I am so glad to see you,” she said to Ursula, in her slow +voice, that was like an incantation. “You and Rupert have become quite +friends?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” said Ursula. “He is always somewhere in the +background.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione paused before she answered. She saw perfectly well the other +woman’s vaunt: it seemed truly vulgar. +</p> + +<p> +“Is he?” she said slowly, and with perfect equanimity. +“And do you think you will marry?” +</p> + +<p> +The question was so calm and mild, so simple and bare and dispassionate that +Ursula was somewhat taken aback, rather attracted. It pleased her almost like a +wickedness. There was some delightful naked irony in Hermione. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” replied Ursula, “<i>He</i> wants to, awfully, but +I’m not so sure.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione watched her with slow calm eyes. She noted this new expression of +vaunting. How she envied Ursula a certain unconscious positivity! even her +vulgarity! +</p> + +<p> +“Why aren’t you sure?” she asked, in her easy sing song. +She was perfectly at her ease, perhaps even rather happy in this conversation. +“You don’t really love him?” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula flushed a little at the mild impertinence of this question. And yet +she could not definitely take offence. Hermione seemed so calmly and sanely +candid. After all, it was rather great to be able to be so sane. +</p> + +<p> +“He says it isn’t love he wants,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it then?” Hermione was slow and level. +</p> + +<p> +“He wants me really to accept him in marriage.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione was silent for some time, watching Ursula with slow, pensive eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Does he?” she said at length, without expression. Then, +rousing, “And what is it you don’t want? You don’t want +marriage?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—I don’t—not really. I don’t want to give +the sort of <i>submission</i> he insists on. He wants me to give myself up—and +I simply don’t feel that I <i>can</i> do it.” +</p> + +<p> +Again there was a long pause, before Hermione replied: +</p> + +<p> +“Not if you don’t want to.” Then again there was silence. +Hermione shuddered with a strange desire. Ah, if only he had asked <i>her</i> +to subserve him, to be his slave! She shuddered with desire. +</p> + +<p> +“You see I can’t—” +</p> + +<p> +“But exactly in what does—” +</p> + +<p> +They had both begun at once, they both stopped. Then, Hermione, assuming +priority of speech, resumed as if wearily: +</p> + +<p> +“To what does he want you to submit?” +</p> + +<p> +“He says he wants me to accept him non-emotionally, and +finally—I really don’t know <i>what</i> he means. He says he wants the +demon part of himself to be mated—physically—not the human being. +You see he says one thing one day, and another the next—and he always +contradicts himself—” +</p> + +<p> +“And always thinks about himself, and his own dissatisfaction,” +said Hermione slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” cried Ursula. “As if there were no one but himself +concerned. That makes it so impossible.” +</p> + +<p> +But immediately she began to retract. +</p> + +<p> +“He insists on my accepting God knows what in <i>him</i>,” she resumed. +“He wants me to accept <i>him</i> as—as an absolute—But it seems to +me he doesn’t want to <i>give</i> anything. He doesn’t want real warm +intimacy—he won’t have it—he rejects it. He won’t let me +think, really, and he won’t let me <i>feel</i>—he hates feelings.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a long pause, bitter for Hermione. Ah, if only he would have made +this demand of her? Her he <i>drove</i> into thought, drove inexorably into +knowledge—and then execrated her for it. +</p> + +<p> +“He wants me to sink myself,” Ursula resumed, “not to have +any being of my own—” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why doesn’t he marry an odalisk?” said Hermione in +her mild sing-song, “if it is that he wants.” Her long face looked +sardonic and amused. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Ursula vaguely. After all, the tiresome thing was, +he did not want an odalisk, he did not want a slave. Hermione would have been +his slave—there was in her a horrible desire to prostrate herself before a +man—a man who worshipped her, however, and admitted her as the supreme +thing. He did not want an odalisk. He wanted a woman to <i>take</i> something from +him, to give herself up so much that she could take the last realities of him, the +last facts, the last physical facts, physical and unbearable. +</p> + +<p> +And if she did, would he acknowledge her? Would he be able to acknowledge +her through everything, or would he use her just as his instrument, use her for +his own private satisfaction, not admitting her? That was what the other men had +done. They had wanted their own show, and they would not admit her, they turned +all she was into nothingness. Just as Hermione now betrayed herself as a woman. +Hermione was like a man, she believed only in men’s things. She betrayed +the woman in herself. And Birkin, would he acknowledge, or would he deny her? +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Hermione, as each woman came out of her own separate +reverie. “It would be a mistake—I think it would be a +mistake—” +</p> + +<p> +“To marry him?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Hermione slowly—“I think you need a +man—soldierly, strong-willed—” Hermione held out her hand and +clenched it with rhapsodic intensity. “You should have a man like the old +heroes—you need to stand behind him as he goes into battle, you need to +<i>see</i> his strength, and to <i>hear</i> his shout—. You need a man physically +strong, and virile in his will, <i>not</i> a sensitive man—.” There was a +break, as if the pythoness had uttered the oracle, and now the woman went on, in +a rhapsody-wearied voice: “And you see, Rupert isn’t this, he +isn’t. He is frail in health and body, he needs great, great care. Then he +is so changeable and unsure of himself—it requires the greatest patience +and understanding to help him. And I don’t think you are patient. You +would have to be prepared to suffer—dreadfully. I can’t <i>tell</i> you how +much suffering it would take to make him happy. He lives an <i>intensely</i> spiritual +life, at times—too, too wonderful. And then come the reactions. I +can’t speak of what I have been through with him. We have been together so +long, I really do know him, I <i>do</i> know what he is. And I feel I must say it; I +feel it would be perfectly <i>disastrous</i> for you to marry him—for you even +more than for him.” Hermione lapsed into bitter reverie. “He is so +uncertain, so unstable—he wearies, and then reacts. I couldn’t <i>tell</i> +you what his reactions are. I couldn’t <i>tell</i> you the agony of them. That +which he affirms and loves one day—a little latter he turns on it in a +fury of destruction. He is never constant, always this awful, dreadful reaction. +Always the quick change from good to bad, bad to good. And nothing is so +devastating, nothing—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Ursula humbly, “you must have suffered.” +</p> + +<p> +An unearthly light came on Hermione’s face. She clenched her hand like +one inspired. +</p> + +<p> +“And one must be willing to suffer—willing to suffer for him +hourly, daily—if you are going to help him, if he is to keep true to +anything at all—” +</p> + +<p> +“And I don’t <i>want</i> to suffer hourly and daily,” said +Ursula. “I don’t, I should be ashamed. I think it is degrading not +to be happy.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione stopped and looked at her a long time. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you?” she said at last. And this utterance seemed to her a +mark of Ursula’s far distance from herself. For to Hermione suffering was +the greatest reality, come what might. Yet she too had a creed of happiness. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. “One <i>should</i> be happy—” But +it was a matter of will. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Hermione, listlessly now, “I can only feel +that it would be disastrous, disastrous—at least, to marry in a hurry. +Can’t you be together without marriage? Can’t you go away and live +somewhere without marriage? I do feel that marriage would be fatal, for both of +you. I think for you even more than for him—and I think of his +health—” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Ursula, “I don’t care about +marriage—it isn’t really important to me—it’s he who +wants it.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is his idea for the moment,” said Hermione, with that weary +finality, and a sort of <i>si jeunesse savait</i> infallibility. +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. Then Ursula broke into faltering challenge. +</p> + +<p> +“You think I’m merely a physical woman, don’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“No indeed,” said Hermione. “No, indeed! But I think you +are vital and young—it isn’t a question of years, or even of +experience—it is almost a question of race. Rupert is race-old, he comes +of an old race—and you seem to me so young, you come of a young, +inexperienced race.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do I!” said Ursula. “But I think he is awfully young, on +one side.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, perhaps childish in many respects. Nevertheless—” +</p> + +<p> +They both lapsed into silence. Ursula was filled with deep resentment and a +touch of hopelessness. “It isn’t true,” she said to herself, +silently addressing her adversary. “It isn’t true. And it is <i>you</i> +who want a physically strong, bullying man, not I. It is you who want an unsensitive +man, not I. You <i>don’t</i> know anything about Rupert, not really, in spite +of the years you have had with him. You don’t give him a woman’s love, +you give him an ideal love, and that is why he reacts away from you. You +don’t know. You only know the dead things. Any kitchen maid would know +something about him, you don’t know. What do you think your knowledge is +but dead understanding, that doesn’t mean a thing. You are so false, and +untrue, how could you know anything? What is the good of your talking about +love—you untrue spectre of a woman! How can you know anything, when you +don’t believe? You don’t believe in yourself and your own womanhood, +so what good is your conceited, shallow cleverness—!” +</p> + +<p> +The two women sat on in antagonistic silence. Hermione felt injured, that +all her good intention, all her offering, only left the other woman in vulgar +antagonism. But then, Ursula could not understand, never would understand, could +never be more than the usual jealous and unreasonable female, with a good deal +of powerful female emotion, female attraction, and a fair amount of female +understanding, but no mind. Hermione had decided long ago that where there was +no mind, it was useless to appeal for reason—one had merely to ignore the +ignorant. And Rupert—he had now reacted towards the strongly female, +healthy, selfish woman—it was his reaction for the time being—there +was no helping it all. It was all a foolish backward and forward, a violent +oscillation that would at length be too violent for his coherency, and he would +smash and be dead. There was no saving him. This violent and directionless +reaction between animalism and spiritual truth would go on in him till he tore +himself in two between the opposite directions, and disappeared meaninglessly +out of life. It was no good—he too was without unity, without <i>mind</i>, +in the ultimate stages of living; not quite man enough to make a destiny for a +woman. +</p> + +<p> +They sat on till Birkin came in and found them together. He felt at once the +antagonism in the atmosphere, something radical and insuperable, and he bit his +lip. But he affected a bluff manner. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello, Hermione, are you back again? How do you feel?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, better. And how are you—you don’t look +well—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!—I believe Gudrun and Winnie Crich are coming in to tea. At +least they said they were. We shall be a tea-party. What train did you come by, +Ursula?” +</p> + +<p> +It was rather annoying to see him trying to placate both women at once. Both +women watched him, Hermione with deep resentment and pity for him, Ursula very +impatient. He was nervous and apparently in quite good spirits, chattering the +conventional commonplaces. Ursula was amazed and indignant at the way he made +small-talk; he was adept as any <i>fat</i> in Christendom. She became quite stiff, +she would not answer. It all seemed to her so false and so belittling. And still +Gudrun did not appear. +</p> + +<p> +“I think I shall go to Florence for the winter,” said Hermione +at length. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you?” he answered. “But it is so cold there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but I shall stay with Palestra. It is quite comfortable.” +</p> + +<p> +“What takes you to Florence?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” said Hermione slowly. Then she looked at +him with her slow, heavy gaze. “Barnes is starting his school of +æsthetics, and Olandese is going to give a set of discourses on the Italian +national policy—” +</p> + +<p> +“Both rubbish,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t think so,” said Hermione. +</p> + +<p> +“Which do you admire, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“I admire both. Barnes is a pioneer. And then I am interested in +Italy, in her coming to national consciousness.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish she’d come to something different from national +consciousness, then,” said Birkin; “especially as it only means a +sort of commercial-industrial consciousness. I hate Italy and her national rant. +And I think Barnes is an amateur.” +</p> + +<p> +Hermione was silent for some moments, in a state of hostility. But yet, she +had got Birkin back again into her world! How subtle her influence was, she +seemed to start his irritable attention into her direction exclusively, in one +minute. He was her creature. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, “you are wrong.” Then a sort of +tension came over her, she raised her face like the pythoness inspired with +oracles, and went on, in rhapsodic manner: “<i>Il Sandro mi scrive che ha +accolto il più grande entusiasmo, tutti i giovani, e fanciulle e ragazzi, sono +tutti</i>—” She went on in Italian, as if, in thinking of the Italians +she thought in their language. +</p> + +<p> +He listened with a shade of distaste to her rhapsody, then he said: +</p> + +<p> +“For all that, I don’t like it. Their nationalism is just +industrialism—that and a shallow jealousy I detest so much.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think you are wrong—I think you are wrong—” said +Hermione. “It seems to me purely spontaneous and beautiful, the modern +Italian’s <i>passion</i>, for it is a passion, for Italy, +<i>l’Italia</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know Italy well?” Ursula asked of Hermione. Hermione +hated to be broken in upon in this manner. Yet she answered mildly: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, pretty well. I spent several years of my girlhood there, with my +mother. My mother died in Florence.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause, painful to Ursula and to Birkin. Hermione however seemed +abstracted and calm. Birkin was white, his eyes glowed as if he were in a fever, +he was far too over-wrought. How Ursula suffered in this tense atmosphere of +strained wills! Her head seemed bound round by iron bands. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin rang the bell for tea. They could not wait for Gudrun any longer. +When the door was opened, the cat walked in. +</p> + +<p> +“Micio! Micio!” called Hermione, in her slow, deliberate +sing-song. The young cat turned to look at her, then, with his slow and stately +walk he advanced to her side. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Vieni—vieni quá</i>,” Hermione was saying, in her strange +caressive, protective voice, as if she were always the elder, the mother +superior. “<i>Vieni dire Buon’ Giorno alla zia. Mi ricordi, mi ricordi +bene—non è vero, piccolo? È vero che mi ricordi? È vero?</i>” And +slowly she rubbed his head, slowly and with ironic indifference. +</p> + +<p> +“Does he understand Italian?” said Ursula, who knew nothing of +the language. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Hermione at length. “His mother was Italian. +She was born in my waste-paper basket in Florence, on the morning of +Rupert’s birthday. She was his birthday present.” +</p> + +<p> +Tea was brought in. Birkin poured out for them. It was strange how +inviolable was the intimacy which existed between him and Hermione. Ursula felt +that she was an outsider. The very tea-cups and the old silver was a bond +between Hermione and Birkin. It seemed to belong to an old, past world which +they had inhabited together, and in which Ursula was a foreigner. She was almost +a parvenue in their old cultured milieu. Her convention was not their +convention, their standards were not her standards. But theirs were established, +they had the sanction and the grace of age. He and she together, Hermione and +Birkin, were people of the same old tradition, the same withered deadening +culture. And she, Ursula, was an intruder. So they always made her feel. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione poured a little cream into a saucer. The simple way she assumed her +rights in Birkin’s room maddened and discouraged Ursula. There was a +fatality about it, as if it were bound to be. Hermione lifted the cat and put +the cream before him. He planted his two paws on the edge of the table and bent +his gracious young head to drink. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Sicuro che capisce italiano</i>,” sang Hermione, “<i>non +l’avrà dimenticato, la lingua della Mamma.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +She lifted the cat’s head with her long, slow, white fingers, not +letting him drink, holding him in her power. It was always the same, this joy in +power she manifested, peculiarly in power over any male being. He blinked +forbearingly, with a male, bored expression, licking his whiskers. Hermione +laughed in her short, grunting fashion. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Ecco, il bravo ragazzo, com’ è superbo, questo!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +She made a vivid picture, so calm and strange with the cat. She had a true +static impressiveness, she was a social artist in some ways. +</p> + +<p> +The cat refused to look at her, indifferently avoided her fingers, and began +to drink again, his nose down to the cream, perfectly balanced, as he lapped +with his odd little click. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s bad for him, teaching him to eat at table,” said +Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Hermione, easily assenting. +</p> + +<p> +Then, looking down at the cat, she resumed her old, mocking, humorous +sing-song. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Ti imparano fare brutte cose, brutte cose</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +She lifted the Mino’s white chin on her forefinger, slowly. The young +cat looked round with a supremely forbearing air, avoided seeing anything, +withdrew his chin, and began to wash his face with his paw. Hermione grunted her +laughter, pleased. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Bel giovanotto</i>—” she said. +</p> + +<p> +The cat reached forward again and put his fine white paw on the edge of the +saucer. Hermione lifted it down with delicate slowness. This deliberate, +delicate carefulness of movement reminded Ursula of Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>No! Non è permesso di mettere il zampino nel tondinetto. Non piace al +babbo. Un signor gatto così selvatico—!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +And she kept her finger on the softly planted paw of the cat, and her voice +had the same whimsical, humorous note of bullying. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula had her nose out of joint. She wanted to go away now. It all seemed +no good. Hermione was established for ever, she herself was ephemeral and had +not yet even arrived. +</p> + +<p> +“I will go now,” she said suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked at her almost in fear—he so dreaded her anger. +“But there is no need for such hurry,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she answered. “I will go.” And turning to +Hermione, before there was time to say any more, she held out her hand and said +“Good-bye.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye—” sang Hermione, detaining the hand. “Must +you really go now?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I think I’ll go,” said Ursula, her face set, and +averted from Hermione’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“You think you will—” +</p> + +<p> +But Ursula had got her hand free. She turned to Birkin with a quick, almost +jeering: “Good-bye,” and she was opening the door before he had time +to do it for her. +</p> + +<p> +When she got outside the house she ran down the road in fury and agitation. +It was strange, the unreasoning rage and violence Hermione roused in her, by her +very presence. Ursula knew she gave herself away to the other woman, she knew +she looked ill-bred, uncouth, exaggerated. But she did not care. She only ran up +the road, lest she should go back and jeer in the faces of the two she had left +behind. For they outraged her. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.<br/> +EXCURSE</h2> + +<p> +Next day Birkin sought Ursula out. It happened to be the half-day at the +Grammar School. He appeared towards the end of the morning, and asked her, would +she drive with him in the afternoon. She consented. But her face was closed and +unresponding, and his heart sank. +</p> + +<p> +The afternoon was fine and dim. He was driving the motor-car, and she sat +beside him. But still her face was closed against him, unresponding. When she +became like this, like a wall against him, his heart contracted. +</p> + +<p> +His life now seemed so reduced, that he hardly cared any more. At moments it +seemed to him he did not care a straw whether Ursula or Hermione or anybody else +existed or did not exist. Why bother! Why strive for a coherent, satisfied life? +Why not drift on in a series of accidents—like a picaresque novel? Why not? +Why bother about human relationships? Why take them seriously-male or female? Why +form any serious connections at all? Why not be casual, drifting along, taking +all for what it was worth? +</p> + +<p> +And yet, still, he was damned and doomed to the old effort at serious +living. +</p> + +<p> +“Look,” he said, “what I bought.” The car was +running along a broad white road, between autumn trees. +</p> + +<p> +He gave her a little bit of screwed-up paper. She took it and opened it. +</p> + +<p> +“How lovely,” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +She examined the gift. +</p> + +<p> +“How perfectly lovely!” she cried again. “But why do you +give them me?” She put the question offensively. +</p> + +<p> +His face flickered with bored irritation. He shrugged his shoulders +slightly. +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted to,” he said, coolly. +</p> + +<p> +“But why? Why should you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Am I called on to find reasons?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence, whilst she examined the rings that had been screwed up +in the paper. +</p> + +<p> +“I think they are <i>beautiful</i>,” she said, “especially this. +This is wonderful—” +</p> + +<p> +It was a round opal, red and fiery, set in a circle of tiny rubies. +</p> + +<p> +“You like that best?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I think I do.” +</p> + +<p> +“I like the sapphire,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“This?” +</p> + +<p> +It was a rose-shaped, beautiful sapphire, with small brilliants. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, “it is lovely.” She held it in the +light. “Yes, perhaps it <i>is</i> the best—” +</p> + +<p> +“The blue—” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, wonderful—” +</p> + +<p> +He suddenly swung the car out of the way of a farm-cart. It tilted on the +bank. He was a careless driver, yet very quick. But Ursula was frightened. There +was always that something regardless in him which terrified her. She suddenly +felt he might kill her, by making some dreadful accident with the motor-car. For +a moment she was stony with fear. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it rather dangerous, the way you drive?” she asked +him. +</p> + +<p> +“No, it isn’t dangerous,” he said. And then, after a +pause: “Don’t you like the yellow ring at all?” +</p> + +<p> +It was a squarish topaz set in a frame of steel, or some other similar +mineral, finely wrought. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, “I do like it. But why did you buy these +rings?” +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted them. They are second-hand.” +</p> + +<p> +“You bought them for yourself?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. Rings look wrong on my hands.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you buy them then?” +</p> + +<p> +“I bought them to give to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why? Surely you ought to give them to Hermione! You belong to +her.” +</p> + +<p> +He did not answer. She remained with the jewels shut in her hand. She wanted +to try them on her fingers, but something in her would not let her. And +moreover, she was afraid her hands were too large, she shrank from the +mortification of a failure to put them on any but her little finger. They +travelled in silence through the empty lanes. +</p> + +<p> +Driving in a motor-car excited her, she forgot his presence even. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are we?” she asked suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +“Not far from Worksop.” +</p> + +<p> +“And where are we going?” +</p> + +<p> +“Anywhere.” +</p> + +<p> +It was the answer she liked. +</p> + +<p> +She opened her hand to look at the rings. They gave her <i>such</i> pleasure, as +they lay, the three circles, with their knotted jewels, entangled in her palm. +She would have to try them on. She did so secretly, unwilling to let him see, so +that he should not know her finger was too large for them. But he saw +nevertheless. He always saw, if she wanted him not to. It was another of his +hateful, watchful characteristics. +</p> + +<p> +Only the opal, with its thin wire loop, would go on her ring finger. And she +was superstitious. No, there was ill-portent enough, she would not accept this +ring from him in pledge. +</p> + +<p> +“Look,” she said, putting forward her hand, that was half-closed +and shrinking. “The others don’t fit me.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at the red-glinting, soft stone, on her over-sensitive skin. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“But opals are unlucky, aren’t they?” she said wistfully. +</p> + +<p> +“No. I prefer unlucky things. Luck is vulgar. Who wants what <i>luck</i> +would bring? I don’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why?” she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +And, consumed with a desire to see how the other rings would look on her +hand, she put them on her little finger. +</p> + +<p> +“They can be made a little bigger,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she replied, doubtfully. And she sighed. She knew that, +in accepting the rings, she was accepting a pledge. Yet fate seemed more than +herself. She looked again at the jewels. They were very beautiful to her +eyes—not as ornament, or wealth, but as tiny fragments of loveliness. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad you bought them,” she said, putting her hand, +half unwillingly, gently on his arm. +</p> + +<p> +He smiled, slightly. He wanted her to come to him. But he was angry at the +bottom of his soul, and indifferent. He knew she had a passion for him, really. +But it was not finally interesting. There were depths of passion when one became +impersonal and indifferent, unemotional. Whereas Ursula was still at the +emotional personal level—always so abominably personal. He had taken her +as he had never been taken himself. He had taken her at the roots of her darkness +and shame—like a demon, laughing over the fountain of mystic corruption which +was one of the sources of her being, laughing, shrugging, accepting, accepting +finally. As for her, when would she so much go beyond herself as to accept him +at the quick of death? +</p> + +<p> +She now became quite happy. The motor-car ran on, the afternoon was soft and +dim. She talked with lively interest, analysing people and their motives—Gudrun, +Gerald. He answered vaguely. He was not very much interested any more in +personalities and in people—people were all different, but they were all +enclosed nowadays in a definite limitation, he said; there were only about two +great ideas, two great streams of activity remaining, with various forms of +reaction therefrom. The reactions were all varied in various people, but they +followed a few great laws, and intrinsically there was no difference. They acted +and reacted involuntarily according to a few great laws, and once the laws, the +great principles, were known, people were no longer mystically interesting. They +were all essentially alike, the differences were only variations on a theme. +None of them transcended the given terms. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula did not agree—people were still an adventure to her—but—perhaps +not as much as she tried to persuade herself. Perhaps there was something +mechanical, now, in her interest. Perhaps also her interest was destructive, her +analysing was a real tearing to pieces. There was an under-space in her where +she did not care for people and their idiosyncracies, even to destroy them. She +seemed to touch for a moment this undersilence in herself, she became still, and +she turned for a moment purely to Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t it be lovely to go home in the dark?” she said. +“We might have tea rather late—shall we?—and have high tea? +Wouldn’t that be rather nice?” +</p> + +<p> +“I promised to be at Shortlands for dinner,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“But—it doesn’t matter—you can go tomorrow—” +</p> + +<p> +“Hermione is there,” he said, in rather an uneasy voice. +“She is going away in two days. I suppose I ought to say good-bye to her. +I shall never see her again.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula drew away, closed in a violent silence. He knitted his brows, and his +eyes began to sparkle again in anger. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked irritably. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t care. Why should I? Why should I mind?” Her +tone was jeering and offensive. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what I ask myself,” he said; “why <i>should</i> +you mind! But you seem to.” His brows were tense with violent irritation. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>assure</i> you I don’t, I don’t mind in the least. Go where +you belong—it’s what I want you to do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah you fool!” he cried, “with your ‘go where you belong.’ +It’s finished between Hermione and me. She means much more to <i>you</i>, if it +comes to that, than she does to me. For you can only revolt in pure reaction +from her—and to be her opposite is to be her counterpart.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, opposite!” cried Ursula. “I know your dodges. I am +not taken in by your word-twisting. You belong to Hermione and her dead show. +Well, if you do, you do. I don’t blame you. But then you’ve nothing +to do with me. +</p> + +<p> +In his inflamed, overwrought exasperation, he stopped the car, and they sat +there, in the middle of the country lane, to have it out. It was a crisis of war +between them, so they did not see the ridiculousness of their situation. +</p> + +<p> +“If you weren’t a fool, if only you weren’t a fool,” +he cried in bitter despair, “you’d see that one could be decent, +even when one has been wrong. I <i>was</i> wrong to go on all those years with +Hermione—it was a deathly process. But after all, one can have a little +human decency. But no, you would tear my soul out with your jealousy at the very +mention of Hermione’s name.” +</p> + +<p> +“I jealous! <i>I</i>—jealous! You <i>are</i> mistaken if you think +that. I’m not jealous in the least of Hermione, she is nothing to me, not +<i>that!</i>” And Ursula snapped her fingers. “No, it’s you +who are a liar. It’s you who must return, like a dog to his vomit. It is +what Hermione <i>stands for</i> that I <i>hate</i>. I <i>hate</i> it. It is lies, +it is false, it is death. But you want it, you can’t help it, you can’t +help yourself. You belong to that old, deathly way of living—then go back to +it. But don’t come to me, for I’ve nothing to do with it.” +</p> + +<p> +And in the stress of her violent emotion, she got down from the car and went +to the hedgerow, picking unconsciously some flesh-pink spindleberries, some of +which were burst, showing their orange seeds. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, you are a fool,” he cried, bitterly, with some contempt. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I am. I <i>am</i> a fool. And thank God for it. I’m too big a +fool to swallow your cleverness. God be praised. You go to your women—go +to them—they are your sort—you’ve always had a string of them +trailing after you—and you always will. Go to your spiritual +brides—but don’t come to me as well, because I’m not having +any, thank you. You’re not satisfied, are you? Your spiritual brides +can’t give you what you want, they aren’t common and fleshy enough +for you, aren’t they? So you come to me, and keep them in the background! +You will marry me for daily use. But you’ll keep yourself well provided +with spiritual brides in the background. I know your dirty little game.” +Suddenly a flame ran over her, and she stamped her foot madly on the road, and +he winced, afraid that she would strike him. “And <i>I, I’m</i> not +spiritual enough, <i>I’m</i> not as spiritual as that Hermione—!” +Her brows knitted, her eyes blazed like a tiger’s. “Then <i>go</i> +to her, that’s all I say, <i>go</i> to her, <i>go</i>. Ha, she +spiritual—<i>spiritual</i>, she! A dirty materialist as she is. +<i>She</i> spiritual? What does she care for, what is her spirituality? What +<i>is</i> it?” Her fury seemed to blaze out and burn his face. +He shrank a little. “I tell you it’s <i>dirt, dirt</i>, and nothing +<i>but</i> dirt. And it’s dirt you want, you crave for it. Spiritual! Is +<i>that</i> spiritual, her bullying, her conceit, her sordid materialism? She’s +a fishwife, a fishwife, she is such a materialist. And all so sordid. What does +she work out to, in the end, with all her social passion, as you call it. Social +passion—what social passion has she?—show it me!—where is it? +She wants petty, immediate <i>power</i>, she wants the illusion that she is a great +woman, that is all. In her soul she’s a devilish unbeliever, common as +dirt. That’s what she is at the bottom. And all the rest is +pretence—but you love it. You love the sham spirituality, it’s your +food. And why? Because of the dirt underneath. Do you think I don’t know +the foulness of your sex life—and her’s?—I do. And it’s +that foulness you want, you liar. Then have it, have it. You’re such a +liar.” +</p> + +<p> +She turned away, spasmodically tearing the twigs of spindleberry from the +hedge, and fastening them, with vibrating fingers, in the bosom of her coat. +</p> + +<p> +He stood watching in silence. A wonderful tenderness burned in him, at the +sight of her quivering, so sensitive fingers: and at the same time he was full +of rage and callousness. +</p> + +<p> +“This is a degrading exhibition,” he said coolly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, degrading indeed,” she said. “But more to me than to +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Since you choose to degrade yourself,” he said. Again the flash +came over her face, the yellow lights concentrated in her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You!</i>” she cried. “You! You truth-lover! You +purity-monger! It <i>stinks</i>, your truth and your purity. It stinks of the +offal you feed on, you scavenger dog, you eater of corpses. You are foul, +<i>foul</i>—and you must know it. Your purity, your candour, your +goodness—yes, thank you, we’ve had some. What you are is a foul, +deathly thing, obscene, that’s what you are, obscene and perverse. You, +and love! You may well say, you don’t want love. No, you want <i>yourself</i>, +and dirt, and death—that’s what you want. You are so <i>perverse</i>, +so death-eating. And then—” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a bicycle coming,” he said, writhing under her +loud denunciation. +</p> + +<p> +She glanced down the road. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care,” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless she was silent. The cyclist, having heard the voices raised in +altercation, glanced curiously at the man, and the woman, and at the standing +motor-car as he passed. +</p> + +<p> +“—Afternoon,” he said, cheerfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-afternoon,” replied Birkin coldly. +</p> + +<p> +They were silent as the man passed into the distance. +</p> + +<p> +A clearer look had come over Birkin’s face. He knew she was in the +main right. He knew he was perverse, so spiritual on the one hand, and in some +strange way, degraded, on the other. But was she herself any better? Was anybody +any better? +</p> + +<p> +“It may all be true, lies and stink and all,” he said. +“But Hermione’s spiritual intimacy is no rottener than your +emotional-jealous intimacy. One can preserve the decencies, even to one’s +enemies: for one’s own sake. Hermione is my enemy—to her last +breath! That’s why I must bow her off the field.” +</p> + +<p> +“You! You and your enemies and your bows! A pretty picture you make of +yourself. But it takes nobody in but yourself. I <i>jealous! I!</i> What I say,” +her voice sprang into flame, “I say because it is <i>true</i>, do you see, +because you are <i>you</i>, a foul and false liar, a whited sepulchre. That’s +why I say it. And <i>you</i> hear it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And be grateful,” he added, with a satirical grimace. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she cried, “and if you have a spark of decency in +you, be grateful.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not having a spark of decency, however—” he retorted. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she cried, “you haven’t a <i>spark</i>. And so you +can go your way, and I’ll go mine. It’s no good, not the slightest. +So you can leave me now, I don’t want to go any further with +you—leave me—” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t even know where you are,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t bother, I assure you I shall be all right. I’ve +got ten shillings in my purse, and that will take me back from anywhere <i>you</i> +have brought me to.” She hesitated. The rings were still on her fingers, two +on her little finger, one on her ring finger. Still she hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +“Very good,” he said. “The only hopeless thing is a +fool.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are quite right,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Still she hesitated. Then an ugly, malevolent look came over her face, she +pulled the rings from her fingers, and tossed them at him. One touched his face, +the others hit his coat, and they scattered into the mud. +</p> + +<p> +“And take your rings,” she said, “and go and buy yourself +a female elsewhere—there are plenty to be had, who will be quite glad to +share your spiritual mess,—or to have your physical mess, and leave your +spiritual mess to Hermione.” +</p> + +<p> +With which she walked away, desultorily, up the road. He stood motionless, +watching her sullen, rather ugly walk. She was sullenly picking and pulling at +the twigs of the hedge as she passed. She grew smaller, she seemed to pass out +of his sight. A darkness came over his mind. Only a small, mechanical speck of +consciousness hovered near him. +</p> + +<p> +He felt tired and weak. Yet also he was relieved. He gave up his old +position. He went and sat on the bank. No doubt Ursula was right. It was true, +really, what she said. He knew that his spirituality was concomitant of a +process of depravity, a sort of pleasure in self-destruction. There really <i>was</i> +a certain stimulant in self-destruction, for him—especially when it was +translated spiritually. But then he knew it—he knew it, and had done. And +was not Ursula’s way of emotional intimacy, emotional and physical, was it +not just as dangerous as Hermione’s abstract spiritual intimacy? Fusion, +fusion, this horrible fusion of two beings, which every woman and most men +insisted on, was it not nauseous and horrible anyhow, whether it was a fusion of +the spirit or of the emotional body? Hermione saw herself as the perfect Idea, +to which all men must come: And Ursula was the perfect Womb, the bath of birth, +to which all men must come! And both were horrible. Why could they not remain +individuals, limited by their own limits? Why this dreadful +all-comprehensiveness, this hateful tyranny? Why not leave the other being, +free, why try to absorb, or melt, or merge? One might abandon oneself utterly to +the <i>moments</i>, but not to any other being. +</p> + +<p> +He could not bear to see the rings lying in the pale mud of the road. He +picked them up, and wiped them unconsciously on his hands. They were the little +tokens of the reality of beauty, the reality of happiness in warm creation. But +he had made his hands all dirty and gritty. +</p> + +<p> +There was a darkness over his mind. The terrible knot of consciousness that +had persisted there like an obsession was broken, gone, his life was dissolved +in darkness over his limbs and his body. But there was a point of anxiety in his +heart now. He wanted her to come back. He breathed lightly and regularly like an +infant, that breathes innocently, beyond the touch of responsibility. +</p> + +<p> +She was coming back. He saw her drifting desultorily under the high hedge, +advancing towards him slowly. He did not move, he did not look again. He was as +if asleep, at peace, slumbering and utterly relaxed. +</p> + +<p> +She came up and stood before him, hanging her head. +</p> + +<p> +“See what a flower I found you,” she said, wistfully holding a +piece of purple-red bell-heather under his face. He saw the clump of coloured +bells, and the tree-like, tiny branch: also her hands, with their over-fine, +over-sensitive skin. +</p> + +<p> +“Pretty!” he said, looking up at her with a smile, taking the +flower. Everything had become simple again, quite simple, the complexity gone +into nowhere. But he badly wanted to cry: except that he was weary and bored by +emotion. +</p> + +<p> +Then a hot passion of tenderness for her filled his heart. He stood up and +looked into her face. It was new and oh, so delicate in its luminous wonder and +fear. He put his arms round her, and she hid her face on his shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +It was peace, just simple peace, as he stood folding her quietly there on +the open lane. It was peace at last. The old, detestable world of tension had +passed away at last, his soul was strong and at ease. +</p> + +<p> +She looked up at him. The wonderful yellow light in her eyes now was soft +and yielded, they were at peace with each other. He kissed her, softly, many, +many times. A laugh came into her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Did I abuse you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +He smiled too, and took her hand, that was so soft and given. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind,” she said, “it is all for the good.” He +kissed her again, softly, many times. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly,” he replied. “Wait! I shall have my own +back.” +</p> + +<p> +She laughed suddenly, with a wild catch in her voice, and flung her arms +around him. +</p> + +<p> +“You are mine, my love, aren’t you?” she cried straining +him close. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, softly. +</p> + +<p> +His voice was so soft and final, she went very still, as if under a fate +which had taken her. Yes, she acquiesced—but it was accomplished without +her acquiescence. He was kissing her quietly, repeatedly, with a soft, still +happiness that almost made her heart stop beating. +</p> + +<p> +“My love!” she cried, lifting her face and looking with +frightened, gentle wonder of bliss. Was it all real? But his eyes were beautiful +and soft and immune from stress or excitement, beautiful and smiling lightly to +her, smiling with her. She hid her face on his shoulder, hiding before him, +because he could see her so completely. She knew he loved her, and she was +afraid, she was in a strange element, a new heaven round about her. She wished +he were passionate, because in passion she was at home. But this was so still +and frail, as space is more frightening than force. +</p> + +<p> +Again, quickly, she lifted her head. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you love me?” she said, quickly, impulsively. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he replied, not heeding her motion, only her stillness. +</p> + +<p> +She knew it was true. She broke away. +</p> + +<p> +“So you ought,” she said, turning round to look at the road. +“Did you find the rings?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where are they?” +</p> + +<p> +“In my pocket.” +</p> + +<p> +She put her hand into his pocket and took them out. +</p> + +<p> +She was restless. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he answered. And they mounted to the car once more, and +left behind them this memorable battle-field. +</p> + +<p> +They drifted through the wild, late afternoon, in a beautiful motion that +was smiling and transcendent. His mind was sweetly at ease, the life flowed +through him as from some new fountain, he was as if born out of the cramp of a +womb. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you happy?” she asked him, in her strange, delighted way. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“So am I,” she cried in sudden ecstacy, putting her arm round +him and clutching him violently against her, as he steered the motor-car. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t drive much more,” she said. “I don’t +want you to be always doing something.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “We’ll finish this little trip, and +then we’ll be free.” +</p> + +<p> +“We will, my love, we will,” she cried in delight, kissing him +as he turned to her. +</p> + +<p> +He drove on in a strange new wakefulness, the tension of his consciousness +broken. He seemed to be conscious all over, all his body awake with a simple, +glimmering awareness, as if he had just come awake, like a thing that is born, +like a bird when it comes out of an egg, into a new universe. +</p> + +<p> +They dropped down a long hill in the dusk, and suddenly Ursula recognised on +her right hand, below in the hollow, the form of Southwell Minster. +</p> + +<p> +“Are we here!” she cried with pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +The rigid, sombre, ugly cathedral was settling under the gloom of the coming +night, as they entered the narrow town, the golden lights showed like slabs of +revelation, in the shop-windows. +</p> + +<p> +“Father came here with mother,” she said, “when they first +knew each other. He loves it—he loves the Minster. Do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. It looks like quartz crystals sticking up out of the dark +hollow. We’ll have our high tea at the Saracen’s Head.” +</p> + +<p> +As they descended, they heard the Minster bells playing a hymn, when the +hour had struck six. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Glory to thee my God this night<br /> +For all the blessings of the light—<br /> +</p> + +<p> +So, to Ursula’s ear, the tune fell out, drop by drop, from the unseen +sky on to the dusky town. It was like dim, bygone centuries sounding. It was all +so far off. She stood in the old yard of the inn, smelling of straw and stables +and petrol. Above, she could see the first stars. What was it all? This was no +actual world, it was the dream-world of one’s childhood—a great +circumscribed reminiscence. The world had become unreal. She herself was a +strange, transcendent reality. +</p> + +<p> +They sat together in a little parlour by the fire. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it true?” she said, wondering. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“Everything—is everything true?” +</p> + +<p> +“The best is true,” he said, grimacing at her. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it?” she replied, laughing, but unassured. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him. He seemed still so separate. New eyes were opened in her +soul. She saw a strange creature from another world, in him. It was as if she +were enchanted, and everything were metamorphosed. She recalled again the old +magic of the Book of Genesis, where the sons of God saw the daughters of men, +that they were fair. And he was one of these, one of these strange creatures +from the beyond, looking down at her, and seeing she was fair. +</p> + +<p> +He stood on the hearth-rug looking at her, at her face that was upturned +exactly like a flower, a fresh, luminous flower, glinting faintly golden with +the dew of the first light. And he was smiling faintly as if there were no +speech in the world, save the silent delight of flowers in each other. Smilingly +they delighted in each other’s presence, pure presence, not to be thought +of, even known. But his eyes had a faintly ironical contraction. +</p> + +<p> +And she was drawn to him strangely, as in a spell. Kneeling on the +hearth-rug before him, she put her arms round his loins, and put her face +against his thigh. Riches! Riches! She was overwhelmed with a sense of a +heavenful of riches. +</p> + +<p> +“We love each other,” she said in delight. +</p> + +<p> +“More than that,” he answered, looking down at her with his +glimmering, easy face. +</p> + +<p> +Unconsciously, with her sensitive fingertips, she was tracing the back of +his thighs, following some mysterious life-flow there. She had discovered +something, something more than wonderful, more wonderful than life itself. It +was the strange mystery of his life-motion, there, at the back of the thighs, +down the flanks. It was a strange reality of his being, the very stuff of being, +there in the straight downflow of the thighs. It was here she discovered him one +of the sons of God such as were in the beginning of the world, not a man, +something other, something more. +</p> + +<p> +This was release at last. She had had lovers, she had known passion. But +this was neither love nor passion. It was the daughters of men coming back to +the sons of God, the strange inhuman sons of God who are in the beginning. +</p> + +<p> +Her face was now one dazzle of released, golden light, as she looked up at +him, and laid her hands full on his thighs, behind, as he stood before her. He +looked down at her with a rich bright brow like a diadem above his eyes. She was +beautiful as a new marvellous flower opened at his knees, a paradisal flower she +was, beyond womanhood, such a flower of luminousness. Yet something was tight +and unfree in him. He did not like this crouching, this radiance—not +altogether. +</p> + +<p> +It was all achieved, for her. She had found one of the sons of God from the +Beginning, and he had found one of the first most luminous daughters of men. +</p> + +<p> +She traced with her hands the line of his loins and thighs, at the back, and +a living fire ran through her, from him, darkly. It was a dark flood of electric +passion she released from him, drew into herself. She had established a rich new +circuit, a new current of passional electric energy, between the two of them, +released from the darkest poles of the body and established in perfect circuit. +It was a dark fire of electricity that rushed from him to her, and flooded them +both with rich peace, satisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +“My love,” she cried, lifting her face to him, her eyes, her +mouth open in transport. +</p> + +<p> +“My love,” he answered, bending and kissing her, always kissing +her. +</p> + +<p> +She closed her hands over the full, rounded body of his loins, as he stooped +over her, she seemed to touch the quick of the mystery of darkness that was +bodily him. She seemed to faint beneath, and he seemed to faint, stooping over +her. It was a perfect passing away for both of them, and at the same time the +most intolerable accession into being, the marvellous fullness of immediate +gratification, overwhelming, out-flooding from the source of the deepest +life-force, the darkest, deepest, strangest life-source of the human body, at +the back and base of the loins. +</p> + +<p> +After a lapse of stillness, after the rivers of strange dark fluid richness +had passed over her, flooding, carrying away her mind and flooding down her +spine and down her knees, past her feet, a strange flood, sweeping away +everything and leaving her an essential new being, she was left quite free, she +was free in complete ease, her complete self. So she rose, stilly and blithe, +smiling at him. He stood before her, glimmering, so awfully real, that her heart +almost stopped beating. He stood there in his strange, whole body, that had its +marvellous fountains, like the bodies of the sons of God who were in the +beginning. There were strange fountains of his body, more mysterious and potent +than any she had imagined or known, more satisfying, ah, finally, +mystically-physically satisfying. She had thought there was no source deeper +than the phallic source. And now, behold, from the smitten rock of the +man’s body, from the strange marvellous flanks and thighs, deeper, further +in mystery than the phallic source, came the floods of ineffable darkness and +ineffable riches. +</p> + +<p> +They were glad, and they could forget perfectly. They laughed, and went to +the meal provided. There was a venison pasty, of all things, a large broad-faced +cut ham, eggs and cresses and red beet-root, and medlars and apple-tart, and +tea. +</p> + +<p> +“What <i>good</i> things!” she cried with pleasure. “How noble +it looks!—shall I pour out the tea?—” +</p> + +<p> +She was usually nervous and uncertain at performing these public duties, +such as giving tea. But today she forgot, she was at her ease, entirely +forgetting to have misgivings. The tea-pot poured beautifully from a proud +slender spout. Her eyes were warm with smiles as she gave him his tea. She had +learned at last to be still and perfect. +</p> + +<p> +“Everything is ours,” she said to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Everything,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +She gave a queer little crowing sound of triumph. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m so glad!” she cried, with unspeakable relief. +</p> + +<p> +“So am I,” he said. “But I’m thinking we’d +better get out of our responsibilities as quick as we can.” +</p> + +<p> +“What responsibilities?” she asked, wondering. +</p> + +<p> +“We must drop our jobs, like a shot.” +</p> + +<p> +A new understanding dawned into her face. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” she said, “there’s that.” +</p> + +<p> +“We must get out,” he said. “There’s nothing for it +but to get out, quick.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him doubtfully across the table. +</p> + +<p> +“But where?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll just wander +about for a bit.” +</p> + +<p> +Again she looked at him quizzically. +</p> + +<p> +“I should be perfectly happy at the Mill,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s very near the old thing,” he said. “Let us +wander a bit.” +</p> + +<p> +His voice could be so soft and happy-go-lucky, it went through her veins +like an exhilaration. Nevertheless she dreamed of a valley, and wild gardens, +and peace. She had a desire too for splendour—an aristocratic extravagant +splendour. Wandering seemed to her like restlessness, dissatisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +“Where will you wander to?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. I feel as if I would just meet you and we’d +set off—just towards the distance.” +</p> + +<p> +“But where can one go?” she asked anxiously. “After all, +there <i>is</i> only the world, and none of it is very distant.” +</p> + +<p> +“Still,” he said, “I should like to go with +you—nowhere. It would be rather wandering just to nowhere. That’s +the place to get to—nowhere. One wants to wander away from the +world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere.” +</p> + +<p> +Still she meditated. +</p> + +<p> +“You see, my love,” she said, “I’m so afraid that +while we are only people, we’ve got to take the world that’s +given—because there isn’t any other.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes there is,” he said. “There’s somewhere where we +can be free—somewhere where one needn’t wear much clothes—none +even—where one meets a few people who have gone through enough, and can +take things for granted—where you be yourself, without bothering. There is +somewhere—there are one or two people—” +</p> + +<p> +“But where—?” she sighed. +</p> + +<p> +“Somewhere—anywhere. Let’s wander off. That’s the +thing to do—let’s wander off.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—” she said, thrilled at the thought of travel. But to +her it was only travel. +</p> + +<p> +“To be free,” he said. “To be free, in a free place, with +a few other people!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said wistfully. Those “few other people” +depressed her. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t really a locality, though,” he said. +“It’s a perfected relation between you and me, and others—the +perfect relation—so that we are free together.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is, my love, isn’t it,” she said. “It’s +you and me. It’s you and me, isn’t it?” She stretched out her +arms to him. He went across and stooped to kiss her face. Her arms closed round +him again, her hands spread upon his shoulders, moving slowly there, moving +slowly on his back, down his back slowly, with a strange recurrent, rhythmic +motion, yet moving slowly down, pressing mysteriously over his loins, over his +flanks. The sense of the awfulness of riches that could never be impaired +flooded her mind like a swoon, a death in most marvellous possession, +mystic-sure. She possessed him so utterly and intolerably, that she herself +lapsed out. And yet she was only sitting still in the chair, with her hands +pressed upon him, and lost. +</p> + +<p> +Again he softly kissed her. +</p> + +<p> +“We shall never go apart again,” he murmured quietly. And she +did not speak, but only pressed her hands firmer down upon the source of +darkness in him. +</p> + +<p> +They decided, when they woke again from the pure swoon, to write their +resignations from the world of work there and then. She wanted this. +</p> + +<p> +He rang the bell, and ordered note-paper without a printed address. The +waiter cleared the table. +</p> + +<p> +“Now then,” he said, “yours first. Put your home address, +and the date—then ‘Director of Education, Town Hall—Sir—’ +Now then!—I don’t know how one really stands—I suppose one could +get out of it in less than month—Anyhow ‘Sir—I beg to resign my post +as classmistress in the Willey Green Grammar School. I should be very grateful +if you would liberate me as soon as possible, without waiting for the expiration +of the month’s notice.’ That’ll do. Have you got it? Let me look. +‘Ursula Brangwen.’ Good! Now I’ll write mine. I ought to give them three +months, but I can plead health. I can arrange it all right.” +</p> + +<p> +He sat and wrote out his formal resignation. +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” he said, when the envelopes were sealed and addressed, +“shall we post them here, both together? I know Jackie will say, +‘Here’s a coincidence!’ when he receives them in all their identity. Shall +we let him say it, or not?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“No—?” he said, pondering. +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t matter, does it?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he replied. “Their imaginations shall not work on +us. I’ll post yours here, mine after. I cannot be implicated in their +imaginings.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her with his strange, non-human singleness. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you are right,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +She lifted her face to him, all shining and open. It was as if he might +enter straight into the source of her radiance. His face became a little +distracted. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“As you like,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +They were soon out of the little town, and running through the uneven lanes +of the country. Ursula nestled near him, into his constant warmth, and watched +the pale-lit revelation racing ahead, the visible night. Sometimes it was a wide +old road, with grass-spaces on either side, flying magic and elfin in the +greenish illumination, sometimes it was trees looming overhead, sometimes it was +bramble bushes, sometimes the walls of a crew-yard and the butt of a barn. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you going to Shortlands to dinner?” Ursula asked him +suddenly. He started. +</p> + +<p> +“Good God!” he said. “Shortlands! Never again. Not that. +Besides we should be too late.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where are we going then—to the Mill?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you like. Pity to go anywhere on this good dark night. Pity to +come out of it, really. Pity we can’t stop in the good darkness. It is +better than anything ever would be—this good immediate darkness.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat wondering. The car lurched and swayed. She knew there was no leaving +him, the darkness held them both and contained them, it was not to be surpassed. +Besides she had a full mystic knowledge of his suave loins of darkness, +dark-clad and suave, and in this knowledge there was some of the inevitability +and the beauty of fate, fate which one asks for, which one accepts in full. +</p> + +<p> +He sat still like an Egyptian Pharoah, driving the car. He felt as if he +were seated in immemorial potency, like the great carven statues of real Egypt, +as real and as fulfilled with subtle strength, as these are, with a vague +inscrutable smile on the lips. He knew what it was to have the strange and +magical current of force in his back and loins, and down his legs, force so +perfect that it stayed him immobile, and left his face subtly, mindlessly +smiling. He knew what it was to be awake and potent in that other basic mind, +the deepest physical mind. And from this source he had a pure and magic control, +magical, mystical, a force in darkness, like electricity. +</p> + +<p> +It was very difficult to speak, it was so perfect to sit in this pure living +silence, subtle, full of unthinkable knowledge and unthinkable force, upheld +immemorially in timeless force, like the immobile, supremely potent Egyptians, +seated forever in their living, subtle silence. +</p> + +<p> +“We need not go home,” he said. “This car has seats that +let down and make a bed, and we can lift the hood.” +</p> + +<p> +She was glad and frightened. She cowered near to him. +</p> + +<p> +“But what about them at home?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Send a telegram.” +</p> + +<p> +Nothing more was said. They ran on in silence. But with a sort of second +consciousness he steered the car towards a destination. For he had the free +intelligence to direct his own ends. His arms and his breast and his head were +rounded and living like those of the Greek, he had not the unawakened straight +arms of the Egyptian, nor the sealed, slumbering head. A lambent intelligence +played secondarily above his pure Egyptian concentration in darkness. +</p> + +<p> +They came to a village that lined along the road. The car crept slowly +along, until he saw the post-office. Then he pulled up. +</p> + +<p> +“I will send a telegram to your father,” he said. “I will +merely say ‘spending the night in town,’ shall I?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she answered. She did not want to be disturbed into +taking thought. +</p> + +<p> +She watched him move into the post-office. It was also a shop, she saw. +Strange, he was. Even as he went into the lighted, public place he remained dark +and magic, the living silence seemed the body of reality in him, subtle, potent, +indiscoverable. There he was! In a strange uplift of elation she saw him, the +being never to be revealed, awful in its potency, mystic and real. This dark, +subtle reality of him, never to be translated, liberated her into perfection, +her own perfected being. She too was dark and fulfilled in silence. +</p> + +<p> +He came out, throwing some packages into the car. +</p> + +<p> +“There is some bread, and cheese, and raisins, and apples, and hard +chocolate,” he said, in his voice that was as if laughing, because of the +unblemished stillness and force which was the reality in him. She would have to +touch him. To speak, to see, was nothing. It was a travesty to look and to +comprehend the man there. Darkness and silence must fall perfectly on her, then +she could know mystically, in unrevealed touch. She must lightly, mindlessly +connect with him, have the knowledge which is death of knowledge, the reality of +surety in not-knowing. +</p> + +<p> +Soon they had run on again into the darkness. She did not ask where they +were going, she did not care. She sat in a fullness and a pure potency that was +like apathy, mindless and immobile. She was next to him, and hung in a pure +rest, as a star is hung, balanced unthinkably. Still there remained a dark +lambency of anticipation. She would touch him. With perfect fine finger-tips of +reality she would touch the reality in him, the suave, pure, untranslatable +reality of his loins of darkness. To touch, mindlessly in darkness to come in +pure touching upon the living reality of him, his suave perfect loins and thighs +of darkness, this was her sustaining anticipation. +</p> + +<p> +And he too waited in the magical steadfastness of suspense, for her to take +this knowledge of him as he had taken it of her. He knew her darkly, with the +fullness of dark knowledge. Now she would know him, and he too would be +liberated. He would be night-free, like an Egyptian, steadfast in perfectly +suspended equilibrium, pure mystic nodality of physical being. They would give +each other this star-equilibrium which alone is freedom. +</p> + +<p> +She saw that they were running among trees—great old trees with dying +bracken undergrowth. The palish, gnarled trunks showed ghostly, and like old +priests in the hovering distance, the fern rose magical and mysterious. It was a +night all darkness, with low cloud. The motor-car advanced slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are we?” she whispered. +</p> + +<p> +“In Sherwood Forest.” +</p> + +<p> +It was evident he knew the place. He drove softly, watching. Then they came +to a green road between the trees. They turned cautiously round, and were +advancing between the oaks of the forest, down a green lane. The green lane +widened into a little circle of grass, where there was a small trickle of water +at the bottom of a sloping bank. The car stopped. +</p> + +<p> +“We will stay here,” he said, “and put out the +lights.” +</p> + +<p> +He extinguished the lamps at once, and it was pure night, with shadows of +trees like realities of other, nightly being. He threw a rug on to the bracken, +and they sat in stillness and mindless silence. There were faint sounds from the +wood, but no disturbance, no possible disturbance, the world was under a strange +ban, a new mystery had supervened. They threw off their clothes, and he gathered +her to him, and found her, found the pure lambent reality of her forever +invisible flesh. Quenched, inhuman, his fingers upon her unrevealed nudity were +the fingers of silence upon silence, the body of mysterious night upon the body +of mysterious night, the night masculine and feminine, never to be seen with the +eye, or known with the mind, only known as a palpable revelation of living +otherness. +</p> + +<p> +She had her desire of him, she touched, she received the maximum of +unspeakable communication in touch, dark, subtle, positively silent, a +magnificent gift and give again, a perfect acceptance and yielding, a mystery, +the reality of that which can never be known, vital, sensual reality that can +never be transmuted into mind content, but remains outside, living body of +darkness and silence and subtlety, the mystic body of reality. She had her +desire fulfilled. He had his desire fulfilled. For she was to him what he was to +her, the immemorial magnificence of mystic, palpable, real otherness. +</p> + +<p> +They slept the chilly night through under the hood of the car, a night of +unbroken sleep. It was already high day when he awoke. They looked at each other +and laughed, then looked away, filled with darkness and secrecy. Then they +kissed and remembered the magnificence of the night. It was so magnificent, such +an inheritance of a universe of dark reality, that they were afraid to seem to +remember. They hid away the remembrance and the knowledge. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.<br/> +DEATH AND LOVE</h2> + +<p> +Thomas Crich died slowly, terribly slowly. It seemed impossible to everybody +that the thread of life could be drawn out so thin, and yet not break. The sick +man lay unutterably weak and spent, kept alive by morphia and by drinks, which +he sipped slowly. He was only half conscious—a thin strand of +consciousness linking the darkness of death with the light of day. Yet his will +was unbroken, he was integral, complete. Only he must have perfect stillness +about him. +</p> + +<p> +Any presence but that of the nurses was a strain and an effort to him now. +Every morning Gerald went into the room, hoping to find his father passed away +at last. Yet always he saw the same transparent face, the same dread dark hair +on the waxen forehead, and the awful, inchoate dark eyes, which seemed to be +decomposing into formless darkness, having only a tiny grain of vision within +them. +</p> + +<p> +And always, as the dark, inchoate eyes turned to him, there passed through +Gerald’s bowels a burning stroke of revolt, that seemed to resound through +his whole being, threatening to break his mind with its clangour, and making him +mad. +</p> + +<p> +Every morning, the son stood there, erect and taut with life, gleaming in +his blondness. The gleaming blondness of his strange, imminent being put the +father into a fever of fretful irritation. He could not bear to meet the +uncanny, downward look of Gerald’s blue eyes. But it was only for a +moment. Each on the brink of departure, the father and son looked at each other, +then parted. +</p> + +<p> +For a long time Gerald preserved a perfect <i>sang-froid</i>, he remained quite +collected. But at last, fear undermined him. He was afraid of some horrible +collapse in himself. He had to stay and see this thing through. Some perverse +will made him watch his father drawn over the borders of life. And yet, now, +every day, the great red-hot stroke of horrified fear through the bowels of the +son struck a further inflammation. Gerald went about all day with a tendency to +cringe, as if there were the point of a sword of Damocles pricking the nape of +his neck. +</p> + +<p> +There was no escape—he was bound up with his father, he had to see him +through. And the father’s will never relaxed or yielded to death. It would +have to snap when death at last snapped it,—if it did not persist after a +physical death. In the same way, the will of the son never yielded. He stood +firm and immune, he was outside this death and this dying. +</p> + +<p> +It was a trial by ordeal. Could he stand and see his father slowly dissolve +and disappear in death, without once yielding his will, without once relenting +before the omnipotence of death. Like a Red Indian undergoing torture, Gerald +would experience the whole process of slow death without wincing or flinching. +He even triumphed in it. He somehow <i>wanted</i> this death, even forced it. +It was as if he himself were dealing the death, even when he most recoiled in +horror. Still, he would deal it, he would triumph through death. +</p> + +<p> +But in the stress of this ordeal, Gerald too lost his hold on the outer, +daily life. That which was much to him, came to mean nothing. Work, +pleasure—it was all left behind. He went on more or less mechanically with +his business, but this activity was all extraneous. The real activity was this +ghastly wrestling for death in his own soul. And his own will should triumph. +Come what might, he would not bow down or submit or acknowledge a master. He had +no master in death. +</p> + +<p> +But as the fight went on, and all that he had been and was continued to be +destroyed, so that life was a hollow shell all round him, roaring and clattering +like the sound of the sea, a noise in which he participated externally, and +inside this hollow shell was all the darkness and fearful space of death, he +knew he would have to find reinforcements, otherwise he would collapse inwards +upon the great dark void which circled at the centre of his soul. His will held +his outer life, his outer mind, his outer being unbroken and unchanged. But the +pressure was too great. He would have to find something to make good the +equilibrium. Something must come with him into the hollow void of death in his +soul, fill it up, and so equalise the pressure within to the pressure without. +For day by day he felt more and more like a bubble filled with darkness, round +which whirled the iridescence of his consciousness, and upon which the pressure +of the outer world, the outer life, roared vastly. +</p> + +<p> +In this extremity his instinct led him to Gudrun. He threw away everything +now—he only wanted the relation established with her. He would follow her +to the studio, to be near her, to talk to her. He would stand about the room, +aimlessly picking up the implements, the lumps of clay, the little figures she +had cast—they were whimsical and grotesque—looking at them without +perceiving them. And she felt him following her, dogging her heels like a doom. +She held away from him, and yet she knew he drew always a little nearer, a +little nearer. +</p> + +<p> +“I say,” he said to her one evening, in an odd, unthinking, +uncertain way, “won’t you stay to dinner tonight? I wish you +would.” +</p> + +<p> +She started slightly. He spoke to her like a man making a request of another +man. +</p> + +<p> +“They’ll be expecting me at home,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, they won’t mind, will they?” he said. “I should +be awfully glad if you’d stay.” +</p> + +<p> +Her long silence gave consent at last. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell Thomas, shall I?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I must go almost immediately after dinner,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +It was a dark, cold evening. There was no fire in the drawing-room, they sat +in the library. He was mostly silent, absent, and Winifred talked little. But +when Gerald did rouse himself, he smiled and was pleasant and ordinary with her. +Then there came over him again the long blanks, of which he was not aware. +</p> + +<p> +She was very much attracted by him. He looked so preoccupied, and his +strange, blank silences, which she could not read, moved her and made her wonder +over him, made her feel reverential towards him. +</p> + +<p> +But he was very kind. He gave her the best things at the table, he had a +bottle of slightly sweet, delicious golden wine brought out for dinner, knowing +she would prefer it to the burgundy. She felt herself esteemed, needed almost. +</p> + +<p> +As they took coffee in the library, there was a soft, very soft knocking at +the door. He started, and called “Come in.” The timbre of his voice, +like something vibrating at high pitch, unnerved Gudrun. A nurse in white +entered, half hovering in the doorway like a shadow. She was very good-looking, +but strangely enough, shy and self-mistrusting. +</p> + +<p> +“The doctor would like to speak to you, Mr Crich,” she said, in +her low, discreet voice. +</p> + +<p> +“The doctor!” he said, starting up. “Where is he?” +</p> + +<p> +“He is in the dining-room.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell him I’m coming.” +</p> + +<p> +He drank up his coffee, and followed the nurse, who had dissolved like a +shadow. +</p> + +<p> +“Which nurse was that?” asked Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Inglis—I like her best,” replied Winifred. +</p> + +<p> +After a while Gerald came back, looking absorbed by his own thoughts, and +having some of that tension and abstraction which is seen in a slightly drunken +man. He did not say what the doctor had wanted him for, but stood before the +fire, with his hands behind his back, and his face open and as if rapt. Not that +he was really thinking—he was only arrested in pure suspense inside +himself, and thoughts wafted through his mind without order. +</p> + +<p> +“I must go now and see Mama,” said Winifred, “and see +Dadda before he goes to sleep.” +</p> + +<p> +She bade them both good-night. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun also rose to take her leave. +</p> + +<p> +“You needn’t go yet, need you?” said Gerald, glancing +quickly at the clock. “It is early yet. I’ll walk down with you when +you go. Sit down, don’t hurry away.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun sat down, as if, absent as he was, his will had power over her. She +felt almost mesmerised. He was strange to her, something unknown. What was he +thinking, what was he feeling, as he stood there so rapt, saying nothing? He +kept her—she could feel that. He would not let her go. She watched him in +humble submissiveness. +</p> + +<p> +“Had the doctor anything new to tell you?” she asked, softly, at +length, with that gentle, timid sympathy which touched a keen fibre in his +heart. He lifted his eyebrows with a negligent, indifferent expression. +</p> + +<p> +“No—nothing new,” he replied, as if the question were +quite casual, trivial. “He says the pulse is very weak indeed, very +intermittent—but that doesn’t necessarily mean much, you +know.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and soft and unfolded, with a +stricken look that roused him. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she murmured at length. “I don’t understand +anything about these things.” +</p> + +<p> +“Just as well not,” he said. “I say, won’t you have +a cigarette?—do!” He quickly fetched the box, and held her a light. +Then he stood before her on the hearth again. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “we’ve never had much illness in the +house, either—not till father.” He seemed to meditate a while. Then +looking down at her, with strangely communicative blue eyes, that filled her +with dread, he continued: “It’s something you don’t reckon +with, you know, till it is there. And then you realise that it was there all the +time—it was always there—you understand what I mean?—the +possibility of this incurable illness, this slow death.” +</p> + +<p> +He moved his feet uneasily on the marble hearth, and put his cigarette to +his mouth, looking up at the ceiling. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” murmured Gudrun: “it is dreadful.” +</p> + +<p> +He smoked without knowing. Then he took the cigarette from his lips, bared +his teeth, and putting the tip of his tongue between his teeth spat off a grain +of tobacco, turning slightly aside, like a man who is alone, or who is lost in +thought. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what the effect actually <i>is</i>, on one,” he +said, and again he looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and stricken with +knowledge, looking into his. He saw her submerged, and he turned aside his face. +“But I absolutely am not the same. There’s nothing left, if you +understand what I mean. You seem to be clutching at the void—and at the +same time you are void yourself. And so you don’t know what to <i>do</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she murmured. A heavy thrill ran down her nerves, heavy, +almost pleasure, almost pain. “What can be done?” she added. +</p> + +<p> +He turned, and flipped the ash from his cigarette on to the great marble +hearth-stones, that lay bare in the room, without fender or bar. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know, I’m sure,” he replied. “But I +do think you’ve got to find some way of resolving the situation—not +because you want to, but because you’ve <i>got</i> to, otherwise you’re +done. The whole of everything, and yourself included, is just on the point of +caving in, and you are just holding it up with your hands. Well, it’s a +situation that obviously can’t continue. You can’t stand holding the +roof up with your hands, for ever. You know that sooner or later you’ll +<i>have</i> to let go. Do you understand what I mean? And so something’s got +to be done, or there’s a universal collapse—as far as you yourself are +concerned.” +</p> + +<p> +He shifted slightly on the hearth, crunching a cinder under his heel. He +looked down at it. Gudrun was aware of the beautiful old marble panels of the +fireplace, swelling softly carved, round him and above him. She felt as if she +were caught at last by fate, imprisoned in some horrible and fatal trap. +</p> + +<p> +“But what <i>can</i> be done?” she murmured humbly. “You must use +me if I can be of any help at all—but how can I? I don’t see how I +<i>can</i> help you.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked down at her critically. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want you to <i>help</i>,” he said, slightly irritated, +“because there’s nothing to be <i>done</i>. I only want sympathy, do you +see: I want somebody I can talk to sympathetically. That eases the strain. And +there <i>is</i> nobody to talk to sympathetically. That’s the curious thing. +There <i>is</i> nobody. There’s Rupert Birkin. But then he <i>isn’t</i> +sympathetic, he wants to <i>dictate</i>. And that is no use whatsoever.” +</p> + +<p> +She was caught in a strange snare. She looked down at her hands. +</p> + +<p> +Then there was the sound of the door softly opening. Gerald started. He was +chagrined. It was his starting that really startled Gudrun. Then he went +forward, with quick, graceful, intentional courtesy. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, mother!” he said. “How nice of you to come down. How +are you?” +</p> + +<p> +The elderly woman, loosely and bulkily wrapped in a purple gown, came +forward silently, slightly hulked, as usual. Her son was at her side. He pushed +her up a chair, saying “You know Miss Brangwen, don’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +The mother glanced at Gudrun indifferently. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. Then she turned her wonderful, forget-me-not +blue eyes up to her son, as she slowly sat down in the chair he had brought her. +</p> + +<p> +“I came to ask you about your father,” she said, in her rapid, +scarcely-audible voice. “I didn’t know you had company.” +</p> + +<p> +“No? Didn’t Winifred tell you? Miss Brangwen stayed to dinner, +to make us a little more lively—” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs Crich turned slowly round to Gudrun, and looked at her, but with +unseeing eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid it would be no treat to her.” Then she turned +again to her son. “Winifred tells me the doctor had something to say about +your father. What is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Only that the pulse is very weak—misses altogether a good many +times—so that he might not last the night out,” Gerald replied. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs Crich sat perfectly impassive, as if she had not heard. Her bulk seemed +hunched in the chair, her fair hair hung slack over her ears. But her skin was +clear and fine, her hands, as she sat with them forgotten and folded, were quite +beautiful, full of potential energy. A great mass of energy seemed decaying up +in that silent, hulking form. +</p> + +<p> +She looked up at her son, as he stood, keen and soldierly, near to her. Her +eyes were most wonderfully blue, bluer than forget-me-nots. She seemed to have a +certain confidence in Gerald, and to feel a certain motherly mistrust of him. +</p> + +<p> +“How are <i>you?</i>” she muttered, in her strangely quiet voice, +as if nobody should hear but him. “You’re not getting into a state, +are you? +</p> + +<p> +You’re not letting it make you hysterical?” +</p> + +<p> +The curious challenge in the last words startled Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think so, mother,” he answered, rather coldly +cheery. +</p> + +<p> +“Somebody’s got to see it through, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have they? Have they?” answered his mother rapidly. “Why +should <i>you</i> take it on yourself? What have you got to do, seeing it through. +It will see itself through. You are not needed.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t suppose I can do any good,” he answered. +“It’s just how it affects us, you see.” +</p> + +<p> +“You like to be affected—don’t you? It’s quite nuts +for you? You would have to be important. You have no need to stop at home. Why +don’t you go away!” +</p> + +<p> +These sentences, evidently the ripened grain of many dark hours, took Gerald +by surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think it’s any good going away now, mother, at +the last minute,” he said, coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“You take care,” replied his mother. “You mind +<i>yourself</i>—that’s your business. You take too much on yourself. +You mind <i>yourself</i>, or you’ll find yourself in Queer Street, that’s +what will happen to you. You’re hysterical, always were.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m all right, mother,” he said. “There’s no +need to worry about <i>me</i>, I assure you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let the dead bury their dead—don’t go and bury yourself +along with them—that’s what I tell you. I know you well +enough.” +</p> + +<p> +He did not answer this, not knowing what to say. The mother sat bunched up +in silence, her beautiful white hands, that had no rings whatsoever, clasping +the pommels of her arm-chair. +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t do it,” she said, almost bitterly. “You +haven’t the nerve. You’re as weak as a cat, really—always +were. Is this young woman staying here?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Gerald. “She is going home tonight.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then she’d better have the dog-cart. Does she go far?” +</p> + +<p> +“Only to Beldover.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” The elderly woman never looked at Gudrun, yet she seemed +to take knowledge of her presence. +</p> + +<p> +“You are inclined to take too much on yourself, Gerald,” said +the mother, pulling herself to her feet, with a little difficulty. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you go, mother?” he asked, politely. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I’ll go up again,” she replied. Turning to Gudrun, +she bade her “Good-night.” Then she went slowly to the door, as if +she were unaccustomed to walking. At the door she lifted her face to him, +implicitly. He kissed her. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t come any further with me,” she said, in her barely +audible voice. “I don’t want you any further.” +</p> + +<p> +He bade her good-night, watched her across to the stairs and mount slowly. +Then he closed the door and came back to Gudrun. Gudrun rose also, to go. +</p> + +<p> +“A queer being, my mother,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“She has her own thoughts.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +Then they were silent. +</p> + +<p> +“You want to go?” he asked. “Half a minute, I’ll +just have a horse put in—” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Gudrun. “I want to walk.” +</p> + +<p> +He had promised to walk with her down the long, lonely mile of drive, and +she wanted this. +</p> + +<p> +“You might <i>just</i> as well drive,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d <i>much rather</i> walk,” she asserted, with emphasis. +</p> + +<p> +“You would! Then I will come along with you. You know where your +things are? I’ll put boots on.” +</p> + +<p> +He put on a cap, and an overcoat over his evening dress. They went out into +the night. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us light a cigarette,” he said, stopping in a sheltered +angle of the porch. “You have one too.” +</p> + +<p> +So, with the scent of tobacco on the night air, they set off down the dark +drive that ran between close-cut hedges through sloping meadows. +</p> + +<p> +He wanted to put his arm round her. If he could put his arm round her, and +draw her against him as they walked, he would equilibriate himself. For now he +felt like a pair of scales, the half of which tips down and down into an +indefinite void. He must recover some sort of balance. And here was the hope and +the perfect recovery. +</p> + +<p> +Blind to her, thinking only of himself, he slipped his arm softly round her +waist, and drew her to him. Her heart fainted, feeling herself taken. But then, +his arm was so strong, she quailed under its powerful close grasp. She died a +little death, and was drawn against him as they walked down the stormy darkness. +He seemed to balance her perfectly in opposition to himself, in their dual +motion of walking. So, suddenly, he was liberated and perfect, strong, heroic. +</p> + +<p> +He put his hand to his mouth and threw his cigarette away, a gleaming point, +into the unseen hedge. Then he was quite free to balance her. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s better,” he said, with exultancy. +</p> + +<p> +The exultation in his voice was like a sweetish, poisonous drug to her. Did +she then mean so much to him! She sipped the poison. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you happier?” she asked, wistfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Much better,” he said, in the same exultant voice, “and I +was rather far gone.” +</p> + +<p> +She nestled against him. He felt her all soft and warm, she was the rich, +lovely substance of his being. The warmth and motion of her walk suffused +through him wonderfully. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m <i>so</i> glad if I help you,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he answered. “There’s nobody else could do +it, if you wouldn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is true,” she said to herself, with a thrill of strange, +fatal elation. +</p> + +<p> +As they walked, he seemed to lift her nearer and nearer to himself, till she +moved upon the firm vehicle of his body. +</p> + +<p> +He was so strong, so sustaining, and he could not be opposed. She drifted +along in a wonderful interfusion of physical motion, down the dark, blowy +hillside. Far across shone the little yellow lights of Beldover, many of them, +spread in a thick patch on another dark hill. But he and she were walking in +perfect, isolated darkness, outside the world. +</p> + +<p> +“But how much do you care for me!” came her voice, almost +querulous. “You see, I don’t know, I don’t understand!” +</p> + +<p> +“How much!” His voice rang with a painful elation. “I +don’t know either—but everything.” He was startled by his own +declaration. It was true. So he stripped himself of every safeguard, in making +this admission to her. He cared everything for her—she was everything. +</p> + +<p> +“But I can’t believe it,” said her low voice, amazed, +trembling. She was trembling with doubt and exultance. This was the thing she +wanted to hear, only this. Yet now she heard it, heard the strange clapping +vibration of truth in his voice as he said it, she could not believe. She could +not believe—she did not believe. Yet she believed, triumphantly, with +fatal exultance. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” he said. “Why don’t you believe it? +It’s true. It is true, as we stand at this moment—” he stood +still with her in the wind; “I care for nothing on earth, or in heaven, +outside this spot where we are. And it isn’t my own presence I care about, +it is all yours. I’d sell my soul a hundred times—but I +couldn’t bear not to have you here. I couldn’t bear to be alone. My +brain would burst. It is true.” He drew her closer to him, with definite +movement. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she murmured, afraid. Yet this was what she wanted. Why +did she so lose courage? +</p> + +<p> +They resumed their strange walk. They were such strangers—and yet they +were so frightfully, unthinkably near. It was like a madness. Yet it was what +she wanted, it was what she wanted. They had descended the hill, and now they +were coming to the square arch where the road passed under the colliery railway. +The arch, Gudrun knew, had walls of squared stone, mossy on one side with water +that trickled down, dry on the other side. She had stood under it to hear the +train rumble thundering over the logs overhead. And she knew that under this +dark and lonely bridge the young colliers stood in the darkness with their +sweethearts, in rainy weather. And so she wanted to stand under the bridge with +<i>her</i> sweetheart, and be kissed under the bridge in the invisible darkness. +Her steps dragged as she drew near. +</p> + +<p> +So, under the bridge, they came to a standstill, and he lifted her upon his +breast. His body vibrated taut and powerful as he closed upon her and crushed +her, breathless and dazed and destroyed, crushed her upon his breast. Ah, it was +terrible, and perfect. Under this bridge, the colliers pressed their lovers to +their breast. And now, under the bridge, the master of them all pressed her to +himself! And how much more powerful and terrible was his embrace than theirs, +how much more concentrated and supreme his love was, than theirs in the same +sort! She felt she would swoon, die, under the vibrating, inhuman tension of his +arms and his body—she would pass away. Then the unthinkable high vibration +slackened and became more undulating. He slackened and drew her with him to +stand with his back to the wall. +</p> + +<p> +She was almost unconscious. So the colliers’ lovers would stand with +their backs to the walls, holding their sweethearts and kissing them as she was +being kissed. Ah, but would their kisses be fine and powerful as the kisses of +the firm-mouthed master? Even the keen, short-cut moustache—the colliers +would not have that. +</p> + +<p> +And the colliers’ sweethearts would, like herself, hang their heads +back limp over their shoulder, and look out from the dark archway, at the close +patch of yellow lights on the unseen hill in the distance, or at the vague form +of trees, and at the buildings of the colliery wood-yard, in the other +direction. +</p> + +<p> +His arms were fast around her, he seemed to be gathering her into himself, +her warmth, her softness, her adorable weight, drinking in the suffusion of her +physical being, avidly. He lifted her, and seemed to pour her into himself, like +wine into a cup. +</p> + +<p> +“This is worth everything,” he said, in a strange, penetrating +voice. +</p> + +<p> +So she relaxed, and seemed to melt, to flow into him, as if she were some +infinitely warm and precious suffusion filling into his veins, like an +intoxicant. Her arms were round his neck, he kissed her and held her perfectly +suspended, she was all slack and flowing into him, and he was the firm, strong +cup that receives the wine of her life. So she lay cast upon him, stranded, +lifted up against him, melting and melting under his kisses, melting into his +limbs and bones, as if he were soft iron becoming surcharged with her electric +life. +</p> + +<p> +Till she seemed to swoon, gradually her mind went, and she passed away, +everything in her was melted down and fluid, and she lay still, become contained +by him, sleeping in him as lightning sleeps in a pure, soft stone. So she was +passed away and gone in him, and he was perfected. +</p> + +<p> +When she opened her eyes again, and saw the patch of lights in the distance, +it seemed to her strange that the world still existed, that she was standing +under the bridge resting her head on Gerald’s breast. Gerald—who was +he? He was the exquisite adventure, the desirable unknown to her. +</p> + +<p> +She looked up, and in the darkness saw his face above her, his shapely, male +face. There seemed a faint, white light emitted from him, a white aura, as if he +were visitor from the unseen. She reached up, like Eve reaching to the apples on +the tree of knowledge, and she kissed him, though her passion was a transcendent +fear of the thing he was, touching his face with her infinitely delicate, +encroaching wondering fingers. Her fingers went over the mould of his face, over +his features. How perfect and foreign he was—ah how dangerous! Her soul +thrilled with complete knowledge. This was the glistening, forbidden apple, this +face of a man. She kissed him, putting her fingers over his face, his eyes, his +nostrils, over his brows and his ears, to his neck, to know him, to gather him +in by touch. He was so firm, and shapely, with such satisfying, inconceivable +shapeliness, strange, yet unutterably clear. He was such an unutterable enemy, +yet glistening with uncanny white fire. She wanted to touch him and touch him +and touch him, till she had him all in her hands, till she had strained him into +her knowledge. Ah, if she could have the precious <i>knowledge</i> of him, she would +be filled, and nothing could deprive her of this. For he was so unsure, so risky in +the common world of day. +</p> + +<p> +“You are so <i>beautiful</i>,” she murmured in her throat. +</p> + +<p> +He wondered, and was suspended. But she felt him quiver, and she came down +involuntarily nearer upon him. He could not help himself. Her fingers had him +under their power. The fathomless, fathomless desire they could evoke in him was +deeper than death, where he had no choice. +</p> + +<p> +But she knew now, and it was enough. For the time, her soul was destroyed +with the exquisite shock of his invisible fluid lightning. She knew. And this +knowledge was a death from which she must recover. How much more of him was +there to know? Ah much, much, many days harvesting for her large, yet perfectly +subtle and intelligent hands upon the field of his living, radio-active body. +Ah, her hands were eager, greedy for knowledge. But for the present it was +enough, enough, as much as her soul could bear. Too much, and she would shatter +herself, she would fill the fine vial of her soul too quickly, and it would +break. Enough now—enough for the time being. There were all the after days +when her hands, like birds, could feed upon the fields of him mystical plastic +form—till then enough. +</p> + +<p> +And even he was glad to be checked, rebuked, held back. For to desire is +better than to possess, the finality of the end was dreaded as deeply as it was +desired. +</p> + +<p> +They walked on towards the town, towards where the lamps threaded singly, at +long intervals down the dark high-road of the valley. They came at length to the +gate of the drive. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t come any further,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d rather I didn’t?” he asked, relieved. He did +not want to go up the public streets with her, his soul all naked and alight as +it was. +</p> + +<p> +“Much rather—good-night.” She held out her hand. He +grasped it, then touched the perilous, potent fingers with his lips. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night,” he said. “Tomorrow.” +</p> + +<p> +And they parted. He went home full of the strength and the power of living +desire. +</p> + +<p> +But the next day, she did not come, she sent a note that she was kept +indoors by a cold. Here was a torment! But he possessed his soul in some sort of +patience, writing a brief answer, telling her how sorry he was not to see her. +</p> + +<p> +The day after this, he stayed at home—it seemed so futile to go down +to the office. His father could not live the week out. And he wanted to be at +home, suspended. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald sat on a chair by the window in his father’s room. The +landscape outside was black and winter-sodden. His father lay grey and ashen on +the bed, a nurse moved silently in her white dress, neat and elegant, even +beautiful. There was a scent of eau-de-Cologne in the room. The nurse went out +of the room, Gerald was alone with death, facing the winter-black landscape. +</p> + +<p> +“Is there much more water in Denley?” came the faint voice, +determined and querulous, from the bed. The dying man was asking about a leakage +from Willey Water into one of the pits. +</p> + +<p> +“Some more—we shall have to run off the lake,” said +Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you?” The faint voice filtered to extinction. There was +dead stillness. The grey-faced, sick man lay with eyes closed, more dead than +death. Gerald looked away. He felt his heart was seared, it would perish if this +went on much longer. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly he heard a strange noise. Turning round, he saw his father’s +eyes wide open, strained and rolling in a frenzy of inhuman struggling. Gerald +started to his feet, and stood transfixed in horror. +</p> + +<p> +“Wha-a-ah-h-h—” came a horrible choking rattle from his +father’s throat, the fearful, frenzied eye, rolling awfully in its wild +fruitless search for help, passed blindly over Gerald, then up came the dark +blood and mess pumping over the face of the agonised being. The tense body +relaxed, the head fell aside, down the pillow. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald stood transfixed, his soul echoing in horror. He would move, but he +could not. He could not move his limbs. His brain seemed to re-echo, like a +pulse. +</p> + +<p> +The nurse in white softly entered. She glanced at Gerald, then at the bed. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” came her soft whimpering cry, and she hurried forward to +the dead man. “Ah-h!” came the slight sound of her agitated +distress, as she stood bending over the bedside. Then she recovered, turned, and +came for towel and sponge. She was wiping the dead face carefully, and +murmuring, almost whimpering, very softly: “Poor Mr Crich!—Poor Mr +Crich! Poor Mr Crich!” +</p> + +<p> +“Is he dead?” clanged Gerald’s sharp voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, he’s gone,” replied the soft, moaning voice of +the nurse, as she looked up at Gerald’s face. She was young and beautiful +and quivering. A strange sort of grin went over Gerald’s face, over the +horror. And he walked out of the room. +</p> + +<p> +He was going to tell his mother. On the landing he met his brother Basil. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s gone, Basil,” he said, scarcely able to subdue his +voice, not to let an unconscious, frightening exultation sound through. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” cried Basil, going pale. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald nodded. Then he went on to his mother’s room. +</p> + +<p> +She was sitting in her purple gown, sewing, very slowly sewing, putting in a +stitch then another stitch. She looked up at Gerald with her blue undaunted +eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Father’s gone,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s dead? Who says so?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you know, mother, if you see him.” +</p> + +<p> +She put her sewing down, and slowly rose. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you going to see him?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said +</p> + +<p> +By the bedside the children already stood in a weeping group. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, mother!” cried the daughters, almost in hysterics, weeping +loudly. +</p> + +<p> +But the mother went forward. The dead man lay in repose, as if gently +asleep, so gently, so peacefully, like a young man sleeping in purity. He was +still warm. She stood looking at him in gloomy, heavy silence, for some time. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay,” she said bitterly, at length, speaking as if to the unseen +witnesses of the air. “You’re dead.” She stood for some +minutes in silence, looking down. “Beautiful,” she asserted, +“beautiful as if life had never touched you—never touched you. God +send I look different. I hope I shall look my years, when I am dead. Beautiful, +beautiful,” she crooned over him. “You can see him in his teens, +with his first beard on his face. A beautiful soul, beautiful—” Then +there was a tearing in her voice as she cried: “None of you look like +this, when you are dead! Don’t let it happen again.” It was a +strange, wild command from out of the unknown. Her children moved unconsciously +together, in a nearer group, at the dreadful command in her voice. The colour +was flushed bright in her cheek, she looked awful and wonderful. “Blame +me, blame me if you like, that he lies there like a lad in his teens, with his +first beard on his face. Blame me if you like. But you none of you know.” +She was silent in intense silence. +</p> + +<p> +Then there came, in a low, tense voice: “If I thought that the +children I bore would lie looking like that in death, I’d strangle them +when they were infants, yes—” +</p> + +<p> +“No, mother,” came the strange, clarion voice of Gerald from the +background, “we are different, we don’t blame you.” +</p> + +<p> +She turned and looked full in his eyes. Then she lifted her hands in a +strange half-gesture of mad despair. +</p> + +<p> +“Pray!” she said strongly. “Pray for yourselves to God, +for there’s no help for you from your parents.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh mother!” cried her daughters wildly. +</p> + +<p> +But she had turned and gone, and they all went quickly away from each other. +</p> + +<p> +When Gudrun heard that Mr Crich was dead, she felt rebuked. She had stayed +away lest Gerald should think her too easy of winning. And now, he was in the +midst of trouble, whilst she was cold. +</p> + +<p> +The following day she went up as usual to Winifred, who was glad to see her, +glad to get away into the studio. The girl had wept, and then, too frightened, +had turned aside to avoid any more tragic eventuality. She and Gudrun resumed +work as usual, in the isolation of the studio, and this seemed an immeasurable +happiness, a pure world of freedom, after the aimlessness and misery of the +house. Gudrun stayed on till evening. She and Winifred had dinner brought up to +the studio, where they ate in freedom, away from all the people in the house. +</p> + +<p> +After dinner Gerald came up. The great high studio was full of shadow and a +fragrance of coffee. Gudrun and Winifred had a little table near the fire at the +far end, with a white lamp whose light did not travel far. They were a tiny +world to themselves, the two girls surrounded by lovely shadows, the beams and +rafters shadowy over-head, the benches and implements shadowy down the studio. +</p> + +<p> +“You are cosy enough here,” said Gerald, going up to them. +</p> + +<p> +There was a low brick fireplace, full of fire, an old blue Turkish rug, the +little oak table with the lamp and the white-and-blue cloth and the dessert, and +Gudrun making coffee in an odd brass coffee-maker, and Winifred scalding a +little milk in a tiny saucepan. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you had coffee?” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“I have, but I’ll have some more with you,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Then you must have it in a glass—there are only two +cups,” said Winifred. +</p> + +<p> +“It is the same to me,” he said, taking a chair and coming into +the charmed circle of the girls. How happy they were, how cosy and glamorous it +was with them, in a world of lofty shadows! The outside world, in which he had +been transacting funeral business all the day was completely wiped out. In an +instant he snuffed glamour and magic. +</p> + +<p> +They had all their things very dainty, two odd and lovely little cups, +scarlet and solid gilt, and a little black jug with scarlet discs, and the +curious coffee-machine, whose spirit-flame flowed steadily, almost invisibly. +There was the effect of rather sinister richness, in which Gerald at once +escaped himself. +</p> + +<p> +They all sat down, and Gudrun carefully poured out the coffee. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you have milk?” she asked calmly, yet nervously poising +the little black jug with its big red dots. She was always so completely +controlled, yet so bitterly nervous. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I won’t,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +So, with a curious humility, she placed him the little cup of coffee, and +herself took the awkward tumbler. She seemed to want to serve him. +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you give me the glass—it is so clumsy for +you,” he said. He would much rather have had it, and seen her daintily +served. But she was silent, pleased with the disparity, with her self-abasement. +</p> + +<p> +“You are quite <i>en ménage</i>,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. We aren’t really at home to visitors,” said +Winifred. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not? Then I’m an intruder?” +</p> + +<p> +For once he felt his conventional dress was out of place, he was an +outsider. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was very quiet. She did not feel drawn to talk to him. At this stage, +silence was best—or mere light words. It was best to leave serious things +aside. So they talked gaily and lightly, till they heard the man below lead out +the horse, and call it to “back-back!” into the dog-cart that was to +take Gudrun home. So she put on her things, and shook hands with Gerald, without +once meeting his eyes. And she was gone. +</p> + +<p> +The funeral was detestable. Afterwards, at the tea-table, the daughters kept +saying—“He was a good father to us—the best father in the +world”—or else—“We shan’t easily find another man +as good as father was.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald acquiesced in all this. It was the right conventional attitude, and, +as far as the world went, he believed in the conventions. He took it as a matter +of course. But Winifred hated everything, and hid in the studio, and cried her +heart out, and wished Gudrun would come. +</p> + +<p> +Luckily everybody was going away. The Criches never stayed long at home. By +dinner-time, Gerald was left quite alone. Even Winifred was carried off to +London, for a few days with her sister Laura. +</p> + +<p> +But when Gerald was really left alone, he could not bear it. One day passed +by, and another. And all the time he was like a man hung in chains over the edge +of an abyss. Struggle as he might, he could not turn himself to the solid earth, +he could not get footing. He was suspended on the edge of a void, writhing. +Whatever he thought of, was the abyss—whether it were friends or +strangers, or work or play, it all showed him only the same bottomless void, in +which his heart swung perishing. There was no escape, there was nothing to grasp +hold of. He must writhe on the edge of the chasm, suspended in chains of +invisible physical life. +</p> + +<p> +At first he was quiet, he kept still, expecting the extremity to pass away, +expecting to find himself released into the world of the living, after this +extremity of penance. But it did not pass, and a crisis gained upon him. +</p> + +<p> +As the evening of the third day came on, his heart rang with fear. He could +not bear another night. Another night was coming on, for another night he was to +be suspended in chain of physical life, over the bottomless pit of nothingness. +And he could not bear it. He could not bear it. He was frightened deeply, and +coldly, frightened in his soul. He did not believe in his own strength any more. +He could not fall into this infinite void, and rise again. If he fell, he would +be gone for ever. He must withdraw, he must seek reinforcements. He did not +believe in his own single self, any further than this. +</p> + +<p> +After dinner, faced with the ultimate experience of his own nothingness, he +turned aside. He pulled on his boots, put on his coat, and set out to walk in +the night. +</p> + +<p> +It was dark and misty. He went through the wood, stumbling and feeling his +way to the Mill. Birkin was away. Good—he was half glad. He turned up the +hill, and stumbled blindly over the wild slopes, having lost the path in the +complete darkness. It was boring. Where was he going? No matter. He stumbled on +till he came to a path again. Then he went on through another wood. His mind +became dark, he went on automatically. Without thought or sensation, he stumbled +unevenly on, out into the open again, fumbling for stiles, losing the path, and +going along the hedges of the fields till he came to the outlet. +</p> + +<p> +And at last he came to the high road. It had distracted him to struggle +blindly through the maze of darkness. But now, he must take a direction. And he +did not even know where he was. But he must take a direction now. Nothing would +be resolved by merely walking, walking away. He had to take a direction. +</p> + +<p> +He stood still on the road, that was high in the utterly dark night, and he +did not know where he was. It was a strange sensation, his heart beating, and +ringed round with the utterly unknown darkness. So he stood for some time. +</p> + +<p> +Then he heard footsteps, and saw a small, swinging light. He immediately +went towards this. It was a miner. +</p> + +<p> +“Can you tell me,” he said, “where this road goes?” +</p> + +<p> +“Road? Ay, it goes ter Whatmore.” +</p> + +<p> +“Whatmore! Oh thank you, that’s right. I thought I was wrong. +Good-night.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night,” replied the broad voice of the miner. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald guessed where he was. At least, when he came to Whatmore, he would +know. He was glad to be on a high road. He walked forward as in a sleep of +decision. +</p> + +<p> +That was Whatmore Village—? Yes, the King’s Head—and there +the hall gates. He descended the steep hill almost running. Winding through the +hollow, he passed the Grammar School, and came to Willey Green Church. The +churchyard! He halted. +</p> + +<p> +Then in another moment he had clambered up the wall and was going among the +graves. Even in this darkness he could see the heaped pallor of old white +flowers at his feet. This then was the grave. He stooped down. The flowers were +cold and clammy. There was a raw scent of chrysanthemums and tube-roses, +deadened. He felt the clay beneath, and shrank, it was so horribly cold and +sticky. He stood away in revulsion. +</p> + +<p> +Here was one centre then, here in the complete darkness beside the unseen, +raw grave. But there was nothing for him here. No, he had nothing to stay here +for. He felt as if some of the clay were sticking cold and unclean, on his +heart. No, enough of this. +</p> + +<p> +Where then?—home? Never! It was no use going there. That was less than +no use. It could not be done. There was somewhere else to go. Where? +</p> + +<p> +A dangerous resolve formed in his heart, like a fixed idea. There was +Gudrun—she would be safe in her home. But he could get at her—he +would get at her. He would not go back tonight till he had come to her, if it +cost him his life. He staked his all on this throw. +</p> + +<p> +He set off walking straight across the fields towards Beldover. It was so +dark, nobody could ever see him. His feet were wet and cold, heavy with clay. +But he went on persistently, like a wind, straight forward, as if to his fate. +There were great gaps in his consciousness. He was conscious that he was at +Winthorpe hamlet, but quite unconscious how he had got there. And then, as in a +dream, he was in the long street of Beldover, with its street-lamps. +</p> + +<p> +There was a noise of voices, and of a door shutting loudly, and being +barred, and of men talking in the night. The “Lord Nelson” had just +closed, and the drinkers were going home. He had better ask one of these where +she lived—for he did not know the side streets at all. +</p> + +<p> +“Can you tell me where Somerset Drive is?” he asked of one of +the uneven men. +</p> + +<p> +“Where what?” replied the tipsy miner’s voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Somerset Drive.” +</p> + +<p> +“Somerset Drive!—I’ve heard o’ such a place, but I +couldn’t for my life say where it is. Who might you be wanting?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr Brangwen—William Brangwen.” +</p> + +<p> +“William Brangwen—?—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Who teaches at the Grammar School, at Willey Green—his daughter +teaches there too.” +</p> + +<p> +“O-o-o-oh, Brangwen! <i>Now</i> I’ve got you. Of <i>course</i>, William +Brangwen! Yes, yes, he’s got two lasses as teachers, aside hisself. Ay, +that’s him—that’s him! Why certainly I know where he lives, +back your life I do! Yi—<i>what</i> place do they ca’ it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Somerset Drive,” repeated Gerald patiently. He knew his own +colliers fairly well. +</p> + +<p> +“Somerset Drive, for certain!” said the collier, swinging his +arm as if catching something up. “Somerset Drive—yi! I +couldn’t for my life lay hold o’ the lercality o’ the place. +Yis, I know the place, to be sure I do—” +</p> + +<p> +He turned unsteadily on his feet, and pointed up the dark, nigh-deserted +road. +</p> + +<p> +“You go up theer—an’ you ta’e th’ +first—yi, th’ first turnin’ on your left—o’ that +side—past Withamses tuffy shop—” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> know,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay! You go down a bit, past wheer th’ water-man lives—and +then Somerset Drive, as they ca’ it, branches off on ’t right hand +side—an’ there’s nowt but three houses in it, no more than +three, I believe,—an’ I’m a’most certain as theirs is +th’ last—th’ last o’ th’ three—you +see—” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you very much,” said Gerald. “Good-night.” +</p> + +<p> +And he started off, leaving the tipsy man there standing rooted. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald went past the dark shops and houses, most of them sleeping now, and +twisted round to the little blind road that ended on a field of darkness. He +slowed down, as he neared his goal, not knowing how he should proceed. What if +the house were closed in darkness? +</p> + +<p> +But it was not. He saw a big lighted window, and heard voices, then a gate +banged. His quick ears caught the sound of Birkin’s voice, his keen eyes +made out Birkin, with Ursula standing in a pale dress on the step of the garden +path. Then Ursula stepped down, and came along the road, holding Birkin’s +arm. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald went across into the darkness and they dawdled past him, talking +happily, Birkin’s voice low, Ursula’s high and distinct. Gerald went +quickly to the house. +</p> + +<p> +The blinds were drawn before the big, lighted window of the dining-room. +Looking up the path at the side he could see the door left open, shedding a +soft, coloured light from the hall lamp. He went quickly and silently up the +path, and looked up into the hall. There were pictures on the walls, and the +antlers of a stag—and the stairs going up on one side—and just near +the foot of the stairs the half opened door of the dining-room. +</p> + +<p> +With heart drawn fine, Gerald stepped into the hall, whose floor was of +coloured tiles, went quickly and looked into the large, pleasant room. In a +chair by the fire, the father sat asleep, his head tilted back against the side +of the big oak chimney piece, his ruddy face seen foreshortened, the nostrils +open, the mouth fallen a little. It would take the merest sound to wake him. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald stood a second suspended. He glanced down the passage behind him. It +was all dark. Again he was suspended. Then he went swiftly upstairs. His senses +were so finely, almost supernaturally keen, that he seemed to cast his own will +over the half-unconscious house. +</p> + +<p> +He came to the first landing. There he stood, scarcely breathing. Again, +corresponding to the door below, there was a door again. That would be the +mother’s room. He could hear her moving about in the candlelight. She +would be expecting her husband to come up. He looked along the dark landing. +</p> + +<p> +Then, silently, on infinitely careful feet, he went along the passage, +feeling the wall with the extreme tips of his fingers. There was a door. He +stood and listened. He could hear two people’s breathing. It was not that. +He went stealthily forward. There was another door, slightly open. The room was +in darkness. Empty. Then there was the bathroom, he could smell the soap and the +heat. Then at the end another bedroom—one soft breathing. This was she. +</p> + +<p> +With an almost occult carefulness he turned the door handle, and opened the +door an inch. It creaked slightly. Then he opened it another inch—then +another. His heart did not beat, he seemed to create a silence about himself, an +obliviousness. +</p> + +<p> +He was in the room. Still the sleeper breathed softly. It was very dark. He +felt his way forward inch by inch, with his feet and hands. He touched the bed, +he could hear the sleeper. He drew nearer, bending close as if his eyes would +disclose whatever there was. And then, very near to his face, to his fear, he +saw the round, dark head of a boy. +</p> + +<p> +He recovered, turned round, saw the door ajar, a faint light revealed. And +he retreated swiftly, drew the door to without fastening it, and passed rapidly +down the passage. At the head of the stairs he hesitated. There was still time +to flee. +</p> + +<p> +But it was unthinkable. He would maintain his will. He turned past the door +of the parental bedroom like a shadow, and was climbing the second flight of +stairs. They creaked under his weight—it was exasperating. Ah what +disaster, if the mother’s door opened just beneath him, and she saw him! +It would have to be, if it were so. He held the control still. +</p> + +<p> +He was not quite up these stairs when he heard a quick running of feet +below, the outer door was closed and locked, he heard Ursula’s voice, then +the father’s sleepy exclamation. He pressed on swiftly to the upper +landing. +</p> + +<p> +Again a door was ajar, a room was empty. Feeling his way forward, with the +tips of his fingers, travelling rapidly, like a blind man, anxious lest Ursula +should come upstairs, he found another door. There, with his preternaturally +fine sense alert, he listened. He heard someone moving in bed. This would be +she. +</p> + +<p> +Softly now, like one who has only one sense, the tactile sense, he turned +the latch. It clicked. He held still. The bed-clothes rustled. His heart did not +beat. Then again he drew the latch back, and very gently pushed the door. It +made a sticking noise as it gave. +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula?” said Gudrun’s voice, frightened. He quickly +opened the door and pushed it behind him. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it you, Ursula?” came Gudrun’s frightened voice. He +heard her sitting up in bed. In another moment she would scream. +</p> + +<p> +“No, it’s me,” he said, feeling his way towards her. +“It is I, Gerald.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat motionless in her bed in sheer astonishment. She was too astonished, +too much taken by surprise, even to be afraid. +</p> + +<p> +“Gerald!” she echoed, in blank amazement. He had found his way +to the bed, and his outstretched hand touched her warm breast blindly. She +shrank away. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me make a light,” she said, springing out. +</p> + +<p> +He stood perfectly motionless. He heard her touch the match-box, he heard +her fingers in their movement. Then he saw her in the light of a match, which +she held to the candle. The light rose in the room, then sank to a small +dimness, as the flame sank down on the candle, before it mounted again. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him, as he stood near the other side of the bed. His cap was +pulled low over his brow, his black overcoat was buttoned close up to his chin. +His face was strange and luminous. He was inevitable as a supernatural being. +When she had seen him, she knew. She knew there was something fatal in the +situation, and she must accept it. Yet she must challenge him. +</p> + +<p> +“How did you come up?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I walked up the stairs—the door was open.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him. +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t closed this door, either,” he said. She walked +swiftly across the room, and closed her door, softly, and locked it. Then she +came back. +</p> + +<p> +She was wonderful, with startled eyes and flushed cheeks, and her plait of +hair rather short and thick down her back, and her long, fine white night-dress +falling to her feet. +</p> + +<p> +She saw that his boots were all clayey, even his trousers were plastered +with clay. And she wondered if he had made footprints all the way up. He was a +very strange figure, standing in her bedroom, near the tossed bed. +</p> + +<p> +“Why have you come?” she asked, almost querulous. +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted to,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +And this she could see from his face. It was fate. +</p> + +<p> +“You are so muddy,” she said, in distaste, but gently. +</p> + +<p> +He looked down at his feet. +</p> + +<p> +“I was walking in the dark,” he replied. But he felt vividly +elated. There was a pause. He stood on one side of the tumbled bed, she on the +other. He did not even take his cap from his brows. +</p> + +<p> +“And what do you want of me,” she challenged. +</p> + +<p> +He looked aside, and did not answer. Save for the extreme beauty and mystic +attractiveness of this distinct, strange face, she would have sent him away. But +his face was too wonderful and undiscovered to her. It fascinated her with the +fascination of pure beauty, cast a spell on her, like nostalgia, an ache. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want of me?” she repeated in an estranged voice. +</p> + +<p> +He pulled off his cap, in a movement of dream-liberation, and went across to +her. But he could not touch her, because she stood barefoot in her night-dress, +and he was muddy and damp. Her eyes, wide and large and wondering, watched him, +and asked him the ultimate question. +</p> + +<p> +“I came—because I must,” he said. “Why do you +ask?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him in doubt and wonder. +</p> + +<p> +“I must ask,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He shook his head slightly. +</p> + +<p> +“There is no answer,” he replied, with strange vacancy. +</p> + +<p> +There was about him a curious, and almost godlike air of simplicity and +native directness. He reminded her of an apparition, the young Hermes. +</p> + +<p> +“But why did you come to me?” she persisted. +</p> + +<p> +“Because—it has to be so. If there weren’t you in the +world, then <i>I</i> shouldn’t be in the world, either.” +</p> + +<p> +She stood looking at him, with large, wide, wondering, stricken eyes. His +eyes were looking steadily into hers all the time, and he seemed fixed in an odd +supernatural steadfastness. She sighed. She was lost now. She had no choice. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you take off your boots,” she said. “They +must be wet.” +</p> + +<p> +He dropped his cap on a chair, unbuttoned his overcoat, lifting up his chin +to unfasten the throat buttons. His short, keen hair was ruffled. He was so +beautifully blond, like wheat. He pulled off his overcoat. +</p> + +<p> +Quickly he pulled off his jacket, pulled loose his black tie, and was +unfastening his studs, which were headed each with a pearl. She listened, +watching, hoping no one would hear the starched linen crackle. It seemed to snap +like pistol shots. +</p> + +<p> +He had come for vindication. She let him hold her in his arms, clasp her +close against him. He found in her an infinite relief. Into her he poured all +his pent-up darkness and corrosive death, and he was whole again. It was +wonderful, marvellous, it was a miracle. This was the ever-recurrent miracle of +his life, at the knowledge of which he was lost in an ecstasy of relief and +wonder. And she, subject, received him as a vessel filled with his bitter potion +of death. She had no power at this crisis to resist. The terrible frictional +violence of death filled her, and she received it in an ecstasy of subjection, +in throes of acute, violent sensation. +</p> + +<p> +As he drew nearer to her, he plunged deeper into her enveloping soft warmth, +a wonderful creative heat that penetrated his veins and gave him life again. He +felt himself dissolving and sinking to rest in the bath of her living strength. +It seemed as if her heart in her breast were a second unconquerable sun, into +the glow and creative strength of which he plunged further and further. All his +veins, that were murdered and lacerated, healed softly as life came pulsing in, +stealing invisibly in to him as if it were the all-powerful effluence of the +sun. His blood, which seemed to have been drawn back into death, came ebbing on +the return, surely, beautifully, powerfully. +</p> + +<p> +He felt his limbs growing fuller and flexible with life, his body gained an +unknown strength. He was a man again, strong and rounded. And he was a child, so +soothed and restored and full of gratitude. +</p> + +<p> +And she, she was the great bath of life, he worshipped her. Mother and +substance of all life she was. And he, child and man, received of her and was +made whole. His pure body was almost killed. But the miraculous, soft effluence +of her breast suffused over him, over his seared, damaged brain, like a healing +lymph, like a soft, soothing flow of life itself, perfect as if he were bathed +in the womb again. +</p> + +<p> +His brain was hurt, seared, the tissue was as if destroyed. He had not known +how hurt he was, how his tissue, the very tissue of his brain was damaged by the +corrosive flood of death. Now, as the healing lymph of her effluence flowed +through him, he knew how destroyed he was, like a plant whose tissue is burst +from inwards by a frost. +</p> + +<p> +He buried his small, hard head between her breasts, and pressed her breasts +against him with his hands. And she with quivering hands pressed his head +against her, as he lay suffused out, and she lay fully conscious. The lovely +creative warmth flooded through him like a sleep of fecundity within the womb. +Ah, if only she would grant him the flow of this living effluence, he would be +restored, he would be complete again. He was afraid she would deny him before it +was finished. Like a child at the breast, he cleaved intensely to her, and she +could not put him away. And his seared, ruined membrane relaxed, softened, that +which was seared and stiff and blasted yielded again, became soft and flexible, +palpitating with new life. He was infinitely grateful, as to God, or as an +infant is at its mother’s breast. He was glad and grateful like a +delirium, as he felt his own wholeness come over him again, as he felt the full, +unutterable sleep coming over him, the sleep of complete exhaustion and +restoration. +</p> + +<p> +But Gudrun lay wide awake, destroyed into perfect consciousness. She lay +motionless, with wide eyes staring motionless into the darkness, whilst he was +sunk away in sleep, his arms round her. +</p> + +<p> +She seemed to be hearing waves break on a hidden shore, long, slow, gloomy +waves, breaking with the rhythm of fate, so monotonously that it seemed eternal. +This endless breaking of slow, sullen waves of fate held her life a possession, +whilst she lay with dark, wide eyes looking into the darkness. She could see so +far, as far as eternity—yet she saw nothing. She was suspended in perfect +consciousness—and of what was she conscious? +</p> + +<p> +This mood of extremity, when she lay staring into eternity, utterly +suspended, and conscious of everything, to the last limits, passed and left her +uneasy. She had lain so long motionless. She moved, she became self-conscious. +She wanted to look at him, to see him. +</p> + +<p> +But she dared not make a light, because she knew he would wake, and she did +not want to break his perfect sleep, that she knew he had got of her. +</p> + +<p> +She disengaged herself, softly, and rose up a little to look at him. There +was a faint light, it seemed to her, in the room. She could just distinguish his +features, as he slept the perfect sleep. In this darkness, she seemed to see him +so distinctly. But he was far off, in another world. Ah, she could shriek with +torment, he was so far off, and perfected, in another world. She seemed to look +at him as at a pebble far away under clear dark water. And here was she, left +with all the anguish of consciousness, whilst he was sunk deep into the other +element of mindless, remote, living shadow-gleam. He was beautiful, far-off, and +perfected. They would never be together. Ah, this awful, inhuman distance which +would always be interposed between her and the other being! +</p> + +<p> +There was nothing to do but to lie still and endure. She felt an +overwhelming tenderness for him, and a dark, under-stirring of jealous hatred, +that he should lie so perfect and immune, in an other-world, whilst she was +tormented with violent wakefulness, cast out in the outer darkness. +</p> + +<p> +She lay in intense and vivid consciousness, an exhausting +superconsciousness. The church clock struck the hours, it seemed to her, in +quick succession. She heard them distinctly in the tension of her vivid +consciousness. And he slept as if time were one moment, unchanging and unmoving. +</p> + +<p> +She was exhausted, wearied. Yet she must continue in this state of violent +active superconsciousness. She was conscious of everything—her childhood, +her girlhood, all the forgotten incidents, all the unrealised influences and all +the happenings she had not understood, pertaining to herself, to her family, to +her friends, her lovers, her acquaintances, everybody. It was as if she drew a +glittering rope of knowledge out of the sea of darkness, drew and drew and drew +it out of the fathomless depths of the past, and still it did not come to an +end, there was no end to it, she must haul and haul at the rope of glittering +consciousness, pull it out phosphorescent from the endless depths of the +unconsciousness, till she was weary, aching, exhausted, and fit to break, and +yet she had not done. +</p> + +<p> +Ah, if only she might wake him! She turned uneasily. When could she rouse +him and send him away? When could she disturb him? And she relapsed into her +activity of automatic consciousness, that would never end. +</p> + +<p> +But the time was drawing near when she could wake him. It was like a +release. The clock had struck four, outside in the night. Thank God the night +had passed almost away. At five he must go, and she would be released. Then she +could relax and fill her own place. Now she was driven up against his perfect +sleeping motion like a knife white-hot on a grindstone. There was something +monstrous about him, about his juxtaposition against her. +</p> + +<p> +The last hour was the longest. And yet, at last it passed. Her heart leapt +with relief—yes, there was the slow, strong stroke of the church +clock—at last, after this night of eternity. She waited to catch each +slow, fatal reverberation. “Three—four—five!” There, it +was finished. A weight rolled off her. +</p> + +<p> +She raised herself, leaned over him tenderly, and kissed him. She was sad to +wake him. After a few moments, she kissed him again. But he did not stir. The +darling, he was so deep in sleep! What a shame to take him out of it. She let +him lie a little longer. But he must go—he must really go. +</p> + +<p> +With full over-tenderness she took his face between her hands, and kissed +his eyes. The eyes opened, he remained motionless, looking at her. Her heart +stood still. To hide her face from his dreadful opened eyes, in the darkness, +she bent down and kissed him, whispering: +</p> + +<p> +“You must go, my love.” +</p> + +<p> +But she was sick with terror, sick. +</p> + +<p> +He put his arms round her. Her heart sank. +</p> + +<p> +“But you must go, my love. It’s late.” +</p> + +<p> +“What time is it?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Strange, his man’s voice. She quivered. It was an intolerable +oppression to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Past five o’clock,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +But he only closed his arms round her again. Her heart cried within her in +torture. She disengaged herself firmly. +</p> + +<p> +“You really must go,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Not for a minute,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She lay still, nestling against him, but unyielding. +</p> + +<p> +“Not for a minute,” he repeated, clasping her closer. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, unyielding, “I’m afraid if you stay +any longer.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a certain coldness in her voice that made him release her, and she +broke away, rose and lit the candle. That then was the end. +</p> + +<p> +He got up. He was warm and full of life and desire. Yet he felt a little bit +ashamed, humiliated, putting on his clothes before her, in the candle-light. For +he felt revealed, exposed to her, at a time when she was in some way against +him. It was all very difficult to understand. He dressed himself quickly, +without collar or tie. Still he felt full and complete, perfected. She thought +it humiliating to see a man dressing: the ridiculous shirt, the ridiculous +trousers and braces. But again an idea saved her. +</p> + +<p> +“It is like a workman getting up to go to work,” thought Gudrun. +“And I am like a workman’s wife.” But an ache like nausea was +upon her: a nausea of him. +</p> + +<p> +He pushed his collar and tie into his overcoat pocket. Then he sat down and +pulled on his boots. They were sodden, as were his socks and trouser-bottoms. +But he himself was quick and warm. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps you ought to have put your boots on downstairs,” she +said. +</p> + +<p> +At once, without answering, he pulled them off again, and stood holding them +in his hand. She had thrust her feet into slippers, and flung a loose robe round +her. She was ready. She looked at him as he stood waiting, his black coat +buttoned to the chin, his cap pulled down, his boots in his hand. And the +passionate almost hateful fascination revived in her for a moment. It was not +exhausted. His face was so warm-looking, wide-eyed and full of newness, so +perfect. She felt old, old. She went to him heavily, to be kissed. He kissed her +quickly. She wished his warm, expressionless beauty did not so fatally put a +spell on her, compel her and subjugate her. It was a burden upon her, that she +resented, but could not escape. Yet when she looked at his straight man’s +brows, and at his rather small, well-shaped nose, and at his blue, indifferent +eyes, she knew her passion for him was not yet satisfied, perhaps never could be +satisfied. Only now she was weary, with an ache like nausea. She wanted him +gone. +</p> + +<p> +They went downstairs quickly. It seemed they made a prodigious noise. He +followed her as, wrapped in her vivid green wrap, she preceded him with the +light. She suffered badly with fear, lest her people should be roused. He hardly +cared. He did not care now who knew. And she hated this in him. One <i>must</i> +be cautious. One must preserve oneself. +</p> + +<p> +She led the way to the kitchen. It was neat and tidy, as the woman had left +it. He looked up at the clock—twenty minutes past five Then he sat down on +a chair to put on his boots. She waited, watching his every movement. She wanted +it to be over, it was a great nervous strain on her. +</p> + +<p> +He stood up—she unbolted the back door, and looked out. A cold, raw +night, not yet dawn, with a piece of a moon in the vague sky. She was glad she +need not go out. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye then,” he murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll come to the gate,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +And again she hurried on in front, to warn him of the steps. And at the +gate, once more she stood on the step whilst he stood below her. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye,” she whispered. +</p> + +<p> +He kissed her dutifully, and turned away. +</p> + +<p> +She suffered torments hearing his firm tread going so distinctly down the +road. Ah, the insensitiveness of that firm tread! +</p> + +<p> +She closed the gate, and crept quickly and noiselessly back to bed. When she +was in her room, and the door closed, and all safe, she breathed freely, and a +great weight fell off her. She nestled down in bed, in the groove his body had +made, in the warmth he had left. And excited, worn-out, yet still satisfied, she +fell soon into a deep, heavy sleep. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald walked quickly through the raw darkness of the coming dawn. He met +nobody. His mind was beautifully still and thoughtless, like a still pool, and +his body full and warm and rich. He went quickly along towards Shortlands, in a +grateful self-sufficiency. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap25"></a>CHAPTER XXV.<br/> +MARRIAGE OR NOT</h2> + +<p> +The Brangwen family was going to move from Beldover. It was necessary now +for the father to be in town. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin had taken out a marriage licence, yet Ursula deferred from day to +day. She would not fix any definite time—she still wavered. Her +month’s notice to leave the Grammar School was in its third week. +Christmas was not far off. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald waited for the Ursula-Birkin marriage. It was something crucial to +him. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we make it a double-barrelled affair?” he said to Birkin +one day. +</p> + +<p> +“Who for the second shot?” asked Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Gudrun and me,” said Gerald, the venturesome twinkle in his +eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked at him steadily, as if somewhat taken aback. +</p> + +<p> +“Serious—or joking?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, serious. Shall I? Shall Gudrun and I rush in along with +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do by all means,” said Birkin. “I didn’t know +you’d got that length.” +</p> + +<p> +“What length?” said Gerald, looking at the other man, and +laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, we’ve gone all the lengths.” +</p> + +<p> +“There remains to put it on a broad social basis, and to achieve a +high moral purpose,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Something like that: the length and breadth and height of it,” +replied Gerald, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh well,” said Birkin, “it’s a very admirable step +to take, I should say.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked at him closely. +</p> + +<p> +“Why aren’t you enthusiastic?” he asked. “I thought +you were such dead nuts on marriage.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin lifted his shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“One might as well be dead nuts on noses. There are all sorts of +noses, snub and otherwise—” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“And all sorts of marriage, also snub and otherwise?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you think if I marry, it will be snub?” asked Gerald +quizzically, his head a little on one side. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin laughed quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“How do I know what it will be!” he said. “Don’t +lambaste me with my own parallels—” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald pondered a while. +</p> + +<p> +“But I should like to know your opinion, exactly,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“On your marriage?—or marrying? Why should you want my opinion? +I’ve got no opinions. I’m not interested in legal marriage, one way +or another. It’s a mere question of convenience.” +</p> + +<p> +Still Gerald watched him closely. +</p> + +<p> +“More than that, I think,” he said seriously. “However you +may be bored by the ethics of marriage, yet really to marry, in one’s own +personal case, is something critical, final—” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean there is something final in going to the registrar with a +woman?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you’re coming back with her, I do,” said Gerald. +“It is in some way irrevocable.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I agree,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“No matter how one regards legal marriage, yet to enter into the +married state, in one’s own personal instance, is final—” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe it is,” said Birkin, “somewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“The question remains then, should one do it,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin watched him narrowly, with amused eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“You are like Lord Bacon, Gerald,” he said. “You argue it +like a lawyer—or like Hamlet’s to-be-or-not-to-be. If I were you I +would <i>not</i> marry: but ask Gudrun, not me. You’re not marrying me, are +you?” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald did not heed the latter part of this speech. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, “one must consider it coldly. It is +something critical. One comes to the point where one must take a step in one +direction or another. And marriage is one direction—” +</p> + +<p> +“And what is the other?” asked Birkin quickly. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked up at him with hot, strangely-conscious eyes, that the other +man could not understand. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t say,” he replied. “If I knew +<i>that</i>—” He moved uneasily on his feet, and did not finish. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean if you knew the alternative?” asked Birkin. “And +since you don’t know it, marriage is a <i>pis aller.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked up at Birkin with the same hot, constrained eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“One does have the feeling that marriage is a <i>pis aller</i>,” +he admitted. +</p> + +<p> +“Then don’t do it,” said Birkin. “I tell you,” +he went on, “the same as I’ve said before, marriage in the old sense +seems to me repulsive. <i>Égoïsme à deux</i> is nothing to it. It’s a sort +of tacit hunting in couples: the world all in couples, each couple in its own +little house, watching its own little interests, and stewing in its own little +privacy—it’s the most repulsive thing on earth.” +</p> + +<p> +“I quite agree,” said Gerald. “There’s something +inferior about it. But as I say, what’s the alternative.” +</p> + +<p> +“One should avoid this <i>home</i> instinct. It’s not an instinct, +it’s a habit of cowardliness. One should never have a <i>home</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“I agree really,” said Gerald. “But there’s no +alternative.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve got to find one. I do believe in a permanent union +between a man and a woman. Chopping about is merely an exhaustive process. But a +permanent relation between a man and a woman isn’t the last word—it +certainly isn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“In fact,” said Birkin, “because the relation between man +and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that’s where all +the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I believe you,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its +pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the <i>additional</i> perfect +relationship between man and man—additional to marriage.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can never see how they can be the same,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Not the same—but equally important, equally creative, equally +sacred, if you like.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” said Gerald, “you believe something like that. +Only I can’t <i>feel</i> it, you see.” He put his hand on Birkin’s +arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly. +</p> + +<p> +He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was willing +to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines +of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean +activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage was the seal of his +condemnation. He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul +damned but living forever in damnation. But he would not make any pure +relationship with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing +of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in +acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in +which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld +for his life. This he would do. +</p> + +<p> +The other way was to accept Rupert’s offer of alliance, to enter into +the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with +the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge +himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic +marriage. +</p> + +<p> +Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a numbness +either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of +volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert’s offer. Yet he was still +more glad to reject it, not to be committed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.<br/> +A CHAIR</h2> + +<p> +There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old market-place in +town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one afternoon. They had been talking +of furniture, and they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would like +to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble-stones. +</p> + +<p> +The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare patch of granite +setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls under a wall. It was in a poor quarter of +the town. Meagre houses stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a +great blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of little shops +with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, for a crowning monument, the +public baths, of new red brick, with a clock-tower. The people who moved about +seemed stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there was a +sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens of meanness. Now and again +a great chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the +hosiery factory. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the +common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of old iron, +shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and +Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. He was +looking at the goods, she at the people. +</p> + +<p> +She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and who +was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, +feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so +reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry her because she was +having a child. +</p> + +<p> +When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man seated on +a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and she turned to the +young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, +though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman +anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and +bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, +shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. +</p> + +<p> +“Look,” said Birkin, “there is a pretty chair.” +</p> + +<p> +“Charming!” cried Ursula. “Oh, charming.” +</p> + +<p> +It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of such fine +delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, it almost brought tears +to the eyes. It was square in shape, of the purest, slender lines, and four +short lines of wood in the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. +</p> + +<p> +“It was once,” said Birkin, “gilded—and it had a +cane seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is a trifle of +the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, except where the wood is +worn pure and glossy. It is the fine unity of the lines that is so attractive. +Look, how they run and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is +wrong—it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension the cane +gave. I like it though—” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah yes,” said Ursula, “so do I.” +</p> + +<p> +“How much is it?” Birkin asked the man. +</p> + +<p> +“Ten shillings.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you will send it—?” +</p> + +<p> +It was bought. +</p> + +<p> +“So beautiful, so pure!” Birkin said. “It almost breaks my +heart.” They walked along between the heaps of rubbish. “My beloved +country—it had something to express even when it made that chair.” +</p> + +<p> +“And hasn’t it now?” asked Ursula. She was always angry +when he took this tone. +</p> + +<p> +“No, it hasn’t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and I +think of England, even Jane Austen’s England—it had living thoughts +to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfolding them. And now, we can only +fish among the rubbish heaps for the remnants of their old expression. There is +no production in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness.” +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t true,” cried Ursula. “Why must you always +praise the past, at the expense of the present? <i>Really</i>, I don’t think +so much of Jane Austen’s England. It was materialistic enough, if you +like—” +</p> + +<p> +“It could afford to be materialistic,” said Birkin, +“because it had the power to be something other—which we +haven’t. We are materialistic because we haven’t the power to be +anything else—try as we may, we can’t bring off anything but +materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She +was rebelling against something else. +</p> + +<p> +“And I hate your past. I’m sick of it,” she cried. +“I believe I even hate that old chair, though it <i>is</i> beautiful. It +isn’t <i>my</i> sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was +over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I’m sick of the beloved +past.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not so sick as I am of the accursed present,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, just the same. I hate the present—but I don’t want +the past to take its place—I don’t want that old chair.” +</p> + +<p> +He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining beyond +the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all. He laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” he said, “then let us not have it. I’m +sick of it all, too. At any rate one can’t go on living on the old bones +of beauty.” +</p> + +<p> +“One can’t,” she cried. “I <i>don’t</i> want old +things.” +</p> + +<p> +“The truth is, we don’t want things at all,” he replied. +“The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me.” +</p> + +<p> +This startled her for a moment. Then she replied: +</p> + +<p> +“So it is to me. But one must live somewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not somewhere—anywhere,” he said. “One should just +live anywhere—not have a definite place. I don’t want a definite +place. As soon as you get a room, and it is <i>complete</i>, you want to run from +it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the +sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture +is a commandment-stone.” +</p> + +<p> +She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. +</p> + +<p> +“But what are we going to do?” she said. “We must live +somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural +<i>grandeur</i> even, <i>splendour</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +She stood in the street contemplating. +</p> + +<p> +“And we are never to have a complete place of our own—never a +home?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Pray God, in this world, no,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +“But there’s only this world,” she objected. +</p> + +<p> +He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. +</p> + +<p> +“Meanwhile, then, we’ll avoid having things of our own,” +he said. +</p> + +<p> +“But you’ve just bought a chair,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I can tell the man I don’t want it,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, “we don’t want it. I’m sick of +old things.” +</p> + +<p> +“New ones as well,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +They retraced their steps. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us give it to <i>them</i>,” whispered Ursula. “Look they +are getting a home together.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> won’t aid abet them in it,” he said petulantly, +instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, +procreant female. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” cried Ursula. “It’s right for +them—there’s nothing else for them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” said Birkin, “you offer it to them. +I’ll watch.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“We bought a chair,” said Ursula, “and we don’t want +it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would.” +</p> + +<p> +The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be +addressing them. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you care for it?” repeated Ursula. “It’s +really <i>very</i> pretty—but—but—” she smiled rather +dazzlingly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“We wanted to <i>give</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula had apprehended him with a fine <i>frisson</i> of attraction. The full-built +woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you have the chair?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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: +</p> + +<p> +“What she warnt?—eh?” An odd smile writhed his lips. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. +</p> + +<p> +“To give you a chair—that—with the label on it,” he +said, pointing. +</p> + +<p> +The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in +male, outlawed understanding between the two men. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s she warnt to give it <i>us</i> for, guvnor,” he replied, +in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d never thought of that,” said Birkin. “But no, +the wood’s too thin everywhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. “<i>We</i> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all right to be some folks,” said the city girl, +turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the +lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His +eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness. +</p> + +<p> +“Cawsts something to chynge your mind,” he said, in an +incredibly low accent. +</p> + +<p> +“Only ten shillings this time,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure. +</p> + +<p> +“Cheap at ’arf a quid, guvnor,” he said. “Not like +getting divawced.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’re not married yet,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“No, no more aren’t we,” said the young woman loudly. +“But we shall be, a Saturday.” +</p> + +<p> +Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at +once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. +She had got his manhood, but Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive +pride and slinking singleness. +</p> + +<p> +“Good luck to you,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Same to you,” said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: +“When’s yours coming off, then?” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked round at Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s for the lady to say,” he replied. “We go to +the registrar the moment she’s ready.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. +</p> + +<p> +“No ’urry,” said the young man, grinning suggestive. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t break your neck to get there,” said the young +woman. “’Slike when you’re dead—you’re long time +married.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man turned aside as if this hit him. +</p> + +<p> +“The longer the better, let us hope,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it, guvnor,” said the young man admiringly. +“Enjoy it while it larsts—niver whip a dead donkey.” +</p> + +<p> +“Only when he’s shamming dead,” said the young woman, +looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority. +</p> + +<p> +“Aw, there’s a difference,” he said satirically. +</p> + +<p> +“What about the chair?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, all right,” said the woman. +</p> + +<p> +They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging +a little aside. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it,” said Birkin. “Will you take it with +you, or have the address altered.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old +’ome.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mike use of ’im,” said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took +the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, +slinking. +</p> + +<p> +“’Ere’s mother’s cosy chair,” he said. +“Warnts a cushion.” And he stood it down on the market stones. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think it’s pretty?” laughed Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I do,” said the young woman. +</p> + +<p> +“’Ave a sit in it, you’ll wish you’d kept it,” +said the young man. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. +</p> + +<p> +“Awfully comfortable,” she said. “But rather hard. You try +it.” She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, +awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, +like a quick, live rat. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t spoil him,” said the young woman. “He’s +not used to arm-chairs, ’e isn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: +</p> + +<p> +“Only warnts legs on ’is.” +</p> + +<p> +The four parted. The young woman thanked them. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you for the chair—it’ll last till it gives +way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Keep it for an ornyment,” said the young man. +</p> + +<p> +“Good afternoon—good afternoon,” said Ursula and Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Goo’-luck to you,” said the young man, glancing and +avoiding Birkin’s eyes, as he turned aside his head. +</p> + +<p> +The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin’s arm. When +they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside +the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a +sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had +the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square +tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet +he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a +queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. +</p> + +<p> +“How strange they are!” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Children of men,” he said. “They remind me of Jesus: +‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’” +</p> + +<p> +“But they aren’t the meek,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I don’t know why, but they are,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. +The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses. +</p> + +<p> +“And are they going to inherit the earth?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—they.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what are we going to do?” she asked. “We’re +not like them—are we? We’re not the meek?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. We’ve got to live in the chinks they leave us.” +</p> + +<p> +“How horrible!” cried Ursula. “I don’t want to live +in chinks.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t worry,” he said. “They are the children of +men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of +chinks.” +</p> + +<p> +“All the world,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah no—but some room.” +</p> + +<p> +The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of +houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and +looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, +somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mind it even then,” said Ursula, looking at the +repulsiveness of it all. “It doesn’t concern me.” +</p> + +<p> +“No more it does,” he replied, holding her hand. “One +needn’t see. One goes one’s way. In my world it is sunny and +spacious—” +</p> + +<p> +“It is, my love, isn’t it?” she cried, hugging near to him +on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them. +</p> + +<p> +“And we will wander about on the face of the earth,” he said, +“and we’ll look at the world beyond just this bit.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat +thinking. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to inherit the earth,” she said. “I +don’t want to inherit anything.” +</p> + +<p> +He closed his hand over hers. +</p> + +<p> +“Neither do I. I want to be disinherited.” +</p> + +<p> +She clasped his fingers closely. +</p> + +<p> +“We won’t care about <i>anything</i>,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He sat still, and laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“And we’ll be married, and have done with them,” she +added. +</p> + +<p> +Again he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s one way of getting rid of everything,” she said, +“to get married.” +</p> + +<p> +“And one way of accepting the whole world,” he added. +</p> + +<p> +“A whole other world, yes,” she said happily. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps there’s Gerald—and Gudrun—” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“If there is there is, you see,” she said. “It’s no +good our worrying. We can’t really alter them, can we?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “One has no right to try—not with the +best intentions in the world.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you try to force them?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps,” he said. “Why should I want him to be free, if +it isn’t his business?” +</p> + +<p> +She paused for a time. +</p> + +<p> +“We can’t <i>make</i> him happy, anyhow,” she said. +“He’d have to be it of himself.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” he said. “But we want other people with us, +don’t we?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should we?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” he said uneasily. “One has a +hankering after a sort of further fellowship.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why?” she insisted. “Why should you hanker after +other people? Why should you need them?” +</p> + +<p> +This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. +</p> + +<p> +“Does it end with just our two selves?” he asked, tense. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—what more do you want? If anybody likes to come along, let +them. But why must you run after them?” +</p> + +<p> +His face was tense and unsatisfied. +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” he said, “I always imagine our being really +happy with some few other people—a little freedom with people.” +</p> + +<p> +She pondered for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, one does want that. But it must <i>happen</i>. You can’t do +anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can <i>force</i> the +flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us—you +can’t <i>make</i> them.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” he said. “But must one take no steps at all? +Must one just go as if one were alone in the world—the only creature in +the world?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got me,” she said. “Why should you <i>need</i> +others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can’t you be +single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald—as +you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it’s so +horrid of you. You’ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to +love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you +don’t want their love.” +</p> + +<p> +His face was full of real perplexity. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t I?” he said. “It’s the problem I +can’t solve. I <i>know</i> I want a perfect and complete relationship +with you: and we’ve nearly got it—we really have. But beyond that. +<i>Do</i> I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I want a final +almost extra-human relationship with him—a relationship in the ultimate +of me and him—or don’t I?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, but she did not +answer. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap27"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.<br/> +FLITTING</h2> + +<p> +That evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and wondrous—which +irritated her people. Her father came home at suppertime, tired after the +evening class, and the long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in +silence. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large, in a bright voice, +“Rupert and I are going to be married tomorrow.” +</p> + +<p> +Her father turned round, stiffly. +</p> + +<p> +“You what?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Tomorrow!” echoed Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed!” said the mother. +</p> + +<p> +But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. +</p> + +<p> +“Married tomorrow!” cried her father harshly. “What are +you talking about.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Ursula. “Why not?” Those two words, from +her, always drove him mad. “Everything is all right—we shall go to +the registrar’s office—” +</p> + +<p> +There was a second’s hush in the room, after Ursula’s blithe +vagueness. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Really</i>, Ursula!” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy?” demanded the +mother, rather superbly. +</p> + +<p> +“But there hasn’t,” said Ursula. “You knew.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who knew?” now cried the father. “Who knew? What do you +mean by your ‘you knew’?” +</p> + +<p> +He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against him. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course you knew,” she said coolly. “You knew we were +going to get married.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a dangerous pause. +</p> + +<p> +“We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! Why, does +anybody know anything about you, you shifty bitch!” +</p> + +<p> +“Father!” cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remonstrance. +Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her sister to be tractable: +“But isn’t it a <i>fearfully</i> sudden decision, Ursula?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No, not really,” replied Ursula, with the same maddening +cheerfulness. “He’s been <i>wanting</i> me to agree for +weeks—he’s had the licence ready. Only I—I wasn’t ready +in myself. Now I am ready—is there anything to be disagreeable +about?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly not,” said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. +“You are perfectly free to do as you like.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Ready in yourself’—<i>yourself</i>, that’s all that +matters, isn’t it! ‘I wasn’t ready in myself,’” he +mimicked her phrase offensively. “You and <i>yourself</i>, you’re of +some importance, aren’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining yellow and +dangerous. +</p> + +<p> +“I am to myself,” she said, wounded and mortified. “I know +I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to <i>bully</i> me—you never +cared for my happiness.” +</p> + +<p> +He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a spark. +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still,” cried her +mother. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I won’t,” she cried. “I won’t hold my +tongue and be bullied. What does it matter which day I get married—what +does it <i>matter!</i> It doesn’t affect anybody but myself.” +</p> + +<p> +Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about to spring. +</p> + +<p> +“Doesn’t it?” he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank +away. +</p> + +<p> +“No, how can it?” she replied, shrinking but stubborn. +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t matter to <i>me</i> then, what you do—what becomes +of you?” he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. +</p> + +<p> +The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. +“You only want to—” +</p> + +<p> +She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was gathered together, every +muscle ready. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” he challenged. +</p> + +<p> +“Bully me,” she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, his +hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she was sent up against +the door. +</p> + +<p> +“Father!” cried Gudrun in a high voice, “it is +impossible!” +</p> + +<p> +He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the door handle. She +slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful now. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s true,” she declared, with brilliant tears in her +eyes, her head lifted up in defiance. “What has your love meant, what did +it ever mean?—bullying, and denial—it did—” +</p> + +<p> +He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and clenched fist, and +the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning she had flashed out of the door, +and they heard her running upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a defeated animal, he +turned and went back to his seat by the fire. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the mother’s voice +was heard saying, cold and angry: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you shouldn’t take so much notice of her.” +</p> + +<p> +Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and +thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a +small valise in her hand: +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye!” she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking +tone. “I’m going.” +</p> + +<p> +And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door, then +her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and her light +footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the house. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly on winged feet. +There was no train, she must walk on to the junction. As she went through the +darkness, she began to cry, and she wept bitterly, with a dumb, heart-broken, +child’s anguish, all the way on the road, and in the train. Time passed +unheeded and unknown, she did not know where she was, nor what was taking place. +Only she wept from fathomless depths of hopeless, hopeless grief, the terrible +grief of a child, that knows no extenuation. +</p> + +<p> +Yet her voice had the same defensive brightness as she spoke to +Birkin’s landlady at the door. +</p> + +<p> +“Good evening! Is Mr Birkin in? Can I see him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, he’s in. He’s in his study.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula slipped past the woman. His door opened. He had heard her voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello!” he exclaimed in surprise, seeing her standing there +with the valise in her hand, and marks of tears on her face. She was one who +wept without showing many traces, like a child. +</p> + +<p> +“Do I look a sight?” she said, shrinking. +</p> + +<p> +“No—why? Come in,” he took the bag from her hand and they +went into the study. +</p> + +<p> +There—immediately, her lips began to tremble like those of a child +that remembers again, and the tears came rushing up. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter?” he asked, taking her in his arms. She +sobbed violently on his shoulder, whilst he held her still, waiting. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter?” he said again, when she was quieter. +But she only pressed her face further into his shoulder, in pain, like a child +that cannot tell. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, then?” he asked. Suddenly she broke away, wiped her +eyes, regained her composure, and went and sat in a chair. +</p> + +<p> +“Father hit me,” she announced, sitting bunched up, rather like +a ruffled bird, her eyes very bright. +</p> + +<p> +“What for?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She looked away, and would not answer. There was a pitiful redness about her +sensitive nostrils, and her quivering lips. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” he repeated, in his strange, soft, penetrating voice. +</p> + +<p> +She looked round at him, rather defiantly. +</p> + +<p> +“Because I said I was going to be married tomorrow, and he bullied +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why did he bully you?” +</p> + +<p> +Her mouth dropped again, she remembered the scene once more, the tears came +up. +</p> + +<p> +“Because I said he didn’t care—and he doesn’t, +it’s only his domineeringness that’s hurt—” she said, +her mouth pulled awry by her weeping, all the time she spoke, so that he almost +smiled, it seemed so childish. Yet it was not childish, it was a mortal +conflict, a deep wound. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t quite true,” he said. “And even so, you +shouldn’t <i>say</i> it.” +</p> + +<p> +“It <i>is</i> true—it <i>is</i> true,” she wept, “and I +won’t be bullied by his pretending it’s love—when it +<i>isn’t</i>—he doesn’t care, how can he—no, he +can’t—” +</p> + +<p> +He sat in silence. She moved him beyond himself. +</p> + +<p> +“Then you shouldn’t rouse him, if he can’t,” replied +Birkin quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“And I <i>have</i> loved him, I have,” she wept. “I’ve +loved him always, and he’s always done this to me, he has—” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s been a love of opposition, then,” he said. +“Never mind—it will be all right. It’s nothing +desperate.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she wept, “it is, it is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall never see him again—” +</p> + +<p> +“Not immediately. Don’t cry, you had to break with him, it had +to be—don’t cry.” +</p> + +<p> +He went over to her and kissed her fine, fragile hair, touching her wet +cheeks gently. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t cry,” he repeated, “don’t cry any +more.” +</p> + +<p> +He held her head close against him, very close and quiet. +</p> + +<p> +At last she was still. Then she looked up, her eyes wide and frightened. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you want me?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Want you?” His darkened, steady eyes puzzled her and did not +give her play. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you wish I hadn’t come?” she asked, anxious now again +for fear she might be out of place. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “I wish there hadn’t been the +violence—so much ugliness—but perhaps it was inevitable.” +</p> + +<p> +She watched him in silence. He seemed deadened. +</p> + +<p> +“But where shall I stay?” she asked, feeling humiliated. +</p> + +<p> +He thought for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“Here, with me,” he said. “We’re married as much +today as we shall be tomorrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“But—” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell Mrs Varley,” he said. “Never mind +now.” +</p> + +<p> +He sat looking at her. She could feel his darkened steady eyes looking at +her all the time. It made her a little bit frightened. She pushed her hair off +her forehead nervously. +</p> + +<p> +“Do I look ugly?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +And she blew her nose again. +</p> + +<p> +A small smile came round his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “fortunately.” +</p> + +<p> +And he went across to her, and gathered her like a belonging in his arms. +She was so tenderly beautiful, he could not bear to see her, he could only bear +to hide her against himself. Now; washed all clean by her tears, she was new and +frail like a flower just unfolded, a flower so new, so tender, so made perfect +by inner light, that he could not bear to look at her, he must hide her against +himself, cover his eyes against her. She had the perfect candour of creation, +something translucent and simple, like a radiant, shining flower that moment +unfolded in primal blessedness. She was so new, so wonder-clear, so undimmed. +And he was so old, so steeped in heavy memories. Her soul was new, undefined and +glimmering with the unseen. And his soul was dark and gloomy, it had only one +grain of living hope, like a grain of mustard seed. But this one living grain in +him matched the perfect youth in her. +</p> + +<p> +“I love you,” he whispered as he kissed her, and trembled with +pure hope, like a man who is born again to a wonderful, lively hope far +exceeding the bounds of death. +</p> + +<p> +She could not know how much it meant to him, how much he meant by the few +words. Almost childish, she wanted proof, and statement, even over-statement, +for everything seemed still uncertain, unfixed to her. +</p> + +<p> +But the passion of gratitude with which he received her into his soul, the +extreme, unthinkable gladness of knowing himself living and fit to unite with +her, he, who was so nearly dead, who was so near to being gone with the rest of +his race down the slope of mechanical death, could never be understood by her. +He worshipped her as age worships youth, he gloried in her, because, in his one +grain of faith, he was young as she, he was her proper mate. This marriage with +her was his resurrection and his life. +</p> + +<p> +All this she could not know. She wanted to be made much of, to be adored. +There were infinite distances of silence between them. How could he tell her of +the immanence of her beauty, that was not form, or weight, or colour, but +something like a strange, golden light! How could he know himself what her +beauty lay in, for him. He said “Your nose is beautiful, your chin is +adorable.” But it sounded like lies, and she was disappointed, hurt. Even +when he said, whispering with truth, “I love you, I love you,” it +was not the real truth. It was something beyond love, such a gladness of having +surpassed oneself, of having transcended the old existence. How could he say +‘I’ when he was something new and unknown, not himself at all? This +I, this old formula of the age, was a dead letter. +</p> + +<p> +In the new, superfine bliss, a peace superseding knowledge, there was no I +and you, there was only the third, unrealised wonder, the wonder of existing not +as oneself, but in a consummation of my being and of her being in a new one, a +new, paradisal unit regained from the duality. Nor can I say “I love +you,” when I have ceased to be, and you have ceased to be: we are both +caught up and transcended into a new oneness where everything is silent, because +there is nothing to answer, all is perfect and at one. Speech travels between +the separate parts. But in the perfect One there is perfect silence of bliss. +</p> + +<p> +They were married by law on the next day, and she did as he bade her, she +wrote to her father and mother. Her mother replied, not her father. +</p> + +<p> +She did not go back to school. She stayed with Birkin in his rooms, or at +the Mill, moving with him as he moved. But she did not see anybody, save Gudrun +and Gerald. She was all strange and wondering as yet, but relieved as by dawn. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald sat talking to her one afternoon in the warm study down at the Mill. +Rupert had not yet come home. +</p> + +<p> +“You are happy?” Gerald asked her, with a smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Very happy!” she cried, shrinking a little in her brightness. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, one can see it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can one?” cried Ursula in surprise. +</p> + +<p> +He looked up at her with a communicative smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, plainly.” +</p> + +<p> +She was pleased. She meditated a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“And can you see that Rupert is happy as well?” +</p> + +<p> +He lowered his eyelids, and looked aside. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Really!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes.” +</p> + +<p> +He was very quiet, as if it were something not to be talked about by him. He +seemed sad. +</p> + +<p> +She was very sensitive to suggestion. She asked the question he wanted her +to ask. +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you be happy as well?” she said. “You +could be just the same.” +</p> + +<p> +He paused a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“With Gudrun?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes!” she cried, her eyes glowing. But there was a strange +tension, an emphasis, as if they were asserting their wishes, against the truth. +</p> + +<p> +“You think Gudrun would have me, and we should be happy?” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I’m <i>sure!</i>” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes were round with delight. Yet underneath she was constrained, she +knew her own insistence. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I’m <i>so</i> glad,” she added. +</p> + +<p> +He smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“What makes you glad?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“For <i>her</i> sake,” she replied. “I’m sure +you’d—you’re the right man for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are?” he said. “And do you think she would agree with +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes!” she exclaimed hastily. Then, upon reconsideration, +very uneasy: “Though Gudrun isn’t so very simple, is she? One +doesn’t know her in five minutes, does one? She’s not like me in +that.” She laughed at him with her strange, open, dazzled face. +</p> + +<p> +“You think she’s not much like you?” Gerald asked. +</p> + +<p> +She knitted her brows. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, in many ways she is. But I never know what she will do when +anything new comes.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t?” said Gerald. He was silent for some moments. +Then he moved tentatively. “I was going to ask her, in any case, to go +away with me at Christmas,” he said, in a very small, cautious voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Go away with you? For a time, you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“As long as she likes,” he said, with a deprecating movement. +</p> + +<p> +They were both silent for some minutes. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Ursula at last, “she <i>might</i> just +be willing to rush into marriage. You can see.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” smiled Gerald. “I can see. But in case she +won’t—do you think she would go abroad with me for a few +days—or for a fortnight?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” said Ursula. “I’d ask her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think we might all go together?” +</p> + +<p> +“All of us?” Again Ursula’s face lighted up. “It +would be rather fun, don’t you think?” +</p> + +<p> +“Great fun,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And then you could see,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“How things went. I think it is best to take the honeymoon before the +wedding—don’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +She was pleased with this <i>mot</i>. He laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“In certain cases,” he said. “I’d rather it were so +in my own case.” +</p> + +<p> +“Would you!” exclaimed Ursula. Then doubtingly, “Yes, +perhaps you’re right. One should please oneself.” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin came in a little later, and Ursula told him what had been said. +</p> + +<p> +“Gudrun!” exclaimed Birkin. “She’s a born mistress, +just as Gerald is a born lover—<i>amant en titre</i>. If as somebody says +all women are either wives or mistresses, then Gudrun is a mistress.” +</p> + +<p> +“And all men either lovers or husbands,” cried Ursula. +“But why not both?” +</p> + +<p> +“The one excludes the other,” he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Then I want a lover,” cried Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“No you don’t,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“But I do,” she wailed. +</p> + +<p> +He kissed her, and laughed. +</p> + +<p> +It was two days after this that Ursula was to go to fetch her things from +the house in Beldover. The removal had taken place, the family had gone. Gudrun +had rooms in Willey Green. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula had not seen her parents since her marriage. She wept over the +rupture, yet what was the good of making it up! Good or not good, she could not +go to them. So her things had been left behind and she and Gudrun were to walk +over for them, in the afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +It was a wintry afternoon, with red in the sky, when they arrived at the +house. The windows were dark and blank, already the place was frightening. A +stark, void entrance-hall struck a chill to the hearts of the girls. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe I dare have come in alone,” said Ursula. +“It frightens me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula!” cried Gudrun. “Isn’t it amazing! Can you +believe you lived in this place and never felt it? How I lived here a day +without dying of terror, I cannot conceive!” +</p> + +<p> +They looked in the big dining-room. It was a good-sized room, but now a cell +would have been lovelier. The large bay windows were naked, the floor was +stripped, and a border of dark polish went round the tract of pale boarding. +</p> + +<p> +In the faded wallpaper were dark patches where furniture had stood, where +pictures had hung. The sense of walls, dry, thin, flimsy-seeming walls, and a +flimsy flooring, pale with its artificial black edges, was neutralising to the +mind. Everything was null to the senses, there was enclosure without substance, +for the walls were dry and papery. Where were they standing, on earth, or +suspended in some cardboard box? In the hearth was burnt paper, and scraps of +half-burnt paper. +</p> + +<p> +“Imagine that we passed our days here!” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” cried Gudrun. “It is too appalling. What must we +be like, if we are the contents of <i>this!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Vile!” said Ursula. “It really is.” +</p> + +<p> +And she recognised half-burnt covers of “Vogue”—half-burnt +representations of women in gowns—lying under the grate. +</p> + +<p> +They went to the drawing-room. Another piece of shut-in air; without weight +or substance, only a sense of intolerable papery imprisonment in nothingness. +The kitchen did look more substantial, because of the red-tiled floor and the +stove, but it was cold and horrid. +</p> + +<p> +The two girls tramped hollowly up the bare stairs. Every sound re-echoed +under their hearts. They tramped down the bare corridor. Against the wall of +Ursula’s bedroom were her things—a trunk, a work-basket, some books, +loose coats, a hat-box, standing desolate in the universal emptiness of the +dusk. +</p> + +<p> +“A cheerful sight, aren’t they?” said Ursula, looking down +at her forsaken possessions. +</p> + +<p> +“Very cheerful,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +The two girls set to, carrying everything down to the front door. Again and +again they made the hollow, re-echoing transit. The whole place seemed to +resound about them with a noise of hollow, empty futility. In the distance the +empty, invisible rooms sent forth a vibration almost of obscenity. They almost +fled with the last articles, into the out-of-door. +</p> + +<p> +But it was cold. They were waiting for Birkin, who was coming with the car. +They went indoors again, and upstairs to their parents’ front bedroom, +whose windows looked down on the road, and across the country at the +black-barred sunset, black and red barred, without light. +</p> + +<p> +They sat down in the window-seat, to wait. Both girls were looking over the +room. It was void, with a meaninglessness that was almost dreadful. +</p> + +<p> +“Really,” said Ursula, “this room <i>couldn’t</i> be +sacred, could it?” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked over it with slow eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Impossible,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“When I think of their lives—father’s and mother’s, +their love, and their marriage, and all of us children, and our +bringing-up—would you have such a life, Prune?” +</p> + +<p> +“I wouldn’t, Ursula.” +</p> + +<p> +“It all seems so <i>nothing</i>—their two lives—there’s no +meaning in it. Really, if they had <i>not</i> met, and <i>not</i> married, and not +lived together—it wouldn’t have mattered, would it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course—you can’t tell,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“No. But if I thought my life was going to be like +it—Prune,” she caught Gudrun’s arm, “I should +run.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was silent for a few moments. +</p> + +<p> +“As a matter of fact, one cannot contemplate the ordinary +life—one cannot contemplate it,” replied Gudrun. “With you, +Ursula, it is quite different. You will be out of it all, with Birkin. +He’s a special case. But with the ordinary man, who has his life fixed in +one place, marriage is just impossible. There may be, and there <i>are</i>, thousands +of women who want it, and could conceive of nothing else. But the very thought +of it sends me <i>mad</i>. One must be free, above all, one must be free. One may +forfeit everything else, but one must be free—one must not become 7, +Pinchbeck Street—or Somerset Drive—or Shortlands. No man will be +sufficient to make that good—no man! To marry, one must have a free lance, +or nothing, a comrade-in-arms, a Glücksritter. A man with a position in the +social world—well, it is just impossible, impossible!” +</p> + +<p> +“What a lovely word—a Glücksritter!” said Ursula. +“So much nicer than a soldier of fortune.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, isn’t it?” said Gudrun. “I’d tilt the +world with a Glücksritter. But a home, an establishment! Ursula, what would it +mean?—think!” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” said Ursula. “We’ve had one +home—that’s enough for me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite enough,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“The little grey home in the west,” quoted Ursula ironically. +</p> + +<p> +“Doesn’t it sound grey, too,” said Gudrun grimly. +</p> + +<p> +They were interrupted by the sound of the car. There was Birkin. Ursula was +surprised that she felt so lit up, that she became suddenly so free from the +problems of grey homes in the west. +</p> + +<p> +They heard his heels click on the hall pavement below. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello!” he called, his voice echoing alive through the house. +Ursula smiled to herself. <i>He</i> was frightened of the place too. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello! Here we are,” she called downstairs. And they heard him +quickly running up. +</p> + +<p> +“This is a ghostly situation,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“These houses don’t have ghosts—they’ve never had +any personality, and only a place with personality can have a ghost,” said +Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose so. Are you both weeping over the past?” +</p> + +<p> +“We are,” said Gudrun, grimly. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Not weeping that it’s gone, but weeping that it ever +<i>was</i>,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” he replied, relieved. +</p> + +<p> +He sat down for a moment. There was something in his presence, Ursula +thought, lambent and alive. It made even the impertinent structure of this null +house disappear. +</p> + +<p> +“Gudrun says she could not bear to be married and put into a +house,” said Ursula meaningful—they knew this referred to Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +He was silent for some moments. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “if you know beforehand you +couldn’t stand it, you’re safe.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite!” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Why <i>does</i> every woman think her aim in life is to have a hubby and +a little grey home in the west? Why is this the goal of life? Why should it +be?” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Il faut avoir le respect de ses bêtises</i>,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“But you needn’t have the respect for the <i>bêtise</i> before +you’ve committed it,” laughed Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then, <i>des bêtises du papa?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Et de la maman</i>,” added Gudrun satirically. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Et des voisins</i>,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +They all laughed, and rose. It was getting dark. They carried the things to +the car. Gudrun locked the door of the empty house. Birkin had lighted the lamps +of the automobile. It all seemed very happy, as if they were setting out. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mind stopping at Coulsons. I have to leave the key +there,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Right,” said Birkin, and they moved off. +</p> + +<p> +They stopped in the main street. The shops were just lighted, the last +miners were passing home along the causeways, half-visible shadows in their grey +pit-dirt, moving through the blue air. But their feet rang harshly in manifold +sound, along the pavement. +</p> + +<p> +How pleased Gudrun was to come out of the shop, and enter the car, and be +borne swiftly away into the downhill of palpable dusk, with Ursula and Birkin! +What an adventure life seemed at this moment! How deeply, how suddenly she +envied Ursula! Life for her was so quick, and an open door—so reckless as +if not only this world, but the world that was gone and the world to come were +nothing to her. Ah, if she could be <i>just like that</i>, it would be perfect. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Come with us to tea—<i>do</i>,” said Ursula, as they ran nearer +to the cottage of Willey Green. +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks awfully—but I <i>must</i> go in—” said Gudrun. +She wanted very much to go on with Ursula and Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +That seemed like life indeed to her. Yet a certain perversity would not let +her. +</p> + +<p> +“Do come—yes, it would be so nice,” pleaded Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m awfully sorry—I should love to—but I +can’t—really—” +</p> + +<p> +She descended from the car in trembling haste. +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you really!” came Ursula’s regretful voice. +</p> + +<p> +“No, really I can’t,” responded Gudrun’s pathetic, +chagrined words out of the dusk. +</p> + +<p> +“All right, are you?” called Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Quite!” said Gudrun. “Good-night!” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night,” they called. +</p> + +<p> +“Come whenever you like, we shall be glad,” called Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>fearfully</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +And it seemed to her perfect. +</p> + +<p> +“Ursula,” she said at length, in a voice of question and +detachment, “did you know that Gerald Crich had suggested our going away +all together at Christmas?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, he’s spoken to Rupert.” +</p> + +<p> +A deep flush dyed Gudrun’s cheek. She was silent a moment, as if taken +aback, and not knowing what to say. +</p> + +<p> +“But don’t you think,” she said at last, “it is +<i>amazingly cool!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“I like him for it,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was silent. It was evident that, whilst she was almost mortified by +Gerald’s taking the liberty of making such a suggestion to Birkin, yet the +idea itself attracted her strongly. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a rather lovely simplicity about Gerald, I think,” +said Ursula, “so defiant, somehow! Oh, I think he’s <i>very</i> +lovable.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun did not reply for some moments. She had still to get over the feeling +of insult at the liberty taken with her freedom. +</p> + +<p> +“What did Rupert say—do you know?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“He said it would be most awfully jolly,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +Again Gudrun looked down, and was silent. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think it would?” said Ursula, tentatively. She +was never quite sure how many defences Gudrun was having round herself. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun raised her face with difficulty and held it averted. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it <i>might</i> be awfully jolly, as you say,” she replied. +“But don’t you think it was an unpardonable liberty to take—to +talk of such things to Rupert—who after all—you see what I mean, +Ursula—they might have been two men arranging an outing with some little +<i>type</i> they’d picked up. Oh, I think it’s unforgivable, quite!” +She used the French word “<i>type</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes flashed, her soft face was flushed and sullen. Ursula looked on, +rather frightened, frightened most of all because she thought Gudrun seemed +rather common, really like a little <i>type</i>. But she had not the courage quite +to think this—not right out. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” she cried, stammering. “Oh no—not at all +like that—oh no! No, I think it’s rather beautiful, the friendship +between Rupert and Gerald. They just are simple—they say anything to each +other, like brothers.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun flushed deeper. She could not <i>bear</i> it that Gerald gave her +away—even to Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“But do you think even brothers have any right to exchange confidences +of that sort?” she asked, with deep anger. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” said Ursula. “There’s never anything said +that isn’t perfectly straightforward. No, the thing that’s amazed me +most in Gerald—how perfectly simple and direct he can be! And you know, it +takes rather a big man. Most of them <i>must</i> be indirect, they are such +cowards.” +</p> + +<p> +But Gudrun was still silent with anger. She wanted the absolute secrecy +kept, with regard to her movements. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you go?” said Ursula. “Do, we might all be so +happy! There is something I <i>love</i> about Gerald—he’s <i>much</i> +more lovable than I thought him. He’s free, Gudrun, he really is.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun’s mouth was still closed, sullen and ugly. She opened it at +length. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know where he proposes to go?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—to the Tyrol, where he used to go when he was in +Germany—a lovely place where students go, small and rough and lovely, for +winter sport!” +</p> + +<p> +Through Gudrun’s mind went the angry thought—“they know +everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said aloud, “about forty kilometres from +Innsbruck, isn’t it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know exactly where—but it would be lovely, +don’t you think, high in the perfect snow—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Very lovely!” said Gudrun, sarcastically. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was put out. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” she said, “I think Gerald spoke to Rupert so +that it shouldn’t seem like an outing with a <i>type</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +“I know, of course,” said Gudrun, “that he quite commonly +does take up with that sort.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does he!” said Ursula. “Why how do you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know of a model in Chelsea,” said Gudrun coldly. Now Ursula +was silent. “Well,” she said at last, with a doubtful laugh, +“I hope he has a good time with her.” At which Gudrun looked more +glum. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap28"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.<br/> +GUDRUN IN THE POMPADOUR</h2> + +<p> +Christmas drew near, all four prepared for flight. Birkin and Ursula were +busy packing their few personal things, making them ready to be sent off, to +whatever country and whatever place they might choose at last. Gudrun was very +much excited. She loved to be on the wing. +</p> + +<p> +She and Gerald, being ready first, set off via London and Paris to +Innsbruck, where they would meet Ursula and Birkin. In London they stayed one +night. They went to the music-hall, and afterwards to the Pompadour Café. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun hated the Café, yet she always went back to it, as did most of the +artists of her acquaintance. She loathed its atmosphere of petty vice and petty +jealousy and petty art. Yet she always called in again, when she was in town. It +was as if she <i>had</i> to return to this small, slow, central whirlpool of +disintegration and dissolution: just give it a look. +</p> + +<p> +She sat with Gerald drinking some sweetish liqueur, and staring with black, +sullen looks at the various groups of people at the tables. She would greet +nobody, but young men nodded to her frequently, with a kind of sneering +familiarity. She cut them all. And it gave her pleasure to sit there, cheeks +flushed, eyes black and sullen, seeing them all objectively, as put away from +her, like creatures in some menagerie of apish degraded souls. God, what a foul +crew they were! Her blood beat black and thick in her veins with rage and +loathing. Yet she must sit and watch, watch. One or two people came to speak to +her. From every side of the Café, eyes turned half furtively, half jeeringly at +her, men looking over their shoulders, women under their hats. +</p> + +<p> +The old crowd was there, Carlyon in his corner with his pupils and his girl, +Halliday and Libidnikov and the Pussum—they were all there. Gudrun watched +Gerald. She watched his eyes linger a moment on Halliday, on Halliday’s +party. These last were on the look-out—they nodded to him, he nodded +again. They giggled and whispered among themselves. Gerald watched them with the +steady twinkle in his eyes. They were urging the Pussum to something. +</p> + +<p> +She at last rose. She was wearing a curious dress of dark silk splashed and +spattered with different colours, a curious motley effect. She was thinner, her +eyes were perhaps hotter, more disintegrated. Otherwise she was just the same. +Gerald watched her with the same steady twinkle in his eyes as she came across. +She held out her thin brown hand to him. +</p> + +<p> +“How are you?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He shook hands with her, but remained seated, and let her stand near him, +against the table. She nodded blackly to Gudrun, whom she did not know to speak +to, but well enough by sight and reputation. +</p> + +<p> +“I am very well,” said Gerald. “And you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I’m all wight. What about Wupert?” +</p> + +<p> +“Rupert? He’s very well, too.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I don’t mean that. What about him being married?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—yes, he is married.” +</p> + +<p> +The Pussum’s eyes had a hot flash. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, he’s weally bwought it off then, has he? When was he +married?” +</p> + +<p> +“A week or two ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“Weally! He’s never written.” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“No. Don’t you think it’s too bad?” +</p> + +<p> +This last was in a tone of challenge. The Pussum let it be known by her +tone, that she was aware of Gudrun’s listening. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose he didn’t feel like it,” replied Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“But why didn’t he?” pursued the Pussum. +</p> + +<p> +This was received in silence. There was an ugly, mocking persistence in the +small, beautiful figure of the short-haired girl, as she stood near Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you staying in town long?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Tonight only.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, only tonight. Are you coming over to speak to Julius?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not tonight.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh very well. I’ll tell him then.” Then came her touch of +diablerie. “You’re looking awf’lly fit.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—I feel it.” Gerald was quite calm and easy, a spark +of satiric amusement in his eye. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you having a good time?” +</p> + +<p> +This was a direct blow for Gudrun, spoken in a level, toneless voice of +callous ease. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he replied, quite colourlessly. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m awf’lly sorry you aren’t coming round to the +flat. You aren’t very faithful to your fwiends.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not very,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She nodded them both “Good-night’, and went back slowly to her +own set. Gudrun watched her curious walk, stiff and jerking at the loins. They +heard her level, toneless voice distinctly. +</p> + +<p> +“He won’t come over;—he is otherwise engaged,” it +said. There was more laughter and lowered voices and mockery at the table. +</p> + +<p> +“Is she a friend of yours?” said Gudrun, looking calmly at +Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve stayed at Halliday’s flat with Birkin,” he +said, meeting her slow, calm eyes. And she knew that the Pussum was one of his +mistresses—and he knew she knew. +</p> + +<p> +She looked round, and called for the waiter. She wanted an iced cocktail, of +all things. This amused Gerald—he wondered what was up. +</p> + +<p> +The Halliday party was tipsy, and malicious. They were talking out loudly +about Birkin, ridiculing him on every point, particularly on his marriage. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, <i>don’t</i> make me think of Birkin,” Halliday was +squealing. “He makes me perfectly sick. He is as bad as Jesus. ‘Lord, +<i>what</i> must I do to be saved!’” +</p> + +<p> +He giggled to himself tipsily. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you remember,” came the quick voice of the Russian, +“the letters he used to send. ‘Desire is holy—’” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes!” cried Halliday. “Oh, how perfectly splendid. +Why, I’ve got one in my pocket. I’m sure I have.” +</p> + +<p> +He took out various papers from his pocket book. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure I’ve—<i>hic! Oh dear!</i>—got one.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald and Gudrun were watching absorbedly. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, how perfectly—<i>hic!</i>—splendid! Don’t make me +laugh, Pussum, it gives me the hiccup. Hic!—” They all giggled. +</p> + +<p> +“What did he say in that one?” the Pussum asked, leaning +forward, her dark, soft hair falling and swinging against her face. There was +something curiously indecent, obscene, about her small, longish, dark skull, +particularly when the ears showed. +</p> + +<p> +“Wait—oh do wait! <i>No-o</i>, I won’t give it to you, I’ll +read it aloud. I’ll read you the choice bits,—<i>hic!</i> Oh dear! Do you +think if I drink water it would take off this hiccup? <i>Hic!</i> Oh, I feel perfectly +helpless.” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t that the letter about uniting the dark and the +light—and the Flux of Corruption?” asked Maxim, in his precise, +quick voice. +</p> + +<p> +“I believe so,” said the Pussum. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh is it? I’d forgotten—<i>hic!</i>—it was that +one,” Halliday said, opening the letter. “<i>Hic!</i> Oh yes. How perfectly +splendid! This is one of the best. ‘There is a phase in every +race—’” he read in the sing-song, slow, distinct voice of a +clergyman reading the Scriptures, “‘When the desire for destruction +overcomes every other desire. In the individual, this desire is ultimately a +desire for destruction in the self’—<i>hic!</i>—” he paused and +looked up. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope he’s going ahead with the destruction of himself,” +said the quick voice of the Russian. Halliday giggled, and lolled his head back, +vaguely. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s not much to destroy in him,” said the Pussum. +“He’s so thin already, there’s only a fag-end to start +on.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, isn’t it beautiful! I love reading it! I believe it has +cured my hiccup!” squealed Halliday. “Do let me go on. ‘It is a +desire for the reduction process in oneself, a reducing back to the origin, a +return along the Flux of Corruption, to the original rudimentary conditions of +being—!’ Oh, but I <i>do</i> think it is wonderful. It almost supersedes +the Bible—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—Flux of Corruption,” said the Russian, “I +remember that phrase.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, he was always talking about Corruption,” said the Pussum. +“He must be corrupt himself, to have it so much on his mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly!” said the Russian. +</p> + +<p> +“Do let me go on! Oh, this is a perfectly wonderful piece! But do +listen to this. ‘And in the great retrogression, the reducing back of the +created body of life, we get knowledge, and beyond knowledge, the phosphorescent +ecstasy of acute sensation.’ Oh, I do think these phrases are too absurdly +wonderful. Oh but don’t you think they <i>are</i>—they’re nearly as +good as Jesus. ‘And if, Julius, you want this ecstasy of reduction with the +Pussum, you must go on till it is fulfilled. But surely there is in you also, +somewhere, the living desire for positive creation, relationships in ultimate +faith, when all this process of active corruption, with all its flowers of mud, +is transcended, and more or less finished—’ I do wonder what the flowers +of mud are. Pussum, you are a flower of mud.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you—and what are you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I’m another, surely, according to this letter! We’re +all flowers of mud—<i>fleurs—hic! du mal!</i> It’s perfectly +wonderful, Birkin harrowing Hell—harrowing the Pompadour—<i>Hic!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Go on—go on,” said Maxim. “What comes next? +It’s really very interesting.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think it’s awful cheek to write like that,” said the +Pussum. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—yes, so do I,” said the Russian. “He is a +megalomaniac, of course, it is a form of religious mania. He thinks he is the +Saviour of man—go on reading.” +</p> + +<p> +“Surely,” Halliday intoned, “‘surely goodness and mercy +hath followed me all the days of my life—’” he broke off and +giggled. Then he began again, intoning like a clergyman. “‘Surely there +will come an end in us to this desire—for the constant going +apart,—this passion for putting asunder—everything—ourselves, +reducing ourselves part from part—reacting in intimacy only for +destruction,—using sex as a great reducing agent, reducing the two great +elements of male and female from their highly complex unity—reducing the +old ideas, going back to the savages for our sensations,—always seeking to +<i>lose</i> ourselves in some ultimate black sensation, mindless and +infinite—burning only with destructive fires, raging on with the hope of +being burnt out utterly—’” +</p> + +<p> +“I want to go,” said Gudrun to Gerald, as she signalled the +waiter. Her eyes were flashing, her cheeks were flushed. The strange effect of +Birkin’s letter read aloud in a perfect clerical sing-song, clear and +resonant, phrase by phrase, made the blood mount into her head as if she were +mad. +</p> + +<p> +She rose, whilst Gerald was paying the bill, and walked over to +Halliday’s table. They all glanced up at her. +</p> + +<p> +“Excuse me,” she said. “Is that a genuine letter you are +reading?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” said Halliday. “Quite genuine.” +</p> + +<p> +“May I see?” +</p> + +<p> +Smiling foolishly he handed it to her, as if hypnotised. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +And she turned and walked out of the Café with the letter, all down the +brilliant room, between the tables, in her measured fashion. It was some moments +before anybody realised what was happening. +</p> + +<p> +From Halliday’s table came half articulate cries, then somebody booed, +then all the far end of the place began booing after Gudrun’s retreating +form. She was fashionably dressed in blackish-green and silver, her hat was +brilliant green, like the sheen on an insect, but the brim was soft dark green, +a falling edge with fine silver, her coat was dark green, lustrous, with a high +collar of grey fur, and great fur cuffs, the edge of her dress showed silver and +black velvet, her stockings and shoes were silver grey. She moved with slow, +fashionable indifference to the door. The porter opened obsequiously for her, +and, at her nod, hurried to the edge of the pavement and whistled for a taxi. +The two lights of a vehicle almost immediately curved round towards her, like +two eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald had followed in wonder, amid all the booing, not having caught her +misdeed. He heard the Pussum’s voice saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Go and get it back from her. I never heard of such a thing! Go and +get it back from her. Tell Gerald Crich—there he goes—go and make +him give it up.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun stood at the door of the taxi, which the man held open for her. +</p> + +<p> +“To the hotel?” she asked, as Gerald came out, hurriedly. +</p> + +<p> +“Where you like,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Right!” she said. Then to the driver, +“Wagstaff’s—Barton Street.” +</p> + +<p> +The driver bowed his head, and put down the flag. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun entered the taxi, with the deliberate cold movement of a woman who is +well-dressed and contemptuous in her soul. Yet she was frozen with overwrought +feelings. Gerald followed her. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve forgotten the man,” she said cooly, with a slight +nod of her hat. Gerald gave the porter a shilling. The man saluted. They were in +motion. +</p> + +<p> +“What was all the row about?” asked Gerald, in wondering +excitement. +</p> + +<p> +“I walked away with Birkin’s letter,” she said, and he saw +the crushed paper in her hand. +</p> + +<p> +His eyes glittered with satisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” he said. “Splendid! A set of jackasses!” +</p> + +<p> +“I could have <i>killed</i> them!” she cried in passion. +“<i>Dogs!</i>—they are dogs! Why is Rupert such a <i>fool</i> as to +write such letters to them? Why does he give himself away to such <i>canaille?</i> +It’s a thing that <i>cannot be borne.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald wondered over her strange passion. +</p> + +<p> +And she could not rest any longer in London. They must go by the morning +train from Charing Cross. As they drew over the bridge, in the train, having +glimpses of the river between the great iron girders, she cried: +</p> + +<p> +“I feel I could <i>never</i> see this foul town again—I couldn’t +<i>bear</i> to come back to it.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap29"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.<br/> +CONTINENTAL</h2> + +<p> +Ursula went on in an unreal suspense, the last weeks before going away. She +was not herself,—she was not anything. She was something that is going to +be—soon—soon—very soon. But as yet, she was only imminent. +</p> + +<p> +She went to see her parents. It was a rather stiff, sad meeting, more like a +verification of separateness than a reunion. But they were all vague and +indefinite with one another, stiffened in the fate that moved them apart. +</p> + +<p> +She did not really come to until she was on the ship crossing from Dover to +Ostend. Dimly she had come down to London with Birkin, London had been a +vagueness, so had the train-journey to Dover. It was all like a sleep. +</p> + +<p> +And now, at last, as she stood in the stern of the ship, in a pitch-dark, +rather blowy night, feeling the motion of the sea, and watching the small, +rather desolate little lights that twinkled on the shores of England, as on the +shores of nowhere, watched them sinking smaller and smaller on the profound and +living darkness, she felt her soul stirring to awake from its anæsthetic sleep. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us go forward, shall we?” said Birkin. He wanted to be at +the tip of their projection. So they left off looking at the faint sparks that +glimmered out of nowhere, in the far distance, called England, and turned their +faces to the unfathomed night in front. +</p> + +<p> +They went right to the bows of the softly plunging vessel. In the complete +obscurity, Birkin found a comparatively sheltered nook, where a great rope was +coiled up. It was quite near the very point of the ship, near the black, +unpierced space ahead. There they sat down, folded together, folded round with +the same rug, creeping in nearer and ever nearer to one another, till it seemed +they had crept right into each other, and become one substance. It was very +cold, and the darkness was palpable. +</p> + +<p> +One of the ship’s crew came along the deck, dark as the darkness, not +really visible. They then made out the faintest pallor of his face. He felt +their presence, and stopped, unsure—then bent forward. When his face was +near them, he saw the faint pallor of their faces. Then he withdrew like a +phantom. And they watched him without making any sound. +</p> + +<p> +They seemed to fall away into the profound darkness. There was no sky, no +earth, only one unbroken darkness, into which, with a soft, sleeping motion, +they seemed to fall like one closed seed of life falling through dark, +fathomless space. +</p> + +<p> +They had forgotten where they were, forgotten all that was and all that had +been, conscious only in their heart, and there conscious only of this pure +trajectory through the surpassing darkness. The ship’s prow cleaved on, +with a faint noise of cleavage, into the complete night, without knowing, +without seeing, only surging on. +</p> + +<p> +In Ursula the sense of the unrealised world ahead triumphed over everything. +In the midst of this profound darkness, there seemed to glow on her heart the +effulgence of a paradise unknown and unrealised. Her heart was full of the most +wonderful light, golden like honey of darkness, sweet like the warmth of day, a +light which was not shed on the world, only on the unknown paradise towards +which she was going, a sweetness of habitation, a delight of living quite +unknown, but hers infallibly. In her transport she lifted her face suddenly to +him, and he touched it with his lips. So cold, so fresh, so sea-clear her face +was, it was like kissing a flower that grows near the surf. +</p> + +<p> +But he did not know the ecstasy of bliss in fore-knowledge that she knew. To +him, the wonder of this transit was overwhelming. He was falling through a gulf +of infinite darkness, like a meteorite plunging across the chasm between the +worlds. The world was torn in two, and he was plunging like an unlit star +through the ineffable rift. What was beyond was not yet for him. He was overcome +by the trajectory. +</p> + +<p> +In a trance he lay enfolding Ursula round about. His face was against her +fine, fragile hair, he breathed its fragrance with the sea and the profound +night. And his soul was at peace; yielded, as he fell into the unknown. This was +the first time that an utter and absolute peace had entered his heart, now, in +this final transit out of life. +</p> + +<p> +When there came some stir on the deck, they roused. They stood up. How stiff +and cramped they were, in the night-time! And yet the paradisal glow on her +heart, and the unutterable peace of darkness in his, this was the all-in-all. +</p> + +<p> +They stood up and looked ahead. Low lights were seen down the darkness. This +was the world again. It was not the bliss of her heart, nor the peace of his. It +was the superficial unreal world of fact. Yet not quite the old world. For the +peace and the bliss in their hearts was enduring. +</p> + +<p> +Strange, and desolate above all things, like disembarking from the Styx into +the desolated underworld, was this landing at night. There was the raw, +half-lighted, covered-in vastness of the dark place, boarded and hollow +underfoot, with only desolation everywhere. Ursula had caught sight of the big, +pallid, mystic letters “OSTEND,” standing in the darkness. Everybody +was hurrying with a blind, insect-like intentness through the dark grey air, +porters were calling in un-English English, then trotting with heavy bags, their +colourless blouses looking ghostly as they disappeared; Ursula stood at a long, +low, zinc-covered barrier, along with hundreds of other spectral people, and all +the way down the vast, raw darkness was this low stretch of open bags and +spectral people, whilst, on the other side of the barrier, pallid officials in +peaked caps and moustaches were turning the underclothing in the bags, then +scrawling a chalk-mark. +</p> + +<p> +It was done. Birkin snapped the hand bags, off they went, the porter coming +behind. They were through a great doorway, and in the open night again—ah, +a railway platform! Voices were still calling in inhuman agitation through the +dark-grey air, spectres were running along the darkness between the train. +</p> + +<p> +“Köln—Berlin—” Ursula made out on the boards hung on +the high train on one side. +</p> + +<p> +“Here we are,” said Birkin. And on her side she saw: +“Elsass—Lothringen—Luxembourg, Metz—Basle.” +</p> + +<p> +“That was it, Basle!” +</p> + +<p> +The porter came up. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>À Bâle—deuxième classe?—Voilà!</i>” 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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Nous avons encore—?</i>” said Birkin, looking at his watch +and at the porter. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Encore une demi-heure.</i>” With which, in his blue blouse, he +disappeared. He was ugly and insolent. +</p> + +<p> +“Come,” said Birkin. “It is cold. Let us eat.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>revenant</i> +himself, looked sometimes out of the window, sometimes closed his eyes. Then his +eyes opened again, dark as the darkness outside. +</p> + +<p> +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 æons. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +Zürich, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +They laughed with pleasure when they were in the hall. The place seemed full +and busy. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know if Mr and Mrs Crich—English—from Paris, have +arrived?” Birkin asked in German. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Gudrun! Gudrun!” she called, waving up the well of the +staircase. “Shu-hu!” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked over the rail, and immediately lost her sauntering, diffident +air. Her eyes flashed. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“But!” cried Gudrun, mortified. “We thought it was +<i>tomorrow</i> you were coming! I wanted to come to the station.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, we’ve come today!” cried Ursula. “Isn’t +it lovely here!” +</p> + +<p> +“Adorable!” said Gudrun. “Gerald’s just gone out to +get something. Ursula, aren’t you <i>fearfully</i> tired?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not so very. But I look a filthy sight, don’t I!” +</p> + +<p> +“No, you don’t. You look almost perfectly fresh. I like that fur +cap <i>immensely!</i>” She glanced over Ursula, who wore a big soft coat with a +collar of deep, soft, blond fur, and a soft blond cap of fur. +</p> + +<p> +“And you!” cried Ursula. “What do you think <i>you</i> look +like!” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun assumed an unconcerned, expressionless face. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you like it?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s <i>very</i> fine!” cried Ursula, perhaps with a touch of +satire. +</p> + +<p> +“Go up—or come down,” said Birkin. For there the sisters +stood, Gudrun with her hand on Ursula’s arm, on the turn of the stairs +half way to the first landing, blocking the way and affording full entertainment +to the whole of the hall below, from the door porter to the plump Jew in black +clothes. +</p> + +<p> +The two young women slowly mounted, followed by Birkin and the waiter. +</p> + +<p> +“First floor?” asked Gudrun, looking back over her shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +“Second Madam—the lift!” the waiter replied. And he darted +to the elevator to forestall the two women. But they ignored him, as, chattering +without heed, they set to mount the second flight. Rather chagrined, the waiter +followed. +</p> + +<p> +It was curious, the delight of the sisters in each other, at this meeting. +It was as if they met in exile, and united their solitary forces against all the +world. Birkin looked on with some mistrust and wonder. +</p> + +<p> +When they had bathed and changed, Gerald came in. He looked shining like the +sun on frost. +</p> + +<p> +“Go with Gerald and smoke,” said Ursula to Birkin. “Gudrun +and I want to talk.” +</p> + +<p> +Then the sisters sat in Gudrun’s bedroom, and talked clothes, and +experiences. Gudrun told Ursula the experience of the Birkin letter in the café. +Ursula was shocked and frightened. +</p> + +<p> +“Where is the letter?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I kept it,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll give it me, won’t you?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +But Gudrun was silent for some moments, before she replied: +</p> + +<p> +“Do you really want it, Ursula?” +</p> + +<p> +“I want to read it,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly,” said Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +Even now, she could not admit, to Ursula, that she wanted to keep it, as a +memento, or a symbol. But Ursula knew, and was not pleased. So the subject was +switched off. +</p> + +<p> +“What did you do in Paris?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Gudrun laconically—“the usual things. We +had a <i>fine</i> party one night in Fanny Bath’s studio.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you? And you and Gerald were there! Who else? Tell me about +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Gudrun. “There’s nothing particular to +tell. You know Fanny is <i>frightfully</i> in love with that painter, Billy Macfarlane. +He was there—so Fanny spared nothing, she spent <i>very</i> freely. It was really +remarkable! Of course, everybody got fearfully drunk—but in an interesting +way, not like that filthy London crowd. The fact is these were all people that +matter, which makes all the difference. There was a Roumanian, a fine chap. He +got completely drunk, and climbed to the top of a high studio ladder, and gave +the most marvellous address—really, Ursula, it was wonderful! He began in +French—<i>La vie, c’est une affaire d’âmes impériales</i>—in +a most beautiful voice—he was a fine-looking chap—but he had got into +Roumanian before he had finished, and not a soul understood. But Donald +Gilchrist was worked to a frenzy. He dashed his glass to the ground, and +declared, by God, he was glad he had been born, by God, it was a miracle to be +alive. And do you know, Ursula, so it was—” Gudrun laughed rather +hollowly. +</p> + +<p> +“But how was Gerald among them all?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Gerald! Oh, my word, he came out like a dandelion in the sun! +<i>He’s</i> a whole saturnalia in himself, once he is roused. I shouldn’t +like to say whose waist his arm did not go round. Really, Ursula, he seems to +reap the women like a harvest. There wasn’t one that would have resisted +him. It was too amazing! Can you understand it?” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula reflected, and a dancing light came into her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. “I can. He is such a whole-hogger.” +</p> + +<p> +“Whole-hogger! I should think so!” exclaimed Gudrun. “But +it is true, Ursula, every woman in the room was ready to surrender to him. +Chanticleer isn’t in it—even Fanny Bath, who is <i>genuinely</i> in +love with Billy Macfarlane! I never was more amazed in my life! And you know, +afterwards—I felt I was a whole <i>roomful</i> of women. I was no more myself +to him, than I was Queen Victoria. I was a whole roomful of women at once. It was +most astounding! But my eye, I’d caught a Sultan that time—” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun’s eyes were flashing, her cheek was hot, she looked strange, +exotic, satiric. Ursula was fascinated at once—and yet uneasy. +</p> + +<p> +They had to get ready for dinner. Gudrun came down in a daring gown of vivid +green silk and tissue of gold, with green velvet bodice and a strange +black-and-white band round her hair. She was really brilliantly beautiful and +everybody noticed her. Gerald was in that full-blooded, gleaming state when he +was most handsome. Birkin watched them with quick, laughing, half-sinister eyes, +Ursula quite lost her head. There seemed a spell, almost a blinding spell, cast +round their table, as if they were lighted up more strongly than the rest of the +dining-room. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you love to be in this place?” cried Gudrun. +“Isn’t the snow wonderful! Do you notice how it exalts everything? +It is simply marvellous. One really does feel <i>übermenschlich</i>—more than +human.” +</p> + +<p> +“One does,” cried Ursula. “But isn’t that partly the +being out of England?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, of course,” cried Gudrun. “One could never feel like +this in England, for the simple reason that the damper is <i>never</i> lifted off +one, there. It is quite impossible really to let go, in England, of that I am +assured.” +</p> + +<p> +And she turned again to the food she was eating. She was fluttering with +vivid intensity. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s quite true,” said Gerald, “it never is quite +the same in England. But perhaps we don’t want it to be—perhaps +it’s like bringing the light a little too near the powder-magazine, to let +go altogether, in England. One is afraid what might happen, if <i>everybody +else</i> let go.” +</p> + +<p> +“My God!” cried Gudrun. “But wouldn’t it be +wonderful, if all England did suddenly go off like a display of +fireworks.” +</p> + +<p> +“It couldn’t,” said Ursula. “They are all too damp, +the powder is damp in them.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not so sure of that,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Nor I,” said Birkin. “When the English really begin to go +off, <i>en masse</i>, it’ll be time to shut your ears and run.” +</p> + +<p> +“They never will,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll see,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it marvellous,” said Gudrun, “how thankful +one can be, to be out of one’s country. I cannot believe myself, I am so +transported, the moment I set foot on a foreign shore. I say to myself ‘Here +steps a new creature into life.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be too hard on poor old England,” said Gerald. +“Though we curse it, we love it really.” +</p> + +<p> +To Ursula, there seemed a fund of cynicism in these words. +</p> + +<p> +“We may,” said Birkin. “But it’s a damnably +uncomfortable love: like a love for an aged parent who suffers horribly from a +complication of diseases, for which there is no hope.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked at him with dilated dark eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“You think there is no hope?” she asked, in her pertinent +fashion. +</p> + +<p> +But Birkin backed away. He would not answer such a question. +</p> + +<p> +“Any hope of England’s becoming real? God knows. It’s a +great actual unreality now, an aggregation into unreality. It might be real, if +there were no Englishmen.” +</p> + +<p> +“You think the English will have to disappear?” persisted +Gudrun. It was strange, her pointed interest in his answer. It might have been +her own fate she was inquiring after. Her dark, dilated eyes rested on Birkin, +as if she could conjure the truth of the future out of him, as out of some +instrument of divination. +</p> + +<p> +He was pale. Then, reluctantly, he answered: +</p> + +<p> +“Well—what else is in front of them, but disappearance? +They’ve got to disappear from their own special brand of Englishness, +anyhow.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun watched him as if in a hypnotic state, her eyes wide and fixed on +him. +</p> + +<p> +“But in what way do you mean, disappear?—” she persisted. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, do you mean a change of heart?” put in Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mean anything, why should I?” said Birkin. +“I’m an Englishman, and I’ve paid the price of it. I +can’t talk about England—I can only speak for myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gudrun slowly, “you love England immensely, +<i>immensely</i>, Rupert.” +</p> + +<p> +“And leave her,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“No, not for good. You’ll come back,” said Gerald, nodding +sagely. +</p> + +<p> +“They say the lice crawl off a dying body,” said Birkin, with a +glare of bitterness. “So I leave England.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, but you’ll come back,” said Gudrun, with a sardonic +smile. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Tant pis pour moi</i>,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t he angry with his mother country!” laughed Gerald, +amused. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, a patriot!” said Gudrun, with something like a sneer. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin refused to answer any more. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun watched him still for a few seconds. Then she turned away. It was +finished, her spell of divination in him. She felt already purely cynical. She +looked at Gerald. He was wonderful like a piece of radium to her. She felt she +could consume herself and know <i>all</i>, by means of this fatal, living metal. She +smiled to herself at her fancy. And what would she do with herself, when she had +destroyed herself? For if spirit, if integral being is destructible, Matter is +indestructible. +</p> + +<p> +He was looking bright and abstracted, puzzled, for the moment. She stretched +out her beautiful arm, with its fluff of green tulle, and touched his chin with +her subtle, artist’s fingers. +</p> + +<p> +“What are they then?” she asked, with a strange, knowing smile. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” he replied, his eyes suddenly dilating with wonder. +</p> + +<p> +“Your thoughts.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked like a man coming awake. +</p> + +<p> +“I think I had none,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Really!” she said, with grave laughter in her voice. +</p> + +<p> +And to Birkin it was as if she killed Gerald, with that touch. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but,” cried Gudrun, “let us drink to +Britannia—let us drink to Britannia.” +</p> + +<p> +It seemed there was wild despair in her voice. Gerald laughed, and filled +the glasses. +</p> + +<p> +“I think Rupert means,” he said, “that <i>nationally</i> all +Englishmen must die, so that they can exist individually and—” +</p> + +<p> +“Super-nationally—” put in Gudrun, with a slight ironic +grimace, raising her glass. +</p> + +<p> +The next day, they descended at the tiny railway station of Hohenhausen, at +the end of the tiny valley railway. It was snow everywhere, a white, perfect +cradle of snow, new and frozen, sweeping up on either side, black crags, and +white sweeps of silver towards the blue pale heavens. +</p> + +<p> +As they stepped out on the naked platform, with only snow around and above, +Gudrun shrank as if it chilled her heart. +</p> + +<p> +“My God, Jerry,” she said, turning to Gerald with sudden +intimacy, “you’ve done it now.” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +She made a faint gesture, indicating the world on either hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at it!” +</p> + +<p> +She seemed afraid to go on. He laughed. +</p> + +<p> +They were in the heart of the mountains. From high above, on either side, +swept down the white fold of snow, so that one seemed small and tiny in a valley +of pure concrete heaven, all strangely radiant and changeless and silent. +</p> + +<p> +“It makes one feel so small and alone,” said Ursula, turning to +Birkin and laying her hand on his arm. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not sorry you’ve come, are you?” said Gerald +to Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +She looked doubtful. They went out of the station between banks of snow. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said Gerald, sniffing the air in elation, “this is +perfect. There’s our sledge. We’ll walk a bit—we’ll run +up the road.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun, always doubtful, dropped her heavy coat on the sledge, as he did +his, and they set off. Suddenly she threw up her head and set off scudding along +the road of snow, pulling her cap down over her ears. Her blue, bright dress +fluttered in the wind, her thick scarlet stockings were brilliant above the +whiteness. Gerald watched her: she seemed to be rushing towards her fate, and +leaving him behind. He let her get some distance, then, loosening his limbs, he +went after her. +</p> + +<p> +Everywhere was deep and silent snow. Great snow-eaves weighed down the +broad-roofed Tyrolese houses, that were sunk to the window-sashes in snow. +Peasant-women, full-skirted, wearing each a cross-over shawl, and thick +snow-boots, turned in the way to look at the soft, determined girl running with +such heavy fleetness from the man, who was overtaking her, but not gaining any +power over her. +</p> + +<p> +They passed the inn with its painted shutters and balcony, a few cottages, +half buried in the snow; then the snow-buried silent sawmill by the roofed +bridge, which crossed the hidden stream, over which they ran into the very depth +of the untouched sheets of snow. It was a silence and a sheer whiteness +exhilarating to madness. But the perfect silence was most terrifying, isolating +the soul, surrounding the heart with frozen air. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a marvellous place, for all that,” said Gudrun, +looking into his eyes with a strange, meaning look. His soul leapt. +</p> + +<p> +“Good,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +A fierce electric energy seemed to flow over all his limbs, his muscles were +surcharged, his hands felt hard with strength. They walked along rapidly up the +snow-road, that was marked by withered branches of trees stuck in at intervals. +He and she were separate, like opposite poles of one fierce energy. But they +felt powerful enough to leap over the confines of life into the forbidden +places, and back again. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin and Ursula were running along also, over the snow. He had disposed of +the luggage, and they had a little start of the sledges. Ursula was excited and +happy, but she kept turning suddenly to catch hold of Birkin’s arm, to +make sure of him. +</p> + +<p> +“This is something I never expected,” she said. “It is a +different world, here.” +</p> + +<p> +They went on into a snow meadow. There they were overtaken by the sledge, +that came tinkling through the silence. It was another mile before they came +upon Gudrun and Gerald on the steep up-climb, beside the pink, half-buried +shrine. +</p> + +<p> +Then they passed into a gulley, where were walls of black rock and a river +filled with snow, and a still blue sky above. Through a covered bridge they +went, drumming roughly over the boards, crossing the snow-bed once more, then +slowly up and up, the horses walking swiftly, the driver cracking his long whip +as he walked beside, and calling his strange wild <i>hue-hue!</i>, the walls of +rock passing slowly by, till they emerged again between slopes and masses of snow. +Up and up, gradually they went, through the cold shadow-radiance of the afternoon, +silenced by the imminence of the mountains, the luminous, dazing sides of snow +that rose above them and fell away beneath. +</p> + +<p> +They came forth at last in a little high table-land of snow, where stood the +last peaks of snow like the heart petals of an open rose. In the midst of the +last deserted valleys of heaven stood a lonely building with brown wooden walls +and white heavy roof, deep and deserted in the waste of snow, like a dream. It +stood like a rock that had rolled down from the last steep slopes, a rock that +had taken the form of a house, and was now half-buried. It was unbelievable that +one could live there uncrushed by all this terrible waste of whiteness and +silence and clear, upper, ringing cold. +</p> + +<p> +Yet the sledges ran up in fine style, people came to the door laughing and +excited, the floor of the hostel rang hollow, the passage was wet with snow, it +was a real, warm interior. +</p> + +<p> +The newcomers tramped up the bare wooden stairs, following the serving +woman. Gudrun and Gerald took the first bedroom. In a moment they found +themselves alone in a bare, smallish, close-shut room that was all of +golden-coloured wood, floor, walls, ceiling, door, all of the same warm gold +panelling of oiled pine. There was a window opposite the door, but low down, +because the roof sloped. Under the slope of the ceiling were the table with +wash-hand bowl and jug, and across, another table with mirror. On either side +the door were two beds piled high with an enormous blue-checked overbolster, +enormous. +</p> + +<p> +This was all—no cupboard, none of the amenities of life. Here they +were shut up together in this cell of golden-coloured wood, with two blue +checked beds. They looked at each other and laughed, frightened by this naked +nearness of isolation. +</p> + +<p> +A man knocked and came in with the luggage. He was a sturdy fellow with +flattish cheek-bones, rather pale, and with coarse fair moustache. Gudrun +watched him put down the bags, in silence, then tramp heavily out. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t too rough, is it?” Gerald asked. +</p> + +<p> +The bedroom was not very warm, and she shivered slightly. +</p> + +<p> +“It is wonderful,” she equivocated. “Look at the colour of +this panelling—it’s wonderful, like being inside a nut.” +</p> + +<p> +He was standing watching her, feeling his short-cut moustache, leaning back +slightly and watching her with his keen, undaunted eyes, dominated by the +constant passion, that was like a doom upon him. +</p> + +<p> +She went and crouched down in front of the window, curious. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, but this—!” she cried involuntarily, almost in pain. +</p> + +<p> +In front was a valley shut in under the sky, the last huge slopes of snow +and black rock, and at the end, like the navel of the earth, a white-folded +wall, and two peaks glimmering in the late light. Straight in front ran the +cradle of silent snow, between the great slopes that were fringed with a little +roughness of pine-trees, like hair, round the base. But the cradle of snow ran +on to the eternal closing-in, where the walls of snow and rock rose +impenetrable, and the mountain peaks above were in heaven immediate. This was +the centre, the knot, the navel of the world, where the earth belonged to the +skies, pure, unapproachable, impassable. +</p> + +<p> +It filled Gudrun with a strange rapture. She crouched in front of the +window, clenching her face in her hands, in a sort of trance. At last she had +arrived, she had reached her place. Here at last she folded her venture and +settled down like a crystal in the navel of snow, and was gone. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald bent above her and was looking out over her shoulder. Already he felt +he was alone. She was gone. She was completely gone, and there was icy vapour +round his heart. He saw the blind valley, the great cul-de-sac of snow and +mountain peaks, under the heaven. And there was no way out. The terrible silence +and cold and the glamorous whiteness of the dusk wrapped him round, and she +remained crouching before the window, as at a shrine, a shadow. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you like it?” he asked, in a voice that sounded detached and +foreign. At least she might acknowledge he was with her. But she only averted +her soft, mute face a little from his gaze. And he knew that there were tears in +her eyes, her own tears, tears of her strange religion, that put him to nought. +</p> + +<p> +Quite suddenly, he put his hand under her chin and lifted up her face to +him. Her dark blue eyes, in their wetness of tears, dilated as if she was +startled in her very soul. They looked at him through their tears in terror and +a little horror. His light blue eyes were keen, small-pupilled and unnatural in +their vision. Her lips parted, as she breathed with difficulty. +</p> + +<p> +The passion came up in him, stroke after stroke, like the ringing of a +bronze bell, so strong and unflawed and indomitable. His knees tightened to +bronze as he hung above her soft face, whose lips parted and whose eyes dilated +in a strange violation. In the grasp of his hand her chin was unutterably soft +and silken. He felt strong as winter, his hands were living metal, invincible +and not to be turned aside. His heart rang like a bell clanging inside him. +</p> + +<p> +He took her up in his arms. She was soft and inert, motionless. All the +while her eyes, in which the tears had not yet dried, were dilated as if in a +kind of swoon of fascination and helplessness. He was superhumanly strong, and +unflawed, as if invested with supernatural force. +</p> + +<p> +He lifted her close and folded her against him. Her softness, her inert, +relaxed weight lay against his own surcharged, bronze-like limbs in a heaviness +of desirability that would destroy him, if he were not fulfilled. She moved +convulsively, recoiling away from him. His heart went up like a flame of ice, he +closed over her like steel. He would destroy her rather than be denied. +</p> + +<p> +But the overweening power of his body was too much for her. She relaxed +again, and lay loose and soft, panting in a little delirium. And to him, she was +so sweet, she was such bliss of release, that he would have suffered a whole +eternity of torture rather than forego one second of this pang of unsurpassable +bliss. +</p> + +<p> +“My God,” he said to her, his face drawn and strange, +transfigured, “what next?” +</p> + +<p> +She lay perfectly still, with a still, child-like face and dark eyes, +looking at him. She was lost, fallen right away. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall always love you,” he said, looking at her. +</p> + +<p> +But she did not hear. She lay, looking at him as at something she could +never understand, never: as a child looks at a grown-up person, without hope of +understanding, only submitting. +</p> + +<p> +He kissed her, kissed her eyes shut, so that she could not look any more. He +wanted something now, some recognition, some sign, some admission. But she only +lay silent and child-like and remote, like a child that is overcome and cannot +understand, only feels lost. He kissed her again, giving up. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go down and have coffee and <i>Kuchen?</i>” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +The twilight was falling slate-blue at the window. She closed her eyes, +closed away the monotonous level of dead wonder, and opened them again to the +every-day world. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said briefly, regaining her will with a click. She +went again to the window. Blue evening had fallen over the cradle of snow and +over the great pallid slopes. But in the heaven the peaks of snow were rosy, +glistening like transcendent, radiant spikes of blossom in the heavenly +upper-world, so lovely and beyond. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun saw all their loveliness, she <i>knew</i> how immortally beautiful they +were, great pistils of rose-coloured, snow-fed fire in the blue twilight of the +heaven. She could <i>see</i> it, she knew it, but she was not of it. She was divorced, +debarred, a soul shut out. +</p> + +<p> +With a last look of remorse, she turned away, and was doing her hair. He had +unstrapped the luggage, and was waiting, watching her. She knew he was watching +her. It made her a little hasty and feverish in her precipitation. +</p> + +<p> +They went downstairs, both with a strange other-world look on their faces, +and with a glow in their eyes. They saw Birkin and Ursula sitting at the long +table in a corner, waiting for them. +</p> + +<p> +“How good and simple they look together,” Gudrun thought, +jealously. She envied them some spontaneity, a childish sufficiency to which she +herself could never approach. They seemed such children to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Such good <i>Kranzkuchen!</i>” cried Ursula greedily. “So +good!” +</p> + +<p> +“Right,” said Gudrun. “Can we have <i>Kaffee mit +Kranzkuchen?</i>” she added to the waiter. +</p> + +<p> +And she seated herself on the bench beside Gerald. Birkin, looking at them, +felt a pain of tenderness for them. +</p> + +<p> +“I think the place is really wonderful, Gerald,” he said; +“<i>prachtvoll</i> and <i>wunderbar</i> and <i>wunderschön</i> and +<i>unbeschreiblich</i> and all the other German adjectives.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald broke into a slight smile. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> like it,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The tables, of white scrubbed wood, were placed round three sides of the +room, as in a Gasthaus. Birkin and Ursula sat with their backs to the wall, +which was of oiled wood, and Gerald and Gudrun sat in the corner next them, near +to the stove. It was a fairly large place, with a tiny bar, just like a country +inn, but quite simple and bare, and all of oiled wood, ceilings and walls and +floor, the only furniture being the tables and benches going round three sides, +the great green stove, and the bar and the doors on the fourth side. The windows +were double, and quite uncurtained. It was early evening. +</p> + +<p> +The coffee came—hot and good—and a whole ring of cake. +</p> + +<p> +“A whole <i>Kuchen!</i>” cried Ursula. “They give you more than +us! I want some of yours.” +</p> + +<p> +There were other people in the place, ten altogether, so Birkin had found +out: two artists, three students, a man and wife, and a Professor and two +daughters—all Germans. The four English people, being newcomers, sat in +their coign of vantage to watch. The Germans peeped in at the door, called a +word to the waiter, and went away again. It was not meal-time, so they did not +come into this dining-room, but betook themselves, when their boots were +changed, to the <i>Reunionsaal.</i> +</p> + +<p> +The English visitors could hear the occasional twanging of a zither, the +strumming of a piano, snatches of laughter and shouting and singing, a faint +vibration of voices. The whole building being of wood, it seemed to carry every +sound, like a drum, but instead of increasing each particular noise, it +decreased it, so that the sound of the zither seemed tiny, as if a diminutive +zither were playing somewhere, and it seemed the piano must be a small one, like +a little spinet. +</p> + +<p> +The host came when the coffee was finished. He was a Tyrolese, broad, rather +flat-cheeked, with a pale, pock-marked skin and flourishing moustaches. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you like to go to the <i>Reunionsaal</i> to be introduced to the other +ladies and gentlemen?” he asked, bending forward and smiling, showing his +large, strong teeth. His blue eyes went quickly from one to the other—he +was not quite sure of his ground with these English people. He was unhappy too +because he spoke no English and he was not sure whether to try his French. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go to the <i>Reunionsaal</i>, and be introduced to the other +people?” repeated Gerald, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +There was a moment’s hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose we’d better—better break the ice,” said +Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +The women rose, rather flushed. And the Wirt’s black, beetle-like, +broad-shouldered figure went on ignominiously in front, towards the noise. He +opened the door and ushered the four strangers into the play-room. +</p> + +<p> +Instantly a silence fell, a slight embarrassment came over the company. The +newcomers had a sense of many blond faces looking their way. Then, the host was +bowing to a short, energetic-looking man with large moustaches, and saying in a +low voice: +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Herr Professor, darf ich vorstellen</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +The Herr Professor was prompt and energetic. He bowed low to the English +people, smiling, and began to be a comrade at once. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Nehmen die Herrschaften teil an unserer Unterhaltung?</i>” he said, +with a vigorous suavity, his voice curling up in the question. +</p> + +<p> +The four English people smiled, lounging with an attentive uneasiness in the +middle of the room. Gerald, who was spokesman, said that they would willingly +take part in the entertainment. Gudrun and Ursula, laughing, excited, felt the +eyes of all the men upon them, and they lifted their heads and looked nowhere, +and felt royal. +</p> + +<p> +The Professor announced the names of those present, <i>sans cérémonie</i>. There +was a bowing to the wrong people and to the right people. Everybody was there, +except the man and wife. The two tall, clear-skinned, athletic daughters of the +professor, with their plain-cut, dark blue blouses and loden skirts, their +rather long, strong necks, their clear blue eyes and carefully banded hair, and +their blushes, bowed and stood back; the three students bowed very low, in the +humble hope of making an impression of extreme good-breeding; then there was a +thin, dark-skinned man with full eyes, an odd creature, like a child, and like a +troll, quick, detached; he bowed slightly; his companion, a large fair young +man, stylishly dressed, blushed to the eyes and bowed very low. +</p> + +<p> +It was over. +</p> + +<p> +“Herr Loerke was giving us a recitation in the Cologne dialect,” +said the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“He must forgive us for interrupting him,” said Gerald, +“we should like very much to hear it.” +</p> + +<p> +There was instantly a bowing and an offering of seats. Gudrun and Ursula, +Gerald and Birkin sat in the deep sofas against the wall. The room was of naked +oiled panelling, like the rest of the house. It had a piano, sofas and chairs, +and a couple of tables with books and magazines. In its complete absence of +decoration, save for the big, blue stove, it was cosy and pleasant. +</p> + +<p> +Herr Loerke was the little man with the boyish figure, and the round, full, +sensitive-looking head, and the quick, full eyes, like a mouse’s. He +glanced swiftly from one to the other of the strangers, and held himself aloof. +</p> + +<p> +“Please go on with the recitation,” said the Professor, suavely, +with his slight authority. Loerke, who was sitting hunched on the piano stool, +blinked and did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +“It would be a great pleasure,” said Ursula, who had been +getting the sentence ready, in German, for some minutes. +</p> + +<p> +Then, suddenly, the small, unresponding man swung aside, towards his +previous audience and broke forth, exactly as he had broken off; in a +controlled, mocking voice, giving an imitation of a quarrel between an old +Cologne woman and a railway guard. +</p> + +<p> +His body was slight and unformed, like a boy’s, but his voice was +mature, sardonic, its movement had the flexibility of essential energy, and of a +mocking penetrating understanding. Gudrun could not understand a word of his +monologue, but she was spell-bound, watching him. He must be an artist, nobody +else could have such fine adjustment and singleness. The Germans were doubled up +with laughter, hearing his strange droll words, his droll phrases of dialect. +And in the midst of their paroxysms, they glanced with deference at the four +English strangers, the elect. Gudrun and Ursula were forced to laugh. The room +rang with shouts of laughter. The blue eyes of the Professor’s daughters +were swimming over with laughter-tears, their clear cheeks were flushed crimson +with mirth, their father broke out in the most astonishing peals of hilarity, +the students bowed their heads on their knees in excess of joy. Ursula looked +round amazed, the laughter was bubbling out of her involuntarily. She looked at +Gudrun. Gudrun looked at her, and the two sisters burst out laughing, carried +away. Loerke glanced at them swiftly, with his full eyes. Birkin was sniggering +involuntarily. Gerald Crich sat erect, with a glistening look of amusement on +his face. And the laughter crashed out again, in wild paroxysms, the +Professor’s daughters were reduced to shaking helplessness, the veins of +the Professor’s neck were swollen, his face was purple, he was strangled +in ultimate, silent spasms of laughter. The students were shouting +half-articulated words that tailed off in helpless explosions. Then suddenly the +rapid patter of the artist ceased, there were little whoops of subsiding mirth, +Ursula and Gudrun were wiping their eyes, and the Professor was crying loudly. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Das war ausgezeichnet, das war famos</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Wirklich famos</i>,” echoed his exhausted daughters, faintly. +</p> + +<p> +“And we couldn’t understand it,” cried Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Oh leider, leider!</i>” cried the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“You couldn’t understand it?” cried the Students, let +loose at last in speech with the newcomers. “<i>Ja, das ist wirklich schade, +das ist schade, gnädige Frau. Wissen Sie</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +The mixture was made, the newcomers were stirred into the party, like new +ingredients, the whole room was alive. Gerald was in his element, he talked +freely and excitedly, his face glistened with a strange amusement. Perhaps even +Birkin, in the end, would break forth. He was shy and withheld, though full of +attention. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was prevailed upon to sing “Annie Lowrie,” as the +Professor called it. There was a hush of <i>extreme</i> deference. She had never +been so flattered in her life. Gudrun accompanied her on the piano, playing from +memory. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula had a beautiful ringing voice, but usually no confidence, she spoiled +everything. This evening she felt conceited and untrammelled. Birkin was well in +the background, she shone almost in reaction, the Germans made her feel fine and +infallible, she was liberated into overweening self-confidence. She felt like a +bird flying in the air, as her voice soared out, enjoying herself extremely in +the balance and flight of the song, like the motion of a bird’s wings that +is up in the wind, sliding and playing on the air, she played with +sentimentality, supported by rapturous attention. She was very happy, singing +that song by herself, full of a conceit of emotion and power, working upon all +those people, and upon herself, exerting herself with gratification, giving +immeasurable gratification to the Germans. +</p> + +<p> +At the end, the Germans were all touched with admiring, delicious +melancholy, they praised her in soft, reverent voices, they could not say too +much. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Wie schön, wie rührend! Ach, die Schottischen Lieder, sie haben so +viel Stimmung! Aber die gnädige Frau hat eine wunderbare Stimme; die gnädige +Frau ist wirklich eine Künstlerin, aber wirklich!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +She was dilated and brilliant, like a flower in the morning sun. She felt +Birkin looking at her, as if he were jealous of her, and her breasts thrilled, +her veins were all golden. She was as happy as the sun that has just opened +above clouds. And everybody seemed so admiring and radiant, it was perfect. +</p> + +<p> +After dinner she wanted to go out for a minute, to look at the world. The +company tried to dissuade her—it was so terribly cold. But just to look, +she said. +</p> + +<p> +They all four wrapped up warmly, and found themselves in a vague, +unsubstantial outdoors of dim snow and ghosts of an upper-world, that made +strange shadows before the stars. It was indeed cold, bruisingly, frighteningly, +unnaturally cold. Ursula could not believe the air in her nostrils. It seemed +conscious, malevolent, purposive in its intense murderous coldness. +</p> + +<p> +Yet it was wonderful, an intoxication, a silence of dim, unrealised snow, of +the invisible intervening between her and the visible, between her and the +flashing stars. She could see Orion sloping up. How wonderful he was, wonderful +enough to make one cry aloud. +</p> + +<p> +And all around was this cradle of snow, and there was firm snow underfoot, +that struck with heavy cold through her boot-soles. It was night, and silence. +She imagined she could hear the stars. She imagined distinctly she could hear +the celestial, musical motion of the stars, quite near at hand. She seemed like +a bird flying amongst their harmonious motion. +</p> + +<p> +And she clung close to Birkin. Suddenly she realised she did not know what +he was thinking. She did not know where he was ranging. +</p> + +<p> +“My love!” she said, stopping to look at him. +</p> + +<p> +His face was pale, his eyes dark, there was a faint spark of starlight on +them. And he saw her face soft and upturned to him, very near. He kissed her +softly. +</p> + +<p> +“What then?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you love me?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Too much,” he answered quietly. +</p> + +<p> +She clung a little closer. +</p> + +<p> +“Not too much,” she pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +“Far too much,” he said, almost sadly. +</p> + +<p> +“And does it make you sad, that I am everything to you?” she +asked, wistful. He held her close to him, kissing her, and saying, scarcely +audible: +</p> + +<p> +“No, but I feel like a beggar—I feel poor.” +</p> + +<p> +She was silent, looking at the stars now. Then she kissed him. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be a beggar,” she pleaded, wistfully. “It +isn’t ignominious that you love me.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is ignominious to feel poor, isn’t it?” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Why? Why should it be?” she asked. He only stood still, in the +terribly cold air that moved invisibly over the mountain tops, folding her round +with his arms. +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t bear this cold, eternal place without you,” he +said. “I couldn’t bear it, it would kill the quick of my +life.” +</p> + +<p> +She kissed him again, suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you hate it?” she asked, puzzled, wondering. +</p> + +<p> +“If I couldn’t come near to you, if you weren’t here, I +should hate it. I couldn’t bear it,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +“But the people are nice,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean the stillness, the cold, the frozen eternality,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +She wondered. Then her spirit came home to him, nestling unconscious in him. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it is good we are warm and together,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +And they turned home again. They saw the golden lights of the hotel glowing +out in the night of snow-silence, small in the hollow, like a cluster of yellow +berries. It seemed like a bunch of sun-sparks, tiny and orange in the midst of +the snow-darkness. Behind, was a high shadow of a peak, blotting out the stars, +like a ghost. +</p> + +<p> +They drew near to their home. They saw a man come from the dark building, +with a lighted lantern which swung golden, and made that his dark feet walked in +a halo of snow. He was a small, dark figure in the darkened snow. He unlatched +the door of an outhouse. A smell of cows, hot, animal, almost like beef, came +out on the heavily cold air. There was a glimpse of two cattle in their dark +stalls, then the door was shut again, and not a chink of light showed. It had +reminded Ursula again of home, of the Marsh, of her childhood, and of the +journey to Brussels, and, strangely, of Anton Skrebensky. +</p> + +<p> +Oh, God, could one bear it, this past which was gone down the abyss? Could +she bear, that it ever had been! She looked round this silent, upper world of +snow and stars and powerful cold. There was another world, like views on a magic +lantern; The Marsh, Cossethay, Ilkeston, lit up with a common, unreal light. +There was a shadowy unreal Ursula, a whole shadow-play of an unreal life. It was +as unreal, and circumscribed, as a magic-lantern show. She wished the slides +could all be broken. She wished it could be gone for ever, like a lantern-slide +which was broken. She wanted to have no past. She wanted to have come down from +the slopes of heaven to this place, with Birkin, not to have toiled out of the +murk of her childhood and her upbringing, slowly, all soiled. She felt that +memory was a dirty trick played upon her. What was this decree, that she should +‘remember’! Why not a bath of pure oblivion, a new birth, without +any recollections or blemish of a past life. She was with Birkin, she had just +come into life, here in the high snow, against the stars. What had she to do +with parents and antecedents? She knew herself new and unbegotten, she had no +father, no mother, no anterior connections, she was herself, pure and silvery, +she belonged only to the oneness with Birkin, a oneness that struck deeper +notes, sounding into the heart of the universe, the heart of reality, where she +had never existed before. +</p> + +<p> +Even Gudrun was a separate unit, separate, separate, having nothing to do +with this self, this Ursula, in her new world of reality. That old shadow-world, +the actuality of the past—ah, let it go! She rose free on the wings of her +new condition. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun and Gerald had not come in. They had walked up the valley straight in +front of the house, not like Ursula and Birkin, on to the little hill at the +right. Gudrun was driven by a strange desire. She wanted to plunge on and on, +till she came to the end of the valley of snow. Then she wanted to climb the +wall of white finality, climb over, into the peaks that sprang up like sharp +petals in the heart of the frozen, mysterious navel of the world. She felt that +there, over the strange blind, terrible wall of rocky snow, there in the navel +of the mystic world, among the final cluster of peaks, there, in the infolded +navel of it all, was her consummation. If she could but come there, alone, and +pass into the infolded navel of eternal snow and of uprising, immortal peaks of +snow and rock, she would be a oneness with all, she would be herself the +eternal, infinite silence, the sleeping, timeless, frozen centre of the All. +</p> + +<p> +They went back to the house, to the <i>Reunionsaal</i>. She was curious to see what +was going on. The men there made her alert, roused her curiosity. It was a new +taste of life for her, they were so prostrate before her, yet so full of life. +</p> + +<p> +The party was boisterous; they were dancing all together, dancing the +<i>Schuhplatteln</i>, the Tyrolese dance of the clapping hands and tossing the partner +in the air at the crisis. The Germans were all proficient—they were from +Munich chiefly. Gerald also was quite passable. There were three zithers +twanging away in a corner. It was a scene of great animation and confusion. The +Professor was initiating Ursula into the dance, stamping, clapping, and swinging +her high, with amazing force and zest. When the crisis came even Birkin was +behaving manfully with one of the Professor’s fresh, strong daughters, who +was exceedingly happy. Everybody was dancing, there was the most boisterous +turmoil. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked on with delight. The solid wooden floor resounded to the +knocking heels of the men, the air quivered with the clapping hands and the +zither music, there was a golden dust about the hanging lamps. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly the dance finished, Loerke and the students rushed out to bring in +drinks. There was an excited clamour of voices, a clinking of mug-lids, a great +crying of “<i>Prosit—Prosit!</i>” Loerke was everywhere at once, like +a gnome, suggesting drinks for the women, making an obscure, slightly risky joke +with the men, confusing and mystifying the waiter. +</p> + +<p> +He wanted very much to dance with Gudrun. From the first moment he had seen +her, he wanted to make a connection with her. Instinctively she felt this, and +she waited for him to come up. But a kind of sulkiness kept him away from her, +so she thought he disliked her. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you <i>schuhplätteln, gnädige Frau?</i>” said the large, fair +youth, Loerke’s companion. He was too soft, too humble for Gudrun’s +taste. But she wanted to dance, and the fair youth, who was called Leitner, was +handsome enough in his uneasy, slightly abject fashion, a humility that covered +a certain fear. She accepted him as a partner. +</p> + +<p> +The zithers sounded out again, the dance began. Gerald led them, laughing, +with one of the Professor’s daughters. Ursula danced with one of the +students, Birkin with the other daughter of the Professor, the Professor with +Frau Kramer, and the rest of the men danced together, with quite as much zest as +if they had had women partners. +</p> + +<p> +Because Gudrun had danced with the well-built, soft youth, his companion, +Loerke, was more pettish and exasperated than ever, and would not even notice +her existence in the room. This piqued her, but she made up to herself by +dancing with the Professor, who was strong as a mature, well-seasoned bull, and +as full of coarse energy. She could not bear him, critically, and yet she +enjoyed being rushed through the dance, and tossed up into the air, on his +coarse, powerful impetus. The Professor enjoyed it too, he eyed her with +strange, large blue eyes, full of galvanic fire. She hated him for the seasoned, +semi-paternal animalism with which he regarded her, but she admired his weight +of strength. +</p> + +<p> +The room was charged with excitement and strong, animal emotion. Loerke was +kept away from Gudrun, to whom he wanted to speak, as by a hedge of thorns, and +he felt a sardonic ruthless hatred for this young love-companion, Leitner, who +was his penniless dependent. He mocked the youth, with an acid ridicule, that +made Leitner red in the face and impotent with resentment. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald, who had now got the dance perfectly, was dancing again with the +younger of the Professor’s daughters, who was almost dying of virgin +excitement, because she thought Gerald so handsome, so superb. He had her in his +power, as if she were a palpitating bird, a fluttering, flushing, bewildered +creature. And it made him smile, as she shrank convulsively between his hands, +violently, when he must throw her into the air. At the end, she was so overcome +with prostrate love for him, that she could scarcely speak sensibly at all. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin was dancing with Ursula. There were odd little fires playing in his +eyes, he seemed to have turned into something wicked and flickering, mocking, +suggestive, quite impossible. Ursula was frightened of him, and fascinated. +Clear, before her eyes, as in a vision, she could see the sardonic, licentious +mockery of his eyes, he moved towards her with subtle, animal, indifferent +approach. The strangeness of his hands, which came quick and cunning, inevitably +to the vital place beneath her breasts, and, lifting with mocking, suggestive +impulse, carried her through the air as if without strength, through blackmagic, +made her swoon with fear. For a moment she revolted, it was horrible. She would +break the spell. But before the resolution had formed she had submitted again, +yielded to her fear. He knew all the time what he was doing, she could see it in +his smiling, concentrated eyes. It was his responsibility, she would leave it to +him. +</p> + +<p> +When they were alone in the darkness, she felt the strange, licentiousness +of him hovering upon her. She was troubled and repelled. Why should he turn like +this? +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” she asked in dread. +</p> + +<p> +But his face only glistened on her, unknown, horrible. And yet she was +fascinated. Her impulse was to repel him violently, break from this spell of +mocking brutishness. But she was too fascinated, she wanted to submit, she +wanted to know. What would he do to her? +</p> + +<p> +He was so attractive, and so repulsive at one. The sardonic suggestivity +that flickered over his face and looked from his narrowed eyes, made her want to +hide, to hide herself away from him and watch him from somewhere unseen. +</p> + +<p> +“Why are you like this?” she demanded again, rousing against him +with sudden force and animosity. +</p> + +<p> +The flickering fires in his eyes concentrated as he looked into her eyes. +Then the lids drooped with a faint motion of satiric contempt. Then they rose +again to the same remorseless suggestivity. And she gave way, he might do as he +would. His licentiousness was repulsively attractive. But he was +self-responsible, she would see what it was. +</p> + +<p> +They might do as they liked—this she realised as she went to sleep. +How could anything that gave one satisfaction be excluded? What was degrading? +Who cared? Degrading things were real, with a different reality. And he was so +unabashed and unrestrained. Wasn’t it rather horrible, a man who could be +so soulful and spiritual, now to be so—she balked at her own thoughts and +memories: then she added—so bestial? So bestial, they two!—so +degraded! She winced. But after all, why not? She exulted as well. Why not be +bestial, and go the whole round of experience? She exulted in it. She was +bestial. How good it was to be really shameful! There would be no shameful thing +she had not experienced. Yet she was unabashed, she was herself. Why not? She +was free, when she knew everything, and no dark shameful things were denied her. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun, who had been watching Gerald in the <i>Reunionsaal</i>, suddenly thought: +</p> + +<p> +“He should have all the women he can—it is his nature. It is +absurd to call him monogamous—he is naturally promiscuous. That is his +nature.” +</p> + +<p> +The thought came to her involuntarily. It shocked her somewhat. It was as if +she had seen some new <i>Mene! Mene!</i> upon the wall. Yet it was merely true. +A voice seemed to have spoken it to her so clearly, that for the moment she +believed in inspiration. +</p> + +<p> +“It is really true,” she said to herself again. +</p> + +<p> +She knew quite well she had believed it all along. She knew it implicitly. +But she must keep it dark—almost from herself. She must keep it completely +secret. It was knowledge for her alone, and scarcely even to be admitted to +herself. +</p> + +<p> +The deep resolve formed in her, to combat him. One of them must triumph over +the other. Which should it be? Her soul steeled itself with strength. Almost she +laughed within herself, at her confidence. It woke a certain keen, half +contemptuous pity, tenderness for him: she was so ruthless. +</p> + +<p> +Everybody retired early. The Professor and Loerke went into a small lounge +to drink. They both watched Gudrun go along the landing by the railing upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Ein schönes Frauenzimmer</i>,” said the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Ja!</i>” asserted Loerke, shortly. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald walked with his queer, long wolf-steps across the bedroom to the +window, stooped and looked out, then rose again, and turned to Gudrun, his eyes +sharp with an abstract smile. He seemed very tall to her, she saw the glisten of +his whitish eyebrows, that met between his brows. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you like it?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +He seemed to be laughing inside himself, quite unconsciously. She looked at +him. He was a phenomenon to her, not a human being: a sort of creature, greedy. +</p> + +<p> +“I like it very much,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Who do you like best downstairs?” he asked, standing tall and +glistening above her, with his glistening stiff hair erect. +</p> + +<p> +“Who do I like best?” she repeated, wanting to answer his +question, and finding it difficult to collect herself. “Why I don’t +know, I don’t know enough about them yet, to be able to say. Who do +<i>you</i> like best?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t care—I don’t like or dislike any of +them. It doesn’t matter about me. I wanted to know about you.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why?” she asked, going rather pale. The abstract, +unconscious smile in his eyes was intensified. +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted to know,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She turned aside, breaking the spell. In some strange way, she felt he was +getting power over her. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I can’t tell you already,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +She went to the mirror to take out the hairpins from her hair. She stood +before the mirror every night for some minutes, brushing her fine dark hair. It +was part of the inevitable ritual of her life. +</p> + +<p> +He followed her, and stood behind her. She was busy with bent head, taking +out the pins and shaking her warm hair loose. When she looked up, she saw him in +the glass standing behind her, watching unconsciously, not consciously seeing +her, and yet watching, with finepupilled eyes that <i>seemed</i> to smile, and which +were not really smiling. +</p> + +<p> +She started. It took all her courage for her to continue brushing her hair, +as usual, for her to pretend she was at her ease. She was far, far from being at +her ease with him. She beat her brains wildly for something to say to him. +</p> + +<p> +“What are your plans for tomorrow?” she asked nonchalantly, +whilst her heart was beating so furiously, her eyes were so bright with strange +nervousness, she felt he could not but observe. But she knew also that he was +completely blind, blind as a wolf looking at her. It was a strange battle +between her ordinary consciousness and his uncanny, black-art consciousness. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” he replied, “what would you like to +do?” +</p> + +<p> +He spoke emptily, his mind was sunk away. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” she said, with easy protestation, “I’m ready +for anything—anything will be fine for <i>me</i>, I’m sure.” +</p> + +<p> +And to herself she was saying: “God, why am I so nervous—why are +you so nervous, you fool. If he sees it I’m done for forever—you +<i>know</i> you’re done for forever, if he sees the absurd state you’re +in.” +</p> + +<p> +And she smiled to herself as if it were all child’s play. Meanwhile +her heart was plunging, she was almost fainting. She could see him, in the +mirror, as he stood there behind her, tall and over-arching—blond and +terribly frightening. She glanced at his reflection with furtive eyes, willing +to give anything to save him from knowing she could see him. He did not know she +could see his reflection. He was looking unconsciously, glisteningly down at her +head, from which the hair fell loose, as she brushed it with wild, nervous hand. +She held her head aside and brushed and brushed her hair madly. For her life, +she could not turn round and face him. For her life, <i>she could not</i>. And +the knowledge made her almost sink to the ground in a faint, helpless, spent. +She was aware of his frightening, impending figure standing close behind her, +she was aware of his hard, strong, unyielding chest, close upon her back. And +she felt she could not bear it any more, in a few minutes she would fall down at +his feet, grovelling at his feet, and letting him destroy her. +</p> + +<p> +The thought pricked up all her sharp intelligence and presence of mind. She +dared not turn round to him—and there he stood motionless, unbroken. +Summoning all her strength, she said, in a full, resonant, nonchalant voice, +that was forced out with all her remaining self-control: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, would you mind looking in that bag behind there and giving me +my—” +</p> + +<p> +Here her power fell inert. “My what—my what—?” she +screamed in silence to herself. +</p> + +<p> +But he had started round, surprised and startled that she should ask him to +look in her bag, which she always kept so <i>very</i> private to herself. +</p> + +<p> +She turned now, her face white, her dark eyes blazing with uncanny, +overwrought excitement. She saw him stooping to the bag, undoing the loosely +buckled strap, unattentive. +</p> + +<p> +“Your what?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, a little enamel box—yellow—with a design of a +cormorant plucking her breast—” +</p> + +<p> +She went towards him, stooping her beautiful, bare arm, and deftly turned +some of her things, disclosing the box, which was exquisitely painted. +</p> + +<p> +“That is it, see,” she said, taking it from under his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +And he was baffled now. He was left to fasten up the bag, whilst she swiftly +did up her hair for the night, and sat down to unfasten her shoes. She would not +turn her back to him any more. +</p> + +<p> +He was baffled, frustrated, but unconscious. She had the whip hand over him +now. She knew he had not realised her terrible panic. Her heart was beating +heavily still. Fool, fool that she was, to get into such a state! How she +thanked God for Gerald’s obtuse blindness. Thank God he could see nothing. +</p> + +<p> +She sat slowly unlacing her shoes, and he too commenced to undress. Thank +God that crisis was over. She felt almost fond of him now, almost in love with +him. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, Gerald,” she laughed, caressively, teasingly, “Ah, +what a fine game you played with the Professor’s +daughter—didn’t you now?” +</p> + +<p> +“What game?” he asked, looking round. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Isn’t</i> she in love with you—oh <i>dear</i>, isn’t +she in love with you!” said Gudrun, in her gayest, most attractive mood. +</p> + +<p> +“I shouldn’t think so,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Shouldn’t think so!” she teased. “Why the poor girl +is lying at this moment overwhelmed, dying with love for you. She thinks +you’re <i>wonderful</i>—oh marvellous, beyond what man has ever been. +<i>really</i>, isn’t it funny?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why funny, what is funny?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Why to see you working it on her,” she said, with a half +reproach that confused the male conceit in him. “Really Gerald, the poor +girl—!” +</p> + +<p> +“I did nothing to her,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it was too shameful, the way you simply swept her off her +feet.” +</p> + +<p> +“That was <i>Schuhplatteln</i>,” he replied, with a bright grin. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha—ha—ha!” laughed Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +Her mockery quivered through his muscles with curious re-echoes. When he +slept he seemed to crouch down in the bed, lapped up in his own strength, that +yet was hollow. +</p> + +<p> +And Gudrun slept strongly, a victorious sleep. Suddenly, she was almost +fiercely awake. The small timber room glowed with the dawn, that came upwards +from the low window. She could see down the valley when she lifted her head: the +snow with a pinkish, half-revealed magic, the fringe of pine-trees at the bottom +of the slope. And one tiny figure moved over the vaguely-illuminated space. +</p> + +<p> +She glanced at his watch; it was seven o’clock. He was still +completely asleep. And she was so hard awake, it was almost frightening—a +hard, metallic wakefulness. She lay looking at him. +</p> + +<p> +He slept in the subjection of his own health and defeat. She was overcome by +a sincere regard for him. Till now, she was afraid before him. She lay and +thought about him, what he was, what he represented in the world. A fine, +independent will, he had. She thought of the revolution he had worked in the +mines, in so short a time. She knew that, if he were confronted with any +problem, any hard actual difficulty, he would overcome it. If he laid hold of +any idea, he would carry it through. He had the faculty of making order out of +confusion. Only let him grip hold of a situation, and he would bring to pass an +inevitable conclusion. +</p> + +<p> +For a few moments she was borne away on the wild wings of ambition. Gerald, +with his force of will and his power for comprehending the actual world, should +be set to solve the problems of the day, the problem of industrialism in the +modern world. She knew he would, in the course of time, effect the changes he +desired, he could re-organise the industrial system. She knew he could do it. As +an instrument, in these things, he was marvellous, she had never seen any man +with his potentiality. He was unaware of it, but she knew. +</p> + +<p> +He only needed to be hitched on, he needed that his hand should be set to +the task, because he was so unconscious. And this she could do. She would marry +him, he would go into Parliament in the Conservative interest, he would clear up +the great muddle of labour and industry. He was so superbly fearless, masterful, +he knew that every problem could be worked out, in life as in geometry. And he +would care neither about himself nor about anything but the pure working out of +the problem. He was very pure, really. +</p> + +<p> +Her heart beat fast, she flew away on wings of elation, imagining a future. +He would be a Napoleon of peace, or a Bismarck—and she the woman behind +him. She had read Bismarck’s letters, and had been deeply moved by them. +And Gerald would be freer, more dauntless than Bismarck. +</p> + +<p> +But even as she lay in fictitious transport, bathed in the strange, false +sunshine of hope in life, something seemed to snap in her, and a terrible +cynicism began to gain upon her, blowing in like a wind. Everything turned to +irony with her: the last flavour of everything was ironical. When she felt her +pang of undeniable reality, this was when she knew the hard irony of hopes and +ideas. +</p> + +<p> +She lay and looked at him, as he slept. He was sheerly beautiful, he was a +perfect instrument. To her mind, he was a pure, inhuman, almost superhuman +instrument. His instrumentality appealed so strongly to her, she wished she were +God, to use him as a tool. +</p> + +<p> +And at the same instant, came the ironical question: “What for?” +She thought of the colliers’ wives, with their linoleum and their lace +curtains and their little girls in high-laced boots. She thought of the wives +and daughters of the pit-managers, their tennis-parties, and their terrible +struggles to be superior each to the other, in the social scale. There was +Shortlands with its meaningless distinction, the meaningless crowd of the +Criches. There was London, the House of Commons, the extant social world. My +God! +</p> + +<p> +Young as she was, Gudrun had touched the whole pulse of social England. She +had no ideas of rising in the world. She knew, with the perfect cynicism of +cruel youth, that to rise in the world meant to have one outside show instead of +another, the advance was like having a spurious half-crown instead of a spurious +penny. The whole coinage of valuation was spurious. Yet of course, her cynicism +knew well enough that, in a world where spurious coin was current, a bad +sovereign was better than a bad farthing. But rich and poor, she despised both +alike. +</p> + +<p> +Already she mocked at herself for her dreams. They could be fulfilled easily +enough. But she recognised too well, in her spirit, the mockery of her own +impulses. What did she care, that Gerald had created a richly-paying industry +out of an old worn-out concern? What did she care? The worn-out concern and the +rapid, splendidly organised industry, they were bad money. Yet of course, she +cared a great deal, outwardly—and outwardly was all that mattered, for +inwardly was a bad joke. +</p> + +<p> +Everything was intrinsically a piece of irony to her. She leaned over Gerald +and said in her heart, with compassion: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my dear, my dear, the game isn’t worth even you. You are a +fine thing really—why should you be used on such a poor show!” +</p> + +<p> +Her heart was breaking with pity and grief for him. And at the same moment, +a grimace came over her mouth, of mocking irony at her own unspoken tirade. Ah, +what a farce it was! She thought of Parnell and Katherine O’Shea. Parnell! +After all, who can take the nationalisation of Ireland seriously? Who can take +political Ireland really seriously, whatever it does? And who can take political +England seriously? Who can? Who can care a straw, really, how the old patched-up +Constitution is tinkered at any more? Who cares a button for our national ideas, +any more than for our national bowler hat? Aha, it is all old hat, it is all old +bowler hat! +</p> + +<p> +That’s all it is, Gerald, my young hero. At any rate we’ll spare +ourselves the nausea of stirring the old broth any more. You be beautiful, my +Gerald, and reckless. There <i>are</i> perfect moments. Wake up, Gerald, wake up, +convince me of the perfect moments. Oh, convince me, I need it. +</p> + +<p> +He opened his eyes, and looked at her. She greeted him with a mocking, +enigmatic smile in which was a poignant gaiety. Over his face went the +reflection of the smile, he smiled, too, purely unconsciously. +</p> + +<p> +That filled her with extraordinary delight, to see the smile cross his face, +reflected from her face. She remembered that was how a baby smiled. It filled +her with extraordinary radiant delight. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve done it,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” he asked, dazed. +</p> + +<p> +“Convinced me.” +</p> + +<p> +And she bent down, kissing him passionately, passionately, so that he was +bewildered. He did not ask her of what he had convinced her, though he meant to. +He was glad she was kissing him. She seemed to be feeling for his very heart to +touch the quick of him. And he wanted her to touch the quick of his being, he +wanted that most of all. +</p> + +<p> +Outside, somebody was singing, in a manly, reckless handsome voice: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Mach mir auf, mach mir auf, du Stolze,<br /> +Mach mir ein Feuer von Holze.<br /> +Vom Regen bin ich nass<br /> +Vom Regen bin ich nass—”<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun knew that that song would sound through her eternity, sung in a +manly, reckless, mocking voice. It marked one of her supreme moments, the +supreme pangs of her nervous gratification. There it was, fixed in eternity for +her. +</p> + +<p> +The day came fine and bluish. There was a light wind blowing among the +mountain tops, keen as a rapier where it touched, carrying with it a fine dust +of snow-powder. Gerald went out with the fine, blind face of a man who is in his +state of fulfilment. Gudrun and he were in perfect static unity this morning, +but unseeing and unwitting. They went out with a toboggan, leaving Ursula and +Birkin to follow. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was all scarlet and royal blue—a scarlet jersey and cap, and a +royal blue skirt and stockings. She went gaily over the white snow, with Gerald +beside her, in white and grey, pulling the little toboggan. They grew small in +the distance of snow, climbing the steep slope. +</p> + +<p> +For Gudrun herself, she seemed to pass altogether into the whiteness of the +snow, she became a pure, thoughtless crystal. When she reached the top of the +slope, in the wind, she looked round, and saw peak beyond peak of rock and snow, +bluish, transcendent in heaven. And it seemed to her like a garden, with the +peaks for pure flowers, and her heart gathering them. She had no separate +consciousness for Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +She held on to him as they went sheering down over the keen slope. She felt +as if her senses were being whetted on some fine grindstone, that was keen as +flame. The snow sprinted on either side, like sparks from a blade that is being +sharpened, the whiteness round about ran swifter, swifter, in pure flame the +white slope flew against her, and she fused like one molten, dancing globule, +rushed through a white intensity. Then there was a great swerve at the bottom, +when they swung as it were in a fall to earth, in the diminishing motion. +</p> + +<p> +They came to rest. But when she rose to her feet, she could not stand. She +gave a strange cry, turned and clung to him, sinking her face on his breast, +fainting in him. Utter oblivion came over her, as she lay for a few moments +abandoned against him. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” he was saying. “Was it too much for +you?” +</p> + +<p> +But she heard nothing. +</p> + +<p> +When she came to, she stood up and looked round, astonished. Her face was +white, her eyes brilliant and large. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” he repeated. “Did it upset you?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him with her brilliant eyes that seemed to have undergone some +transfiguration, and she laughed, with a terrible merriment. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she cried, with triumphant joy. “It was the complete +moment of my life.” +</p> + +<p> +And she looked at him with her dazzling, overweening laughter, like one +possessed. A fine blade seemed to enter his heart, but he did not care, or take +any notice. +</p> + +<p> +But they climbed up the slope again, and they flew down through the white +flame again, splendidly, splendidly. Gudrun was laughing and flashing, powdered +with snow-crystals, Gerald worked perfectly. He felt he could guide the toboggan +to a hair-breadth, almost he could make it pierce into the air and right into +the very heart of the sky. It seemed to him the flying sledge was but his +strength spread out, he had but to move his arms, the motion was his own. They +explored the great slopes, to find another slide. He felt there must be +something better than they had known. And he found what he desired, a perfect +long, fierce sweep, sheering past the foot of a rock and into the trees at the +base. It was dangerous, he knew. But then he knew also he would direct the +sledge between his fingers. +</p> + +<p> +The first days passed in an ecstasy of physical motion, sleighing, skiing, +skating, moving in an intensity of speed and white light that surpassed life +itself, and carried the souls of the human beings beyond into an inhuman +abstraction of velocity and weight and eternal, frozen snow. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald’s eyes became hard and strange, and as he went by on his skis +he was more like some powerful, fateful sigh than a man, his muscles elastic in +a perfect, soaring trajectory, his body projected in pure flight, mindless, +soulless, whirling along one perfect line of force. +</p> + +<p> +Luckily there came a day of snow, when they must all stay indoors: otherwise +Birkin said, they would all lose their faculties, and begin to utter themselves +in cries and shrieks, like some strange, unknown species of snow-creatures. +</p> + +<p> +It happened in the afternoon that Ursula sat in the <i>Reunionsaal</i> talking +to Loerke. The latter had seemed unhappy lately. He was lively and full of +mischievous humour, as usual. +</p> + +<p> +But Ursula had thought he was sulky about something. His partner, too, the +big, fair, good-looking youth, was ill at ease, going about as if he belonged to +nowhere, and was kept in some sort of subjection, against which he was +rebelling. +</p> + +<p> +Loerke had hardly talked to Gudrun. His associate, on the other hand, had +paid her constantly a soft, over-deferential attention. Gudrun wanted to talk to +Loerke. He was a sculptor, and she wanted to hear his view of his art. And his +figure attracted her. There was the look of a little wastrel about him, that +intrigued her, and an old man’s look, that interested her, and then, +beside this, an uncanny singleness, a quality of being by himself, not in +contact with anybody else, that marked out an artist to her. He was a chatterer, +a magpie, a maker of mischievous word-jokes, that were sometimes very clever, +but which often were not. And she could see in his brown, gnome’s eyes, +the black look of inorganic misery, which lay behind all his small buffoonery. +</p> + +<p> +His figure interested her—the figure of a boy, almost a street arab. +He made no attempt to conceal it. He always wore a simple loden suit, with knee +breeches. His legs were thin, and he made no attempt to disguise the fact: which +was of itself remarkable, in a German. And he never ingratiated himself +anywhere, not in the slightest, but kept to himself, for all his apparent +playfulness. +</p> + +<p> +Leitner, his companion, was a great sportsman, very handsome with his big +limbs and his blue eyes. Loerke would go toboganning or skating, in little +snatches, but he was indifferent. And his fine, thin nostrils, the nostrils of a +pure-bred street arab, would quiver with contempt at Leitner’s splothering +gymnastic displays. It was evident that the two men who had travelled and lived +together, sharing the same bedroom, had now reached the stage of loathing. +Leitner hated Loerke with an injured, writhing, impotent hatred, and Loerke +treated Leitner with a fine-quivering contempt and sarcasm. Soon the two would +have to go apart. +</p> + +<p> +Already they were rarely together. Leitner ran attaching himself to somebody +or other, always deferring, Loerke was a good deal alone. Out of doors he wore a +Westphalian cap, a close brown-velvet head with big brown velvet flaps down over +his ears, so that he looked like a lop-eared rabbit, or a troll. His face was +brown-red, with a dry, bright skin, that seemed to crinkle with his mobile +expressions. His eyes were arresting—brown, full, like a rabbit’s, +or like a troll’s, or like the eyes of a lost being, having a strange, +dumb, depraved look of knowledge, and a quick spark of uncanny fire. Whenever +Gudrun had tried to talk to him he had shied away unresponsive, looking at her +with his watchful dark eyes, but entering into no relation with her. He had made +her feel that her slow French and her slower German, were hateful to him. As for +his own inadequate English, he was much too awkward to try it at all. But he +understood a good deal of what was said, nevertheless. And Gudrun, piqued, left +him alone. +</p> + +<p> +This afternoon, however, she came into the lounge as he was talking to +Ursula. His fine, black hair somehow reminded her of a bat, thin as it was on +his full, sensitive-looking head, and worn away at the temples. He sat hunched +up, as if his spirit were bat-like. And Gudrun could see he was making some slow +confidence to Ursula, unwilling, a slow, grudging, scanty self-revelation. She +went and sat by her sister. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her, then looked away again, as if he took no notice of her. +But as a matter of fact, she interested him deeply. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it interesting, Prune,” said Ursula, turning to her +sister, “Herr Loerke is doing a great frieze for a factory in Cologne, for +the outside, the street.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him, at his thin, brown, nervous hands, that were prehensile, +and somehow like talons, like “griffes,” inhuman. +</p> + +<p> +“What <i>in?</i>” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Aus was?</i>” repeated Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Granit</i>,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +It had become immediately a laconic series of question and answer between +fellow craftsmen. +</p> + +<p> +“What is the relief?” asked Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Alto relievo.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“And at what height?” +</p> + +<p> +It was very interesting to Gudrun to think of his making the great granite +frieze for a great granite factory in Cologne. She got from him some notion of +the design. It was a representation of a fair, with peasants and artisans in an +orgy of enjoyment, drunk and absurd in their modern dress, whirling ridiculously +in roundabouts, gaping at shows, kissing and staggering and rolling in knots, +swinging in swing-boats, and firing down shooting galleries, a frenzy of chaotic +motion. +</p> + +<p> +There was a swift discussion of technicalities. Gudrun was very much +impressed. +</p> + +<p> +“But how wonderful, to have such a factory!” cried Ursula. +“Is the whole building fine?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” he replied. “The frieze is part of the whole +architecture. Yes, it is a colossal thing.” +</p> + +<p> +Then he seemed to stiffen, shrugged his shoulders, and went on: +</p> + +<p> +“Sculpture and architecture must go together. The day for irrelevant +statues, as for wall pictures, is over. As a matter of fact sculpture is always +part of an architectural conception. And since churches are all museum stuff, +since industry is our business, now, then let us make our places of industry our +art—our factory-area our Parthenon, <i>ecco!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula pondered. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose,” she said, “there is no <i>need</i> for our great +works to be so hideous.” +</p> + +<p> +Instantly he broke into motion. +</p> + +<p> +“There you are!” he cried, “there you are! There is not +only <i>no need</i> for our places of work to be ugly, but their ugliness ruins the +work, in the end. Men will not go on submitting to such intolerable ugliness. In +the end it will hurt too much, and they will wither because of it. And this will +wither the <i>work</i> as well. They will think the work itself is ugly: the machines, +the very act of labour. Whereas the machinery and the acts of labour are +extremely, maddeningly beautiful. But this will be the end of our civilisation, +when people will not work because work has become so intolerable to their +senses, it nauseates them too much, they would rather starve. <i>Then</i> we shall +see the hammer used only for smashing, then we shall see it. Yet here we +are—we have the opportunity to make beautiful factories, beautiful +machine-houses—we have the opportunity—” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun could only partly understand. She could have cried with vexation. +</p> + +<p> +“What does he say?” she asked Ursula. And Ursula translated, +stammering and brief. Loerke watched Gudrun’s face, to see her judgment. +</p> + +<p> +“And do you think then,” said Gudrun, “that art should +serve industry?” +</p> + +<p> +“Art should <i>interpret</i> industry, as art once interpreted +religion,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“But does your fair interpret industry?” she asked him. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly. What is man doing, when he is at a fair like this? He is +fulfilling the counterpart of labour—the machine works him, instead of he +the machine. He enjoys the mechanical motion, in his own body.” +</p> + +<p> +“But is there nothing but work—mechanical work?” said +Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing but work!” he repeated, leaning forward, his eyes two +darknesses, with needle-points of light. “No, it is nothing but this, +serving a machine, or enjoying the motion of a machine—motion, that is +all. You have never worked for hunger, or you would know what god governs +us.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun quivered and flushed. For some reason she was almost in tears. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I have not worked for hunger,” she replied, “but I +have worked!” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Travaillé—lavorato?</i>” he asked. “<i>E che +lavoro—che lavoro? Quel travail est-ce que vous avez fait?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +He broke into a mixture of Italian and French, instinctively using a foreign +language when he spoke to her. +</p> + +<p> +“You have never worked as the world works,” he said to her, with +sarcasm. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. “I have. And I do—I work now for my +daily bread.” +</p> + +<p> +He paused, looked at her steadily, then dropped the subject entirely. She +seemed to him to be trifling. +</p> + +<p> +“But have <i>you</i> ever worked as the world works?” Ursula asked him. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her untrustful. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he replied, with a surly bark. “I have known what +it was to lie in bed for three days, because I had nothing to eat.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was looking at him with large, grave eyes, that seemed to draw the +confession from him as the marrow from his bones. All his nature held him back +from confessing. And yet her large, grave eyes upon him seemed to open some +valve in his veins, and involuntarily he was telling. +</p> + +<p> +“My father was a man who did not like work, and we had no mother. We +lived in Austria, Polish Austria. How did we live? Ha!—somehow! Mostly in +a room with three other families—one set in each corner—and the W.C. +in the middle of the room—a pan with a plank on it—ha! I had two +brothers and a sister—and there might be a woman with my father. He was a +free being, in his way—would fight with any man in the town—a +garrison town—and was a little man too. But he wouldn’t work for +anybody—set his heart against it, and wouldn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“And how did you live then?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her—then, suddenly, at Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you understand?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Enough,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +Their eyes met for a moment. Then he looked away. He would say no more. +</p> + +<p> +“And how did you become a sculptor?” asked Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“How did I become a sculptor—” he paused. +“<i>Dunque</i>—” he resumed, in a changed manner, and beginning +to speak French—“I became old enough—I used to steal from the +market-place. Later I went to work—imprinted the stamp on clay bottles, +before they were baked. It was an earthenware-bottle factory. There I began +making models. One day, I had had enough. I lay in the sun and did not go to +work. Then I walked to Munich—then I walked to Italy—begging, +begging everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Italians were very good to me—they were good and honourable +to me. From Bozen to Rome, almost every night I had a meal and a bed, perhaps of +straw, with some peasant. I love the Italian people, with all my heart. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Dunque, adesso—maintenant</i>—I earn a thousand pounds +in a year, or I earn two thousand—” +</p> + +<p> +He looked down at the ground, his voice tailing off into silence. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked at his fine, thin, shiny skin, reddish-brown from the sun, +drawn tight over his full temples; and at his thin hair—and at the thick, +coarse, brush-like moustache, cut short about his mobile, rather shapeless +mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“How old are you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +He looked up at her with his full, elfin eyes startled. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Wie alt?</i>” he repeated. And he hesitated. It was evidently one +of his reticencies. +</p> + +<p> +“How old are <i>you?</i>” he replied, without answering. +</p> + +<p> +“I am twenty-six,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Twenty-six,” he repeated, looking into her eyes. He paused. +Then he said: +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Und Ihr Herr Gemahl, wie alt ist er?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Who?” asked Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Your husband,” said Ursula, with a certain irony. +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t got a husband,” said Gudrun in English. In +German she answered, +</p> + +<p> +“He is thirty-one.” +</p> + +<p> +But Loerke was watching closely, with his uncanny, full, suspicious eyes. +Something in Gudrun seemed to accord with him. He was really like one of the +“little people’ who have no soul, who has found his mate in a human +being. But he suffered in his discovery. She too was fascinated by him, +fascinated, as if some strange creature, a rabbit or a bat, or a brown seal, had +begun to talk to her. But also, she knew what he was unconscious of, his +tremendous power of understanding, of apprehending her living motion. He did not +know his own power. He did not know how, with his full, submerged, watchful +eyes, he could look into her and see her, what she was, see her secrets. He +would only want her to be herself—he knew her verily, with a subconscious, +sinister knowledge, devoid of illusions and hopes. +</p> + +<p> +To Gudrun, there was in Loerke the rock-bottom of all life. Everybody else +had their illusion, must have their illusion, their before and after. But he, +with a perfect stoicism, did without any before and after, dispensed with all +illusion. He did not deceive himself in the last issue. In the last issue he +cared about nothing, he was troubled about nothing, he made not the slightest +attempt to be at one with anything. He existed a pure, unconnected will, stoical +and momentaneous. There was only his work. +</p> + +<p> +It was curious too, how his poverty, the degradation of his earlier life, +attracted her. There was something insipid and tasteless to her, in the idea of +a gentleman, a man who had gone the usual course through school and university. +A certain violent sympathy, however, came up in her for this mud-child. He +seemed to be the very stuff of the underworld of life. There was no going beyond +him. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula too was attracted by Loerke. In both sisters he commanded a certain +homage. But there were moments when to Ursula he seemed indescribably inferior, +false, a vulgarism. +</p> + +<p> +Both Birkin and Gerald disliked him, Gerald ignoring him with some contempt, +Birkin exasperated. +</p> + +<p> +“What do the women find so impressive in that little brat?” +Gerald asked. +</p> + +<p> +“God alone knows,” replied Birkin, “unless it’s some +sort of appeal he makes to them, which flatters them and has such a power over +them.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked up in surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Does</i> he make an appeal to them?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” replied Birkin. “He is the perfectly subjected +being, existing almost like a criminal. And the women rush towards that, like a +current of air towards a vacuum.” +</p> + +<p> +“Funny they should rush to that,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Makes one mad, too,” said Birkin. “But he has the +fascination of pity and repulsion for them, a little obscene monster of the +darkness that he is.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald stood still, suspended in thought. +</p> + +<p> +“What <i>do</i> women want, at the bottom?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin shrugged his shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“God knows,” he said. “Some satisfaction in basic +repulsion, it seems to me. They seem to creep down some ghastly tunnel of +darkness, and will never be satisfied till they’ve come to the end.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked out into the mist of fine snow that was blowing by. Everywhere +was blind today, horribly blind. +</p> + +<p> +“And what is the end?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve not got there yet, so I don’t know. Ask Loerke, +he’s pretty near. He is a good many stages further than either you or I +can go.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but stages further in what?” cried Gerald, irritated. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin sighed, and gathered his brows into a knot of anger. +</p> + +<p> +“Stages further in social hatred,” he said. “He lives like +a rat, in the river of corruption, just where it falls over into the bottomless +pit. He’s further on than we are. He hates the ideal more acutely. He +<i>hates</i> the ideal utterly, yet it still dominates him. I expect he is a +Jew—or part Jewish.” +</p> + +<p> +“Probably,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“He is a gnawing little negation, gnawing at the roots of life.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why does anybody care about him?” cried Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Because they hate the ideal also, in their souls. They want to +explore the sewers, and he’s the wizard rat that swims ahead.” +</p> + +<p> +Still Gerald stood and stared at the blind haze of snow outside. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t understand your terms, really,” he said, in a +flat, doomed voice. “But it sounds a rum sort of desire.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose we want the same,” said Birkin. “Only we want +to take a quick jump downwards, in a sort of ecstasy—and he ebbs with the +stream, the sewer stream.” +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Gudrun and Ursula waited for the next opportunity to talk to +Loerke. It was no use beginning when the men were there. Then they could get +into no touch with the isolated little sculptor. He had to be alone with them. +And he preferred Ursula to be there, as a sort of transmitter to Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you do nothing but architectural sculpture?” Gudrun asked +him one evening. +</p> + +<p> +“Not now,” he replied. “I have done all sorts—except +portraits—I never did portraits. But other things—” +</p> + +<p> +“What kind of things?” asked Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +He paused a moment, then rose, and went out of the room. He returned almost +immediately with a little roll of paper, which he handed to her. She unrolled +it. It was a photogravure reproduction of a statuette, signed F. Loerke. +</p> + +<p> +“That is quite an early thing—<i>not</i> mechanical,” he said, +“more popular.” +</p> + +<p> +The statuette was of a naked girl, small, finely made, sitting on a great +naked horse. The girl was young and tender, a mere bud. She was sitting sideways +on the horse, her face in her hands, as if in shame and grief, in a little +abandon. Her hair, which was short and must be flaxen, fell forward, divided, +half covering her hands. +</p> + +<p> +Her limbs were young and tender. Her legs, scarcely formed yet, the legs of +a maiden just passing towards cruel womanhood, dangled childishly over the side +of the powerful horse, pathetically, the small feet folded one over the other, +as if to hide. But there was no hiding. There she was exposed naked on the naked +flank of the horse. +</p> + +<p> +The horse stood stock still, stretched in a kind of start. It was a massive, +magnificent stallion, rigid with pent-up power. Its neck was arched and +terrible, like a sickle, its flanks were pressed back, rigid with power. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun went pale, and a darkness came over her eyes, like shame, she looked +up with a certain supplication, almost slave-like. He glanced at her, and jerked +his head a little. +</p> + +<p> +“How big is it?” she asked, in a toneless voice, persisting in +appearing casual and unaffected. +</p> + +<p> +“How big?” he replied, glancing again at her. “Without +pedestal—so high—” he measured with his hand—“with +pedestal, so—” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her steadily. There was a little brusque, turgid contempt for +her in his swift gesture, and she seemed to cringe a little. +</p> + +<p> +“And what is it done in?” she asked, throwing back her head and +looking at him with affected coldness. +</p> + +<p> +He still gazed at her steadily, and his dominance was not shaken. +</p> + +<p> +“Bronze—green bronze.” +</p> + +<p> +“Green bronze!” repeated Gudrun, coldly accepting his challenge. +She was thinking of the slender, immature, tender limbs of the girl, smooth and +cold in green bronze. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, beautiful,” she murmured, looking up at him with a certain +dark homage. +</p> + +<p> +He closed his eyes and looked aside, triumphant. +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” said Ursula, “did you make the horse so stiff? It +is as stiff as a block.” +</p> + +<p> +“Stiff?” he repeated, in arms at once. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. <i>Look</i> how stock and stupid and brutal it is. Horses are +sensitive, quite delicate and sensitive, really.” +</p> + +<p> +He raised his shoulders, spread his hands in a shrug of slow indifference, +as much as to inform her she was an amateur and an impertinent nobody. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Wissen Sie</i>,” he said, with an insulting patience and +condescension in his voice, “that horse is a certain <i>form</i>, part of a whole +form. It is part of a work of art, a piece of form. It is not a picture of a +friendly horse to which you give a lump of sugar, do you see—it is part of +a work of art, it has no relation to anything outside that work of art.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula, angry at being treated quite so insultingly <i>de haut en bas</i>, from +the height of esoteric art to the depth of general exoteric amateurism, replied, +hotly, flushing and lifting her face. +</p> + +<p> +“But it <i>is</i> a picture of a horse, nevertheless.” +</p> + +<p> +He lifted his shoulders in another shrug. +</p> + +<p> +“As you like—it is not a picture of a cow, certainly.” +</p> + +<p> +Here Gudrun broke in, flushed and brilliant, anxious to avoid any more of +this, any more of Ursula’s foolish persistence in giving herself away. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean by ‘it is a picture of a horse?’” she cried at +her sister. “What do you mean by a horse? You mean an idea you have in +<i>your</i> head, and which you want to see represented. There is another idea +altogether, quite another idea. Call it a horse if you like, or say it is not a +horse. I have just as much right to say that <i>your</i> horse isn’t a horse, +that it is a falsity of your own make-up.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula wavered, baffled. Then her words came. +</p> + +<p> +“But why does he have this idea of a horse?” she said. “I +know it is his idea. I know it is a picture of himself, really—” +</p> + +<p> +Loerke snorted with rage. +</p> + +<p> +“A picture of myself!” he repeated, in derision. “<i>Wissen +sie, gnädige Frau</i>, that is a <i>Kunstwerk</i>, a work of art. It is a work of +art, it is a picture of nothing, of absolutely nothing. It has nothing to do with +anything but itself, it has no relation with the everyday world of this and +other, there is no connection between them, absolutely none, they are two +different and distinct planes of existence, and to translate one into the other +is worse than foolish, it is a darkening of all counsel, a making confusion +everywhere. Do you see, you <i>must not</i> confuse the relative work of action, +with the absolute world of art. That you <i>must not do</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is quite true,” cried Gudrun, let loose in a sort of +rhapsody. “The two things are quite and permanently apart, they have +nothing to do with one another. <i>I</i> and my art, they have <i>nothing</i> +to do with each other. My art stands in another world, I am in this world.” +</p> + +<p> +Her face was flushed and transfigured. Loerke who was sitting with his head +ducked, like some creature at bay, looked up at her, swiftly, almost furtively, +and murmured, +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Ja—so ist es, so ist es.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was silent after this outburst. She was furious. She wanted to poke a +hole into them both. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t a word of it true, of all this harangue you have made +me,” she replied flatly. “The horse is a picture of your own stock, +stupid brutality, and the girl was a girl you loved and tortured and then +ignored.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked up at her with a small smile of contempt in his eyes. He would not +trouble to answer this last charge. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun too was silent in exasperated contempt. Ursula <i>was</i> such an +insufferable outsider, rushing in where angels would fear to tread. But +then—fools must be suffered, if not gladly. +</p> + +<p> +But Ursula was persistent too. +</p> + +<p> +“As for your world of art and your world of reality,” she +replied, “you have to separate the two, because you can’t bear to +know what you are. You can’t bear to realise what a stock, stiff, +hide-bound brutality you <i>are</i> really, so you say ‘it’s the +world of art.’ The world of art is only the truth about the real world, +that’s all—but you are too far gone to see it.” +</p> + +<p> +She was white and trembling, intent. Gudrun and Loerke sat in stiff dislike +of her. Gerald too, who had come up in the beginning of the speech, stood +looking at her in complete disapproval and opposition. He felt she was +undignified, she put a sort of vulgarity over the esotericism which gave man his +last distinction. He joined his forces with the other two. They all three wanted +her to go away. But she sat on in silence, her soul weeping, throbbing +violently, her fingers twisting her handkerchief. +</p> + +<p> +The others maintained a dead silence, letting the display of Ursula’s +obtrusiveness pass by. Then Gudrun asked, in a voice that was quite cool and +casual, as if resuming a casual conversation: +</p> + +<p> +“Was the girl a model?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Nein, sie war kein Modell. Sie war eine kleine Malschülerin.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“An art-student!” replied Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +And how the situation revealed itself to her! She saw the girl art-student, +unformed and of pernicious recklessness, too young, her straight flaxen hair cut +short, hanging just into her neck, curving inwards slightly, because it was +rather thick; and Loerke, the well-known master-sculptor, and the girl, probably +well-brought-up, and of good family, thinking herself so great to be his +mistress. Oh how well she knew the common callousness of it all. Dresden, Paris, +or London, what did it matter? She knew it. +</p> + +<p> +“Where is she now?” Ursula asked. +</p> + +<p> +Loerke raised his shoulders, to convey his complete ignorance and +indifference. +</p> + +<p> +“That is already six years ago,” he said; “she will be +twenty-three years old, no more good.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald had picked up the picture and was looking at it. It attracted him +also. He saw on the pedestal, that the piece was called “Lady +Godiva.” +</p> + +<p> +“But this isn’t Lady Godiva,” he said, smiling +good-humouredly. “She was the middle-aged wife of some Earl or other, who +covered herself with her long hair.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>À la</i> Maud Allan,” said Gudrun with a mocking grimace. +</p> + +<p> +“Why Maud Allan?” he replied. “Isn’t it so? I always +thought the legend was that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Gerald dear, I’m quite <i>sure</i> you’ve got the legend +perfectly.” +</p> + +<p> +She was laughing at him, with a little, mock-caressive contempt. +</p> + +<p> +“To be sure, I’d rather see the woman than the hair,” he +laughed in return. +</p> + +<p> +“Wouldn’t you just!” mocked Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula rose and went away, leaving the three together. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun took the picture again from Gerald, and sat looking at it closely. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” she said, turning to tease Loerke now, “you +<i>understood</i> your little <i>Malschülerin</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +He raised his eyebrows and his shoulders in a complacent shrug. +</p> + +<p> +“The little girl?” asked Gerald, pointing to the figure. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was sitting with the picture in her lap. She looked up at Gerald, +full into his eyes, so that he seemed to be blinded. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Didn’t</i> he understand her!” she said to Gerald, in a +slightly mocking, humorous playfulness. “You’ve only to look at the +feet—<i>aren’t</i> they darling, so pretty and tender—oh, +they’re really wonderful, they are really—” +</p> + +<p> +She lifted her eyes slowly, with a hot, flaming look into Loerke’s +eyes. His soul was filled with her burning recognition, he seemed to grow more +uppish and lordly. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked at the small, sculptured feet. They were turned together, half +covering each other in pathetic shyness and fear. He looked at them a long time, +fascinated. Then, in some pain, he put the picture away from him. He felt full +of barrenness. +</p> + +<p> +“What was her name?” Gudrun asked Loerke. +</p> + +<p> +“Annette von Weck,” Loerke replied reminiscent. “<i>Ja, sie +war hübsch.</i> She was pretty—but she was tiresome. She was a +nuisance,—not for a minute would she keep still—not until I’d +slapped her hard and made her cry—then she’d sit for five +minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +He was thinking over the work, his work, the all important to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you really slap her?” asked Gudrun, coolly. +</p> + +<p> +He glanced back at her, reading her challenge. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I did,” he said, nonchalant, “harder than I have +ever beat anything in my life. I had to, I had to. It was the only way I got the +work done.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun watched him with large, dark-filled eyes, for some moments. She +seemed to be considering his very soul. Then she looked down, in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you have such a young Godiva then?” asked Gerald. +“She is so small, besides, on the horse—not big enough for +it—such a child.” +</p> + +<p> +A queer spasm went over Loerke’s face. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. “I don’t like them any bigger, any +older. Then they are beautiful, at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen—after +that, they are no use to me.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a moment’s pause. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +Loerke shrugged his shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t find them interesting—or beautiful—they are +no good to me, for my work.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean to say a woman isn’t beautiful after she is +twenty?” asked Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“For me, no. Before twenty, she is small and fresh and tender and +slight. After that—let her be what she likes, she has nothing for me. The +Venus of Milo is a bourgeoise—so are they all.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you don’t care for women at all after twenty?” asked +Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“They are no good to me, they are of no use in my art,” Loerke +repeated impatiently. “I don’t find them beautiful.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are an epicure,” said Gerald, with a slight sarcastic +laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“And what about men?” asked Gudrun suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, they are good at all ages,” replied Loerke. “A man +should be big and powerful—whether he is old or young is of no account, so +he has the size, something of massiveness and—and stupid form.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula went out alone into the world of pure, new snow. But the dazzling +whiteness seemed to beat upon her till it hurt her, she felt the cold was slowly +strangling her soul. Her head felt dazed and numb. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly she wanted to go away. It occurred to her, like a miracle, that she +might go away into another world. She had felt so doomed up here in the eternal +snow, as if there were no beyond. +</p> + +<p> +Now suddenly, as by a miracle she remembered that away beyond, below her, +lay the dark fruitful earth, that towards the south there were stretches of land +dark with orange trees and cypress, grey with olives, that ilex trees lifted +wonderful plumy tufts in shadow against a blue sky. Miracle of +miracles!—this utterly silent, frozen world of the mountain-tops was not +universal! One might leave it and have done with it. One might go away. +</p> + +<p> +She wanted to realise the miracle at once. She wanted at this instant to +have done with the snow-world, the terrible, static ice-built mountain tops. She +wanted to see the dark earth, to smell its earthy fecundity, to see the patient +wintry vegetation, to feel the sunshine touch a response in the buds. +</p> + +<p> +She went back gladly to the house, full of hope. Birkin was reading, lying +in bed. +</p> + +<p> +“Rupert,” she said, bursting in on him. “I want to go +away.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked up at her slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you?” he replied mildly. +</p> + +<p> +She sat by him und put her arms round his neck. It surprised her that he was +so little surprised. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t <i>you?</i>” she asked troubled. +</p> + +<p> +“I hadn’t thought about it,” he said. “But I’m +sure I do.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat up, suddenly erect. +</p> + +<p> +“I hate it,” she said. “I hate the snow, and the +unnaturalness of it, the unnatural light it throws on everybody, the ghastly +glamour, the unnatural feelings it makes everybody have.” +</p> + +<p> +He lay still and laughed, meditating. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “we can go away—we can go tomorrow. +We’ll go tomorrow to Verona, and find Romeo and Juliet, and sit in the +amphitheatre—shall we?” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly she hid her face against his shoulder with perplexity and shyness. +He lay so untrammelled. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said softly, filled with relief. She felt her soul +had new wings, now he was so uncaring. “I shall love to be Romeo and +Juliet,” she said. “My love!” +</p> + +<p> +“Though a fearfully cold wind blows in Verona,” he said, +“from out of the Alps. We shall have the smell of the snow in our +noses.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat up and looked at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you glad to go?” she asked, troubled. +</p> + +<p> +His eyes were inscrutable and laughing. She hid her face against his neck, +clinging close to him, pleading: +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t laugh at me—don’t laugh at me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why how’s that?” he laughed, putting his arms round her. +</p> + +<p> +“Because I don’t want to be laughed at,” she whispered. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed more, as he kissed her delicate, finely perfumed hair. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you love me?” she whispered, in wild seriousness. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he answered, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly she lifted her mouth to be kissed. Her lips were taut and quivering +and strenuous, his were soft, deep and delicate. He waited a few moments in the +kiss. Then a shade of sadness went over his soul. +</p> + +<p> +“Your mouth is so hard,” he said, in faint reproach. +</p> + +<p> +“And yours is so soft and nice,” she said gladly. +</p> + +<p> +“But why do you always grip your lips?” he asked, regretful. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind,” she said swiftly. “It is my way.” +</p> + +<p> +She knew he loved her; she was sure of him. Yet she could not let go a +certain hold over herself, she could not bear him to question her. She gave +herself up in delight to being loved by him. She knew that, in spite of his joy +when she abandoned herself, he was a little bit saddened too. She could give +herself up to his activity. But she could not be herself, she <i>dared</i> not come +forth quite nakedly to his nakedness, abandoning all adjustment, lapsing in pure +faith with him. She abandoned herself to <i>him</i>, or she took hold of him and +gathered her joy of him. And she enjoyed him fully. But they were never <i>quite</i> +together, at the same moment, one was always a little left out. Nevertheless she +was glad in hope, glorious and free, full of life and liberty. And he was still +and soft and patient, for the time. +</p> + +<p> +They made their preparations to leave the next day. First they went to +Gudrun’s room, where she and Gerald were just dressed ready for the +evening indoors. +</p> + +<p> +“Prune,” said Ursula, “I think we shall go away tomorrow. +I can’t stand the snow any more. It hurts my skin and my soul.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does it really hurt your soul, Ursula?” asked Gudrun, in some +surprise. “I can believe quite it hurts your skin—it is <i>terrible</i>. +But I thought it was <i>admirable</i> for the soul.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not for mine. It just injures it,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“Really!” cried Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence in the room. And Ursula and Birkin could feel that +Gudrun and Gerald were relieved by their going. +</p> + +<p> +“You will go south?” said Gerald, a little ring of uneasiness in +his voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Birkin, turning away. There was a queer, indefinable +hostility between the two men, lately. Birkin was on the whole dim and +indifferent, drifting along in a dim, easy flow, unnoticing and patient, since +he came abroad, whilst Gerald on the other hand, was intense and gripped into +white light, agonistes. The two men revoked one another. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald and Gudrun were very kind to the two who were departing, solicitous +for their welfare as if they were two children. Gudrun came to Ursula’s +bedroom with three pairs of the coloured stockings for which she was notorious, +and she threw them on the bed. But these were thick silk stockings, vermilion, +cornflower blue, and grey, bought in Paris. The grey ones were knitted, seamless +and heavy. Ursula was in raptures. She knew Gudrun must be feeling <i>very</i> +loving, to give away such treasures. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t take them from you, Prune,” she cried. “I +can’t possibly deprive you of them—the jewels.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Aren’t</i> they jewels!” cried Gudrun, eyeing her gifts with +an envious eye. “<i>Aren’t</i> they real lambs!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you <i>must</i> keep them,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t <i>want</i> them, I’ve got three more pairs. I +<i>want</i> you to keep them—I want you to have them. They’re +yours, there—” +</p> + +<p> +And with trembling, excited hands she put the coveted stockings under +Ursula’s pillow. +</p> + +<p> +“One gets the greatest joy of all out of really lovely +stockings,” said Ursula. +</p> + +<p> +“One does,” replied Gudrun; “the greatest joy of +all.” +</p> + +<p> +And she sat down in the chair. It was evident she had come for a last talk. +Ursula, not knowing what she wanted, waited in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you <i>feel</i>, Ursula,” Gudrun began, rather sceptically, +that you are going-away-for-ever, never-to-return, sort of thing?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, we shall come back,” said Ursula. “It isn’t a +question of train-journeys.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I know. But spiritually, so to speak, you are going away from us +all?” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula quivered. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know a bit what is going to happen,” she said. +“I only know we are going somewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun waited. +</p> + +<p> +“And you are glad?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula meditated for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“I believe I am <i>very</i> glad,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +But Gudrun read the unconscious brightness on her sister’s face, +rather than the uncertain tones of her speech. +</p> + +<p> +“But don’t you think you’ll <i>want</i> the old connection +with the world—father and the rest of us, and all that it means, England +and the world of thought—don’t you think you’ll <i>need</i> +that, really to make a world?” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula was silent, trying to imagine. +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” she said at length, involuntarily, “that Rupert +is right—one wants a new space to be in, and one falls away from the +old.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun watched her sister with impassive face and steady eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“One wants a new space to be in, I quite agree,” she said. +“But <i>I</i> think that a new world is a development from this world, and +that to isolate oneself with one other person, isn’t to find a new world at +all, but only to secure oneself in one’s illusions.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula looked out of the window. In her soul she began to wrestle, and she +was frightened. She was always frightened of words, because she knew that mere +word-force could always make her believe what she did not believe. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps,” she said, full of mistrust, of herself and everybody. +“But,” she added, “I do think that one can’t have +anything new whilst one cares for the old—do you know what I +mean?—even fighting the old is belonging to it. I know, one is tempted to +stop with the world, just to fight it. But then it isn’t worth it.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun considered herself. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. “In a way, one is of the world if one +lives in it. But isn’t it really an illusion to think you can get out of +it? After all, a cottage in the Abruzzi, or wherever it may be, isn’t a +new world. No, the only thing to do with the world, is to see it through.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula looked away. She was so frightened of argument. +</p> + +<p> +“But there <i>can</i> be something else, can’t there?” she said. +“One can see it through in one’s soul, long enough before it sees +itself through in actuality. And then, when one has seen one’s soul, one +is something else.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Can</i> one see it through in one’s soul?” asked Gudrun. +“If you mean that you can see to the end of what will happen, I +don’t agree. I really can’t agree. And anyhow, you can’t +suddenly fly off on to a new planet, because you think you can see to the end of +this.” +</p> + +<p> +Ursula suddenly straightened herself. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. “Yes—one knows. One has no more +connections here. One has a sort of other self, that belongs to a new planet, +not to this. You’ve got to hop off.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun reflected for a few moments. Then a smile of ridicule, almost of +contempt, came over her face. +</p> + +<p> +“And what will happen when you find yourself in space?” she +cried in derision. “After all, the great ideas of the world are the same +there. You above everybody can’t get away from the fact that love, for +instance, is the supreme thing, in space as well as on earth.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Ursula, “it isn’t. Love is too human and +little. I believe in something inhuman, of which love is only a little part. I +believe what we must fulfil comes out of the unknown to us, and it is something +infinitely more than love. It isn’t so merely <i>human</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked at Ursula with steady, balancing eyes. She admired and +despised her sister so much, both! Then, suddenly she averted her face, saying +coldly, uglily: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ve got no further than love, yet.” +</p> + +<p> +Over Ursula’s mind flashed the thought: “Because you never <i>have</i> +loved, you can’t get beyond it.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun rose, came over to Ursula and put her arm round her neck. +</p> + +<p> +“Go and find your new world, dear,” she said, her voice clanging +with false benignity. “After all, the happiest voyage is the quest of +Rupert’s Blessed Isles.” +</p> + +<p> +Her arm rested round Ursula’s neck, her fingers on Ursula’s +cheek for a few moments. Ursula was supremely uncomfortable meanwhile. There was +an insult in Gudrun’s protective patronage that was really too hurting. +Feeling her sister’s resistance, Gudrun drew awkwardly away, turned over +the pillow, and disclosed the stockings again. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha—ha!” she laughed, rather hollowly. “How we do +talk indeed—new worlds and old—!” +</p> + +<p> +And they passed to the familiar worldly subjects. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald and Birkin had walked on ahead, waiting for the sledge to overtake +them, conveying the departing guests. +</p> + +<p> +“How much longer will you stay here?” asked Birkin, glancing up +at Gerald’s very red, almost blank face. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I can’t say,” Gerald replied. “Till we get +tired of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not afraid of the snow melting first?” asked +Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Does it melt?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Things are all right with you then?” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald screwed up his eyes a little. +</p> + +<p> +“All right?” he said. “I never know what those common +words mean. All right and all wrong, don’t they become synonymous, +somewhere?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I suppose. How about going back?” asked Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t know. We may never get back. I don’t look +before and after,” said Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Nor</i> pine for what is not,” said Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald looked into the distance, with the small-pupilled, abstract eyes of a +hawk. +</p> + +<p> +“No. There’s something final about this. And Gudrun seems like +the end, to me. I don’t know—but she seems so soft, her skin like +silk, her arms heavy and soft. And it withers my consciousness, somehow, it +burns the pith of my mind.” He went on a few paces, staring ahead, his +eyes fixed, looking like a mask used in ghastly religions of the barbarians. +“It blasts your soul’s eye,” he said, “and leaves you +sightless. Yet you <i>want</i> to be sightless, you <i>want</i> to be blasted, +you don’t want it any different.” +</p> + +<p> +He was speaking as if in a trance, verbal and blank. Then suddenly he braced +himself up with a kind of rhapsody, and looked at Birkin with vindictive, cowed +eyes, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know what it is to suffer when you are with a woman? +She’s so beautiful, so perfect, you find her <i>so good</i>, it tears you +like a silk, and every stroke and bit cuts hot—ha, that perfection, when +you blast yourself, you blast yourself! And then—” he stopped on +the snow and suddenly opened his clenched hands—“it’s +nothing—your brain might have gone charred as rags—and—” +he looked round into the air with a queer histrionic movement “it’s +blasting—you understand what I mean—it is a great experience, +something final—and then—you’re shrivelled as if struck by +electricity.” He walked on in silence. It seemed like bragging, but like a +man in extremity bragging truthfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” he resumed, “I wouldn’t <i>not</i> have +had it! It’s a complete experience. And she’s a wonderful woman. +But—how I hate her somewhere! It’s curious—” +</p> + +<p> +Birkin looked at him, at his strange, scarcely conscious face. Gerald seemed +blank before his own words. +</p> + +<p> +“But you’ve had enough now?” said Birkin. “You have +had your experience. Why work on an old wound?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Gerald, “I don’t know. It’s not +finished—” +</p> + +<p> +And the two walked on. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve loved you, as well as Gudrun, don’t forget,” +said Birkin bitterly. Gerald looked at him strangely, abstractedly. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you?” he said, with icy scepticism. “Or do you think +you have?” He was hardly responsible for what he said. +</p> + +<p> +The sledge came. Gudrun dismounted and they all made their farewell. They +wanted to go apart, all of them. Birkin took his place, and the sledge drove +away leaving Gudrun and Gerald standing on the snow, waving. Something froze +Birkin’s heart, seeing them standing there in the isolation of the snow, +growing smaller and more isolated. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap30"></a>CHAPTER XXX.<br/> +SNOWED UP</h2> + +<p> +When Ursula and Birkin were gone, Gudrun felt herself free in her contest +with Gerald. As they grew more used to each other, he seemed to press upon her +more and more. At first she could manage him, so that her own will was always +left free. But very soon, he began to ignore her female tactics, he dropped his +respect for her whims and her privacies, he began to exert his own will blindly, +without submitting to hers. +</p> + +<p> +Already a vital conflict had set in, which frightened them both. But he was +alone, whilst already she had begun to cast round for external resource. +</p> + +<p> +When Ursula had gone, Gudrun felt her own existence had become stark and +elemental. She went and crouched alone in her bedroom, looking out of the window +at the big, flashing stars. In front was the faint shadow of the mountain-knot. +That was the pivot. She felt strange and inevitable, as if she were centred upon +the pivot of all existence, there was no further reality. +</p> + +<p> +Presently Gerald opened the door. She knew he would not be long before he +came. She was rarely alone, he pressed upon her like a frost, deadening her. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you alone in the dark?” he said. And she could tell by his +tone he resented it, he resented this isolation she had drawn round herself. +Yet, feeling static and inevitable, she was kind towards him. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you like to light the candle?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +He did not answer, but came and stood behind her, in the darkness. +</p> + +<p> +“Look,” she said, “at that lovely star up there. Do you +know its name?” +</p> + +<p> +He crouched beside her, to look through the low window. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “It is very fine.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Isn’t</i> it beautiful! Do you notice how it darts different +coloured fires—it flashes really superbly—” +</p> + +<p> +They remained in silence. With a mute, heavy gesture she put her hand on his +knee, and took his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you regretting Ursula?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No, not at all,” she said. Then, in a slow mood, she asked: +</p> + +<p> +“How much do you love me?” +</p> + +<p> +He stiffened himself further against her. +</p> + +<p> +“How much do you think I do?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“But what is your opinion?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. At length, in the darkness, came her voice, hard and +indifferent: +</p> + +<p> +“Very little indeed,” she said coldly, almost flippant. +</p> + +<p> +His heart went icy at the sound of her voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t I love you?” he asked, as if admitting the +truth of her accusation, yet hating her for it. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know why you don’t—I’ve been good to +you. You were in a <i>fearful</i> state when you came to me.” +</p> + +<p> +Her heart was beating to suffocate her, yet she was strong and unrelenting. +</p> + +<p> +“When was I in a fearful state?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“When you first came to me. I <i>had</i> to take pity on you. But it was +never love.” +</p> + +<p> +It was that statement “It was never love,” which sounded in his +ears with madness. +</p> + +<p> +“Why must you repeat it so often, that there is no love?” he +said in a voice strangled with rage. +</p> + +<p> +“Well you don’t <i>think</i> you love, do you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +He was silent with cold passion of anger. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t think you <i>can</i> love me, do you?” she repeated +almost with a sneer. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You know you never <i>have</i> loved me, don’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what you mean by the word “love,” he +replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you do. You know all right that you have never loved me. Have +you, do you think?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, prompted by some barren spirit of truthfulness +and obstinacy. +</p> + +<p> +“And you never <i>will</i> love me,” she said finally, “will +you?” +</p> + +<p> +There was a diabolic coldness in her, too much to bear. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” she replied, “what have you against me!” +</p> + +<p> +He was silent in cold, frightened rage and despair. “If only I could +kill her,” his heart was whispering repeatedly. “If only I could +kill her—I should be free.” +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to him that death was the only severing of this Gordian knot. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you torture me?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She flung her arms round his neck. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, I don’t want to torture you,” she said pityingly, as +if she were comforting a child. The impertinence made his veins go cold, he was +insensible. She held her arms round his neck, in a triumph of pity. And her pity +for him was as cold as stone, its deepest motive was hate of him, and fear of +his power over her, which she must always counterfoil. +</p> + +<p> +“Say you love me,” she pleaded. “Say you will love me for +ever—won’t you—won’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +But it was her voice only that coaxed him. Her senses were entirely apart +from him, cold and destructive of him. It was her overbearing <i>will</i> +that insisted. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you say you’ll love me always?” she coaxed. +“Say it, even if it isn’t true—say it Gerald, do.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will love you always,” he repeated, in real agony, forcing +the words out. +</p> + +<p> +She gave him a quick kiss. +</p> + +<p> +“Fancy your actually having said it,” she said with a touch of +raillery. +</p> + +<p> +He stood as if he had been beaten. +</p> + +<p> +“Try to love me a little more, and to want me a little less,” +she said, in a half contemptuous, half coaxing tone. +</p> + +<p> +The darkness seemed to be swaying in waves across his mind, great waves of +darkness plunging across his mind. It seemed to him he was degraded at the very +quick, made of no account. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean you don’t want me?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You are so insistent, and there is so little grace in you, so little +fineness. You are so crude. You break me—you only waste me—it is +horrible to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Horrible to you?” he repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Don’t you think I might have a room to myself, now Ursula +has gone? You can say you want a dressing room.” +</p> + +<p> +“You do as you like—you can leave altogether if you like,” +he managed to articulate. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I know that,” she replied. “So can you. You can +leave me whenever you like—without notice even.” +</p> + +<p> +The great tides of darkness were swinging across his mind, he could hardly +stand upright. A terrible weariness overcame him, he felt he must lie on the +floor. Dropping off his clothes, he got into bed, and lay like a man suddenly +overcome by drunkenness, the darkness lifting and plunging as if he were lying +upon a black, giddy sea. He lay still in this strange, horrific reeling for some +time, purely unconscious. +</p> + +<p> +At length she slipped from her own bed and came over to him. He remained +rigid, his back to her. He was all but unconscious. +</p> + +<p> +She put her arms round his terrifying, insentient body, and laid her cheek +against his hard shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +“Gerald,” she whispered. “Gerald.” +</p> + +<p> +There was no change in him. She caught him against her. She pressed her +breasts against his shoulders, she kissed his shoulder, through the sleeping +jacket. Her mind wondered, over his rigid, unliving body. She was bewildered, +and insistent, only her will was set for him to speak to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Gerald, my dear!” she whispered, bending over him, kissing his +ear. +</p> + +<p> +Her warm breath playing, flying rhythmically over his ear, seemed to relax +the tension. She could feel his body gradually relaxing a little, losing its +terrifying, unnatural rigidity. Her hands clutched his limbs, his muscles, going +over him spasmodically. +</p> + +<p> +The hot blood began to flow again through his veins, his limbs relaxed. +</p> + +<p> +“Turn round to me,” she whispered, forlorn with insistence and +triumph. +</p> + +<p> +So at last he was given again, warm and flexible. He turned and gathered her +in his arms. And feeling her soft against him, so perfectly and wondrously soft +and recipient, his arms tightened on her. She was as if crushed, powerless in +him. His brain seemed hard and invincible now like a jewel, there was no +resisting him. +</p> + +<p> +His passion was awful to her, tense and ghastly, and impersonal, like a +destruction, ultimate. She felt it would kill her. She was being killed. +</p> + +<p> +“My God, my God,” she cried, in anguish, in his embrace, feeling +her life being killed within her. And when he was kissing her, soothing her, her +breath came slowly, as if she were really spent, dying. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I die, shall I die?” she repeated to herself. +</p> + +<p> +And in the night, and in him, there was no answer to the question. +</p> + +<p> +And yet, next day, the fragment of her which was not destroyed remained +intact and hostile, she did not go away, she remained to finish the holiday, +admitting nothing. He scarcely ever left her alone, but followed her like a +shadow, he was like a doom upon her, a continual “thou shalt,” +“thou shalt not.” Sometimes it was he who seemed strongest, whist +she was almost gone, creeping near the earth like a spent wind; sometimes it was +the reverse. But always it was this eternal see-saw, one destroyed that the +other might exist, one ratified because the other was nulled. +</p> + +<p> +“In the end,” she said to herself, “I shall go away from +him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can be free of her,” he said to himself in his paroxysms of +suffering. +</p> + +<p> +And he set himself to be free. He even prepared to go away, to leave her in +the lurch. But for the first time there was a flaw in his will. +</p> + +<p> +“Where shall I go?” he asked himself. +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you be self-sufficient?” he replied to himself, +putting himself upon his pride. +</p> + +<p> +“Self-sufficient!” he repeated. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to him that Gudrun was sufficient unto herself, closed round and +completed, like a thing in a case. In the calm, static reason of his soul, he +recognised this, and admitted it was her right, to be closed round upon herself, +self-complete, without desire. He realised it, he admitted it, it only needed +one last effort on his own part, to win for himself the same completeness. He +knew that it only needed one convulsion of his will for him to be able to turn +upon himself also, to close upon himself as a stone fixes upon itself, and is +impervious, self-completed, a thing isolated. +</p> + +<p> +This knowledge threw him into a terrible chaos. Because, however much he +might mentally <i>will</i> to be immune and self-complete, the desire for this +state was lacking, and he could not create it. He could see that, to exist at +all, he must be perfectly free of Gudrun, leave her if she wanted to be left, +demand nothing of her, have no claim upon her. +</p> + +<p> +But then, to have no claim upon her, he must stand by himself, in sheer +nothingness. And his brain turned to nought at the idea. It was a state of +nothingness. On the other hand, he might give in, and fawn to her. Or, finally, +he might kill her. Or he might become just indifferent, purposeless, dissipated, +momentaneous. But his nature was too serious, not gay enough or subtle enough +for mocking licentiousness. +</p> + +<p> +A strange rent had been torn in him; like a victim that is torn open and +given to the heavens, so he had been torn apart and given to Gudrun. How should +he close again? This wound, this strange, infinitely-sensitive opening of his +soul, where he was exposed, like an open flower, to all the universe, and in +which he was given to his complement, the other, the unknown, this wound, this +disclosure, this unfolding of his own covering, leaving him incomplete, limited, +unfinished, like an open flower under the sky, this was his cruellest joy. Why +then should he forego it? Why should he close up and become impervious, immune, +like a partial thing in a sheath, when he had broken forth, like a seed that has +germinated, to issue forth in being, embracing the unrealised heavens. +</p> + +<p> +He would keep the unfinished bliss of his own yearning even through the +torture she inflicted upon him. A strange obstinacy possessed him. He would not +go away from her whatever she said or did. A strange, deathly yearning carried +him along with her. She was the determinating influence of his very being, +though she treated him with contempt, repeated rebuffs, and denials, still he +would never be gone, since in being near her, even, he felt the quickening, the +going forth in him, the release, the knowledge of his own limitation and the +magic of the promise, as well as the mystery of his own destruction and +annihilation. +</p> + +<p> +She tortured the open heart of him even as he turned to her. And she was +tortured herself. It may have been her will was stronger. She felt, with horror, +as if he tore at the bud of her heart, tore it open, like an irreverent +persistent being. Like a boy who pulls off a fly’s wings, or tears open a +bud to see what is in the flower, he tore at her privacy, at her very life, he +would destroy her as an immature bud, torn open, is destroyed. +</p> + +<p> +She might open towards him, a long while hence, in her dreams, when she was +a pure spirit. But now she was not to be violated and ruined. She closed against +him fiercely. +</p> + +<p> +They climbed together, at evening, up the high slope, to see the sunset. In +the finely breathing, keen wind they stood and watched the yellow sun sink in +crimson and disappear. Then in the east the peaks and ridges glowed with living +rose, incandescent like immortal flowers against a brown-purple sky, a miracle, +whilst down below the world was a bluish shadow, and above, like an +annunciation, hovered a rosy transport in mid-air. +</p> + +<p> +To her it was so beautiful, it was a delirium, she wanted to gather the +glowing, eternal peaks to her breast, and die. He saw them, saw they were +beautiful. But there arose no clamour in his breast, only a bitterness that was +visionary in itself. He wished the peaks were grey and unbeautiful, so that she +should not get her support from them. Why did she betray the two of them so +terribly, in embracing the glow of the evening? Why did she leave him standing +there, with the ice-wind blowing through his heart, like death, to gratify +herself among the rosy snow-tips? +</p> + +<p> +“What does the twilight matter?” he said. “Why do you +grovel before it? Is it so important to you?” +</p> + +<p> +She winced in violation and in fury. +</p> + +<p> +“Go away,” she cried, “and leave me to it. It is +beautiful, beautiful,” she sang in strange, rhapsodic tones. “It is +the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. Don’t try to come +between it and me. Take yourself away, you are out of place—” +</p> + +<p> +He stood back a little, and left her standing there, statue-like, +transported into the mystic glowing east. Already the rose was fading, large +white stars were flashing out. He waited. He would forego everything but the +yearning. +</p> + +<p> +“That was the most perfect thing I have ever seen,” she said in +cold, brutal tones, when at last she turned round to him. “It amazes me +that you should want to destroy it. If you can’t see it yourself, why try +to debar me?” But in reality, he had destroyed it for her, she was +straining after a dead effect. +</p> + +<p> +“One day,” he said, softly, looking up at her, “I shall +destroy <i>you</i>, as you stand looking at the sunset; because you are such +a liar.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a soft, voluptuous promise to himself in the words. She was +chilled but arrogant. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha!” she said. “I am not afraid of your threats!” +She denied herself to him, she kept her room rigidly private to herself. But he +waited on, in a curious patience, belonging to his yearning for her. +</p> + +<p> +“In the end,” he said to himself with real voluptuous promise, +“when it reaches that point, I shall do away with her.” And he +trembled delicately in every limb, in anticipation, as he trembled in his most +violent accesses of passionate approach to her, trembling with too much desire. +</p> + +<p> +She had a curious sort of allegiance with Loerke, all the while, now, +something insidious and traitorous. Gerald knew of it. But in the unnatural +state of patience, and the unwillingness to harden himself against her, in which +he found himself, he took no notice, although her soft kindliness to the other +man, whom he hated as a noxious insect, made him shiver again with an access of +the strange shuddering that came over him repeatedly. +</p> + +<p> +He left her alone only when he went skiing, a sport he loved, and which she +did not practise. Then he seemed to sweep out of life, to be a projectile into +the beyond. And often, when he went away, she talked to the little German +sculptor. They had an invariable topic, in their art. +</p> + +<p> +They were almost of the same ideas. He hated Mestrovic, was not satisfied +with the Futurists, he liked the West African wooden figures, the Aztec art, +Mexican and Central American. He saw the grotesque, and a curious sort of +mechanical motion intoxicated him, a confusion in nature. They had a curious +game with each other, Gudrun and Loerke, of infinite suggestivity, strange and +leering, as if they had some esoteric understanding of life, that they alone +were initiated into the fearful central secrets, that the world dared not know. +Their whole correspondence was in a strange, barely comprehensible suggestivity, +they kindled themselves at the subtle lust of the Egyptians or the Mexicans. The +whole game was one of subtle inter-suggestivity, and they wanted to keep it on +the plane of suggestion. From their verbal and physical nuances they got the +highest satisfaction in the nerves, from a queer interchange of half-suggested +ideas, looks, expressions and gestures, which were quite intolerable, though +incomprehensible, to Gerald. He had no terms in which to think of their +commerce, his terms were much too gross. +</p> + +<p> +The suggestion of primitive art was their refuge, and the inner mysteries of +sensation their object of worship. Art and Life were to them the Reality and the +Unreality. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Gudrun, “life doesn’t <i>really</i> +matter—it is one’s art which is central. What one does in +one’s life has <i>peu de rapport</i>, it doesn’t signify much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, that is so, exactly,” replied the sculptor. “What +one does in one’s art, that is the breath of one’s being. What one +does in one’s life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss +about.” +</p> + +<p> +It was curious what a sense of elation and freedom Gudrun found in this +communication. She felt established for ever. Of course Gerald was <i>bagatelle</i>. +Love was one of the temporal things in her life, except in so far as she was an +artist. She thought of Cleopatra—Cleopatra must have been an artist; she +reaped the essential from a man, she harvested the ultimate sensation, and threw +away the husk; and Mary Stuart, and the great Rachel, panting with her lovers +after the theatre, these were the exoteric exponents of love. After all, what +was the lover but fuel for the transport of this subtle knowledge, for a female +art, the art of pure, perfect knowledge in sensuous understanding. +</p> + +<p> +One evening Gerald was arguing with Loerke about Italy and Tripoli. The +Englishman was in a strange, inflammable state, the German was excited. It was a +contest of words, but it meant a conflict of spirit between the two men. And all +the while Gudrun could see in Gerald an arrogant English contempt for a +foreigner. Although Gerald was quivering, his eyes flashing, his face flushed, +in his argument there was a brusqueness, a savage contempt in his manner, that +made Gudrun’s blood flare up, and made Loerke keen and mortified. For +Gerald came down like a sledge-hammer with his assertions, anything the little +German said was merely contemptible rubbish. +</p> + +<p> +At last Loerke turned to Gudrun, raising his hands in helpless irony, a +shrug of ironical dismissal, something appealing and child-like. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Sehen sie, gnädige Frau</i>—” he began. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Bitte sagen Sie nicht immer, gnädige Frau</i>,” cried Gudrun, her +eyes flashing, her cheeks burning. She looked like a vivid Medusa. Her voice was +loud and clamorous, the other people in the room were startled. +</p> + +<p> +“Please don’t call me Mrs Crich,” she cried aloud. +</p> + +<p> +The name, in Loerke’s mouth particularly, had been an intolerable +humiliation and constraint upon her, these many days. +</p> + +<p> +The two men looked at her in amazement. Gerald went white at the +cheek-bones. +</p> + +<p> +“What shall I say, then?” asked Loerke, with soft, mocking +insinuation. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Sagen Sie nur nicht das</i>,” she muttered, her cheeks flushed +crimson. “Not that, at least.” +</p> + +<p> +She saw, by the dawning look on Loerke’s face, that he had understood. +She was <i>not</i> Mrs Crich! So-o-, that explained a great deal. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Soll ich Fräulein sagen?</i>” he asked, malevolently. +</p> + +<p> +“I am not married,” she said, with some hauteur. +</p> + +<p> +Her heart was fluttering now, beating like a bewildered bird. She knew she +had dealt a cruel wound, and she could not bear it. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald sat erect, perfectly still, his face pale and calm, like the face of +a statue. He was unaware of her, or of Loerke or anybody. He sat perfectly +still, in an unalterable calm. Loerke, meanwhile, was crouching and glancing up +from under his ducked head. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was tortured for something to say, to relieve the suspense. She +twisted her face in a smile, and glanced knowingly, almost sneering, at Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Truth is best,” she said to him, with a grimace. +</p> + +<p> +But now again she was under his domination; now, because she had dealt him +this blow; because she had destroyed him, and she did not know how he had taken +it. She watched him. He was interesting to her. She had lost her interest in +Loerke. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald rose at length, and went over in a leisurely still movement, to the +Professor. The two began a conversation on Goethe. +</p> + +<p> +She was rather piqued by the simplicity of Gerald’s demeanour this +evening. He did not seem angry or disgusted, only he looked curiously innocent +and pure, really beautiful. Sometimes it came upon him, this look of clear +distance, and it always fascinated her. +</p> + +<p> +She waited, troubled, throughout the evening. She thought he would avoid +her, or give some sign. But he spoke to her simply and unemotionally, as he +would to anyone else in the room. A certain peace, an abstraction possessed his +soul. +</p> + +<p> +She went to his room, hotly, violently in love with him. He was so beautiful +and inaccessible. He kissed her, he was a lover to her. And she had extreme +pleasure of him. But he did not come to, he remained remote and candid, +unconscious. She wanted to speak to him. But this innocent, beautiful state of +unconsciousness that had come upon him prevented her. She felt tormented and +dark. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning, however, he looked at her with a little aversion, some +horror and some hatred darkening into his eyes. She withdrew on to her old +ground. But still he would not gather himself together, against her. +</p> + +<p> +Loerke was waiting for her now. The little artist, isolated in his own +complete envelope, felt that here at last was a woman from whom he could get +something. He was uneasy all the while, waiting to talk with her, subtly +contriving to be near her. Her presence filled him with keenness and excitement, +he gravitated cunningly towards her, as if she had some unseen force of +attraction. +</p> + +<p> +He was not in the least doubtful of himself, as regards Gerald. Gerald was +one of the outsiders. Loerke only hated him for being rich and proud and of fine +appearance. All these things, however, riches, pride of social standing, +handsome physique, were externals. When it came to the relation with a woman +such as Gudrun, he, Loerke, had an approach and a power that Gerald never +dreamed of. +</p> + +<p> +How should Gerald hope to satisfy a woman of Gudrun’s calibre? Did he +think that pride or masterful will or physical strength would help him? Loerke +knew a secret beyond these things. The greatest power is the one that is subtle +and adjusts itself, not one which blindly attacks. And he, Loerke, had +understanding where Gerald was a calf. He, Loerke, could penetrate into depths +far out of Gerald’s knowledge. Gerald was left behind like a postulant in +the ante-room of this temple of mysteries, this woman. But he Loerke, could he +not penetrate into the inner darkness, find the spirit of the woman in its inner +recess, and wrestle with it there, the central serpent that is coiled at the +core of life. +</p> + +<p> +What was it, after all, that a woman wanted? Was it mere social effect, +fulfilment of ambition in the social world, in the community of mankind? Was it +even a union in love and goodness? Did she want “goodness”? Who but +a fool would accept this of Gudrun? This was but the street view of her wants. +Cross the threshold, and you found her completely, completely cynical about the +social world and its advantages. Once inside the house of her soul and there was +a pungent atmosphere of corrosion, an inflamed darkness of sensation, and a +vivid, subtle, critical consciousness, that saw the world distorted, horrific. +</p> + +<p> +What then, what next? Was it sheer blind force of passion that would satisfy +her now? Not this, but the subtle thrills of extreme sensation in reduction. It +was an unbroken will reacting against her unbroken will in a myriad subtle +thrills of reduction, the last subtle activities of analysis and breaking down, +carried out in the darkness of her, whilst the outside form, the individual, was +utterly unchanged, even sentimental in its poses. +</p> + +<p> +But between two particular people, any two people on earth, the range of +pure sensational experience is limited. The climax of sensual reaction, once +reached in any direction, is reached finally, there is no going on. There is +only repetition possible, or the going apart of the two protagonists, or the +subjugating of the one will to the other, or death. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald had penetrated all the outer places of Gudrun’s soul. He was to +her the most crucial instance of the existing world, the <i>ne plus ultra</i> of +the world of man as it existed for her. In him she knew the world, and had done +with it. Knowing him finally she was the Alexander seeking new worlds. But there +<i>were</i> no new worlds, there were no more <i>men</i>, there were only creatures, +little, ultimate <i>creatures</i> like Loerke. The world was finished now, for her. +There was only the inner, individual darkness, sensation within the ego, the obscene +religious mystery of ultimate reduction, the mystic frictional activities of +diabolic reducing down, disintegrating the vital organic body of life. +</p> + +<p> +All this Gudrun knew in her subconsciousness, not in her mind. She knew her +next step—she knew what she should move on to, when she left Gerald. She was +afraid of Gerald, that he might kill her. But she did not intend to be killed. A +fine thread still united her to him. It should not be <i>her</i> death which broke +it. She had further to go, a further, slow exquisite experience to reap, unthinkable +subtleties of sensation to know, before she was finished. +</p> + +<p> +Of the last series of subtleties, Gerald was not capable. He could not touch +the quick of her. But where his ruder blows could not penetrate, the fine, +insinuating blade of Loerke’s insect-like comprehension could. At least, +it was time for her now to pass over to the other, the creature, the final +craftsman. She knew that Loerke, in his innermost soul, was detached from +everything, for him there was neither heaven nor earth nor hell. He admitted no +allegiance, he gave no adherence anywhere. He was single and, by abstraction +from the rest, absolute in himself. +</p> + +<p> +Whereas in Gerald’s soul there still lingered some attachment to the +rest, to the whole. And this was his limitation. He was limited, <i>borné</i>, +subject to his necessity, in the last issue, for goodness, for righteousness, +for oneness with the ultimate purpose. That the ultimate purpose might be the +perfect and subtle experience of the process of death, the will being kept +unimpaired, that was not allowed in him. And this was his limitation. +</p> + +<p> +There was a hovering triumph in Loerke, since Gudrun had denied her marriage +with Gerald. The artist seemed to hover like a creature on the wing, waiting to +settle. He did not approach Gudrun violently, he was never ill-timed. But +carried on by a sure instinct in the complete darkness of his soul, he +corresponded mystically with her, imperceptibly, but palpably. +</p> + +<p> +For two days, he talked to her, continued the discussions of art, of life, +in which they both found such pleasure. They praised the by-gone things, they +took a sentimental, childish delight in the achieved perfections of the past. +Particularly they liked the late eighteenth century, the period of Goethe and of +Shelley, and Mozart. +</p> + +<p> +They played with the past, and with the great figures of the past, a sort of +little game of chess, or marionettes, all to please themselves. They had all the +great men for their marionettes, and they two were the God of the show, working +it all. As for the future, that they never mentioned except one laughed out some +mocking dream of the destruction of the world by a ridiculous catastrophe of +man’s invention: a man invented such a perfect explosive that it blew the +earth in two, and the two halves set off in different directions through space, +to the dismay of the inhabitants: or else the people of the world divided into +two halves, and each half decided <i>it</i> was perfect and right, the other half +was wrong and must be destroyed; so another end of the world. Or else, +Loerke’s dream of fear, the world went cold, and snow fell everywhere, and +only white creatures, polar-bears, white foxes, and men like awful white +snow-birds, persisted in ice cruelty. +</p> + +<p> +Apart from these stories, they never talked of the future. They delighted +most either in mocking imaginations of destruction, or in sentimental, fine +marionette-shows of the past. It was a sentimental delight to reconstruct the +world of Goethe at Weimar, or of Schiller and poverty and faithful love, or to +see again Jean Jacques in his quakings, or Voltaire at Ferney, or Frederick the +Great reading his own poetry. +</p> + +<p> +They talked together for hours, of literature and sculpture and painting, +amusing themselves with Flaxman and Blake and Fuseli, with tenderness, and with +Feuerbach and Böcklin. It would take them a life-time, they felt to live again, +<i>in petto</i>, the lives of the great artists. But they preferred to stay in +the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. +</p> + +<p> +They talked in a mixture of languages. The ground-work was French, in either +case. But he ended most of his sentences in a stumble of English and a +conclusion of German, she skilfully wove herself to her end in whatever phrase +came to her. She took a peculiar delight in this conversation. It was full of +odd, fantastic expression, of double meanings, of evasions, of suggestive +vagueness. It was a real physical pleasure to her to make this thread of +conversation out of the different-coloured strands of three languages. +</p> + +<p> +And all the while they two were hovering, hesitating round the flame of some +invisible declaration. He wanted it, but was held back by some inevitable +reluctance. She wanted it also, but she wanted to put it off, to put it off +indefinitely, she still had some pity for Gerald, some connection with him. And +the most fatal of all, she had the reminiscent sentimental compassion for +herself in connection with him. Because of what <i>had</i> been, she felt herself +held to him by immortal, invisible threads—because of what <i>had</i> been, +because of his coming to her that first night, into her own house, in his +extremity, because— +</p> + +<p> +Gerald was gradually overcome with a revulsion of loathing for Loerke. He +did not take the man seriously, he despised him merely, except as he felt in +Gudrun’s veins the influence of the little creature. It was this that +drove Gerald wild, the feeling in Gudrun’s veins of Loerke’s +presence, Loerke’s being, flowing dominant through her. +</p> + +<p> +“What makes you so smitten with that little vermin?” he asked, +really puzzled. For he, man-like, could not see anything attractive or important +<i>at all</i> in Loerke. Gerald expected to find some handsomeness or nobleness, +to account for a woman’s subjection. But he saw none here, only an +insect-like repulsiveness. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun flushed deeply. It was these attacks she would never forgive. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” she replied. “My God, what a mercy I +am <i>not</i> married to you!” +</p> + +<p> +Her voice of flouting and contempt scotched him. He was brought up short. +But he recovered himself. +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me, only tell me,” he reiterated in a dangerous narrowed +voice—“tell me what it is that fascinates you in him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not fascinated,” she said, with cold repelling innocence. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you are. You are fascinated by that little dry snake, like a +bird gaping ready to fall down its throat.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him with black fury. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t choose to be discussed by you,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t matter whether you choose or not,” he replied, +“that doesn’t alter the fact that you are ready to fall down and +kiss the feet of that little insect. And I don’t want to prevent +you—do it, fall down and kiss his feet. But I want to know, what it is +that fascinates you—what is it?” +</p> + +<p> +She was silent, suffused with black rage. +</p> + +<p> +“How <i>dare</i> you come brow-beating me,” she cried, “how +dare you, you little squire, you bully. What right have you over me, do you +think?” +</p> + +<p> +His face was white and gleaming, she knew by the light in his eyes that she +was in his power—the wolf. And because she was in his power, she hated him +with a power that she wondered did not kill him. In her will she killed him as +he stood, effaced him. +</p> + +<p> +“It is not a question of right,” said Gerald, sitting down on a +chair. She watched the change in his body. She saw his clenched, mechanical body +moving there like an obsession. Her hatred of him was tinged with fatal +contempt. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not a question of my right over you—though I <i>have</i> +some right, remember. I want to know, I only want to know what it is that +subjugates you to that little scum of a sculptor downstairs, what it is that +brings you down like a humble maggot, in worship of him. I want to know what you +creep after.” +</p> + +<p> +She stood over against the window, listening. Then she turned round. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you?” she said, in her most easy, most cutting voice. +“Do you want to know what it is in him? It’s because he has some +understanding of a woman, because he is not stupid. That’s why it +is.” +</p> + +<p> +A queer, sinister, animal-like smile came over Gerald’s face. +</p> + +<p> +“But what understanding is it?” he said. “The +understanding of a flea, a hopping flea with a proboscis. Why should you crawl +abject before the understanding of a flea?” +</p> + +<p> +There passed through Gudrun’s mind Blake’s representation of the +soul of a flea. She wanted to fit it to Loerke. Blake was a clown too. But it +was necessary to answer Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think the understanding of a flea is more interesting +than the understanding of a fool?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“A fool!” he repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“A fool, a conceited fool—a <i>Dummkopf</i>,” she replied, adding +the German word. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you call me a fool?” he replied. “Well, wouldn’t +I rather be the fool I am, than that flea downstairs?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him. A certain blunt, blind stupidity in him palled on her +soul, limiting her. +</p> + +<p> +“You give yourself away by that last,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He sat and wondered. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall go away soon,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She turned on him. +</p> + +<p> +“Remember,” she said, “I am completely independent of +you—completely. You make your arrangements, I make mine.” +</p> + +<p> +He pondered this. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean we are strangers from this minute?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She halted and flushed. He was putting her in a trap, forcing her hand. She +turned round on him. +</p> + +<p> +“Strangers,” she said, “we can never be. But if you <i>want</i> +to make any movement apart from me, then I wish you to know you are perfectly +free to do so. Do not consider me in the slightest.” +</p> + +<p> +Even so slight an implication that she needed him and was depending on him +still was sufficient to rouse his passion. As he sat a change came over his +body, the hot, molten stream mounted involuntarily through his veins. He groaned +inwardly, under its bondage, but he loved it. He looked at her with clear eyes, +waiting for her. +</p> + +<p> +She knew at once, and was shaken with cold revulsion. <i>How</i> could he look at +her with those clear, warm, waiting eyes, waiting for her, even now? What had +been said between them, was it not enough to put them worlds asunder, to freeze +them forever apart! And yet he was all transfused and roused, waiting for her. +</p> + +<p> +It confused her. Turning her head aside, she said: +</p> + +<p> +“I shall always <i>tell</i> you, whenever I am going to make any +change—” +</p> + +<p> +And with this she moved out of the room. +</p> + +<p> +He sat suspended in a fine recoil of disappointment, that seemed gradually +to be destroying his understanding. But the unconscious state of patience +persisted in him. He remained motionless, without thought or knowledge, for a +long time. Then he rose, and went downstairs, to play at chess with one of the +students. His face was open and clear, with a certain innocent <i>laisser-aller</i> +that troubled Gudrun most, made her almost afraid of him, whilst she disliked +him deeply for it. +</p> + +<p> +It was after this that Loerke, who had never yet spoken to her personally, +began to ask her of her state. +</p> + +<p> +“You are not married at all, are you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She looked full at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Not in the least,” she replied, in her measured way. Loerke +laughed, wrinkling up his face oddly. There was a thin wisp of his hair straying +on his forehead, she noticed that his skin was of a clear brown colour, his +hands, his wrists. And his hands seemed closely prehensile. He seemed like +topaz, so strangely brownish and pellucid. +</p> + +<p> +“Good,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Still it needed some courage for him to go on. +</p> + +<p> +“Was Mrs Birkin your sister?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“And was <i>she</i> married?” +</p> + +<p> +“She was married.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you parents, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gudrun, “we have parents.” +</p> + +<p> +And she told him, briefly, laconically, her position. He watched her +closely, curiously all the while. +</p> + +<p> +“So!” he exclaimed, with some surprise. “And the Herr +Crich, is he rich?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, he is rich, a coal owner.” +</p> + +<p> +“How long has your friendship with him lasted?” +</p> + +<p> +“Some months.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I am surprised,” he said at length. “The English, I +thought they were so—cold. And what do you think to do when you leave +here?” +</p> + +<p> +“What do I think to do?” she repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. You cannot go back to the teaching. No—” he shrugged +his shoulders—“that is impossible. Leave that to the <i>canaille</i> +who can do nothing else. You, for your part—you know, you are a remarkable +woman, <i>eine seltsame Frau</i>. Why deny it—why make any question of it? +You are an extraordinary woman, why should you follow the ordinary course, the +ordinary life?” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun sat looking at her hands, flushed. She was pleased that he said, so +simply, that she was a remarkable woman. He would not say that to flatter +her—he was far too self-opinionated and objective by nature. He said it as +he would say a piece of sculpture was remarkable, because he knew it was so. +</p> + +<p> +And it gratified her to hear it from him. Other people had such a passion to +make everything of one degree, of one pattern. In England it was chic to be +perfectly ordinary. And it was a relief to her to be acknowledged extraordinary. +Then she need not fret about the common standards. +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” she said, “I have no money whatsoever.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ach, money!” he cried, lifting his shoulders. “When one +is grown up, money is lying about at one’s service. It is only when one is +young that it is rare. Take no thought for money—that always lies to +hand.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does it?” she said, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“Always. The Gerald will give you a sum, if you ask him for +it—” +</p> + +<p> +She flushed deeply. +</p> + +<p> +“I will ask anybody else,” she said, with some +difficulty—“but not him.” +</p> + +<p> +Loerke looked closely at her. +</p> + +<p> +“Good,” he said. “Then let it be somebody else. Only +don’t go back to that England, that school. No, that is stupid.” +</p> + +<p> +Again there was a pause. He was afraid to ask her outright to go with him, +he was not even quite sure he wanted her; and she was afraid to be asked. He +begrudged his own isolation, was <i>very</i> chary of sharing his life, even for +a day. +</p> + +<p> +“The only other place I know is Paris,” she said, “and I +can’t stand that.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked with her wide, steady eyes full at Loerke. He lowered his head +and averted his face. +</p> + +<p> +“Paris, no!” he said. “Between the <i>réligion d’amour</i>, +and the latest ’ism, and the new turning to Jesus, one had better ride on +a carrousel all day. But come to Dresden. I have a studio there—I can give +you work,—oh, that would be easy enough. I haven’t seen any of your +things, but I believe in you. Come to Dresden—that is a fine town to be +in, and as good a life as you can expect of a town. You have everything there, +without the foolishness of Paris or the beer of Munich.” +</p> + +<p> +He sat and looked at her, coldly. What she liked about him was that he spoke +to her simple and flat, as to himself. He was a fellow craftsman, a fellow being +to her, first. +</p> + +<p> +“No—Paris,” he resumed, “it makes me sick. +Pah—<i>l’amour</i>. I detest it. <i>L’amour, l’amore, die +Liebe</i>—I detest it in every language. Women and love, there is no greater +tedium,” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +She was slightly offended. And yet, this was her own basic feeling. Men, and +love—there was no greater tedium. +</p> + +<p> +“I think the same,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“A bore,” he repeated. “What does it matter whether I wear +this hat or another. So love. I needn’t wear a hat at all, only for +convenience. Neither need I love except for convenience. I tell you what, +<i>gnädige Frau</i>—” and he leaned towards her—then he made a quick, +odd gesture, as of striking something aside—“<i>gnädige Fräulein</i>, never +mind—I tell you what, I would give everything, everything, all your love, +for a little companionship in intelligence—” his eyes flickered +darkly, evilly at her. “You understand?” he asked, with a faint +smile. “It wouldn’t matter if she were a hundred years old, a +thousand—it would be all the same to me, so that she can +<i>understand</i>.” He shut his eyes with a little snap. +</p> + +<p> +Again Gudrun was rather offended. Did he not think her good looking, then? +Suddenly she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall have to wait about eighty years to suit you, at that!” +she said. “I am ugly enough, aren’t I?” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her with an artist’s sudden, critical, estimating eye. +</p> + +<p> +“You are beautiful,” he said, “and I am glad of it. But it +isn’t that—it isn’t that,” he cried, with emphasis that +flattered her. “It is that you have a certain wit, it is the kind of +understanding. For me, I am little, <i>chétif</i>, insignificant. Good! Do not ask +me to be strong and handsome, then. But it is the <i>me</i>—” he put +his fingers to his mouth, oddly—“it is the <i>me</i> that is looking +for a mistress, and my <i>me</i> is waiting for the <i>thee</i> of the mistress, +for the match to my particular intelligence. You understand?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, “I understand.” +</p> + +<p> +“As for the other, this <i>amour</i>—” he made a gesture, dashing +his hand aside, as if to dash away something troublesome—“it is +unimportant, unimportant. Does it matter, whether I drink white wine this +evening, or whether I drink nothing? It <i>does not matter</i>, it does not matter. +So this love, this <i>amour</i>, this <i>baiser</i>. Yes or no, <i>soit ou soit +pas</i>, today, tomorrow, or never, it is all the same, it does not matter—no +more than the white wine.” +</p> + +<p> +He ended with an odd dropping of the head in a desperate negation. Gudrun +watched him steadily. She had gone pale. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly she stretched over and seized his hand in her own. +</p> + +<p> +“That is true,” she said, in rather a high, vehement voice, +“that is true for me too. It is the understanding that matters.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked up at her almost frightened, furtive. Then he nodded, a little +sullenly. She let go his hand: he had made not the lightest response. And they +sat in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know,” he said, suddenly looking at her with dark, +self-important, prophetic eyes, “your fate and mine, they will run +together, till—” and he broke off in a little grimace. +</p> + +<p> +“Till when?” she asked, blanched, her lips going white. She was +terribly susceptible to these evil prognostications, but he only shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +Gerald did not come in from his skiing until nightfall, he missed the coffee +and cake that she took at four o’clock. The snow was in perfect condition, +he had travelled a long way, by himself, among the snow ridges, on his skis, he +had climbed high, so high that he could see over the top of the pass, five miles +distant, could see the Marienhütte, the hostel on the crest of the pass, half +buried in snow, and over into the deep valley beyond, to the dusk of the pine +trees. One could go that way home; but he shuddered with nausea at the thought +of home;—one could travel on skis down there, and come to the old imperial +road, below the pass. But why come to any road? He revolted at the thought of +finding himself in the world again. He must stay up there in the snow forever. +He had been happy by himself, high up there alone, travelling swiftly on skis, +taking far flights, and skimming past the dark rocks veined with brilliant snow. +</p> + +<p> +But he felt something icy gathering at his heart. This strange mood of +patience and innocence which had persisted in him for some days, was passing +away, he would be left again a prey to the horrible passions and tortures. +</p> + +<p> +So he came down reluctantly, snow-burned, snow-estranged, to the house in +the hollow, between the knuckles of the mountain tops. He saw its lights shining +yellow, and he held back, wishing he need not go in, to confront those people, +to hear the turmoil of voices and to feel the confusion of other presences. He +was isolated as if there were a vacuum round his heart, or a sheath of pure ice. +</p> + +<p> +The moment he saw Gudrun something jolted in his soul. She was looking +rather lofty and superb, smiling slowly and graciously to the Germans. A sudden +desire leapt in his heart, to kill her. He thought, what a perfect voluptuous +fulfilment it would be, to kill her. His mind was absent all the evening, +estranged by the snow and his passion. But he kept the idea constant within him, +what a perfect voluptuous consummation it would be to strangle her, to strangle +every spark of life out of her, till she lay completely inert, soft, relaxed for +ever, a soft heap lying dead between his hands, utterly dead. Then he would have +had her finally and for ever; there would be such a perfect voluptuous finality. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun was unaware of what he was feeling, he seemed so quiet and amiable, +as usual. His amiability even made her feel brutal towards him. +</p> + +<p> +She went into his room when he was partially undressed. She did not notice +the curious, glad gleam of pure hatred, with which he looked at her. She stood +near the door, with her hand behind her. +</p> + +<p> +“I have been thinking, Gerald,” she said, with an insulting +nonchalance, “that I shall not go back to England.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” he said, “where will you go then?” +</p> + +<p> +But she ignored his question. She had her own logical statement to make, and +it must be made as she had thought it. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t see the use of going back,” she continued. +“It is over between me and you—” +</p> + +<p> +She paused for him to speak. But he said nothing. He was only talking to +himself, saying “Over, is it? I believe it is over. But it isn’t +finished. Remember, it isn’t finished. We must put some sort of a finish +on it. There must be a conclusion, there must be finality.” +</p> + +<p> +So he talked to himself, but aloud he said nothing whatever. +</p> + +<p> +“What has been, has been,” she continued. “There is +nothing that I regret. I hope you regret nothing—” +</p> + +<p> +She waited for him to speak. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I regret nothing,” he said, accommodatingly. +</p> + +<p> +“Good then,” she answered, “good then. Then neither of us +cherishes any regrets, which is as it should be.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite as it should be,” he said aimlessly. +</p> + +<p> +She paused to gather up her thread again. +</p> + +<p> +“Our attempt has been a failure,” she said. “But we can +try again, elsewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +A little flicker of rage ran through his blood. It was as if she were +rousing him, goading him. Why must she do it? +</p> + +<p> +“Attempt at what?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“At being lovers, I suppose,” she said, a little baffled, yet so +trivial she made it all seem. +</p> + +<p> +“Our attempt at being lovers has been a failure?” he repeated +aloud. +</p> + +<p> +To himself he was saying, “I ought to kill her here. There is only +this left, for me to kill her.” A heavy, overcharged desire to bring about +her death possessed him. She was unaware. +</p> + +<p> +“Hasn’t it?” she asked. “Do you think it has been a +success?” +</p> + +<p> +Again the insult of the flippant question ran through his blood like a +current of fire. +</p> + +<p> +“It had some of the elements of success, our relationship,” he +replied. “It—might have come off.” +</p> + +<p> +But he paused before concluding the last phrase. Even as he began the +sentence, he did not believe in what he was going to say. He knew it never could +have been a success. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she replied. “You cannot love.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +Her wide, dark-filled eyes were fixed on him, like two moons of darkness. +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t love <i>you</i>,” she said, with stark cold truth. +</p> + +<p> +A blinding flash went over his brain, his body jolted. His heart had burst +into flame. His consciousness was gone into his wrists, into his hands. He was +one blind, incontinent desire, to kill her. His wrists were bursting, there +would be no satisfaction till his hands had closed on her. +</p> + +<p> +But even before his body swerved forward on her, a sudden, cunning +comprehension was expressed on her face, and in a flash she was out of the door. +She ran in one flash to her room and locked herself in. She was afraid, but +confident. She knew her life trembled on the edge of an abyss. But she was +curiously sure of her footing. She knew her cunning could outwit him. +</p> + +<p> +She trembled, as she stood in her room, with excitement and awful +exhilaration. She knew she could outwit him. She could depend on her presence of +mind, and on her wits. But it was a fight to the death, she knew it now. One +slip, and she was lost. She had a strange, tense, exhilarated sickness in her +body, as one who is in peril of falling from a great height, but who does not +look down, does not admit the fear. +</p> + +<p> +“I will go away the day after tomorrow,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +She only did not want Gerald to think that she was afraid of him, that she +was running away because she was afraid of him. She was not afraid of him, +fundamentally. She knew it was her safeguard to avoid his physical violence. But +even physically she was not afraid of him. She wanted to prove it to him. When +she had proved it, that, whatever he was, she was not afraid of him; when she +had proved <i>that</i>, she could leave him forever. But meanwhile the fight between +them, terrible as she knew it to be, was inconclusive. And she wanted to be +confident in herself. However many terrors she might have, she would be +unafraid, uncowed by him. He could never cow her, nor dominate her, nor have any +right over her; this she would maintain until she had proved it. Once it was +proved, she was free of him forever. +</p> + +<p> +But she had not proved it yet, neither to him nor to herself. And this was +what still bound her to him. She was bound to him, she could not live beyond +him. She sat up in bed, closely wrapped up, for many hours, thinking endlessly +to herself. It was as if she would never have done weaving the great provision +of her thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t as if he really loved me,” she said to herself. +“He doesn’t. Every woman he comes across he wants to make her in +love with him. He doesn’t even know that he is doing it. But there he is, +before every woman he unfurls his male attractiveness, displays his great +desirability, he tries to make every woman think how wonderful it would be to +have him for a lover. His very ignoring of the women is part of the game. He is +never <i>unconscious</i> of them. He should have been a cockerel, so he could +strut before fifty females, all his subjects. But really, his Don Juan does +<i>not</i> interest me. I could play Dona Juanita a million times better than he +plays Juan. He bores me, you know. His maleness bores me. Nothing is so boring, +so inherently stupid and stupidly conceited. Really, the fathomless conceit of +these men, it is ridiculous—the little strutters. +</p> + +<p> +“They are all alike. Look at Birkin. Built out of the limitation of +conceit they are, and nothing else. Really, nothing but their ridiculous +limitation and intrinsic insignificance could make them so conceited. +</p> + +<p> +“As for Loerke, there is a thousand times more in him than in a +Gerald. Gerald is so limited, there is a dead end to him. He would grind on at +the old mills forever. And really, there is no corn between the millstones any +more. They grind on and on, when there is nothing to grind—saying the same +things, believing the same things, acting the same things. Oh, my God, it would +wear out the patience of a stone. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t worship Loerke, but at any rate, he is a free +individual. He is not stiff with conceit of his own maleness. He is not grinding +dutifully at the old mills. Oh God, when I think of Gerald, and his +work—those offices at Beldover, and the mines—it makes my heart +sick. What <i>have</i> I to do with it—and him thinking he can be a lover to +a woman! One might as well ask it of a self-satisfied lamp-post. These men, with +their eternal jobs—and their eternal mills of God that keep on grinding at +nothing! It is too boring, just boring. However did I come to take him seriously +at all! +</p> + +<p> +“At least in Dresden, one will have one’s back to it all. And +there will be amusing things to do. It will be amusing to go to these eurythmic +displays, and the German opera, the German theatre. It <i>will</i> be amusing to +take part in German Bohemian life. And Loerke is an artist, he is a free individual. +One will escape from so much, that is the chief thing, escape so much hideous +boring repetition of vulgar actions, vulgar phrases, vulgar postures. I +don’t delude myself that I shall find an elixir of life in Dresden. I know +I shan’t. But I shall get away from people who have their own homes and +their own children and their own acquaintances and their own this and their own +that. I shall be among people who <i>don’t</i> own things and who +<i>haven’t</i> got a home and a domestic servant in the background, who +haven’t got a standing and a status and a degree and a circle of friends of +the same. Oh God, the wheels within wheels of people, it makes one’s head tick +like a clock, with a very madness of dead mechanical monotony and meaninglessness. +How I <i>hate</i> life, how I hate it. How I hate the Geralds, that they can offer +one nothing else. +</p> + +<p> +“Shortlands!—Heavens! Think of living there, one week, then the +next, and <i>then the third</i>— +</p> + +<p> +“No, I won’t think of it—it is too much—” +</p> + +<p> +And she broke off, really terrified, really unable to bear any more. +</p> + +<p> +The thought of the mechanical succession of day following day, day following +day, <i>ad infintum</i>, was one of the things that made her heart palpitate with +a real approach of madness. The terrible bondage of this tick-tack of time, this +twitching of the hands of the clock, this eternal repetition of hours and +days—oh God, it was too awful to contemplate. And there was no escape from +it, no escape. +</p> + +<p> +She almost wished Gerald were with her to save her from the terror of her +own thoughts. Oh, how she suffered, lying there alone, confronted by the +terrible clock, with its eternal tick-tack. All life, all life resolved itself +into this: tick-tack, tick-tack, tick-tack; then the striking of the hour; then +the tick-tack, tick-tack, and the twitching of the clock-fingers. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald could not save her from it. He, his body, his motion, his +life—it was the same ticking, the same twitching across the dial, a +horrible mechanical twitching forward over the face of the hours. What were his +kisses, his embraces. She could hear their tick-tack, tick-tack. +</p> + +<p> +Ha—ha—she laughed to herself, so frightened that she was trying +to laugh it off—ha—ha, how maddening it was, to be sure, to be sure! +</p> + +<p> +Then, with a fleeting self-conscious motion, she wondered if she would be +very much surprised, on rising in the morning, to realise that her hair had +turned white. She had <i>felt</i> it turning white so often, under the intolerable +burden of her thoughts, und her sensations. Yet there it remained, brown as +ever, and there she was herself, looking a picture of health. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps she was healthy. Perhaps it was only her unabateable health that +left her so exposed to the truth. If she were sickly she would have her +illusions, imaginations. As it was, there was no escape. She must always see and +know and never escape. She could never escape. There she was, placed before the +clock-face of life. And if she turned round as in a railway station, to look at +the bookstall, still she could see, with her very spine, she could see the +clock, always the great white clock-face. In vain she fluttered the leaves of +books, or made statuettes in clay. She knew she was not <i>really</i> reading. She +was not <i>really</i> working. She was watching the fingers twitch across the eternal, +mechanical, monotonous clock-face of time. She never really lived, she only +watched. Indeed, she was like a little, twelve-hour clock, vis-à-vis with the +enormous clock of eternity—there she was, like Dignity and Impudence, or +Impudence and Dignity. +</p> + +<p> +The picture pleased her. Didn’t her face really look like a clock +dial—rather roundish and often pale, and impassive. She would have got up +to look, in the mirror, but the thought of the sight of her own face, that was +like a twelve-hour clock-dial, filled her with such deep terror, that she +hastened to think of something else. +</p> + +<p> +Oh, why wasn’t somebody kind to her? Why wasn’t there somebody +who would take her in their arms, and hold her to their breast, and give her +rest, pure, deep, healing rest. Oh, why wasn’t there somebody to take her +in their arms and fold her safe and perfect, for sleep. She wanted so much this +perfect enfolded sleep. She lay always so unsheathed in sleep. She would lie +always unsheathed in sleep, unrelieved, unsaved. Oh, how could she bear it, this +endless unrelief, this eternal unrelief. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald! Could he fold her in his arms and sheathe her in sleep? Ha! He +needed putting to sleep himself—poor Gerald. That was all he needed. What +did he do, he made the burden for her greater, the burden of her sleep was the +more intolerable, when he was there. He was an added weariness upon her +unripening nights, her unfruitful slumbers. Perhaps he got some repose from her. +Perhaps he did. Perhaps this was what he was always dogging her for, like a +child that is famished, crying for the breast. Perhaps this was the secret of +his passion, his forever unquenched desire for her—that he needed her to +put him to sleep, to give him repose. +</p> + +<p> +What then! Was she his mother? Had she asked for a child, whom she must +nurse through the nights, for her lover. She despised him, she despised him, she +hardened her heart. An infant crying in the night, this Don Juan. +</p> + +<p> +Ooh, but how she hated the infant crying in the night. She would murder it +gladly. She would stifle it and bury it, as Hetty Sorrell did. No doubt Hetty +Sorrell’s infant cried in the night—no doubt Arthur +Donnithorne’s infant would. Ha—the Arthur Donnithornes, the Geralds +of this world. So manly by day, yet all the while, such a crying of infants in +the night. Let them turn into mechanisms, let them. Let them become instruments, +pure machines, pure wills, that work like clock-work, in perpetual repetition. +Let them be this, let them be taken up entirely in their work, let them be +perfect parts of a great machine, having a slumber of constant repetition. Let +Gerald manage his firm. There he would be satisfied, as satisfied as a +wheelbarrow that goes backwards and forwards along a plank all day—she had +seen it. +</p> + +<p> +The wheel-barrow—the one humble wheel—the unit of the firm. Then +the cart, with two wheels; then the truck, with four; then the donkey-engine, +with eight, then the winding-engine, with sixteen, and so on, till it came to +the miner, with a thousand wheels, and then the electrician, with three +thousand, and the underground manager, with twenty thousand, and the general +manager with a hundred thousand little wheels working away to complete his +make-up, and then Gerald, with a million wheels and cogs and axles. +</p> + +<p> +Poor Gerald, such a lot of little wheels to his make-up! He was more +intricate than a chronometer-watch. But oh heavens, what weariness! What +weariness, God above! A chronometer-watch—a beetle—her soul fainted +with utter ennui, from the thought. So many wheels to count and consider and +calculate! Enough, enough—there was an end to man’s capacity for +complications, even. Or perhaps there was no end. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Gerald sat in his room, reading. When Gudrun was gone, he was left +stupefied with arrested desire. He sat on the side of the bed for an hour, +stupefied, little strands of consciousness appearing and reappearing. But he did +not move, for a long time he remained inert, his head dropped on his breast. +</p> + +<p> +Then he looked up and realised that he was going to bed. He was cold. Soon +he was lying down in the dark. +</p> + +<p> +But what he could not bear was the darkness. The solid darkness confronting +him drove him mad. So he rose, and made a light. He remained seated for a while, +staring in front. He did not think of Gudrun, he did not think of anything. +</p> + +<p> +Then suddenly he went downstairs for a book. He had all his life been in +terror of the nights that should come, when he could not sleep. He knew that +this would be too much for him, to have to face nights of sleeplessness and of +horrified watching the hours. +</p> + +<p> +So he sat for hours in bed, like a statue, reading. His mind, hard and +acute, read on rapidly, his body understood nothing. In a state of rigid +unconsciousness, he read on through the night, till morning, when, weary and +disgusted in spirit, disgusted most of all with himself, he slept for two hours. +</p> + +<p> +Then he got up, hard and full of energy. Gudrun scarcely spoke to him, +except at coffee when she said: +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be leaving tomorrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“We will go together as far as Innsbruck, for appearance’s +sake?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +She said ‘Perhaps’ between the sips of her coffee. And the sound +of her taking her breath in the word, was nauseous to him. He rose quickly to be +away from her. +</p> + +<p> +He went and made arrangements for the departure on the morrow. Then, taking +some food, he set out for the day on the skis. Perhaps, he said to the Wirt, he +would go up to the Marienhütte, perhaps to the village below. +</p> + +<p> +To Gudrun this day was full of a promise like spring. She felt an +approaching release, a new fountain of life rising up in her. It gave her +pleasure to dawdle through her packing, it gave her pleasure to dip into books, +to try on her different garments, to look at herself in the glass. She felt a +new lease of life was come upon her, and she was happy like a child, very +attractive and beautiful to everybody, with her soft, luxuriant figure, and her +happiness. Yet underneath was death itself. +</p> + +<p> +In the afternoon she had to go out with Loerke. Her tomorrow was perfectly +vague before her. This was what gave her pleasure. She might be going to England +with Gerald, she might be going to Dresden with Loerke, she might be going to +Munich, to a girl-friend she had there. Anything might come to pass on the +morrow. And today was the white, snowy iridescent threshold of all possibility. +All possibility—that was the charm to her, the lovely, iridescent, +indefinite charm,—pure illusion. All possibility—because death was +inevitable, and <i>nothing</i> was possible but death. +</p> + +<p> +She did not want things to materialise, to take any definite shape. She +wanted, suddenly, at one moment of the journey tomorrow, to be wafted into an +utterly new course, by some utterly unforeseen event, or motion. So that, +although she wanted to go out with Loerke for the last time into the snow, she +did not want to be serious or businesslike. +</p> + +<p> +And Loerke was not a serious figure. In his brown velvet cap, that made his +head as round as a chestnut, with the brown-velvet flaps loose and wild over his +ears, and a wisp of elf-like, thin black hair blowing above his full, elf-like +dark eyes, the shiny, transparent brown skin crinkling up into odd grimaces on +his small-featured face, he looked an odd little boy-man, a bat. But in his +figure, in the greeny loden suit, he looked <i>chétif</i> and puny, still +strangely different from the rest. +</p> + +<p> +He had taken a little toboggan, for the two of them, and they trudged +between the blinding slopes of snow, that burned their now hardening faces, +laughing in an endless sequence of quips and jests and polyglot fancies. The +fancies were the reality to both of them, they were both so happy, tossing about +the little coloured balls of verbal humour and whimsicality. Their natures +seemed to sparkle in full interplay, they were enjoying a pure game. And they +wanted to keep it on the level of a game, their relationship: <i>such</i> a fine +game. +</p> + +<p> +Loerke did not take the toboganning very seriously. He put no fire and +intensity into it, as Gerald did. Which pleased Gudrun. She was weary, oh so +weary of Gerald’s gripped intensity of physical motion. Loerke let the +sledge go wildly, and gaily, like a flying leaf, and when, at a bend, he pitched +both her and him out into the snow, he only waited for them both to pick +themselves up unhurt off the keen white ground, to be laughing and pert as a +pixie. She knew he would be making ironical, playful remarks as he wandered in +hell—if he were in the humour. And that pleased her immensely. It seemed +like a rising above the dreariness of actuality, the monotony of contingencies. +</p> + +<p> +They played till the sun went down, in pure amusement, careless and +timeless. Then, as the little sledge twirled riskily to rest at the bottom of +the slope, +</p> + +<p> +“Wait!” he said suddenly, and he produced from somewhere a large +thermos flask, a packet of Keks, and a bottle of Schnapps. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh Loerke,” she cried. “What an inspiration! What a +<i>comble de joie indeed!</i> What is the Schnapps?” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at it, and laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Heidelbeer!</i>” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“No! From the bilberries under the snow. Doesn’t it look as if +it were distilled from snow. Can you—” she sniffed, and sniffed at +the bottle—“can you smell bilberries? Isn’t it wonderful? It +is exactly as if one could smell them through the snow.” +</p> + +<p> +She stamped her foot lightly on the ground. He kneeled down and whistled, +and put his ear to the snow. As he did so his black eyes twinkled up. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! Ha!” she laughed, warmed by the whimsical way in which he +mocked at her verbal extravagances. He was always teasing her, mocking her ways. +But as he in his mockery was even more absurd than she in her extravagances, +what could one do but laugh and feel liberated. +</p> + +<p> +She could feel their voices, hers and his, ringing silvery like bells in the +frozen, motionless air of the first twilight. How perfect it was, how <i>very</i> +perfect it was, this silvery isolation and interplay. +</p> + +<p> +She sipped the hot coffee, whose fragrance flew around them like bees +murmuring around flowers, in the snowy air, she drank tiny sips of the +<i>Heidelbeerwasser</i>, she ate the cold, sweet, creamy wafers. How good everything +was! How perfect everything tasted and smelled and sounded, here in this utter +stillness of snow and falling twilight. +</p> + +<p> +“You are going away tomorrow?” his voice came at last. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause, when the evening seemed to rise in its silent, ringing +pallor infinitely high, to the infinite which was near at hand. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Wohin?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +That was the question—<i>wohin?</i> Whither? <i>Wohin?</i> What a lovely word! +She <i>never</i> wanted it answered. Let it chime for ever. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she said, smiling at him. +</p> + +<p> +He caught the smile from her. +</p> + +<p> +“One never does,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“One never does,” she repeated. +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence, wherein he ate biscuits rapidly, as a rabbit eats +leaves. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” he laughed, “where will you take a ticket +to?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh heaven!” she cried. “One must take a ticket.” +</p> + +<p> +Here was a blow. She saw herself at the wicket, at the railway station. Then +a relieving thought came to her. She breathed freely. +</p> + +<p> +“But one needn’t go,” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly not,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean one needn’t go where one’s ticket says.” +</p> + +<p> +That struck him. One might take a ticket, so as not to travel to the +destination it indicated. One might break off, and avoid the destination. A +point located. That was an idea! +</p> + +<p> +“Then take a ticket to London,” he said. “One should never +go there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Right,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +He poured a little coffee into a tin can. +</p> + +<p> +“You won’t tell me where you will go?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Really and truly,” she said, “I don’t know. It +depends which way the wind blows.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her quizzically, then he pursed up his lips, like Zephyrus, +blowing across the snow. +</p> + +<p> +“It goes towards Germany,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I believe so,” she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly, they were aware of a vague white figure near them. It was Gerald. +Gudrun’s heart leapt in sudden terror, profound terror. She rose to her +feet. +</p> + +<p> +“They told me where you were,” came Gerald’s voice, like a +judgment in the whitish air of twilight. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Maria!</i> You come like a ghost,” exclaimed Loerke. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald did not answer. His presence was unnatural and ghostly to them. +</p> + +<p> +Loerke shook the flask—then he held it inverted over the snow. Only a +few brown drops trickled out. +</p> + +<p> +“All gone!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +To Gerald, the smallish, odd figure of the German was distinct and +objective, as if seen through field glasses. And he disliked the small figure +exceedingly, he wanted it removed. +</p> + +<p> +Then Loerke rattled the box which held the biscuits. +</p> + +<p> +“Biscuits there are still,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +And reaching from his seated posture in the sledge, he handed them to +Gudrun. She fumbled, and took one. He would have held them to Gerald, but Gerald +so definitely did not want to be offered a biscuit, that Loerke, rather vaguely, +put the box aside. Then he took up the small bottle, and held it to the light. +</p> + +<p> +“Also there is some Schnapps,” he said to himself. +</p> + +<p> +Then suddenly, he elevated the battle gallantly in the air, a strange, +grotesque figure leaning towards Gudrun, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Gnädiges Fräulein</i>,” he said, “<i>wohl</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +There was a crack, the bottle was flying, Loerke had started back, the three +stood quivering in violent emotion. +</p> + +<p> +Loerke turned to Gerald, a devilish leer on his bright-skinned face. +</p> + +<p> +“Well done!” he said, in a satirical demoniac frenzy. +“<i>C’est le sport, sans doute.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +The next instant he was sitting ludicrously in the snow, Gerald’s fist +having rung against the side of his head. But Loerke pulled himself together, +rose, quivering, looking full at Gerald, his body weak and furtive, but his eyes +demoniacal with satire. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Vive le héros, vive</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +But he flinched, as, in a black flash Gerald’s fist came upon him, +banged into the other side of his head, and sent him aside like a broken straw. +</p> + +<p> +But Gudrun moved forward. She raised her clenched hand high, and brought it +down, with a great downward stroke on to the face and on to the breast of +Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +A great astonishment burst upon him, as if the air had broken. Wide, wide +his soul opened, in wonder, feeling the pain. Then it laughed, turning, with +strong hands outstretched, at last to take the apple of his desire. At last he +could finish his desire. +</p> + +<p> +He took the throat of Gudrun between his hands, that were hard and +indomitably powerful. And her throat was beautifully, so beautifully soft, save +that, within, he could feel the slippery chords of her life. And this he +crushed, this he could crush. What bliss! Oh what bliss, at last, what +satisfaction, at last! The pure zest of satisfaction filled his soul. He was +watching the unconsciousness come unto her swollen face, watching the eyes roll +back. How ugly she was! What a fulfilment, what a satisfaction! How good this +was, oh how good it was, what a God-given gratification, at last! He was +unconscious of her fighting and struggling. The struggling was her reciprocal +lustful passion in this embrace, the more violent it became, the greater the +frenzy of delight, till the zenith was reached, the crisis, the struggle was +overborne, her movement became softer, appeased. +</p> + +<p> +Loerke roused himself on the snow, too dazed and hurt to get up. Only his +eyes were conscious. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Monsieur!</i>” he said, in his thin, roused voice: “<i>Quand +vous aurez fini</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +A revulsion of contempt and disgust came over Gerald’s soul. The +disgust went to the very bottom of him, a nausea. Ah, what was he doing, to what +depths was he letting himself go! As if he cared about her enough to kill her, +to have her life on his hands! +</p> + +<p> +A weakness ran over his body, a terrible relaxing, a thaw, a decay of +strength. Without knowing, he had let go his grip, and Gudrun had fallen to her +knees. Must he see, must he know? +</p> + +<p> +A fearful weakness possessed him, his joints were turned to water. He +drifted, as on a wind, veered, and went drifting away. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t want it, really,” was the last confession of +disgust in his soul, as he drifted up the slope, weak, finished, only sheering +off unconsciously from any further contact. “I’ve had enough—I +want to go to sleep. I’ve had enough.” He was sunk under a sense of +nausea. +</p> + +<p> +He was weak, but he did not want to rest, he wanted to go on and on, to the +end. Never again to stay, till he came to the end, that was all the desire that +remained to him. So he drifted on and on, unconscious and weak, not thinking of +anything, so long as he could keep in action. +</p> + +<p> +The twilight spread a weird, unearthly light overhead, bluish-rose in +colour, the cold blue night sank on the snow. In the valley below, behind, in +the great bed of snow, were two small figures: Gudrun dropped on her knees, like +one executed, and Loerke sitting propped up near her. That was all. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald stumbled on up the slope of snow, in the bluish darkness, always +climbing, always unconsciously climbing, weary though he was. On his left was a +steep slope with black rocks and fallen masses of rock and veins of snow +slashing in and about the blackness of rock, veins of snow slashing vaguely in +and about the blackness of rock. Yet there was no sound, all this made no noise. +</p> + +<p> +To add to his difficulty, a small bright moon shone brilliantly just ahead, +on the right, a painful brilliant thing that was always there, unremitting, from +which there was no escape. He wanted so to come to the end—he had had +enough. Yet he did not sleep. +</p> + +<p> +He surged painfully up, sometimes having to cross a slope of black rock, +that was blown bare of snow. Here he was afraid of falling, very much afraid of +falling. And high up here, on the crest, moved a wind that almost overpowered +him with a sleep-heavy iciness. Only it was not here, the end, and he must still +go on. His indefinite nausea would not let him stay. +</p> + +<p> +Having gained one ridge, he saw the vague shadow of something higher in +front. Always higher, always higher. He knew he was following the track towards +the summit of the slopes, where was the Marienhütte, and the descent on the +other side. But he was not really conscious. He only wanted to go on, to go on +whilst he could, to move, to keep going, that was all, to keep going, until it +was finished. He had lost all his sense of place. And yet in the remaining +instinct of life, his feet sought the track where the skis had gone. +</p> + +<p> +He slithered down a sheer snow slope. That frightened him. He had no +alpenstock, nothing. But having come safely to rest, he began to walk on, in the +illuminated darkness. It was as cold as sleep. He was between two ridges, in a +hollow. So he swerved. Should he climb the other ridge, or wander along the +hollow? How frail the thread of his being was stretched! He would perhaps climb +the ridge. The snow was firm and simple. He went along. There was something +standing out of the snow. He approached, with dimmest curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +It was a half-buried Crucifix, a little Christ under a little sloping hood, +at the top of a pole. He sheered away. Somebody was going to murder him. He had +a great dread of being murdered. But it was a dread which stood outside him, +like his own ghost. +</p> + +<p> +Yet why be afraid? It was bound to happen. To be murdered! He looked round +in terror at the snow, the rocking, pale, shadowy slopes of the upper world. He +was bound to be murdered, he could see it. This was the moment when the death +was uplifted, and there was no escape. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Jesus, was it then bound to be—Lord Jesus! He could feel the blow +descending, he knew he was murdered. Vaguely wandering forward, his hands lifted +as if to feel what would happen, he was waiting for the moment when he would +stop, when it would cease. It was not over yet. +</p> + +<p> +He had come to the hollow basin of snow, surrounded by sheer slopes and +precipices, out of which rose a track that brought one to the top of the +mountain. But he wandered unconsciously, till he slipped and fell down, and as +he fell something broke in his soul, and immediately he went to sleep. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap31"></a>CHAPTER XXXI.<br/> +EXEUNT</h2> + +<p> +When they brought the body home, the next morning, Gudrun was shut up in her +room. From her window she saw men coming along with a burden, over the snow. She +sat still and let the minutes go by. +</p> + +<p> +There came a tap at her door. She opened. There stood a woman, saying +softly, oh, far too reverently: +</p> + +<p> +“They have found him, madam!” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Il est mort?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—hours ago.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun did not know what to say. What should she say? What should she feel? +What should she do? What did they expect of her? She was coldly at a loss. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you,” she said, and she shut the door of her room. The +woman went away mortified. Not a word, not a tear—ha! Gudrun was cold, a +cold woman. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun sat on in her room, her face pale and impassive. What was she to do? +She could not weep and make a scene. She could not alter herself. She sat +motionless, hiding from people. Her one motive was to avoid actual contact with +events. She only wrote out a long telegram to Ursula and Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +In the afternoon, however, she rose suddenly to look for Loerke. She glanced +with apprehension at the door of the room that had been Gerald’s. Not for +worlds would she enter there. +</p> + +<p> +She found Loerke sitting alone in the lounge. She went straight up to him. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t true, is it?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He looked up at her. A small smile of misery twisted his face. He shrugged +his shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“True?” he echoed. +</p> + +<p> +“We haven’t killed him?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +He disliked her coming to him in such a manner. He raised his shoulders +wearily. +</p> + +<p> +“It has happened,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him. He sat crushed and frustrated for the time being, quite +as emotionless and barren as herself. My God! this was a barren tragedy, barren, +barren. +</p> + +<p> +She returned to her room to wait for Ursula and Birkin. She wanted to get +away, only to get away. She could not think or feel until she had got away, till +she was loosed from this position. +</p> + +<p> +The day passed, the next day came. She heard the sledge, saw Ursula and +Birkin alight, and she shrank from these also. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula came straight up to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Gudrun!” she cried, the tears running down her cheeks. And she +took her sister in her arms. Gudrun hid her face on Ursula’s shoulder, but +still she could not escape the cold devil of irony that froze her soul. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha, ha!” she thought, “this is the right +behaviour.” +</p> + +<p> +But she could not weep, and the sight of her cold, pale, impassive face soon +stopped the fountain of Ursula’s tears. In a few moments, the sisters had +nothing to say to each other. +</p> + +<p> +“Was it very vile to be dragged back here again?” Gudrun asked +at length. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula looked up in some bewilderment. +</p> + +<p> +“I never thought of it,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I felt a beast, fetching you,” said Gudrun. “But I simply +couldn’t see people. That is too much for me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Ursula, chilled. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin tapped and entered. His face was white and expressionless. She knew +he knew. He gave her his hand, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“The end of <i>this</i> trip, at any rate.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun glanced at him, afraid. +</p> + +<p> +There was silence between the three of them, nothing to be said. At length +Ursula asked in a small voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Have you seen him?” +</p> + +<p> +He looked back at Ursula with a hard, cold look, and did not trouble to +answer. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you seen him?” she repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“I have,” he said, coldly. +</p> + +<p> +Then he looked at Gudrun. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you done anything?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing,” she replied, “nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +She shrank in cold disgust from making any statement. +</p> + +<p> +“Loerke says that Gerald came to you, when you were sitting on the +sledge at the bottom of the Rudelbahn, that you had words, and Gerald walked +away. What were the words about? I had better know, so that I can satisfy the +authorities, if necessary.” +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun looked up at him, white, childlike, mute with trouble. +</p> + +<p> +“There weren’t even any words,” she said. “He +knocked Loerke down and stunned him, he half strangled me, then he went +away.” +</p> + +<p> +To herself she was saying: +</p> + +<p> +“A pretty little sample of the eternal triangle!” And she turned +ironically away, because she knew that the fight had been between Gerald and +herself and that the presence of the third party was a mere contingency—an +inevitable contingency perhaps, but a contingency none the less. But let them +have it as an example of the eternal triangle, the trinity of hate. It would be +simpler for them. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin went away, his manner cold and abstracted. But she knew he would do +things for her, nevertheless, he would see her through. She smiled slightly to +herself, with contempt. Let him do the work, since he was so extremely <i>good</i> +at looking after other people. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin went again to Gerald. He had loved him. And yet he felt chiefly +disgust at the inert body lying there. It was so inert, so coldly dead, a +carcase, Birkin’s bowels seemed to turn to ice. He had to stand and look +at the frozen dead body that had been Gerald. +</p> + +<p> +It was the frozen carcase of a dead male. Birkin remembered a rabbit which +he had once found frozen like a board on the snow. It had been rigid like a +dried board when he picked it up. And now this was Gerald, stiff as a board, +curled up as if for sleep, yet with the horrible hardness somehow evident. It +filled him with horror. The room must be made warm, the body must be thawed. The +limbs would break like glass or like wood if they had to be straightened. +</p> + +<p> +He reached and touched the dead face. And the sharp, heavy bruise of ice +bruised his living bowels. He wondered if he himself were freezing too, freezing +from the inside. In the short blond moustache the life-breath was frozen into a +block of ice, beneath the silent nostrils. And this was Gerald! +</p> + +<p> +Again he touched the sharp, almost glittering fair hair of the frozen body. +It was icy-cold, hair icy-cold, almost venomous. Birkin’s heart began to +freeze. He had loved Gerald. Now he looked at the shapely, strange-coloured +face, with the small, fine, pinched nose and the manly cheeks, saw it frozen +like an ice-pebble—yet he had loved it. What was one to think or feel? His +brain was beginning to freeze, his blood was turning to ice-water. So cold, so +cold, a heavy, bruising cold pressing on his arms from outside, and a heavier +cold congealing within him, in his heart and in his bowels. +</p> + +<p> +He went over the snow slopes, to see where the death had been. At last he +came to the great shallow among the precipices and slopes, near the summit of +the pass. It was a grey day, the third day of greyness and stillness. All was +white, icy, pallid, save for the scoring of black rocks that jutted like roots +sometimes, and sometimes were in naked faces. In the distance a slope sheered +down from a peak, with many black rock-slides. +</p> + +<p> +It was like a shallow pot lying among the stone and snow of the upper world. +In this pot Gerald had gone to sleep. At the far end, the guides had driven iron +stakes deep into the snow-wall, so that, by means of the great rope attached, +they could haul themselves up the massive snow-front, out on to the jagged +summit of the pass, naked to heaven, where the Marienhütte hid among the naked +rocks. Round about, spiked, slashed snow-peaks pricked the heaven. +</p> + +<p> +Gerald might have found this rope. He might have hauled himself up to the +crest. He might have heard the dogs in the Marienhütte, and found shelter. He +might have gone on, down the steep, steep fall of the south-side, down into the +dark valley with its pines, on to the great Imperial road leading south to +Italy. +</p> + +<p> +He might! And what then? The Imperial road! The south? Italy? What then? Was +it a way out? It was only a way in again. Birkin stood high in the painful air, +looking at the peaks, and the way south. Was it any good going south, to Italy? +Down the old, old Imperial road? +</p> + +<p> +He turned away. Either the heart would break, or cease to care. Best cease +to care. Whatever the mystery which has brought forth man and the universe, it +is a non-human mystery, it has its own great ends, man is not the criterion. +Best leave it all to the vast, creative, non-human mystery. Best strive with +oneself only, not with the universe. +</p> + +<p> +“God cannot do without man.” It was a saying of some great +French religious teacher. But surely this is false. God can do without man. God +could do without the ichthyosauri and the mastodon. These monsters failed +creatively to develop, so God, the creative mystery, dispensed with them. In the +same way the mystery could dispense with man, should he too fail creatively to +change and develop. The eternal creative mystery could dispose of man, and +replace him with a finer created being. Just as the horse has taken the place of +the mastodon. +</p> + +<p> +It was very consoling to Birkin, to think this. If humanity ran into a <i>cul +de sac</i> and expended itself, the timeless creative mystery would bring forth some +other being, finer, more wonderful, some new, more lovely race, to carry on the +embodiment of creation. The game was never up. The mystery of creation was +fathomless, infallible, inexhaustible, forever. Races came and went, species +passed away, but ever new species arose, more lovely, or equally lovely, always +surpassing wonder. The fountain-head was incorruptible and unsearchable. It had +no limits. It could bring forth miracles, create utter new races and new +species, in its own hour, new forms of consciousness, new forms of body, new +units of being. To be man was as nothing compared to the possibilities of the +creative mystery. To have one’s pulse beating direct from the mystery, +this was perfection, unutterable satisfaction. Human or inhuman mattered +nothing. The perfect pulse throbbed with indescribable being, miraculous unborn +species. +</p> + +<p> +Birkin went home again to Gerald. He went into the room, and sat down on the +bed. Dead, dead and cold! +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Imperial Caesar dead, and turned to clay<br /> +Would stop a hole to keep the wind away.<br /> +</p> + +<p> +There was no response from that which had been Gerald. Strange, congealed, +icy substance—no more. No more! +</p> + +<p> +Terribly weary, Birkin went away, about the day’s business. He did it +all quietly, without bother. To rant, to rave, to be tragic, to make +situations—it was all too late. Best be quiet, and bear one’s soul +in patience and in fullness. +</p> + +<p> +But when he went in again, at evening, to look at Gerald between the +candles, because of his heart’s hunger, suddenly his heart contracted, his +own candle all but fell from his hand, as, with a strange whimpering cry, the +tears broke out. He sat down in a chair, shaken by a sudden access. Ursula who +had followed him, recoiled aghast from him, as he sat with sunken head and body +convulsively shaken, making a strange, horrible sound of tears. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t want it to be like this—I didn’t want it +to be like this,” he cried to himself. Ursula could but think of the +Kaiser’s: “<i>Ich habe es nicht gewollt.</i>” She looked +almost with horror on Birkin. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly he was silent. But he sat with his head dropped, to hide his face. +Then furtively he wiped his face with his fingers. Then suddenly he lifted his +head, and looked straight at Ursula, with dark, almost vengeful eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“He should have loved me,” he said. “I offered him.” +</p> + +<p> +She, afraid, white, with mute lips answered: +</p> + +<p> +“What difference would it have made!” +</p> + +<p> +“It would!” he said. “It would.” +</p> + +<p> +He forgot her, and turned to look at Gerald. With head oddly lifted, like a +man who draws his head back from an insult, half haughtily, he watched the cold, +mute, material face. It had a bluish cast. It sent a shaft like ice through the +heart of the living man. Cold, mute, material! Birkin remembered how once Gerald +had clutched his hand, with a warm, momentaneous grip of final love. For one +second—then let go again, let go for ever. If he had kept true to that +clasp, death would not have mattered. Those who die, and dying still can love, +still believe, do not die. They live still in the beloved. Gerald might still +have been living in the spirit with Birkin, even after death. He might have +lived with his friend, a further life. +</p> + +<p> +But now he was dead, like clay, like bluish, corruptible ice. Birkin looked +at the pale fingers, the inert mass. He remembered a dead stallion he had seen: +a dead mass of maleness, repugnant. He remembered also the beautiful face of one +whom he had loved, and who had died still having the faith to yield to the +mystery. That dead face was beautiful, no one could call it cold, mute, +material. No one could remember it without gaining faith in the mystery, without +the soul’s warming with new, deep life-trust. +</p> + +<p> +And Gerald! The denier! He left the heart cold, frozen, hardly able to beat. +Gerald’s father had looked wistful, to break the heart: but not this last +terrible look of cold, mute Matter. Birkin watched and watched. +</p> + +<p> +Ursula stood aside watching the living man stare at the frozen face of the +dead man. Both faces were unmoved and unmoving. The candle-flames flickered in +the frozen air, in the intense silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Haven’t you seen enough?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He got up. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a bitter thing to me,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“What—that he’s dead?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +His eyes just met hers. He did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got me,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He smiled and kissed her. +</p> + +<p> +“If I die,” he said, “you’ll know I haven’t +left you.” +</p> + +<p> +“And me?” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“And you won’t have left me,” he said. “We +shan’t have any need to despair, in death.” +</p> + +<p> +She took hold of his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“But need you despair over Gerald?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +They went away. Gerald was taken to England, to be buried. Birkin and Ursula +accompanied the body, along with one of Gerald’s brothers. It was the +Crich brothers and sisters who insisted on the burial in England. Birkin wanted +to leave the dead man in the Alps, near the snow. But the family was strident, +loudly insistent. +</p> + +<p> +Gudrun went to Dresden. She wrote no particulars of herself. Ursula stayed +at the Mill with Birkin for a week or two. They were both very quiet. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you need Gerald?” she asked one evening. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t I enough for you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “You are enough for me, as far as a woman +is concerned. You are all women to me. But I wanted a man friend, as eternal as +you and I are eternal.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why aren’t I enough?” she said. “You are enough for +me. I don’t want anybody else but you. Why isn’t it the same with +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Having you, I can live all my life without anybody else, any other +sheer intimacy. But to make it complete, really happy, I wanted eternal union +with a man too: another kind of love,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe it,” she said. “It’s an +obstinacy, a theory, a perversity.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t have two kinds of love. Why should you!” +</p> + +<p> +It seems as if I can’t,” he said. “Yet I wanted it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t have it, because it’s false, impossible,” +she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe that,” he answered. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN IN LOVE ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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