Women in Love - 12

“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.

“I think I’d rather close the account,” said Gerald, repeating himself vaguely.

“It doesn’t matter one way or another,” said Birkin.

“You always say it doesn’t matter,” said Gerald, a little puzzled, looking down at the face of the other man affectionately.

“Neither does it,” said Birkin.

“But she was a decent sort, really—”

“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.

“I wish you’d tell me something that did matter,” said Gerald, looking down all the time at the face of the other man, waiting for something. But Birkin turned his face aside.

“All right then, go to sleep,” said Gerald, and he laid his hand affectionately on the other man’s shoulder, and went away.

In the morning when Gerald awoke and heard Birkin move, he called out: “I still think I ought to give the Pussum ten pounds.”

“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.”

“How do you know I can’t?”

“Knowing you.”

Gerald meditated for some moments.

“It seems to me the right thing to do, you know, with the Pussums, is to pay them.”

“And the right thing for mistresses: keep them. And the right thing for wives: live under the same roof with them. Integer vitae scelerisque purus—” said Birkin.

“There’s no need to be nasty about it,” said Gerald.

“It bores me. I’m not interested in your peccadilloes.”

“And I don’t care whether you are or not—I am.”

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.

“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.”

“You be interested in what you can, Gerald. Only I’m not interested myself,” said Birkin.

“What am I to do at all, then?” came Gerald’s voice.

“What you like. What am I to do myself?”

In the silence Birkin could feel Gerald musing this fact.

“I’m blest if I know,” came the good-humoured answer.

“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—”

“And part of me wants something else,” said Gerald, in a queer, quiet, real voice.

“What?” said Birkin, rather surprised.

“That’s what I hoped you could tell me,” said Gerald.

There was a silence for some time.

“I can’t tell you—I can’t find my own way, let alone yours. You might marry,” Birkin replied.

“Who—the Pussum?” asked Gerald.

“Perhaps,” said Birkin. And he rose and went to the window.

“That is your panacea,” said Gerald. “But you haven’t even tried it on yourself yet, and you are sick enough.”

“I am,” said Birkin. “Still, I shall come right.”

“Through marriage?”

“Yes,” Birkin answered obstinately.

“And no,” added Gerald. “No, no, no, my boy.”

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.

“Salvator femininus,” said Gerald, satirically.

“Why not?” said Birkin.

“No reason at all,” said Gerald, “if it really works. But whom will you marry?”

“A woman,” said Birkin.

“Good,” said Gerald.

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.

She lifted her face, and said, in her amused sing-song:

“Good morning! Did you sleep well? I’m so glad.”

And she turned away, ignoring them. Birkin, who knew her well, saw that she intended to discount his existence.

“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.”

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.

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.

Suddenly Birkin got up and went out.

“That’s enough,” he said to himself involuntarily.

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.

“Shall we bathe this morning?” she said, suddenly looking at them all.

“Splendid,” said Joshua. “It is a perfect morning.”

“Oh, it is beautiful,” said Fräulein.

“Yes, let us bathe,” said the Italian woman.

“We have no bathing suits,” said Gerald.

“Have mine,” said Alexander. “I must go to church and read the lessons. They expect me.”

“Are you a Christian?” asked the Italian Countess, with sudden interest.

“No,” said Alexander. “I’m not. But I believe in keeping up the old institutions.”

“They are so beautiful,” said Fräulein daintily.

“Oh, they are,” cried Miss Bradley.

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.

“Good-bye,” called Alexander, waving his gloves cheerily, and he disappeared behind the bushes, on his way to church.

“Now,” said Hermione, “shall we all bathe?”

“I won’t,” said Ursula.

“You don’t want to?” said Hermione, looking at her slowly.

“No. I don’t want to,” said Ursula.

“Nor I,” said Gudrun.

“What about my suit?” asked Gerald.

“I don’t know,” laughed Hermione, with an odd, amused intonation. “Will a handkerchief do—a large handkerchief?”

“That will do,” said Gerald.

“Come along then,” sang Hermione.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

But Gerald lingered a moment to speak to Gudrun.

“You don’t like the water?” he said.

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.

“I like it very much,” she replied.

He paused, expecting some sort of explanation.

“And you swim?”

“Yes, I swim.”

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.

“Why wouldn’t you bathe?” he asked her again, later, when he was once more the properly-dressed young Englishman.

She hesitated a moment before answering, opposing his persistence.

“Because I didn’t like the crowd,” she replied.

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.

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 were broken and destroyed, then, out of the chaos, what then?

The great social idea, said Sir Joshua, was the social 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 was a mechanism. Apart from work they were isolated, free to do as they liked.

“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.”

“Things would work very much better, Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen,” said Gerald.

“What things, Mr Colliery-Manager Crich? The relation between you and me, par exemple?”

“Yes, for example,” cried the Italian. “That which is between men and women—!”

“That is non-social,” said Birkin, sarcastically.

“Exactly,” said Gerald. “Between me and a woman, the social question does not enter. It is my own affair.”

“A ten-pound note on it,” said Birkin.

“You don’t admit that a woman is a social being?” asked Ursula of Gerald.

“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.”

“But won’t it be rather difficult to arrange the two halves?” asked Ursula.

“Oh no,” replied Gerald. “They arrange themselves naturally—we see it now, everywhere.”

“Don’t you laugh so pleasantly till you’re out of the wood,” said Birkin.

Gerald knitted his brows in momentary irritation.

“Was I laughing?” he said.

“If,” said Hermione at last, “we could only realise, that in the spirit 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.”

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: