“They are so languid,” said Ursula.
“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.
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.
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. ag The inter-play 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.
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.
“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.ah
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.
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.
“Now I see,” cried the Contessa excitedly, watching his purely gay motion, which he had all to himself. “Mr. Birkin, he is a changer.”
Hermione looked at her slowly, and shuddered, knowing that only a foreigner could have seen and have said this.
“Cosa vuol’dire, Palestra?”ai she asked, sing-song.
“Look,” said the Contessa, in Italian. “He is not a man, he is a chameleon, a creature of change.”
“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, 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.
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:
“Isn’t it wonderful—who would dare to put those two strong colours together—”
Then Hermione’s maid entered silently and Ursula, overcome with dread, escaped, carried away by powerful impulse.
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.
“Who are those two Brangwens?” Gerald asked.
“They live in Beldover.”
“In Beldover! Who are they then?”
“Teachers in the Grammar School.”
There was a pause.
“They are!” exclaimed Gerald at length. “I thought I had seen them before.”
“It disappoints you?” said Birkin.
“Disappoints me! No—but how is it Hermione has them here?”
“She knew Gudrun in London—that’s the younger one, the one with the darker hair—she’s an artist—does sculpture and modelling.”
“She’s not a teacher in the Grammar School, then—only the other?”
“Both—Gudrun art mistress, Ursula a class mistress.”
“And what’s the father?”
“Handicraft instructor in the schools.”
“Really!”
“Class-barriers are breaking down!”
Gerald was always uneasy under the slightly jeering tone of the other.
“That their father is handicraft instructor in a school! What does it matter to me?”
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.
“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.
“Where will she go?”
“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.”
Gerald pondered for a few moments.
“How do you know her so well?” he asked.
“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.”
“And she makes money, apart from her teaching?” asked Gerald.
“Some—irregularly. She can sell her models. She has a certain réclame.”
“How much for?”
“A guinea, ten guineas.”
“And are they good? What are they?”
“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.”
“I thought it was savage carving again.”
“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.”
“She might be a well-known artist one day?” mused Gerald.
“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 d
efensive. 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.”
“Oh, rather disgusting. Halliday turned objectionable, and I only just saved myself from jumping in his stomach, in a real old-fashioned row.”
Birkin was silent.
“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’s 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 Botticelli face, on the one hand, and on the other, he must have the Pussum, just to defile himself with her.”
“That’s what I can’t make out,” said Gerald. “Does he love her, the Pussum, or doesn’t he?”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I know,” said Birkin. Then he added, rather fretfully, “But go to bed, Gerald. God knows what time it is.”
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.
“One thing,” he said, seating himself on the bed again. “We finished up rather stormily, and I never had time to give her anything.”
“Money?” said Birkin. “She’ll get what she wants from Halliday or from one of her acquaintances.”
“But then,” said Gerald, “I’d rather give her her dues and settle the account.”
“She doesn’t care.”
“No, perhaps not. But one feels the account is left open, and one would rather it were closed.”
“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,”aj said Birkin, turning aside. It seemed to him Gerald was talking for the sake of talking. “Go away, it wearies me—its 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,” came the laconic answer.
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 vitæ scelerisque purus—”ak 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 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,”al 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 Malleson, 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.
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