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.
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.
It filled him with almost insane fury, this calm assumption of the Magna Mater,bj that all was hers, because she had borne it. Man was hers because she had borne him. A Mater Dolorosa,bk 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 then. 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.
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.
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 comme il faut. 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.
“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.
“For my sins, I suppose,” Birkin said, smiling a little ironically.
“For your sins? Yes, probably that is so. You should sin less, and keep better in health.”
“You’d better teach me.”
He looked at Gerald with ironic eyes.
“How are things with you?” asked Birkin.
“With me?” Gerald looked at Birkin, saw he was serious, and a warm light came into his eyes.
“I don’t know that they’re any different. I don’t see how they could be. There’s nothing to change.”
“I suppose you are conducting the business as successfully as ever, and ignoring the demand of the soul.”
“That’s it,” said Gerald. “At least as far as the business is concerned. I couldn’t say about the soul, I’m sure.”
“No.”
“Surely you don’t expect me to?” laughed Gerald.
“No. How are the rest of your affairs progressing, apart from the business?”
“The rest of my affairs? What are those? I couldn’t say; I don’t know what you refer to.”
“Yes, you do,” said Birkin. “Are you gloomy or cheerful? And what about Gudrun Brangwen?”
“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.”
“A hit over the face? What for?”
“That I couldn’t tell you, either.”
“Really! But when?”
“The night of the party—when Diana was drowned. She was driving the cattle up the hill, and I went after her—you remember.”
“Yes, I remember. But what made her do that? You didn’t definitely ask her for it, I suppose?”
“I? No, not that I know of. I merely said to her, that it was dangerous to drive those Highland bullocks—as it is. 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.”
Birkin laughed quickly, as if it pleased him. Gerald looked at him, wondering, and began to laugh as well, saying:
“I didn’t laugh at the time, I assure you. I was never so taken aback in my life.”
“And weren’t you furious?”
“Furious? I should think I was. I’d have murdered her for two pins.”
“H’m!” ejaculated Birkin. “Poor Gudrun, wouldn’t she suffer af terwards for having given herself away!” He was hugely delighted.
“Would she suffer?” asked Gerald, also amused now.
Both men smiled in malice and amusement.
“Badly, I should think; seeing how self-conscious she is.”
“She is self-conscious, is she? Then what made her do it? For I certainly think it was quite uncalled-for, and quite unjustified.”
“I suppose it was a sudden impulse.”
“Yes, but how do you account for her having such an impulse? I’d done her no harm.”
Birkin shook his head.
“The Amazon suddenly came up in her, I suppose,” he said.
“Well,” replied Gerald, “I’d rather it had been the Orinoco.”
They both laughed lightly 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.
“And you resent it?” Birkin asked.
“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.”
“Did she? You’ve not met since that night?”
Gerald’s face clouded.
“No,” he said. “We’ve been—you can imagine how it’s been, since the accident.”
“Yes. Is it calming down?”
“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.”
“No? Did it upset you very much?”
“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 grief, you know. It leaves me cold. I can’t quite account for it.”
“You don’t care if you die or not?” asked Birkin.
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.
“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.”
“Timor mortis conturbat me,”bl quoted Birkin, adding—“No, death doesn’t really seem the point any more. It curiously doesn’t concern one. It’s like an ordinary to-morrow. ”
Gerald looked closely at his friend. The eyes of the two men met, and an unspoken understanding was exchanged.
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.
“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.
“What is?” re-echoed Birkin. And there was a mocking silence.
“There’s a long way to go, after the point of intrinsic death, before we disappear,” said Birkin.
“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.
“Right down the slopes of degeneration—mystic, universal degeneration. There are many stages of pure degradation to go through: age-long. We live on long after our death and progressively, in progressive devolution.”
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.
“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 is 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.”
“She oughtn’t to be sent away to school,” said Birkin, who was considering a new proposition.
“She oughtn’t? Why?”
“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.”
“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.”
“She wouldn’t mix, you see. You 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?”
“No, I don’t want to make her anything. But I think school would be good for her.”
“Was it good for you?”
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.
“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.”
“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.”
“Yes, but where’s your special world?” said Gerald.
“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 want a world same as your brothers-in-law. It’s just the special quality you value. Do you want to be normal or ordinary? It’s a lie. You want to be free and extraordinary, in an extraordinary world of liberty.”
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, childlike: so amazingly clever, but incurably innocent.
“Yet you are so banal as to consider me chiefly a freak,” said Birkin pointedly.
“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.”
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.
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 lire—to love a man purely and fully. Of course he had been loving Gerald all along, and all along denying it.
He lay in the bed and wondered, whilst his friend sat beside him, lost in brooding. Each man was gone in his own thoughts.
“You know how the old German knights used to swear a Blutbruderschaft,”2 he said to Gerald, with quite a new happy activity in his eyes.
“Make a little wound in their arms, and rub each other’s blood into the cut?” said Gerald.
“Yes—and swear to be true to each other, of one blood, all their lives. That i
s 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.”
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.
“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.”
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.
“Shall we swear to each other, one day?” said Birkin, putting out his hand towards Gerald.
Gerald just touched the extended fine, living hand, as if withheld and afraid.
“We’ll leave it till I understand it better,” he said, in a voice of excuse.
Birkin watched him. A little sharp disappointment, perhaps a touch of contempt came into his heart.
“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.”
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.
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