There was silence for a time. Then Birkin said, in a lighter tone, letting the stress of the contact pass:
“Can’t you get a good governess for Winifred?—somebody exceptional?”
“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.
“Really! I didn’t know that. Oh well then, if Gudrun would 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.”
“I thought they got on so badly, as a rule.”
“Perhaps. But only artists produce for each other the world that is fit to live in. If you can arrange that for Winifred, it is perfect.”
“But you think she wouldn’t come?”
“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.”
“Do you think mother is abnormal?”
“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.”
“After producing a brood of wrong children,” said Gerald gloomily.
“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.”
“Sometimes I think it is a curse to be alive,” said Gerald, with sudden impotent anger.
“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.”
“Less than you’d think,” said Gerald, revealing a strange poverty in his look at the other man.
There was silence, each thinking his own thoughts.
“I don’t see what she has to distinguish between teaching at the Grammar School, and coming to teach Win,” said Gerald.
“The difference between a public servant and a private one. The only nobleman to-day, king and only aristocrat, is the public, the public. You are quite willing to serve the public—but to be a private tutor—”
“I don’t want to serve either—”
“No! And Gudrun will probably feel the same.”
Gerald thought for a few minutes. Then he said:
“At all events, father won’t make her feel like a private servant. He will be fussy and grateful enough.”
“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.”
“Is she?” said Gerald.
“Yes, and if you haven’t the guts to know it, I hope she’ll leave you to your own devices.”
“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.”
“Nor do I, damn them. But am I a teacher because I teach, or a parson because I preach?”
Gerald laughed. He was always uneasy on this score. He did not want to claim social superiority, yet he would 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. Now 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.
“I’ve been neglecting my business all this while,” he said smiling.
“I ought to have reminded you before,” Birkin replied, laughing and mocking.
“I knew you’d say something like that,” laughed Gerald, rather uneasily.
“Did you?”
“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.”
“Of course, we’re not in the cart now,” said Birkin, satirically.
“Not as much as you make out. At any rate, we have enough to eat and drink—”
“And be satisfied,” added Birkin.
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.
“So,” said Birkin. “Good-bye.” And he reached out his hand from under the bed-clothes, smiling with a glimmering look.
“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.”
“I’ll be there in a few days,” said Birkin.
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.
“Good-bye then. There’s nothing I can do for you?”
“Nothing, thanks.”
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.
CHAPTER XVII
The Industrial Magnate1
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Yes, M
iss Brangwen,” she said, in her slightly whining, insinuating voice, “and how do you like being back in the old place, then?”
Gudrun, whom she addressed, hated her at once.
“I don’t care for it,” she replied abruptly.
“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?”
“What do I think of it?” Gudrun looked round at her slowly. “Do you mean, do I think it’s a good school?”
“Yes. What is your opinion of it?”
“I do think it’s a good school.”
Gudrun was very cold and repelling. She knew the common people hated the school.
“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.”
“Is he worse?” asked Ursula.
“Eh, yes—since they lost Miss Diana. He’s gone off to a shadow. Poor man, he’s had a world of trouble.”
“Has he?” asked Gudrun, faintly ironic.
“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.”
“I suppose they take after their mother?” said Ursula.
“In many ways.” Mrs. Kirk 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.
“Did you know her when she was first married?”
“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.
“Really,” said Gudrun.
“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 look death. And when the door was opened, she’d go in with her hands lifted—‘What have you been doing to my 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.”
“Really!” said Gudrun.
“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, she 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 felt 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—”
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 have to tell him, to see how he took it. And she loathed herself for the thought.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 w
as 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.
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.
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 worst 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: “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.”
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