There was a moment’s pause, after which Brangwen said:
“Well, she pleases herself—”
“Oh yes!” said Birkin, calmly.
A vibration came into Brangwen’s strong voice, as he replied:
“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.”
“Oh, it need never be too late,” said Birkin, “as far as that goes.”
“How do you mean?” asked the father.
“If one repents being married, the marriage is at an end,” said Birkin.
“You think so?”
“Yes.”
“Ay, well, that may be your way of looking at it.”
Birkin, in silence, thought to himself: “So it may. As for your way of looking at it, William Brangwen, it needs a little explaining.”
“I suppose,” said Brangwen, “you know what sort of people we are? What sort of a bringing-up she’s had?”
“‘She, ” thought Birkin to himself, remembering his childhood’s corrections, “is the cat’s mother.”
“Do I know what sort of a bringing-up she’s had?” he said aloud.
He seemed to annoy Brangwen intentionally.
“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.”
“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.
“And I don’t want to see her going back on it all,” he said, in a clanging voice.
“Why?” said Birkin.
This monosyllable exploded in Brangwen’s brain like a shot.
“Why! I don’t believe in your new-fangled ways and new-fangled ideas—in and out like a frog in a gallipot.bx It would never do for me.”
Birkin watched him with steady emotionless eyes. The radical antagonism in the two men was rousing.
“Yes, but are my ways and ideas new-fangled?” asked Birkin.
“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 that”.
There was a dangerous pause.
“And beyond that—?” asked Birkin.
The father hesitated, he was in a nasty position.
“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.
“Of course,” said Birkin, “I don’t want to hurt anybody or influence anybody. Ursula does exactly as she pleases.”
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.
“And as for beliefs, that’s one thing,” he said. “But I’d rather see my daughters dead to-morrow than that they should be at the beck and call of the first man that likes to come and whistle for them.”
A queer painful light came into Birkin’s eyes.
“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.”
Again there was a pause. The father was somewhat bewildered.
“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 but themselves. But she’s a right to consider her mother, and me as well—”
Brangwen was thinking his own thoughts.
“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—”
“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.”
Brangwen looked at him in a sudden flare of impotent anger.
“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.”
Birkin’s brows knitted suddenly, his eyes concentrated in mockery. But he remained perfectly stiff and still. There was a pause.
“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.”
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.
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.
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 there, 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.
They heard her go into the dining room, and drop her armful of books on the table.
“Did you bring me that Girl’s Own?” cried Rosalind.
“Yes, I brought it. But I forgot which one it was you wanted.”
“You would,” cried Rosalind angrily. “It’s right for a wonder.”
Then they heard her say something in a lowered tone.
“Where?” cried Ursula.
Again her sister’s voice was muffled.
Brangwen opened the door, and called, in his strong, brazen voice:
“Ursula.”
She appeared in a moment, wearing her hat.
“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.
“Have I interrupted a conversation?” she asked.
“No, only a complete silence,” said Birkin.
“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.
“Mr. Birkin came to speak to you, not to me,” said her father.
“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?”
“I hope so,” he said, ironically.
“—To propose to you, according to all accounts,” said her father.
“Oh,” said Ursula.
“Oh,” mocked her father, imitating her. “Have you nothing more to say?”
She winced as if violated.
“Did you really come to pro
pose to me?” she asked of Birkin, as if it were a joke.
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose I came to propose.” He seemed to fight shy of the last word.
“Did you?” she cried, with her vague radiance. He might have been saying anything whatsoever. She seemed pleased.
“Yes,” he answered. “I wanted to—I wanted you to agree to marry me.”
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.
“Yes,” she said vaguely, in a doubting, absent voice.
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.
“Well, what do you say?” he cried.
She winced. Then she glanced down at her father, half-frightened, and she said:
“I didn’t speak, did I?” as if she were afraid she might have committed herself.
“No,” said her father, exasperated. “But you needn’t look like an idiot. You’ve got your wits, haven’t you?”
She ebbed away in silent hostility.
“I’ve got my wits, what does that mean?” she repeated, in a sullen voice of antagonism.
“You heard what was asked you, didn’t you?” cried her father in anger.
“Of course I heard.”
“Well, then, can’t you answer?” thundered her father.
“Why should I?”
At the impertinence of this retort, he went stiff. But he said nothing.
“No,” said Birkin, to help out the occasion, “there’s no need to answer at once. You can say when you like.”
Her eyes flashed with a powerful light.
“Why should I say anything?” she cried. “You do this off your own bat, it has nothing to do with me. Why do you both want to bully me?”
“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! You’ll see to that, you self-willed creature.”
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.
“But no-one is bullying you,” he said, in a very soft dangerous voice also.
“Oh, yes,” she cried. “You both want to force me into something.”
“That is an illusion of yours,” he said ironically.
“Illusion!” cried her father. “A self-opinionated fool, that’s what she is.”
Birkin rose, saying:
“However, we’ll leave it for the time being.”
And without another word, he walked out of the house.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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 repellant, 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.
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.
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.
“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.”
“Yes,” cried Ursula, “too much of a preacher. He is really a priest.”
“Exactly! He can’t hear what anybody else has to say—he simply cannot hear. His own voice is so loud.”
“Yes. He cries you down.”
“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.”
“You don’t think one could live with him?” asked Ursula.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Yes,” said Ursula. “You must have his soul.”
“Exactly! And what can you conceive more deadly?” This was all so true, that Ursula felt jarr
ed to the bottom of her soul with ugly distaste.
She went on, with the discord jarring and jolting through her, in the most barren of misery.
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.
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.
“Doesn’t he feel important?” smiled Gudrun.
“Doesn’t he!” exclaimed Ursula, with a little ironical grimace. “Isn’t he a little Lloyd George of the air!”
“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.
But even from this there came the revulsion. Some yellow-hammers 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.
Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 36