“You are very fine,” said Birkin, looking at the full robe.
“It was a caftan in Bokhara,”by said Gerald. “I like it.”
“I like it too.”
Birkin was silent, thinking how scrupulous Gerald was in his attire, how expensive too. He wore silk socks, and studs of fine workmanship, and silk underclothing, and silk braces. Curious! This was another of the differences between them. Birkin was careless and unimaginative about his own appearance.
“Of course you,” said Gerald, as if he had been thinking; “there’s something curious about you. You’re curiously strong. One doesn’t expect it, it is rather surprising.”
Birkin laughed. He was looking at the handsome figure of the other man, blond and comely in the rich robe, and he was half thinking of the difference between it and himself—so different; as far, perhaps, apart as man from woman, yet in another direction. But really it was Ursula, it was the woman who was gaining ascendance over Birkin’s being, at this moment. Gerald was becoming dim again, lapsing out of him.
“Do you know,” he said suddenly, “I went and proposed to Ursula Brangwen to-night, that she should marry me.”
He saw the blank shining wonder come over Gerald’s face.
“You did?”
“Yes. Almost formally—speaking first to her father, as it should be, in the world—though that was accident—or mischief.”
Gerald only stared in wonder, as if he did not grasp.
“You don’t mean to say that you seriously went and asked her father to let you marry her?”
“Yes,” said Birkin, “I did.”
“What, had you spoken to her before about it, then?”
“No, not a word. I suddenly thought I would go there and ask her—and her father happened to come instead of her—so I asked him first.”
“If you could have her?” concluded Gerald.
“Ye-es, that.”
“And you didn’t speak to her?”
“Yes. She came in afterwards. So it was put to her as well.”
“It was! And what did she say then? You’re an engaged man?”
“No,—she only said she didn’t want to be bullied into answering.”
“She what?”
“Said she didn’t want to be bullied into answering.”
“ ‘Said she didn’t want to be bullied into answering!’ Why, what did she mean by that?”
Birkin raised his shoulders. “Can’t say,” he answered.
“Didn’t want to be bothered just then, I suppose.”
“But is this really so? And what did you do then?”
“I walked out of the house and came here.”
“You came straight here?”
“Yes.”
Gerald stared in amazement and amusement. He could not take it in.
“But is this really true, as you say it now?”
“Word for word.”
“It is?”
He leaned back in his chair, filled with delight and amusement.
“Well, that’s good,” he said. “And so you came here to wrestle with your good angel, did you?”
“Did I?” said Birkin.
“Well, it looks like it. Isn’t that what you did?”
Now Birkin could not follow Gerald’s meaning.
“And what’s going to happen?” said Gerald. “You’re going to keep open the proposition, so to speak?”
“I suppose so. I vowed to myself I would see them all to the devil. But I suppose I shall ask her again, in a little while.”
Gerald watched him steadily.
“So you’re fond of her then?” he asked.
“I think—I love her,” said Birkin, his face going very still and fixed.
Gerald glistened for a moment with pleasure, as if it were something done specially to please him. Then his face assumed a fitting gravity, and he nodded his head slowly.
“You know,” he said, “I always believed in love—true love. But where does one find it nowadays?”
“I don’t know,” said Birkin.
“Very rarely,” said Gerald. Then, after a pause, “I’ve never felt it myself—not what I should call love. I’ve gone after women—and been keen enough over some of them. But I’ve never felt love. I don’t believe I’ve ever felt as much love for a woman, as I have for you—not love. You understand what I mean?”
“Yes. I’m sure you’ve never loved a woman.”
“You feel that, do you? And do you think I ever shall? You understand what I mean?” He put his hand to his breast, closing his fist there, as if he would draw something out. “I mean that—that—I can’t express what it is, but I know it.”
“What is it, then?” asked Birkin.
“You see, I can’t put it into words. I mean, at any rate, something abiding, something that can’t change—”
His eyes were bright and puzzled.
“Now do you think I shall ever feel that for a woman?” he said, anxiously.
Birkin looked at him, and shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I could not say.”
Gerald had been on the qui vive, as awaiting his fate. Now he drew back in his chair.
“No,” he said, “and neither do I, and neither do I.”
“We are different, you and I,” said Birkin. “I can’t tell your life.”
“No,” said Gerald, “no more can I. But I tell you—I begin to doubt it!”
“That you will ever love a woman?”
“Well—yes—what you would truly call love—”
“You doubt it?”
“Well—begin to.”
There was a long pause.
“Life has all kinds of things,” said Birkin “There isn’t only one road.”
“Yes, I believe that too. I believe it. And mind you, I don’t care how it is with me—I don’t care how it is—so long as I don’t feel—” he paused, and a blank, barren look passed over his face, to express his feeling—“so long as I feel I’ve lived, somehow—and I don’t care how it is—but I want to feel that ”
“Fulfilled,” said Birkin.
“We-ell, perhaps it is, fulfilled; I don’t use the same words as you.”
“It is the same.”
CHAPTER XXI
Threshold
GUDRUN WAS AWAY IN London, having a little show of her work, with a friend, and looking round, preparing for flight from Beldover. Come what might she would be on the wing in a very short time. She received a letter from Winifred Crich, ornamental with drawings.
“Father also has been to London, to be examined by the doctors. It made him very tired. They say he must rest a very great deal, so he is mostly in bed. He brought me a lovely tropical parrot in faiënce, of Dresden ware, also a man ploughing, and two mice climbing up a stalk, also in faiënce. The mice were Copenhagen ware. They are the best, but mice don’t shine so much, otherwise they are very good, their tails are slim and long. They all shine nearly like glass. Of course it is the glaze, but I don’t like it. Gerald likes the man ploughing the best, his trousers are torn, he is ploughing with an ox, being I suppose a German peasant. It is all grey and white, white shirt and grey trousers, but very shiny and clean. Mr. Birkin likes the girl best, under the hawthorn blossom, with a lamb, and with daffodils painted on her skirts, in the drawing room. But that is silly, because the lamb is not a real lamb, and she is silly too.
“Dear Miss Brangwen, are you coming back soon, you are very much missed here. I enclose a drawing of father sitting up in bed. He says he hopes you are not going to forsake us. Oh dear Miss Brangwen, I am sure you won’t. Do come back and draw the ferrets, they are the most lovely noble darlings in the world. We might carve them in holly-wood, playing against a background of green leaves. Oh do let us, for they are most beautiful.
“Father says we might have a studio. Gerald says we could easily have a beautiful one over the stables, it would only need windows to be put in the slant of the roof, which is a simple matter. Then you
could stay here all day and work, and we could live in the studio, like two real artists, like the man in the picture in the hall, with the frying-pan and the walls all covered with drawings. I long to be free, to live the free life of an artist. Even Gerald told father that only an artist is free, because he lives in a creative world of his own——”
Gudrun caught the drift of the family intentions, in this letter. Gerald wanted her to be attached to the household at Shortlands, he was using Winifred as his stalking-horse. The father thought only of his child, he saw a rock of salvation in Gudrun. And Gudrun admired him for his perspicacity. The child, moreover, was really exceptional. Gudrun was quite content. She was quite willing, given a studio, to spend her days at Shortlands. She disliked the Grammar School already thoroughly, she wanted to be free. If a studio were provided, she would be free to go on with her work, she would await the turn of events with complete serenity. And she was really interested in Winifred, she would be quite glad to understand the girl.
So there was quite a little festivity on Winifred’s account the day Gudrun returned to Shortlands.
“You should make a bunch of flowers to give to Miss Brangwen when she arrives,” Gerald said smiling to his sister.
“Oh no,” cried Winifred, “it’s silly.”
“Not at all. It is a very charming and ordinary attention.”
“Oh, it is silly,” protested Winifred, with all the extreme mauvaise hontebz of her years. Nevertheless, the idea appealed to her. She wanted very much to carry it out. She flitted round the green-houses and the conservatory looking wistfully at the flowers on their stems. And the more she looked, the more she longed to have a bunch of the blossoms she saw, the more fascinated she became with her little vision of ceremony, and the more consumedly shy and self-conscious she grew, till she was almost beside herself. She could not get the idea out of her mind. It was as if some haunting challenge prompted her, and she had not enough courage to take it up. So again she drifted into the green-houses, looking at the lovely roses in their pots, and at the virginal cyclamens, and at the mystic white clusters of a creeper. The beauty, oh the beauty of them, and oh the paradisal bliss, if she should have a perfect bouquet and could give it to Gudrun the next day. Her passion and her complete indecision almost made her ill.
At last she slid to her father’s side.
“Daddie—” she said.
“What, my precious?”
But she hung back, the tears almost coming to her eyes, in her sensitive confusion. Her father looked at her, and his heart ran hot with tenderness, an anguish of poignant love.
“What do you want to say to me, my love?”
“Daddie—!” her eyes smiled laconically—“isn’t it silly if I give Miss Brangwen some flowers when she comes?”
The sick man looked at the bright, knowing eyes of his child, and his heart burned with love.
“No, darling, that’s not silly. It’s what they do to queens.”
This was not very reassuring to Winifred. She half suspected that queens in themselves were a silliness. Yet she so wanted her little romantic occasion.
“Shall I then?” she asked.
“Give Miss Brangwen some flowers? Do, Birdie. Tell Wilson I say you are to have what you want.”
The child smiled a small, subtle, unconscious smile to herself, in anticipation of her way.
“But I won’t get them till to-morrow,” she said.
“Not till to-morrow, Birdie. Give me a kiss then—”
Winifred silently kissed the sick man, and drifted out of the room. She again went the round of the green-houses and the conservatory, informing the gardener, in her high, peremptory, simple fashion, of what she wanted, telling him all the blooms she had selected.
“What do you want these for?” Wilson asked.
“I want them,” she said. She wished servants did not ask questions.
“Ay, you’ve said as much. But what do you want them for, for decoration, or to send away, or what?”
“I want them for a presentation bouquet.”
“A presentation bouquet! Who’s coming then?—the Duchess of Portland?”
“No.”
“Oh, not her? Well you’ll have a rare poppy-show if you put all the things you’ve mentioned into your bouquet.”
“Yes, I want a rare poppy-show.”
“You do! Then there’s no more to be said.”
The next day Winifred, in a dress of silvery velvet, and holding a gaudy bunch of flowers in her hand, waited with keen impatience in the school room, looking down the drive for Gudrun’s arrival. It was a wet morning. Under her nose was the strange fragrance of hot-house flowers, the bunch was like a little fire to her, she seemed to have a strange new fire in her heart. This slight sense of romance stirred her like an intoxicant.
At last she saw Gudrun coming, and she ran downstairs to warn her father and Gerald. They, laughing at her anxiety and gravity, came with her into the hall. The man-servant came hastening to the door, and there he was, relieving Gudrun of her umbrella, and then of her raincoat. The welcoming party hung back till their visitor entered the hall.
Gudrun was flushed with the rain, her hair was blown in loose little curls, she was like a flower just opened in the rain, the heart of the blossom just newly visible, seeming to emit a warmth of retained sunshine. Gerald winced in spirit, seeing her so beautiful and unknown. She was wearing a soft blue dress, and her stockings were of dark red.
Winifred advanced with odd, stately formality.
“We are so glad you’ve come back,” she said. “These are your flowers.” She presented the bouquet.
“Mine!” cried Gudrun. She was suspended for a moment, then a vivid flush went over her, she was as if blinded for a moment with a flame of pleasure. Then her eyes, strange and flaming, lifted and looked at the father, and at Gerald. And again Gerald shrank in spirit, as if it would be more than he could bear, as her hot, exposed eyes rested on him. There was something so revealed, she was revealed beyond bearing, to his eyes. He turned his face aside. And he felt he would not be able to avert her. And he writhed under the imprisonment.
Gudrun put her face into the flowers.
“But how beautiful they are!” she said, in a muffled voice. Then, with a strange, suddenly revealed passion, she stooped and kissed Winifred.
Mr. Crich went forward with his hand held out to her.
“I was afraid you were going to run away from us,” he said, playfully.
Gudrun looked up at him with a luminous, roguish, unknown face.
“Really!” she replied. “No, I didn’t want to stay in London.”
Her voice seemed to imply that she was glad to get back to Shortlands, her tone was warm and subtly caressing.
“That is a good thing,” smiled the father. “You see you are very welcome here among us.”
Gudrun only looked into his face with dark-blue, warm shy eyes. She was unconsciously carried away by her own power.
“And you look as if you came home in every possible triumph,” Mr. Crich continued, holding her hand.
“No,” she said, glowing strangely. “I haven’t had any triumph till I came here.”
“Ah, come, come! We’re not going to hear any of those tales. Haven’t we read notices in the newspaper, Gerald?”
“You came off pretty well,” said Gerald to her, shaking hands. “Did you sell anything?”
“No,” she said, “not much.”
“Just as well,” he said.
She wondered what he meant. But she was all aglow with her reception, carried away by this little flattering ceremonial on her behalf
“Winifred,” said the father, “have you a pair of shoes for Miss Brangwen? You had better change at once—”
Gudrun went out with her bouquet in her hand.
“Quite a remarkable young woman,” said the father to Gerald, when she had gone.
“Yes,” replied Gerald briefly, as if he did not like the observation.
Mr. Crich liked Gudrun to sit with him for half an hour. Usually he was ashy and wretched, with all the life gnawed out of him. But as soon as he rallied, he liked to make believe that he was just as before, quite well and in the midst of life—not of the outer world, but in the midst of a strong essential life. And to this belief, Gudrun contributed perfectly. With her, he could get by stimulation those precious half-hours of strength and exaltation and pure freedom, when he seemed to live more than he had ever lived.
She came to him as he lay propped up in the library. His face was like yellow wax, his eyes darkened, as it were sightless. His black beard, now streaked with grey, seemed to spring out of the waxy flesh of a corpse. Yet the atmosphere about him was energetic and playful. Gudrun subscribed to this, perfectly. To her fancy, he was just an ordinary man. Only his rather terrible appearance was photographed upon her soul, away beneath her consciousness. She knew that, in spite of this playfulness, his eyes could not change from their darkened vacancy, they were the eyes of a man who is dead.
“Ah, this is Miss Brangwen,” he said, suddenly rousing as she entered, announced by the man-servant. “Thomas, put Miss Brangwen a chair here—that’s right.” He looked at her soft, fresh face with pleasure. It gave him the illusion of life. “Now, you will have a glass of sherry and a little piece of cake. Thomas—”
“No, thank you,” said Gudrun. And as soon as she had said it, her heart sank horribly. The sick man seemed to fall into a gap of death, at her contradiction. She ought to play up to him, not to contravene him. In an instant she was smiling her rather roguish smile.
“I don’t like sherry very much,” she said. “But I like almost anything else.”
The sick man caught at this straw instantly.
“Not sherry! No! Something else! What then? What is there, Thomas?”
“Port wine—curaçao—”
“I would love some curaçao—” said Gudrun, looking at the sick man confidingly
“You would. Well then Thomas, curaçao-and a little cake, or a biscuit?”
“A biscuit,” said Gudrun. She did not want anything, but she was wise.
“Yes.”
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