He stood watching in silence. A wonderful tenderness burned in him, at the sight of her quivering, so sensitive fingers: and at the same time he was full of rage and callousness.
“This is a degrading exhibition,” he said coolly.
“Yes, degrading indeed,” she said. “But more to me than to you.”
“Since you choose to degrade yourself,” he said. Again the flash came over her face, the yellow lights concentrated in her eyes.
“You!” she cried. “You! You truth-lover! You purity-monger! It stinks, your truth and your purity. It stinks of the offal you feed on, you scavenger dog, you eater of corpses. You are foul, foul—and you must know it. Your purity, your candour, your goodness—yes, thank you, we’ve had some. What you are is a foul, deathly thing, obscene, that’s what you are, obscene and perverse. You, and love! You may well say, you don’t want love. No, you want yourself, and dirt, and death—that’s what you want. You are so perverse, so death-eating. And then—”
“There’s a bicycle coming,” he said, writhing under her loud denunciation.
She glanced down the road.
“I don’t care,” she cried.
Nevertheless she was silent. The cyclist, having heard the voices raised in altercation, glanced curiously at the man, and the woman, and at the standing motor-car as he passed.
“—Afternoon,” he said, cheerfully.
“Good-afternoon,” replied Birkin coldly.
They were silent as the man passed into the distance.
A clearer look had come over Birkin’s face. He knew she was in the main right. He knew he was perverse, so spiritual on the one hand, and in some strange way, degraded, on the other. But was she herself any better? Was anybody any better?
“It may all be true, lies and stink and all,” he said. “But Hermione’s spiritual intimacy is no rottener than your emotional-jealous intimacy. One can preserve the decencies, even to one’s enemies: for one’s own sake. Hermione is my enemy—to her last breath! That’s why I must bow her off the field.”
“You! You and your enemies and your bows! A pretty picture you make of yourself. But it takes nobody in but yourself. I jealous! I! What I say,” her voice sprang into flame, “I say because it is true, do you see, because you are you, a foul and false liar, a whited sepulchre. That’s why I say it. And you hear it.”
“And be grateful,” he added, with a satirical grimace.
“Yes,” she cried, “and if you have a spark of decency in you, be grateful.”
“Not having a spark of decency, however—” he retorted.
“No,” she cried, “you haven’t a spark. And so you can go your way, and I’ll go mine. It’s no good, not the slightest. So you can leave me now, I don’t want to go any further with you—leave me—”
“You don’t even know where you are,” he said.
“Oh, don’t bother, I assure you I shall be all right. I’ve got ten shillings in my purse, and that will take me back from anywhere you have brought me to.” She hesitated. The rings were still on her fingers, two on her little finger, one on her ring finger. Still she hesitated.
“Very good,” he said. “The only hopeless thing is a fool.”
“You are quite right,” she said.
Still she hesitated. Then an ugly, malevolent look came over her face, she pulled the rings from her fingers, and tossed them at him. One touched his face, the others hit his coat, and they scattered into the mud.
“And take your rings,” she said, “and go and buy yourself a female elsewhere—there are plenty to be had, who will be quite glad to share your spiritual mess,—or to have your physical mess, and leave your spiritual mess to Hermione.”
With which she walked away, desultorily, up the road. He stood motionless, watching her sullen, rather ugly walk. She was sullenly picking and pulling at the twigs of the hedge as she passed. She grew smaller, she seemed to pass out of his sight. A darkness came over his mind. Only a small, mechanical speck of consciousness hovered near him.
He felt tired and weak. Yet also he was relieved. He gave up his old position. He went and sat on the bank. No doubt Ursula was right. It was true, really, what she said. He knew that his spirituality was concomitant of a process of depravity, a sort of pleasure in self-destruction. There really was a certain stimulant in self-destruction, for him—especially when it was translated spiritually. But then he knew it—he knew it, and had done. And was not Ursula’s way of emotional intimacy, emotional and physical, was it not just as dangerous as Hermione’s abstract spiritual intimacy? Fusion, fusion, this horrible fusion of two beings, which every woman and most men insisted on, was it not nauseous and horrible anyhow, whether it was a fusion of the spirit or of the emotional body? Hermione saw herself as the perfect Idea, to which all men must come: And Ursula was the perfect Womb, the bath of birth, to which all men must come! And both were horrible. Why could they not remain individuals, limited by their own limits? Why this dreadful all-comprehensiveness, this hateful tyranny? Why not leave the other being free, why try to absorb, or melt, or merge? One might abandon oneself utterly to the moments, but not to any other being.
He could not bear to see the rings lying in the pale mud of the road. He picked them up, and wiped them unconsciously on his hands. They were the little tokens of the reality of beauty, the reality of happiness in warm creation. But he had made his hands all dirty and gritty.
There was a darkness over his mind. The terrible knot of consciousness that had persisted there like an obsession was broken, gone, his life was dissolved in darkness over his limbs and his body. But there was a point of anxiety in his heart now. He wanted her to come back. He breathed lightly and regularly like an infant, that breathes innocently, beyond the touch of responsibility.
She was coming back. He saw her drifting desultorily under the high hedge, advancing towards him slowly. He did not move, he did not look again. He was as if asleep, at peace, slumbering and utterly relaxed.
She came up and stood before him, hanging her head.
“See what a flower I found you,” she said, wistfully holding a piece of purple-red bell-heather under his face. He saw the clump of coloured bells, and the tree-like, tiny branch: also her hands, with their over-fine, over-sensitive skin.
“Pretty!” he said, looking up at her with a smile, taking the flower. Everything had become simple again, quite simple, the complexity gone into nowhere. But he badly wanted to cry: except that he was weary and bored by emotion.
Then a hot passion of tenderness for her filled his heart. He stood up and looked into her face. It was new and oh, so delicate in its luminous wonder and fear. He put his arms round her, and she hid her face on his shoulder.
It was peace, just simple peace, as he stood folding her quietly there on the open lane. It was peace at last. The old, detestable world of tension had passed away at last, his soul was strong and at ease.
She looked up at him. The wonderful yellow light in her eyes now was soft and yielded, they were at peace with each other. He kissed her, softly, many, many times. A laugh came into her eyes.
“Did I abuse you?” she asked.
He smiled too, and took her hand, that was so soft and given.
“Never mind,” she said, “it is all for the good.” He kissed her again, softly, many times.
“Isn’t it?” she said.
“Certainly,” he replied. “Wait! I shall have my own back.”
She laughed suddenly, with a wild catch in her voice, and flung her arms around him.
“You are mine, my love, aren’t you?” she cried straining him close.
“Yes,” he said, softly.
His voice was so soft and final, she went very still, as if under a fate which had taken her. Yes, she acquiesced—but it was accomplished without her acquiescence. He was kissing her quietly, repeatedly, with a soft, still happiness that almost made her heart stop beating.
“My love!” she cried, lifting her face and looking with frightened, ge
ntle wonder of bliss. Was it all real? But his eyes were beautiful and soft and immune from stress or excitement, beautiful and smiling lightly to her, smiling with her. She hid her face on his shoulder, hiding before him, because he could see her so completely. She knew he loved her, and she was afraid, she was in a strange element, a new heaven round about her. She wished he were passionate, because in passion she was at home. But this was so still and frail, as space is more frightening than force.
Again, quickly, she lifted her head.
“Do you love me?” she said, quickly, impulsively.
“Yes,” he replied, not heeding her emotion, only her stillness.
She knew it was true. She broke away.
“So you ought,” she said, turning round to look at the road. “Did you find the rings?”
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
“In my pocket.”
She put her hand into his pocket and took them out.
She was restless.
“Shall we go?” she said.
“Yes,” he answered. And they mounted to the car once more, and left behind them this memorable battle-field.
They drifted through the wild, late afternoon, in a beautiful motion that was smiling and transcendent. His mind was sweetly at ease, the life flowed through him as from some new fountain, he was as if born out of the cramp of a womb.
“Are you happy?” she asked him, in her strange, delighted way.
“Yes,” he said.
“So am I,” she cried in sudden ecstasy, putting her arm round him and clutching him violently against her, as he steered the motor-car.
“Don’t drive much more,” she said. “I don’t want you to be always doing something.”
“No,” he said. “We’ll finish this little trip, and then we’ll be free.”
“We will, my love, we will,” she cried in delight, kissing him as he turned to her.
He drove on in a strange new wakefulness, the tension of his consciousness broken. He seemed to be conscious all over, all his body awake with a simple, glimmering awareness, as if he had just come awake, like a thing that is born, like a bird when it comes out of an egg, into a new universe.
They dropped down a long hill in the dusk, and suddenly Ursula recognised on her right hand, below in the hollow, the form of Southwell Minster.
“Are we here!” she cried with pleasure.
The rigid, sombre, ugly cathedral was settling under the gloom of the coming night, as they entered the narrow town, the golden lights showed like slabs of revelation, in the shop-windows.
“Father came here with mother,” she said, “when they first knew each other. He loves it—he loves the Minster. Do you?”
“Yes. It looks like quartz crystals sticking up out of the dark hollow. We’ll have our high tea at the Saracen’s Head.”
As they descended, they heard the Minster bells playing a hymn, when the hour had struck six.
“Glory to thee my God this night
For all the blessing of the light—”
So, to Ursula’s ear, the tune fell out, drop by drop, from the unseen sky on to the dusky town. It was like him, bygone centuries sounding. It was all so far off. She stood in the old yard of the inn, smelling of straw and stables and petrol. Above, she could see the first stars. What was it all? This was no actual world, it was the dream-world of one’s childhood—a great circumscribed reminiscence. The world had become unreal. She herself was a strange, transcendent reality.
They sat together in a little parlour by the fire.
“Is it true?” she said, wondering.
“What?”
“Everything—is everything true?”
“The best is true,” he said, grimacing at her.
“Is it?” she replied, laughing, but unassured.
She looked at him. He seemed still so separate. New eyes were opened in her soul. She saw a strange creature from another world, in him. It was as if she were enchanted, and everything were metamorphosed. She recalled again the old magic of the Book of Genesis, where the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair. And he was one of these, one of these strange creatures from the beyond, looking down at her, and seeing she was fair.
He stood on the hearth-rug looking at her, at her face that was upturned exactly like a flower, a fresh, luminous flower, glinting faintly golden with the dew of the first light. And he was smiling faintly as if there were no speech in the world, save the silent delight of flowers in each other. Smilingly they delighted in each other’s presence, pure presence, not to be thought of, even known. But his eyes had a faintly ironical contraction.
And she was drawn to him strangely, as in a spell. Kneeling on the hearth-rug before him, she put her arms round his loins, and put her face against his thighs. Riches! Riches! She was overwhelmed with a sense of a heavenful of riches.
“We love each other,” she said in delight.
“More than that,” he answered, looking down at her with his glimmering, easy face.
Unconsciously, with her sensitive finger-tips, she was tracing the back of his thighs, following some mysterious life-flow there. She had discovered something, something more than wonderful, more wonderful than life itself. It was the strange mystery of his life-motion, there, at the back of his thighs, down the flanks. It was a strange reality of his being, the very stuff of being, there in the straight downflow of the thighs. It was here she discovered him one of the sons of God such as were in the beginning of the world, not a man, something other, something more.
This was release at last. She had had lovers, she had known passion. But this was neither love nor passion. It was the daughters of men coming back to the sons of God, the strange inhuman sons of God who are in the beginning.
Her face was now one dazzle of released, golden light, as she looked up at him, and laid her hands full on his thighs, behind, as he stood before her. He looked down at her with a rich bright brow like a diadem above his eyes. She was beautiful as a new marvellous flower opened at his knees, a paradisal flower she was, beyond womanhood, such a flower of luminousness. Yet something was tight and unfree in him. He did not like this crouching, this radiance—not altogether.
It was all achieved, for her. She had found one of the sons of God from the Beginning, and he had found one of the first most luminous daughters of men.
She traced with her hands the line of his loins and thighs, at the back, and a living fire ran through her, from him, darkly. It was a dark flood of electric passion she released from him, drew into herself. She had established a rich new circuit, a new current of passional electric energy, between the two of them, released from the darkest poles of the body and established in perfect circuit. It was a dark fire of electricity that rushed from him to her, and flooded them both with rich peace, satisfaction.
“My love,” she cried, lifting her face to him, her eyes, her mouth open in transport.
“My love,” he answered, bending and kissing her, always kissing her.
She closed her hands over the full, rounded body of his loins, as he stooped over her, she seemed to touch the quick of the mystery of darkness that was bodily him. She seemed to faint beneath, and he seemed to faint, stooping over her. It was a perfect passing away for both of them, and at the same time the most intolerable accession into being, the marvellous fulness of immediate gratification, overwhelming, outflooding from the source of the deepest life-force, the darkest, deepest, strangest life-source of the human body, at the back and base of the loins.
After a lapse of stillness, after the rivers of strange dark fluid richness had passed over her, flooding, carrying away her mind and flooding down her spine and down her knees, past her feet, a strange flood, sweeping away everything and leaving her an essential new being, she was left quite free, she was free in complete ease, her complete self. So she rose, stilly and blithe, smiling at him. He stood before her, glimmering, so awfully real, that her heart almost stopped beating. He stood there in hi
s strange, whole body, that had its marvellous fountains, like the bodies of the sons of God who were in the beginning. There were strange fountains of his body, more mysterious and potent than any she had imagined or known, more satisfying, ah, finally, mystically-physically satisfying. She had thought there was no source deeper than the phallic source. And now, behold, from the smitten rock of the man’s body, from the strange marvellous flanks and thighs, deeper, further in mystery than the phallic source, came the floods of ineffable darkness and ineffable riches.
They were glad, and they could forget perfectly. They laughed, and went to the meal provided. There was a venison pasty, of all things, a large broad-faced cut ham, eggs and cresses and red beetroot, and medlars and apple-tart, and tea.
“What good things!” she cried with pleasure. “How noble it looks!—shall I pour out the tea?—”
She was usually nervous and uncertain at performing these public duties, such as giving tea. But to-day she forgot, she was at her ease, entirely forgetting to have misgivings. The tea-pot poured beautifully from a proud slender spout. Her eyes were warm with smiles as she gave him his tea. She had learned at last to be still and perfect.
“Everything is ours,” she said to him.
“Everything,” he answered.
She gave a queer little crowing sound of triumph.
“I’m so glad!” she cried, with unspeakable relief.
“So am I,” he said. “But I’m thinking we’d better get out of our responsibilities as quick as we can.”
“What responsibilities?” she asked, wondering.
“We must drop our jobs, like a shot.”
A new understanding dawned into her face.
“Of course,” she said, “there’s that.”
“We must get out,” he said. “There’s nothing for it but to get out, quick.”
She looked at him doubtfully across the table.
“But where?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll just wander about for a bit.”
Again she looked at him quizzically.
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