Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by D. H. Lawrence

  She was laughing at him, with a little, mock-caressive contempt.

  “To be sure, I’d rather see the woman than the hair,” he laughed in return.

  “Wouldn’t you just!” mocked Gudrun.

  Ursula rose and went away, leaving the three together.

  Gudrun took the picture again from Gerald, and sat looking at it closely.

  “Of course,” she said, turning to tease Loerke now, “you understood your little Malschülerin.”

  He raised his eyebrows and his shoulders in a complacent shrug.

  “The little girl?” asked Gerald, pointing to the figure.

  Gudrun was sitting with the picture in her lap. She looked up at Gerald, full into his eyes, so that he seemed to be blinded.

  “Didn’t he understand her!” she said to Gerald, in a slightly mocking, humorous playfulness. “You’ve only to look at the feet—aren’t they darling, so pretty and tender—oh, they’re really wonderful, they are really—”

  She lifted her eyes slowly, with a hot, flaming look into Loerke’s eyes. His soul was filled with her burning recognition, he seemed to grow more uppish and lordly.

  Gerald looked at the small, sculptured feet. They were turned together, half covering each other in pathetic shyness and fear. He looked at them a long time, fascinated. Then, in some pain, he put the picture away from him. He felt full of barrenness.

  “What was her name?” Gudrun asked Loerke.

  “Annette von Weck,” Loerke replied reminiscent. “Ja, sie war hübsch.de She was pretty—but she was tiresome. She was a nuisance,—not for a minute would she keep still—not until I’d slapped her hard and made her cry—then she’d sit for five minutes.”

  He was thinking over the work, his work, the all important to him.

  “Did you really slap her?” asked Gudrun, coolly.

  He glanced back at her, reading her challenge.

  “Yes, I did,” he said, nonchalant, “harder than I have ever beat anything in my life. I had to, I had to. It was the only way I got the work done.”

  Gudrun watched him with large, dark-filled eyes, for some moments. She seemed to be considering his very soul. Then she looked down in silence.

  “Why did you have such a young Godiva then?” asked Gerald. “She is so small, besides, on the horse—not big enough for it—such a child.”

  A queer spasm went over Loerke’s face.

  “Yes,” he said. “I don’t like them any bigger, any older. Then they are beautiful, at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen—after that, they are no use to me.”

  There was a moment’s pause.

  “Why not?” asked Gerald.

  Loerke shrugged his shoulders.

  “I don’t find them interesting—or beautiful—they are no good to me, for my work.”

  “Do you mean to say a woman isn’t beautiful after she is twenty?” asked Gerald.

  “For me, no. Before twenty, she is small and fresh and tender and slight. After that—let her be what she likes, she has nothing for me. The Venus of Milo is a bourgeoise—so are they all.”

  “And you don’t care for women at all after twenty?” asked Gerald.

  “They are no good to me, they are of no use in my art,” Loerke repeated impatiently. “I don’t find them beautiful.”

  “You are an epicure,” said Gerald, with a slight sarcastic laugh.

  “And what about men?” asked Gudrun suddenly.

  “Yes, they are good at all ages,” replied Loerke. “A man should be big and powerful—whether he is old or young is of no account, so he has the size, something of massiveness and—and stupid form.”

  Ursula went out alone into the world of pure, new snow. But the dazzling whiteness seemed to beat upon her till it hurt her, she felt the cold was slowly strangling her soul. Her head felt dazed and numb.

  Suddenly she wanted to go away. It occurred to her like a miracle, that she might go away into another world. She had felt so doomed up here in the eternal snow, as if there were no beyond.

  Now suddenly, as by a miracle she remembered that away beyond, below her, lay the dark fruitful earth, that towards the south there were stretches of land dark with orange trees and cypress, grey with olives, that ilex trees lifted wonderful plumy tufts in shadow against a blue sky. Miracle of miracles!—this utterly silent, frozen world of the mountain tops was not universal! One might leave it and have done with it. One might go away.

  She wanted to realise the miracle at once. She wanted at this instant to have done with the snow-world, the terrible, static ice-built mountain tops. She wanted to see the dark earth, to smell its earthly fecundity, to see the patient wintry vegetation, to feel the sunshine touch a response in the buds.

  She went back gladly to the house, full of hope. Birkin was reading, lying in bed.

  “Rupert,” she said, bursting in on him. “I want to go away.”

  He looked up at her slowly.

  “Do you?” he replied mildly.

  She sat by him and put her arms round his neck. It surprised her that he was so little surprised.

  “Don’t you?” she asked troubled.

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” he said. “But I’m sure I do.”

  She sat up, suddenly erect.

  “I hate it,” she said. “I hate the snow, and the unnaturalness of it, the unnatural light it throws on everybody, the ghastly glamour, the unnatural feelings it makes everybody have.”

  He lay still and laughed, meditating.

  “Well,” he said, “we can go away—we can go to-morrow We’ll go to-morrow to Verona, and be Romeo and Juliet, and sit in the amphitheatre—shall we?”

  Suddenly she hid her face against his shoulder with perplexity and shyness. He lay so untrammelled.

  “Yes,” she said softly, filled with relief. She felt her soul had new wings, now he was so uncaring. “I shall love to be Romeo and Juliet,” she said. “My love!”

  “Though a fearfully cold wind blows in Verona,” he said, “from out of the Alps. We shall have the smell of the snow in our noses.”

  She sat up and looked at him.

  “Are you glad to go?” she asked, troubled.

  His eyes were inscrutable and laughing. She hid her face against his neck, clinging close to him, pleading:

  “Don’t laugh at me—don’t laugh at me.”

  “Why how’s that?” he laughed, putting his arms round her.

  “Because I don’t want to be laughed at,” she whispered.

  He laughed more, as he kissed her delicate, finely perfumed hair.

  “Do you love me?” she whispered, in wild seriousness.

  “Yes,” he answered, laughing.

  Suddenly she lifted her mouth to be kissed. Her lips were taut and quivering and strenuous, his were soft, deep and delicate. He waited a few moments in the kiss. Then a shade of sadness went over his soul.

  “Your mouth is so hard,” he said, in faint reproach.

  “And yours is so soft and nice,” she said gladly.

  “But why do you always grip your lips?” he asked, regretful.

  “Never mind,” she said swiftly. “It is my way.”

  She knew he loved her; she was sure of him. Yet she could not let go a certain hold over herself, she could not bear him to question her. She gave herself up in delight to being loved by him. She knew that, in spite of his joy when she abandoned herself, he was a little bit saddened too. She could give herself up to his activity. But she could not be herself, she dared not come forth quite nakedly to his nakedness, abandoning all adjustment, lapsing in pure faith with him. She abandoned herself to him, or she took hold of him and gathered her joy of him. And she enjoyed him fully. But they were never quite together, at the same moment, one was always a little left out. Nevertheless, she was glad in hope, glorious and free, full of life and liberty. And he was still and soft and patient, for the time.

  They made their preparations to leave the next day. First they went to Gudrun’s room, where she and Gerald w
ere just dressed ready for the evening indoors.

  “Prune,” said Ursula, “I think we shall go away to-morrow. I can’t stand the snow any more. It hurts my skin and my soul.”

  “Does it really hurt your soul, Ursula?” asked Gudrun, in some surprise. “I can believe quite it hurts your skin—it is terrible. But I thought it was admirable for the soul.”

  “No, not for mine. It just injures it,” said Ursula.

  “Really!” cried Gudrun.

  There was a silence in the room. And Ursula and Birkin could feel that Gudrun and Gerald were relieved by their going.

  “You will go south?” said Gerald, a little ring of uneasiness in his voice.

  “Yes,” said Birkin, turning away. There was a queer, indefinable hostility between the two men, lately. Birkin was on the whole dim and indifferent, drifting along in a dim, easy flow, unnoticing and patient, since he came abroad, whilst Gerald on the other hand, was intense and gripped into white light, agonistes. The two men revoked one another.

  Gerald and Gudrun were very kind to the two who were departing, solicitous for their welfare as if they were two children. Gudrun came to Ursula’s bedroom with three pairs of the coloured stockings for which she was notorious, and she threw them on the bed. But these were thick silk stockings, vermilion, cornflower blue, and grey, bought in Paris. The grey ones were knitted, seamless and heavy. Ursula was in raptures. She knew Gudrun must be feeling very loving, to give away such treasures.

  “I can’t take them from you, Prune,” she cried. “I can’t possibly deprive you of them—the jewels.”

  “Aren’t they jewels!” cried Gudrun, eyeing her gifts with an envious eye. “Aren’t they real lambs!”

  “Yes, you must keep them,” said Ursula.

  “I don’t want them, I’ve got three more pairs. I want you to keep them—I want you to have them. They’re yours, there—”

  And with trembling, excited hands she put the coveted stockings under Ursula’s pillow.

  “One gets the greatest joy of all out of really lovely stockings,” said Ursula.

  “One does,” replied Gudrun, “the greatest joy of all.”

  And she sat down in the chair. It was evident she had come for a last talk. Ursula, not knowing what she wanted, waited in silence.

  “Do you feel, Ursula,” Gudrun began, rather sceptically, “that you are going-away-for-ever, never-to-return, sort of thing?”

  “Oh, we shall come back,” said Ursula. “It isn’t a question of train-journeys.”

  “Yes, I know. But spiritually, so to speak, you are going away from us all?”

  Ursula quivered.

  “I don’t know a bit what is going to happen,” she said. “I only know we are going somewhere.”

  Gudrun waited.

  “And you are glad?” she asked.

  Ursula meditated for a moment.

  “I believe I am very glad,” she replied.

  But Gudrun read the unconscious brightness on her sister’s face, rather than the uncertain tones of her speech.

  “But don’t you think you’ll want the old connection with the world—rather and the rest of us, and all that it means, England and the world of thought—don’t you think you’ll need that, really to make a world?”

  Ursula was silent, trying to imagine.

  “I think,” she said at length, involuntarily, “that Rupert is right—one wants a new space to be in, and one falls away from the old.”

  Gudrun watched her sister with impassive face and steady eyes.

  “One wants a new space to be in, I quite agree,” she said. “But I think that a new world is a development from this world, and that to isolate oneself with one other person, isn’t to find a new world at all, but only to secure oneself in one’s illusions.”

  Ursula looked out of the window. In her soul she began to wrestle, and she was frightened. She was always frightened of words, because she knew that mere word-force could always make her believe what she did not believe.

  “Perhaps,” she said, full of mistrust, of herself and everybody. “But,” she added, “I do think that one can’t have anything new whilst one cares for the old—do you know what I mean?—even fighting the old is belonging to it. I know, one is tempted to stop with the world, just to fight it. But then it isn’t worth it.”

  Gudrun considered herself

  “Yes,” she said. “In a way, one is of the world if one lives in it. But isn’t it really an illusion to think you can get out of it? After all, a cottage in the Abruzzi, or wherever it may be, isn’t a new world. No, the only thing to do with the world, is to see it through.”

  Ursula looked away. She was so frightened of argument.

  “But there can be something else, can’t there?” she said. “One can see it through in one’s soul, long enough before it sees itself through in actuality. And then, when one has seen one’s soul, one is something else.”

  “Can one see it through in one’s soul?” asked Gudrun. “If you mean that you can see to the end of what will happen, I don’t agree. I really can’t agree. And anyhow, you can’t suddenly fly off on to a new planet, because you think you can see to the end of this.”

  Ursula suddenly straightened herself

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes—one knows. One has no more connections here. One has a sort of other self, that belongs to a new planet, not to this. You’ve got to hop off.”

  Gudrun reflected for a few moments. Then a smile of ridicule, almost of contempt, came over her face.

  “And what will happen when you find yourself in space?” she cried in derision. “After all, the great ideas of the world are the same there. You above everybody can’t get away from the fact that love, for instance, is the supreme thing, in space as well as on earth.”

  “No,” said Ursula, “it isn’t. Love is too human and little. I believe in something inhuman, of which love is only a little part. I believe what we must fulfil comes out of the unknown to us, and it is something infinitely more than love. It isn’t so merely human.”

  Gudrun looked at Ursula with steady, balancing eyes. She admired and despised her sister so much, both! Then, suddenly she averted her face, saying coldly, uglily:

  “Well, I’ve got no further than love, yet.”

  Over Ursula’s mind flashed the thought: “Because you never have loved, you can’t get beyond it.”

  Gudrun rose, came over to Ursula and put her arm round her neck.

  “Go and find your new world, dear,” she said, her voice clanging with false benignity. “After all, the happiest voyage is the quest of Rupert’s Blessed Isles.”

  Her arm rested round Ursula’s neck, her fingers on Ursula’s cheek for a few moments. Ursula was supremely uncomfortable meanwhile. There was an insult in Gudrun’s protective patronage that was really too hurting. Feeling her sister’s resistance, Gudrun drew awkwardly away, turned over the pillow, and disclosed the stockings again.

  “Ha—ha!” she laughed, rather hollowly. “How we do talk indeed—new worlds and old—!”

  And they passed to the familiar worldly subjects.

  Gerald and Birkin had walked on ahead, waiting for the sledge to overtake them, conveying the departing guests.

  “How much longer will you stay here?” asked Birkin, glancing up at Gerald’s very red, almost blank face.

  “Oh, I can’t say,” Gerald replied. “Till we get tired of it.”

  “You’re not afraid of the snow melting first?” asked Birkin.

  Gerald laughed.

  “Does it melt?” he said.

  “Things are all right with you then?” said Birkin.

  Gerald screwed up his eyes a little.

  “All right?” he said. “I never know what those common words mean. All right and all wrong, don’t they become synonymous, somewhere?”

  “Yes, I suppose. How about going back?” asked Birkin.

  “Oh, I don’t know. We may never get back. I don’t look before and after,” said Gerald.
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  “Nor pine for what is not,” said Birkin.

  Gerald looked into the distance, with the small-pupilled, abstract eyes of a hawk.

  “No. There’s something final about this. And Gudrun seems like the end, to me. I don’t know—but she seems so soft, her skin like silk, her arms heavy and soft. And it withers my consciousness, somehow, it burns the pith of my mind.” He went on a few paces, staring ahead, his eyes fixed, looking like a mask used in ghastly religions of the barbarians. “It blasts your soul’s eye,” he said, “and leaves you sightless. Yet you want to be sightless, you want to be blasted, you don’t want it any different.”

  He was speaking as if in a trance, verbal and blank. Then suddenly he braced himself up with a kind of rhapsody, and looked at Birkin with vindictive, cowed eyes, saying:

  “Do you know what it is to suffer when you are with a woman? She’s so beautiful, so perfect, you find her so good, it tears you like a silk, and every stroke and bit cuts hot—ha, that perfection, when you blast yourself, you blast yourself! And then—” he stopped on the snow and suddenly opened his clenched hands—“it’s nothing—your brain might have gone charred as rags—and—” he looked round into the air with a queer histrionic movement—“it’s blasting—you understand what I mean—it is a great experience, something final—and then—you’re shrivelled as if struck by electricity.” He walked on in silence. It seemed like bragging, but like a man in extremity bragging truthfully.

  “Of course,” he resumed, “I wouldn’t not have had it! It’s a complete experience. And she’s a wonderful woman. But—how I hate her somewhere! It’s curious—”

  Birkin looked at him, at his strange, scarcely conscious face. Gerald seemed blank before his own words.

  “But you’ve had enough now?” said Birkin. “You have had your experience. Why work on an old wound?”

  “Oh,” said Gerald, “I don’t know. It’s not finished—”

  And the two walked on.

  “I’ve loved you, as well as Gudrun, don’t forget,” said Birkin bitterly. Gerald looked at him strangely, abstractedly.

  “Have you?” he said, with icy scepticism. “Or do you think you have?” He was hardly responsible for what he said.

  The sledge came. Gudrun dismounted and they all made their farewell. They wanted to go apart, all of them. Birkin took his place, and the sledge drove away leaving Gudrun and Gerald standing on the snow, waving. Something froze Birkin’s heart, seeing them standing there in the isolation of the snow, growing smaller and more isolated.