“Good,” he said.
Still it needed some courage for him to go on.
“Was Mrs. Birkin your sister?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And was she married?”
“She was married.”
“Have you parents, then?”
“Yes,” said Gudrun, “we have parents.”
And she told him, briefly, laconically, her position. He watched her closely, curiously all the while.
“So!” he exclaimed, with some surprise. “And the Herr Crich, is he rich?”
“Yes, he is rich, a coal owner.”
“How long has your friendship with him lasted?”
“Some months.”
There was a pause.
“Yes, I am surprised,” he said at length. “The English, I thought they were so—cold. And what do you think to do when you leave here?”
“What do I think to do?” she repeated.
“Yes. You cannot go back to the teaching. No—” he shrugged his shoulders—“that is impossible. Leave that to the canailledm who can do nothing else. You, for your part—you know, you are a remarkable woman, eine seltsame Frau.dn Why deny it—why make any question of it? You are an extraordinary woman, why should you follow the ordinary course, the ordinary life?”
Gudrun sat looking at her hands, flushed. She was pleased that he said, so simply, that she was a remarkable woman. He would not say that to flatter her—he was far too self-opinionated and objective by nature. He said it as he would say a piece of sculpture was remarkable, because he knew it was so.
And it gratified her to hear it from him. Other people had such a passion to make everything of one degree, of one pattern. In England it was chic to be perfectly ordinary. And it was a relief to her to be acknowledged extraordinary. Then she need not fret about the common standards.
“You see,” she said, “I have no money whatsoever.”
“Ach, money!” he cried, lifting his shoulders. “When one is grown up, money is lying about at one’s service. It is only when one is young that it is rare. Take no thought for money—that always lies to hand.”
“Does it?” she said, laughing.
“Always. Der Gerald will give you a sum, if you ask him for it—”
She flushed deeply.
“I will ask anybody else,” she said, with some difficulty—“but not him.”
Loerke looked closely at her.
“Good,” he said. “Then let it be somebody else. Only don’t go back to that England, that school. No, that is stupid.”
Again there was a pause. He was afraid to ask her outright to go with him, he was not even quite sure he wanted her; and she was afraid to be asked. He begrudged his own isolation, was very chary of sharing his life, even for a day.
“The only other place I know is Paris,” she said, “and I can’t stand that.”
She looked with her wide, steady eyes full at Loerke. He lowered his head and averted his face.
“Paris, no!” he said. “Between the religion d‘amour, and the latest ’ism, and the new turning to Jesus, one had better ride on a carrousel all day. But come to Dresden. I have a studio there—I can give you work—oh, that would be easy enough. I haven’t seen any of your things, but I believe in you. Come to Dresden—that is a fine town to be in, and as good a life as you can expect of a town. You have everything there, without the foolishness of Paris or the beer of Munich.”
He sat and looked at her, coldly. What she liked about him was that he spoke to her simple and flat, as to himself. He was a fellow craftsman, a fellow being to her, first.
“No—Paris,” he resumed, “it makes me sick. Pah—l‘amour. I detest it. L’amour, l’amour, die Liebedo—I detest it in every language. Women and love, there is no greater tedium,” he cried.
She was slightly offended. And yet, this was her own basic feeling. Men, and love—there was no greater tedium.
“I think the same,” she said.
“A bore,” he repeated. “What does it matter whether I wear this hat or another? So love. I needn’t wear a hat at all, only for convenience. Neither need I love except for convenience. I tell you what, gnädige Frau—” and he leaned towards her—then he made a quick, odd gesture, as of striking something aside—“gnadige Fraulein, never mind—I tell you what, I would give everything, everything, all your love, for a little companionship in intelligence—” his eyes flickered darkly, evilly at her. “You understand?” he asked, with a faint smile. “It wouldn’t matter if she were a hundred years old, a thousand—it would be all the same to me, so that she can understand.” He shut his eyes with a little snap.
Again Gudrun was rather offended. Did he not think her good-looking, then? Suddenly she laughed.
“I shall have to wait about eighty years to suit you, at that,” she said. “I am ugly enough, aren’t I?”
He looked at her with an artist’s sudden, critical, estimating eye.
“You are beautiful,” he said, “and I am glad of it. But it isn’t that—it isn’t that,” he cried, with emphasis that flattered her. “It is that you have a certain wit, it is the kind of understanding. For me, I am little, chétif,dp insignificant. Good! Do not ask me to be strong and handsome, then. But it is the me—“ he put his fingers to his mouth, oddly—”it is the me that is looking for a mistress, and my me is waiting for the thee of the mistress, for the match to my particular intelligence. You understand?”
“Yes,” she said, “I understand.”
“As for the other, this amour—” he made a gesture, dashing his hand aside, as if to dash away something troublesome—“it is unimportant, unimportant. Does it matter, whether I drink white wine this evening, or whether I drink nothing? It does not matter, it does not matter. So this love, this amour, this baiser. Yes or no, soit ou soit pas,dq to-day, to-morrow, or never, it is all the same, it does not matter—no more than the white wine.”
He ended with an odd dropping of the head in a desperate negation. Gudrun watched him steadily. She had gone pale.
Suddenly she stretched over and seized his hand in her own.
“That is true,” she said, in rather a high, vehement voice, “that is true for me too. It is the understanding that matters.”
He looked up at her almost frightened, furtive. Then he nodded, a little sullenly. She let go his hand: he had made not the lightest response. And they sat in silence.
“Do you know,” he said, suddenly looking at her with dark, self-important, prophetic eyes, “your fate and mine, they will run together, till—” and he broke off in a little grimace.
“Till when?” she asked, blanched, her lips going white. She was terribly susceptible to these evil prognostications, but he only shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t know.”
Gerald did not come in from his ski-ing until nightfall, he missed the coffee and cake that she took at four o’clock. The snow was in perfect condition, he had travelled a long way, by himself, among the snow ridges, on his skis, he had climbed high, so high that he could see over the top of the pass, five miles distant, could see the Marienhütte,dr the hostel on the crest of the pass, half buried in snow, and over into the deep valley beyond, to the dusk of the pine trees. One could go that way home but he shuddered with nausea at the thought of home;—one could travel on skis down there, and come to the old imperial road, below the pass. But why come to any road. He revolted at the thought of finding himself in the world again. He must stay up there in the snow forever. He had been happy by himself, high up there alone, travelling swiftly on skis, taking far flights, and skimming past the dark rocks veined with brilliant snow.
But he felt something icy gathering at his heart. This strange mood of patience and innocence which had persisted in him for some days, was passing away, he would be left again a prey to the horrible passions and tortures.
So he came down reluctantly, snow-burned, snow-estranged, to the house in the hollow, between the knuckles of
the mountain tops. He saw its lights shining yellow, and he held back, wishing he need not go in, to confront those people, to hear the turmoil of voices and to feel the confusion of other presences. He was isolated as if there were a vacuum round his heart, or a sheath of pure ice.
The moment he saw Gudrun something jolted in his soul. She was looking rather lofty and superb, smiling slowly and graciously to the Germans. A sudden desire leapt in his heart, to kill her. He thought, what a perfect voluptuous fulfilment it would be, to kill her. His mind was absent all the evening, estranged by the snow and his passion. But he kept the idea constant within him, what a perfect voluptuous consummation it would be to strangle her, to strangle every spark of life out of her, till she lay completely inert, soft, relaxed for ever, a soft heap lying dead between his hands, utterly dead. Then he would have had her finally and for ever; there would be such a perfect voluptuous finality.
Gudrun was unaware of what he was feeling, he seemed so quiet and amiable, as usual. His amiability even made her feel brutal towards him.
She went into his room when he was partially undressed. She did not notice the curious, glad gleam of pure hatred, with which he looked at her. She stood near the door, with her hand behind her.
“I have been thinking, Gerald,” she said, with an insulting nonchalance, “that I shall not go back to England.”
“Oh,” he said, “where will you go then?”
But she ignored his question. She had her own logical statement to make, and it must be made as she had thought it.
“I can’t see the use of going back,” she continued. “It is over between me and you—”
She paused for him to speak. But he said nothing. He was only talking to himself, saying: “Over, is it? I believe it is over. But it isn’t finished. Remember, it isn’t finished. We must put some sort of a finish on it. There must be a conclusion, there must be finality.”
So he talked to himself, but aloud he said nothing whatever.
“What has been, has been,” she continued. “There is nothing that I regret. I hope you regret nothing—”
She waited for him to speak.
“Oh, I regret nothing,” he said, accommodatingly.
“Good then,” she answered, “good then. Then neither of us cherishes any regrets, which is as it should be.”
“Quite as it should be,” he said aimlessly.
She paused to gather up her thread again.
“Our attempt has been a failure,” she said. “But we can try again, elsewhere.”
A little flicker of rage ran through his blood. It was as if she were rousing him, goading him. Why must she do it?
“Attempt at what?” he asked.
“At being lovers, I suppose,” she said, a little baffled, yet so trivial she made it all seem.
“Our attempt at being lovers has been a failure?” he repeated aloud.
To himself he was saying: “I ought to kill her here. There is only this left, for me to kill her.” A heavy, overcharged desire to bring about her death possessed him. She was unaware.
“Hasn’t it?” she asked. “Do you think it has been a success?”
Again the insult of the flippant question ran through his blood like a current of fire.
“It had some of the elements of success, our relationship,” he replied. “It—might have come off.”
But he paused before concluding the last phrase. Even as he began the sentence, he did not believe in what he was going to say. He knew it never could have been a success.
“No,” she replied. “You cannot love.”
“And you?” he asked.
Her wide, dark-filled eyes were fixed on him, like two moons of darkness.
“I couldn’t love you,” she said, with stark cold truth.
A blinding flash went over his brain, his body jolted. His heart had burst into flame. His consciousness was gone into his wrists, into his hands. He was one blind, incontinent desire, to kill her. His wrists were bursting, there would be no satisfaction till his hands had closed on her.
But even before his body swerved forward on her, a sudden, cunning comprehension was expressed on her face, and in a flash she was out of the door. She ran in one flash to her room and locked herself in. She was afraid, but confident. She knew her life trembled on the edge of an abyss. But she was curiously sure of her footing. She knew her cunning could outwit him.
She trembled, as she stood in her room, with excitement and awful exhilaration. She knew she could outwit him. She could depend on her presence of mind, and on her wits. But it was a fight to the death, she knew it now. One slip, and she was lost. She had a strange, tense, exhilarated sickness in her body, as one who is in peril of falling from a great height, but who does not look down, does not admit the fear.
“I will go away the day after to-morrow,” she said.
She only did not want Gerald to think that she was afraid of him, that she was running away because she was afraid of him. She was not afraid of him, fundamentally. She knew it was her safeguard to avoid his physical violence. But even physically she was not afraid of him. She wanted to prove it to him. When she had proved it, that, whatever he was, she was not afraid of him; when she had proved that, she could leave him for ever. But meanwhile the fight between them, terrible as she knew it to be, was inconclusive. And she wanted to be confident in herself However many terrors she might have, she would be unafraid, uncowed by him. He could never cow her, nor dominate her, nor have any right over her; this she would maintain until she had proved it. Once it was proved, she was free of him for ever.
But she had not proved it yet, neither to him nor to herself. And this was what still bound her to him. She was bound to him, she could not live beyond him. She sat up in bed, closely wrapped up, for many hours, thinking endlessly to herself It was as if she would never have done weaving the great provision of her thoughts.
“It isn’t as if he really loved me,” she said to herself “He doesn’t. Every woman he comes across he wants to make her in love with him. He doesn’t even know that he is doing it. But there he is, before every woman he unfurls his male attractiveness, displays his great desirability, he tries to make every woman think how wonderful it would be to have him for a lover. His very ignoring of the women is part of the game. He is never unconscious of them. He should have been a cockerel, so he could strut before fifty females, all his subjects. But really, his Don Juan does not interest me. I could play Dona Juanita a million times better than he plays Juan. He bores me, you know. His maleness bores me. Nothing is so boring as his sort of love, so inherently stupid and stupidly conceited. Really, the fathomless conceit of these men, it is ridiculous—the little strutters.
“They are all alike. Look at Birkin. Built out of the limitation of conceit they are, and nothing else. Really, nothing but their ridiculous limitation and intrinsic insignificance could make them so conceited.
“As for Loerke, there is a thousand times more in him than in a Gerald. Gerald is so limited, there is a dead end to him. He would grind on at the old mills forever. And really, there is no corn between the millstones any more. They grind on and on, when there is nothing to grind—saying the same things, believing the same things, acting the same things. Oh, my God, it would wear out the patience of a stone.
“I don’t worship Loerke, but at any rate, he is a free individual. He is not stiff with conceit of his own maleness. He is not grinding dutifully at the old mills. Oh God, when I think of Gerald, and his work—those offices at Beldover, and the mines—it makes my heart sick. What have I to do with it—and him thinking he can be a lover to a woman! One might as well ask it of a self-satisfied lamp-post. These men, with their eternal jobs—and their eternal mills of God that keep on grinding at nothing! It is too boring, just boring. However did I come to take him seriously at all!
“At least in Dresden, one will have one’s back to it all. And there will be amusing things to do. It will be amusing to go to these eurythmic displays, and the Ge
rman opera, the German theatre. It will be amusing to take part in German Bohemian life. And Loerke is an artist, he is a free individual. One will escape from so much, that is the chief thing, escape so much hideous boring repetition of vulgar actions, vulgar phrases, vulgar postures. I don’t delude myself that I shall find an elixir of life in Dresden. I know I shan’t. But I shall get away from people who have their own homes and their own children and their own acquaintances and their own this and their own that. I shall be among people who don’t own things and who haven’t got a home and a domestic servant in the background, who haven’t got a standing and a status and a degree and a circle of friends of the same. Oh God, the wheels within wheels of people, it makes one’s head tick like a clock, with a very madness of dead mechanical monotony and meaninglessness. How I hate life, how I hate it. How I hate the Geralds, that they can offer one nothing else.
“Shortlands!—Heavens! Think of living there, one week, then the next, and then the third—
“No, I won’t think of it—it is too much—”
And she broke off, really terrified, really unable to bear any more.
The thought of the mechanical succession of day following day, day following day, ad infinitum, was one of the things that made her heart palpitate with a real approach of madness. The terrible bondage of this tick-tack of time, this twitching of the hands of the clock, this eternal repetition of hours and days—oh God, it was too awful to contemplate. And there was no escape from it, no escape.
She almost wished Gerald were with her to save her from the terror of her own thoughts. Oh, how she suffered, lying there alone, confronted by the terrible clock, with its eternal tick-tack. All life, all life resolved itself into this: tick-tack, tick-tack, tick-tack; then the striking of the hour; then the tick-tack, tick-tack, and the twitching of the clock-fingers.
Gerald could not save her from it. He, his body, his motion, his lire—it was the same ticking, the same twitching across the dial, a horrible mechanical twitching forward over the face of the hours. What were his kisses, his embraces. She could hear their tick-tack, tick-tack.
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