It seemed the train ran by degrees out of the darkness into a faint light, then beat after beat into the day. Ah, how weary it was! Faintly, the trees showed, like shadows. Then a house, white, had a curious distinctness. How was it? Then she saw a village — there were always houses passing.
This was an old world she was still journeying through, winter-heavy and dreary. There was plough-land and pasture, and copses of bare trees, copses of bushes, and homesteads naked and work-bare. No new earth had come to pass.
She looked at Birkin’s face. It was white and still and eternal, too eternal. She linked her fingers imploringly in his, under the cover of her rug. His fingers responded, his eyes looked back at her. How dark, like a night, his eyes were, like another world beyond! Oh, if he were the world as well, if only the world were he! If only he could call a world into being, that should be their own world!
The Belgians left, the train ran on, through Luxembourg, through Alsace-Lorraine, through Metz. But she was blind, she could see no more. Her soul did not look out.
They came at last to Basle, to the hotel. It was all a drifting trance, from which she never came to. They went out in the morning, before the train departed. She saw the street, the river, she stood on the bridge. But it all meant nothing. She remembered some shops — one full of pictures, one with orange velvet and ermine. But what did these signify? — nothing.
She was not at ease till they were in the train again. Then she was relieved. So long as they were moving onwards, she was satisfied. They came to Zurich, then, before very long, ran under the mountains, that were deep in snow. At last she was drawing near. This was the other world now.
Innsbruck was wonderful, deep in snow, and evening. They drove in an open sledge over the snow: the train had been so hot and stifling. And the hotel, with the golden light glowing under the porch, seemed like a home.
They laughed with pleasure when they were in the hall. The place seemed full and busy.
‘Do you know if Mr and Mrs Crich — English — from Paris, have arrived?’ Birkin asked in German.
The porter reflected a moment, and was just going to answer, when Ursula caught sight of Gudrun sauntering down the stairs, wearing her dark glossy coat, with grey fur.
‘Gudrun! Gudrun!’ she called, waving up the well of the staircase. ‘Shu-hu!’
Gudrun looked over the rail, and immediately lost her sauntering, diffident air. Her eyes flashed.
‘Really — Ursula!’ she cried. And she began to move downstairs as Ursula ran up. They met at a turn and kissed with laughter and exclamations inarticulate and stirring.
‘But!’ cried Gudrun, mortified. ‘We thought it was TOMORROW you were coming! I wanted to come to the station.’
‘No, we’ve come today!’ cried Ursula. ‘Isn’t it lovely here!’
‘Adorable!’ said Gudrun. ‘Gerald’s just gone out to get something. Ursula, aren’t you FEARFULLY tired?’
‘No, not so very. But I look a filthy sight, don’t I!’
‘No, you don’t. You look almost perfectly fresh. I like that fur cap IMMENSELY!’ She glanced over Ursula, who wore a big soft coat with a collar of deep, soft, blond fur, and a soft blond cap of fur.
‘And you!’ cried Ursula. ‘What do you think YOU look like!’
Gudrun assumed an unconcerned, expressionless face.
‘Do you like it?’ she said.
‘It’s VERY fine!’ cried Ursula, perhaps with a touch of satire.
‘Go up — or come down,’ said Birkin. For there the sisters stood, Gudrun with her hand on Ursula’s arm, on the turn of the stairs half way to the first landing, blocking the way and affording full entertainment to the whole of the hall below, from the door porter to the plump Jew in black clothes.
The two young women slowly mounted, followed by Birkin and the waiter.
‘First floor?’ asked Gudrun, looking back over her shoulder.
‘Second Madam — the lift!’ the waiter replied. And he darted to the elevator to forestall the two women. But they ignored him, as, chattering without heed, they set to mount the second flight. Rather chagrined, the waiter followed.
It was curious, the delight of the sisters in each other, at this meeting. It was as if they met in exile, and united their solitary forces against all the world. Birkin looked on with some mistrust and wonder.
When they had bathed and changed, Gerald came in. He looked shining like the sun on frost.
‘Go with Gerald and smoke,’ said Ursula to Birkin. ‘Gudrun and I want to talk.’
Then the sisters sat in Gudrun’s bedroom, and talked clothes, and experiences. Gudrun told Ursula the experience of the Birkin letter in the cafe. Ursula was shocked and frightened.
‘Where is the letter?’ she asked.
‘I kept it,’ said Gudrun.
‘You’ll give it me, won’t you?’ she said.
But Gudrun was silent for some moments, before she replied:
‘Do you really want it, Ursula?’
‘I want to read it,’ said Ursula.
‘Certainly,’ said Gudrun.
Even now, she could not admit, to Ursula, that she wanted to keep it, as a memento, or a symbol. But Ursula knew, and was not pleased. So the subject was switched off.
‘What did you do in Paris?’ asked Ursula.
‘Oh,’ said Gudrun laconically — ’the usual things. We had a FINE party one night in Fanny Bath’s studio.’
‘Did you? And you and Gerald were there! Who else? Tell me about it.’
‘Well,’ said Gudrun. ‘There’s nothing particular to tell. You know Fanny is FRIGHTFULLY in love with that painter, Billy Macfarlane. He was there — so Fanny spared nothing, she spent VERY freely. It was really remarkable! Of course, everybody got fearfully drunk — but in an interesting way, not like that filthy London crowd. The fact is these were all people that matter, which makes all the difference. There was a Roumanian, a fine chap. He got completely drunk, and climbed to the top of a high studio ladder, and gave the most marvellous address — really, Ursula, it was wonderful! He began in French — La vie, c’est une affaire d’ames imperiales — in a most beautiful voice — he was a fine-looking chap — but he had got into Roumanian before he had finished, and not a soul understood. But Donald Gilchrist was worked to a frenzy. He dashed his glass to the ground, and declared, by God, he was glad he had been born, by God, it was a miracle to be alive. And do you know, Ursula, so it was — ’ Gudrun laughed rather hollowly.
‘But how was Gerald among them all?’ asked Ursula.
‘Gerald! Oh, my word, he came out like a dandelion in the sun! HE’S a whole saturnalia in himself, once he is roused. I shouldn’t like to say whose waist his arm did not go round. Really, Ursula, he seems to reap the women like a harvest. There wasn’t one that would have resisted him. It was too amazing! Can you understand it?’
Ursula reflected, and a dancing light came into her eyes.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can. He is such a whole-hogger.’
‘Whole-hogger! I should think so!’ exclaimed Gudrun. ‘But it is true, Ursula, every woman in the room was ready to surrender to him. Chanticleer isn’t in it — even Fanny Bath, who is GENUINELY in love with Billy Macfarlane! I never was more amazed in my life! And you know, afterwards — I felt I was a whole ROOMFUL of women. I was no more myself to him, than I was Queen Victoria. I was a whole roomful of women at once. It was most astounding! But my eye, I’d caught a Sultan that time — ’
Gudrun’s eyes were flashing, her cheek was hot, she looked strange, exotic, satiric. Ursula was fascinated at once — and yet uneasy.
They had to get ready for dinner. Gudrun came down in a daring gown of vivid green silk and tissue of gold, with green velvet bodice and a strange black-and-white band round her hair. She was really brilliantly beautiful and everybody noticed her. Gerald was in that full-blooded, gleaming state when he was most handsome. Birkin watched them with quick, laughing, half-sinister eyes, Ursula quite lost her head. The
re seemed a spell, almost a blinding spell, cast round their table, as if they were lighted up more strongly than the rest of the dining-room.
‘Don’t you love to be in this place?’ cried Gudrun. ‘Isn’t the snow wonderful! Do you notice how it exalts everything? It is simply marvellous. One really does feel LIBERMENSCHLICH — more than human.’
‘One does,’ cried Ursula. ‘But isn’t that partly the being out of England?’
‘Oh, of course,’ cried Gudrun. ‘One could never feel like this in England, for the simple reason that the damper is NEVER lifted off one, there. It is quite impossible really to let go, in England, of that I am assured.’
And she turned again to the food she was eating. She was fluttering with vivid intensity.
‘It’s quite true,’ said Gerald, ‘it never is quite the same in England. But perhaps we don’t want it to be — perhaps it’s like bringing the light a little too near the powder-magazine, to let go altogether, in England. One is afraid what might happen, if EVERYBODY ELSE let go.’
‘My God!’ cried Gudrun. ‘But wouldn’t it be wonderful, if all England did suddenly go off like a display of fireworks.’
‘It couldn’t,’ said Ursula. ‘They are all too damp, the powder is damp in them.’
‘I’m not so sure of that,’ said Gerald.
‘Nor I,’ said Birkin. ‘When the English really begin to go off, EN MASSE, it’ll be time to shut your ears and run.’
‘They never will,’ said Ursula.
‘We’ll see,’ he replied.
‘Isn’t it marvellous,’ said Gudrun, ‘how thankful one can be, to be out of one’s country. I cannot believe myself, I am so transported, the moment I set foot on a foreign shore. I say to myself “Here steps a new creature into life.”‘
‘Don’t be too hard on poor old England,’ said Gerald. ‘Though we curse it, we love it really.’
To Ursula, there seemed a fund of cynicism in these words.
‘We may,’ said Birkin. ‘But it’s a damnably uncomfortable love: like a love for an aged parent who suffers horribly from a complication of diseases, for which there is no hope.’
Gudrun looked at him with dilated dark eyes.
‘You think there is no hope?’ she asked, in her pertinent fashion.
But Birkin backed away. He would not answer such a question.
‘Any hope of England’s becoming real? God knows. It’s a great actual unreality now, an aggregation into unreality. It might be real, if there were no Englishmen.’
‘You think the English will have to disappear?’ persisted Gudrun. It was strange, her pointed interest in his answer. It might have been her own fate she was inquiring after. Her dark, dilated eyes rested on Birkin, as if she could conjure the truth of the future out of him, as out of some instrument of divination.
He was pale. Then, reluctantly, he answered:
‘Well — what else is in front of them, but disappearance? They’ve got to disappear from their own special brand of Englishness, anyhow.’
Gudrun watched him as if in a hypnotic state, her eyes wide and fixed on him.
‘But in what way do you mean, disappear? — ’ she persisted.
‘Yes, do you mean a change of heart?’ put in Gerald.
‘I don’t mean anything, why should I?’ said Birkin. ‘I’m an Englishman, and I’ve paid the price of it. I can’t talk about England — I can only speak for myself.’
‘Yes,’ said Gudrun slowly, ‘you love England immensely, IMMENSELY, Rupert.’
‘And leave her,’ he replied.
‘No, not for good. You’ll come back,’ said Gerald, nodding sagely.
‘They say the lice crawl off a dying body,’ said Birkin, with a glare of bitterness. ‘So I leave England.’
‘Ah, but you’ll come back,’ said Gudrun, with a sardonic smile.
‘Tant pis pour moi,’ he replied.
‘Isn’t he angry with his mother country!’ laughed Gerald, amused.
‘Ah, a patriot!’ said Gudrun, with something like a sneer.
Birkin refused to answer any more.
Gudrun watched him still for a few seconds. Then she turned away. It was finished, her spell of divination in him. She felt already purely cynical. She looked at Gerald. He was wonderful like a piece of radium to her. She felt she could consume herself and know ALL, by means of this fatal, living metal. She smiled to herself at her fancy. And what would she do with herself, when she had destroyed herself? For if spirit, if integral being is destructible, Matter is indestructible.
He was looking bright and abstracted, puzzled, for the moment. She stretched out her beautiful arm, with its fluff of green tulle, and touched his chin with her subtle, artist’s fingers.
‘What are they then?’ she asked, with a strange, knowing smile.
‘What?’ he replied, his eyes suddenly dilating with wonder.
‘Your thoughts.’
Gerald looked like a man coming awake.
‘I think I had none,’ he said.
‘Really!’ she said, with grave laughter in her voice.
And to Birkin it was as if she killed Gerald, with that touch.
‘Ah but,’ cried Gudrun, ‘let us drink to Britannia — let us drink to Britannia.’
It seemed there was wild despair in her voice. Gerald laughed, and filled the glasses.
‘I think Rupert means,’ he said, ‘that NATIONALLY all Englishmen must die, so that they can exist individually and — ’
‘Super-nationally — ’ put in Gudrun, with a slight ironic grimace, raising her glass.
The next day, they descended at the tiny railway station of Hohenhausen, at the end of the tiny valley railway. It was snow everywhere, a white, perfect cradle of snow, new and frozen, sweeping up an either side, black crags, and white sweeps of silver towards the blue pale heavens.
As they stepped out on the naked platform, with only snow around and above, Gudrun shrank as if it chilled her heart.
‘My God, Jerry,’ she said, turning to Gerald with sudden intimacy, ‘you’ve done it now.’
‘What?’
She made a faint gesture, indicating the world on either hand.
‘Look at it!’
She seemed afraid to go on. He laughed.
They were in the heart of the mountains. From high above, on either side, swept down the white fold of snow, so that one seemed small and tiny in a valley of pure concrete heaven, all strangely radiant and changeless and silent.
‘It makes one feel so small and alone,’ said Ursula, turning to Birkin and laying her hand on his arm.
‘You’re not sorry you’ve come, are you?’ said Gerald to Gudrun.
She looked doubtful. They went out of the station between banks of snow.
‘Ah,’ said Gerald, sniffing the air in elation, ‘this is perfect. There’s our sledge. We’ll walk a bit — we’ll run up the road.’
Gudrun, always doubtful, dropped her heavy coat on the sledge, as he did his, and they set off. Suddenly she threw up her head and set off scudding along the road of snow, pulling her cap down over her ears. Her blue, bright dress fluttered in the wind, her thick scarlet stockings were brilliant above the whiteness. Gerald watched her: she seemed to be rushing towards her fate, and leaving him behind. He let her get some distance, then, loosening his limbs, he went after her.
Everywhere was deep and silent snow. Great snow-eaves weighed down the broad-roofed Tyrolese houses, that were sunk to the window-sashes in snow. Peasant-women, full-skirted, wearing each a cross-over shawl, and thick snow-boots, turned in the way to look at the soft, determined girl running with such heavy fleetness from the man, who was overtaking her, but not gaining any power over her.
They passed the inn with its painted shutters and balcony, a few cottages, half buried in the snow; then the snow-buried silent sawmill by the roofed bridge, which crossed the hidden stream, over which they ran into the very depth of the untouched sheets of snow. It was a silence and a sheer whiteness exh
ilarating to madness. But the perfect silence was most terrifying, isolating the soul, surrounding the heart with frozen air.
‘It’s a marvellous place, for all that,’ said Gudrun, looking into his eyes with a strange, meaning look. His soul leapt.
‘Good,’ he said.
A fierce electric energy seemed to flow over all his limbs, his muscles were surcharged, his hands felt hard with strength. They walked along rapidly up the snow-road, that was marked by withered branches of trees stuck in at intervals. He and she were separate, like opposite poles of one fierce energy. But they felt powerful enough to leap over the confines of life into the forbidden places, and back again.
Birkin and Ursula were running along also, over the snow. He had disposed of the luggage, and they had a little start of the sledges. Ursula was excited and happy, but she kept turning suddenly to catch hold of Birkin’s arm, to make sure of him.
‘This is something I never expected,’ she said. ‘It is a different world, here.’
They went on into a snow meadow. There they were overtaken by the sledge, that came tinkling through the silence. It was another mile before they came upon Gudrun and Gerald on the steep up-climb, beside the pink, half-buried shrine.
Then they passed into a gulley, where were walls of black rock and a river filled with snow, and a still blue sky above. Through a covered bridge they went, drumming roughly over the boards, crossing the snow-bed once more, then slowly up and up, the horses walking swiftly, the driver cracking his long whip as he walked beside, and calling his strange wild HUE-HUE!, the walls of rock passing slowly by, till they emerged again between slopes and masses of snow. Up and up, gradually they went, through the cold shadow-radiance of the afternoon, silenced by the imminence of the mountains, the luminous, dazing sides of snow that rose above them and fell away beneath.
They came forth at last in a little high table-land of snow, where stood the last peaks of snow like the heart petals of an open rose. In the midst of the last deserted valleys of heaven stood a lonely building with brown wooden walls and white heavy roof, deep and deserted in the waste of snow, like a dream. It stood like a rock that had rolled down from the last steep slopes, a rock that had taken the form of a house, and was now half-buried. It was unbelievable that one could live there uncrushed by all this terrible waste of whiteness and silence and clear, upper, ringing cold.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 214