“Must it be bloody, Josephine?” said Robert.
“Why, yes. I don’t believe in revolutions that aren’t bloody,” said Josephine. “Wouldn’t I love it! I’d go in front with a red flag.”
“It would be rather fun,” said Tanny.
“Wouldn’t it!” cried Josephine.
“Oh, Josey, dear!” cried Julia hysterically. “Isn’t she a red-hot Bolsher! I should be frightened.”
“No!” cried Josephine. “I should love it.”
“So should I,” said Jim, in a luscious sort of voice. “What price machine-guns at the end of the Strand! That’s a day to live for, what?”
“Ha! Ha!” laughed Clariss, with her deep laugh. “We’d all Bolsh together. I’d give the cheers.”
“I wouldn’t mind getting killed. I’d love it, in a real fight,” said Josephine.
“But, Josephine,” said Robert, “don’t you think we’ve had enough of that sort of thing in the war? Don’t you think it all works out rather stupid and unsatisfying?”
“Ah, but a civil war would be different. I’ve no interest in fighting Germans. But a civil war would be different.”
“That’s a fact, it would,” said Jim.
“Only rather worse,” said Robert.
“No, I don’t agree,” cried Josephine. “You’d feel you were doing something, in a civil war.”
“Pulling the house down,” said Lilly.
“Yes,” she cried. “Don’t you hate it, the house we live in — London — England — America! Don’t you hate them?”
“I don’t like them. But I can’t get much fire in my hatred. They pall on me rather,” said Lilly.
“Ay!” said Aaron, suddenly stirring in his chair.
Lilly and he glanced at one another with a look of recognition.
“Still,” said Tanny, “there’s got to be a clearance some day or other.”
“Oh,” drawled Clariss. “I’m all for a clearance. I’m all for pulling the house down. Only while it stands I do want central heating and a good cook.”
“May I come to dinner?” said Jim.
“Oh, yes. You’d find it rather domestic.”
“Where do you live?”
“Rather far out now — Amersham.”
“Amersham? Where’s that — ?”
“Oh, it’s on the map.”
There was a little lull. Jim gulped down a drink, standing at the sideboard. He was a tall, fine, soldierly figure, and his face, with its little sandy moustache and bald forehead, was odd. Aaron Sisson sat watching him, unconsciously.
“Hello you!” said Jim. “Have one?”
Aaron shook his head, and Jim did not press him. It saved the drinks.
“You believe in love, don’t you?” said Jim, sitting down near Aaron, and grinning at him.
“Love!” said Aaron.
“LOVE! he says,” mocked Jim, grinning at the company.
“What about it, then?” asked Aaron.
“It’s life! Love is life,” said Jim fiercely.
“It’s a vice, like drink,” said Lilly.
“Eh? A vice!” said Jim. “May be for you, old bird.”
“More so still for you,” said Lilly.
“It’s life. It’s life!” reiterated Jim. “Don’t you agree?” He turned wolfishly to Clariss.
“Oh, yes — every time — ” she drawled, nonchalant.
“Here, let’s write it down,” said Lilly. He found a blue pencil and printed in large letters on the old creamy marble of the mantel-piece panel: — LOVE IS LIFE.
Julia suddenly rose and flung her arms asunder wildly.
“Oh, I hate love. I hate it,” she protested.
Jim watched her sardonically.
“Look at her!” he said. “Look at Lesbia who hates love.”
“No, but perhaps it is a disease. Perhaps we are all wrong, and we can’t love properly,” put in Josephine.
“Have another try,” said Jim, — ”I know what love is. I’ve thought about it. Love is the soul’s respiration.”
“Let’s have that down,” said Lilly.
LOVE IS THE SOUL’S RESPIRATION. He printed it on the old mantel-piece.
Jim eyed the letters.
“It’s right,” he said. “Quite right. When you love, your soul breathes in. If you don’t breathe in, you suffocate.”
“What about breathing out?” said Robert. “If you don’t breathe out, you asphyxiate.”
“Right you are, Mock Turtle — ” said Jim maliciously.
“Breathing out is a bloody revolution,” said Lilly.
“You’ve hit the nail on the head,” said Jim solemnly.
“Let’s record it then,” said Lilly. And with the blue pencil he printed:
WHEN YOU LOVE, YOUR SOUL BREATHES IN —
WHEN YOUR SOUL BREATHES OUT, IT’S A BLOODY REVOLUTION.
“I say Jim,” he said. “You must be busting yourself, trying to breathe in.”
“Don’t you be too clever. I’ve thought about it,” said Jim. “When I’m in love, I get a great inrush of energy. I actually feel it rush in — here!” He poked his finger on the pit of his stomach. “It’s the soul’s expansion. And if I can’t get these rushes of energy, I’M DYING, AND I KNOW I AM.”
He spoke the last words with sudden ferocity and desperation.
“All I know is,” said Tanny, “you don’t look it.”
“I AM. I am.” Jim protested. “I’m dying. Life’s leaving me.”
“Maybe you’re choking with love,” said Robert. “Perhaps you have breathed in so much, you don’t know how to let it go again. Perhaps your soul’s got a crick in it, with expanding so much.”
“You’re a bloody young sucking pig, you are,” said Jim.
“Even at that age, I’ve learned my manners,” replied Robert.
Jim looked round the party. Then he turned to Aaron Sisson.
“What do you make of ‘em, eh?” he said.
Aaron shook his head, and laughed.
“Me?” he said.
But Jim did not wait for an answer.
“I’ve had enough,” said Tanny suddenly rising. “I think you’re all silly. Besides, it’s getting late.”
“She!” said Jim, rising and pointing luridly to Clariss. “She’s Love. And HE’s the Working People. The hope is these two — ” He jerked a thumb at Aaron Sisson, after having indicated Mrs. Browning.
“Oh, how awfully interesting. It’s quite a long time since I’ve been a personification. — I suppose you’ve never been one before?” said Clariss, turning to Aaron in conclusion.
“No, I don’t think I have,” he answered.
“I hope personification is right. — Ought to be allegory or something else?” This from Clariss to Robert.
“Or a parable, Clariss,” laughed the young lieutenant.
“Goodbye,” said Tanny. “I’ve been awfully bored.”
“Have you?” grinned Jim. “Goodbye! Better luck next time.”
“We’d better look sharp,” said Robert, “if we want to get the tube.”
The party hurried through the rainy narrow streets down to the Embankment station. Robert and Julia and Clariss were going west, Lilly and his wife were going to Hampstead, Josephine and Aaron Sisson were going both to Bloomsbury.
“I suppose,” said Robert, on the stairs — ”Mr. Sisson will see you to your door, Josephine. He lives your way.”
“There’s no need at all,” said Josephine.
The four who were going north went down to the low tube level. It was nearly the last train. The station was half deserted, half rowdy, several fellows were drunk, shouting and crowing. Down there in the bowels of London, after midnight, everything seemed horrible and unnatural.
“How I hate this London,” said Tanny. She was half Norwegian, and had spent a large part of her life in Norway, before she married Lilly.
“Yes, so do I,” said Josephine. “But if one must earn one’s living one must stay here. I wi
sh I could get back to Paris. But there’s nothing doing for me in France. — When do you go back into the country, both of you?”
“Friday,” said Lilly.
“How lovely for you! — And when will you go to Norway, Tanny?”
“In about a month,” said Tanny.
“You must be awfully pleased.”
“Oh — thankful — THANKFUL to get out of England — ”
“I know. That’s how I feel. Everything is so awful — so dismal and dreary, I find it — ”
They crowded into the train. Men were still yelling like wild beasts — others were asleep — soldiers were singing.
“Have you really broken your engagement with Jim?” shrilled Tanny in a high voice, as the train roared.
“Yes, he’s impossible,” said Josephine. “Perfectly hysterical and impossible.”
“And SELFISH — ” cried Tanny.
“Oh terribly — ” cried Josephine.
“Come up to Hampstead to lunch with us,” said Lilly to Aaron.
“Ay — thank you,” said Aaron.
Lilly scribbled directions on a card. The hot, jaded midnight underground rattled on. Aaron and Josephine got down to change trains.
CHAPTER VII. THE DARK SQUARE GARDEN
Josephine had invited Aaron Sisson to dinner at a restaurant in Soho, one Sunday evening. They had a corner to themselves, and with a bottle of Burgundy she was getting his history from him.
His father had been a shaft-sinker, earning good money, but had been killed by a fall down the shaft when Aaron was only four years old. The widow had opened a shop: Aaron was her only child. She had done well in her shop. She had wanted Aaron to be a schoolteacher. He had served three years apprenticeship, then suddenly thrown it up and gone to the pit.
“But why?” said Josephine.
“I couldn’t tell you. I felt more like it.”
He had a curious quality of an intelligent, almost sophisticated mind, which had repudiated education. On purpose he kept the midland accent in his speech. He understood perfectly what a personification was — and an allegory. But he preferred to be illiterate.
Josephine found out what a miner’s checkweighman was. She tried to find out what sort of wife Aaron had — but, except that she was the daughter of a publican and was delicate in health, she could learn nothing.
“And do you send her money?” she asked.
“Ay,” said Aaron. “The house is mine. And I allow her so much a week out of the money in the bank. My mother left me a bit over a thousand when she died.”
“You don’t mind what I say, do you?” said Josephine.
“No I don’t mind,” he laughed.
He had this pleasant-seeming courteous manner. But he really kept her at a distance. In some things he reminded her of Robert: blond, erect, nicely built, fresh and English-seeming. But there was a curious cold distance to him, which she could not get across. An inward indifference to her — perhaps to everything. Yet his laugh was so handsome.
“Will you tell me why you left your wife and children? — Didn’t you love them?”
Aaron looked at the odd, round, dark muzzle of the girl. She had had her hair bobbed, and it hung in odd dark folds, very black, over her ears.
“Why I left her?” he said. “For no particular reason. They’re all right without me.”
Josephine watched his face. She saw a pallor of suffering under its freshness, and a strange tension in his eyes.
“But you couldn’t leave your little girls for no reason at all — ”
“Yes, I did. For no reason — except I wanted to have some free room round me — to loose myself — ”
“You mean you wanted love?” flashed Josephine, thinking he said lose.
“No, I wanted fresh air. I don’t know what I wanted. Why should I know?”
“But we must know: especially when other people will be hurt,” said she.
“Ah, well! A breath of fresh air, by myself. I felt forced to feel — I feel if I go back home now, I shall be FORCED — forced to love — or care — or something.”
“Perhaps you wanted more than your wife could give you,” she said.
“Perhaps less. She’s made up her mind she loves me, and she’s not going to let me off.”
“Did you never love her?” said Josephine.
“Oh, yes. I shall never love anybody else. But I’m damned if I want to be a lover any more. To her or to anybody. That’s the top and bottom of it. I don’t want to CARE, when care isn’t in me. And I’m not going to be forced to it.”
The fat, aproned French waiter was hovering near. Josephine let him remove the plates and the empty bottle.
“Have more wine,” she said to Aaron.
But he refused. She liked him because of his dead-level indifference to his surroundings. French waiters and foreign food — he noticed them in his quick, amiable-looking fashion — but he was indifferent. Josephine was piqued. She wanted to pierce this amiable aloofness of his.
She ordered coffee and brandies.
“But you don’t want to get away from EVERYTHING, do you? I myself feel so LOST sometimes — so dreadfully alone: not in a silly sentimental fashion, because men keep telling me they love me, don’t you know. But my LIFE seems alone, for some reason — ”
“Haven’t you got relations?” he said.
“No one, now mother is dead. Nothing nearer than aunts and cousins in America. I suppose I shall see them all again one day. But they hardly count over here.”
“Why don’t you get married?” he said. “How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-five. How old are you?”
“Thirty-three.”
“You might almost be any age. — I don’t know why I don’t get married. In a way, I hate earning my own living — yet I go on — and I like my work — ”
“What are you doing now?”
“I’m painting scenery for a new play — rather fun — I enjoy it. But I often wonder what will become of me.”
“In what way?”
She was almost affronted.
“What becomes of me? Oh, I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter, not to anybody but myself.”
“What becomes of anybody, anyhow? We live till we die. What do you want?”
“Why, I keep saying I want to get married and feel sure of something. But I don’t know — I feel dreadful sometimes — as if every minute would be the last. I keep going on and on — I don’t know what for — and IT keeps going on and on — goodness knows what it’s all for.”
“You shouldn’t bother yourself,” he said. “You should just let it go on and on — ”
“But I MUST bother,” she said. “I must think and feel — ”
“You’ve no occasion,” he said.
“How — ?” she said, with a sudden grunting, unhappy laugh. Then she lit a cigarette.
“No,” she said. “What I should really like more than anything would be an end of the world. I wish the world would come to an end.”
He laughed, and poured his drops of brandy down his throat.
“It won’t, for wishing,” he said.
“No, that’s the awful part of it. It’ll just go on and on — Doesn’t it make you feel you’d go mad?”
He looked at her and shook his head.
“You see it doesn’t concern me,” he said. “So long as I can float by myself.”
“But ARE you SATISFIED!” she cried.
“I like being by myself — I hate feeling and caring, and being forced into it. I want to be left alone — ”
“You aren’t very polite to your hostess of the evening,” she said, laughing a bit miserably.
“Oh, we’re all right,” he said. “You know what I mean — ”
“You like your own company? Do you? — Sometimes I think I’m nothing when I’m alone. Sometimes I think I surely must be nothing — nothingness.”
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “No. I only want to be left alon
e.”
“Not to have anything to do with anybody?” she queried ironically.
“Not to any extent.”
She watched him — and then she bubbled with a laugh.
“I think you’re funny,” she said. “You don’t mind?”
“No — why — It’s just as you see it. — Jim Bricknell’s a rare comic, to my eye.”
“Oh, him! — no, not actually. He’s self-conscious and selfish and hysterical. It isn’t a bit funny after a while.”
“I only know what I’ve seen,” said Aaron. “You’d both of you like a bloody revolution, though.”
“Yes. Only when it came he wouldn’t be there.”
“Would you?”
“Yes, indeed I would. I would give everything to be in it. I’d give heaven and earth for a great big upheaval — and then darkness.”
“Perhaps you’ll get it, when you die,” said Aaron.
“Oh, but I don’t want to die and leave all this standing. I hate it so.”
“Why do you?”
“But don’t you?”
“No, it doesn’t really bother me.”
“It makes me feel I can’t live.”
“I can’t see that.”
“But you always disagree with one!” said Josephine. “How do you like Lilly? What do you think of him?”
“He seems sharp,” said Aaron.
“But he’s more than sharp.”
“Oh, yes! He’s got his finger in most pies.”
“And doesn’t like the plums in any of them,” said Josephine tartly.
“What does he do?”
“Writes — stories and plays.”
“And makes it pay?”
“Hardly at all. — They want us to go. Shall we?” She rose from the table. The waiter handed her her cloak, and they went out into the blowy dark night. She folded her wrap round her, and hurried forward with short, sharp steps. There was a certain Parisian chic and mincingness about her, even in her walk: but underneath, a striding, savage suggestion as if she could leg it in great strides, like some savage squaw.
Aaron pressed his bowler hat down on his brow.
“Would you rather take a bus?” she said in a high voice, because of the wind.
“I’d rather walk.”
“So would I.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 310