Mrs Bircumshaw slipped into bed quietly, settling to rest at once, as far as possible from the broad form of her husband. Both lay quite still, although, as each knew, neither slept. The man felt he wanted to move, but his will was so weak and shrinking, he could not rouse his muscles. He lay tense, paralyzed with self-conscious shrinking, yet bursting to move. She nestled herself down quite at ease. She did not care, this evening, how he felt or thought: for once she let herself rest in indifference.
Towards one o’clock in the morning, just as she was drifting into sleep, her eyes flew open. She did not start or stir; she was merely wide awake. A match had been struck.
Her husband was sitting up in bed, leaning forward to the plate on the chair. Very carefully, she turned her head just enough to see him. His big back bulked above her. He was leaning forward to the chair. The candle, which he had set on the floor, so that its light should not penetrate the sleep of his wife, threw strange shadows on the ceiling, and lighted his throat and underneath his strong chin. Through the arch of his arm, she could see his jaw and his throat working. For some strange reason, he felt that he could not eat in the dark. Occasionally she could see his cheek bulged with food. He ate rapidly, almost voraciously, leaning over the edge of the bed and taking care of the crumbs. She noticed the weight of his shoulder muscles at rest upon the arm on which he leaned.
‘The strange animal!’ she said to herself, and she laughed, laughed heartily within herself.
‘Are they nice?’ she longed to say, slyly.
‘Are they nice?’ — she must say it — ‘are they nice?’ The temptation was almost too great. But she was afraid of this lusty animal startled at his feeding. She dared not twit him.
He took the milk, leaned back, almost arching backwards over her as he drank. She shrank with a little fear, a little repulsion, which was nevertheless half pleasurable. Cowering under his shadow, she shrugged with contempt, yet her eyes widened with a small, excited smile. This vanished, and a real scorn hardened her lips: when he was sulky his blood was cold as water, nothing could rouse it to passion; he resisted caresses as if he had thin acid in his veins. ‘Mean in the blood,’ she said to herself.
He finished the food and milk, licked his lips, nipped out the candle, then stealthily lay down. He seemed to sink right into a grateful sleep.
‘Nothing on earth is so vital to him as a meal,’ she thought.
She lay a long time thinking, before she fell asleep.
ONCE
THE morning was very beautiful. White packets of mist hung over the river, as if a great train had gone by leaving its steam idle, in a trail down the valley. The mountains were just faint grey-blue, with the slightest glitter of snow high up in the sunshine. They seemed to be standing a long way off watching me, and wondering. As I bathed in the shaft of sunshine that came through the wide-opened window, letting the water slip swiftly down my sides, my mind went wandering through the hazy morning, very sweet and far-off and still, so that I had hardly wit enough to dry myself. And as soon as I had got on my dressing-gown, I lay down again idly on the bed, looking out at the morning that still was greenish from the dawn, and thinking of Anita.
I had loved her when I was a boy. She was an aristocrat’s daughter, but she was not rich. I was simply middle-class, then. I was much too green and humble-minded to think of making love to her. No sooner had she come home from school than she married an officer. He was rather handsome, something in the Kaiser’s fashion, but stupid as an ass. And Anita was only eighteen. When at last she accepted me as a lover, she told me about it.
‘The night I was married,’ she said, ‘I lay counting the flowers on the wall-paper, how many on a string; he bored me so.’
He was of good family, and of great repute in the Army, being a worker. He had the tenacity of a bulldog, and rode like a centaur. These things look well from a distance, but to live with they weary one beyond endurance, so Anita says.
She had her first child just before she was twenty: two years afterwards, another. Then no more. Her husband was something of a brute. He neglected her, though not outrageously, treated her as if she were a fine animal. To complete matters, he more than ruined himself owing to debts, gambling and otherwise, then utterly disgraced himself by using Government money and being caught.
‘You have found a hair in your soup,’ I wrote to Anita.
‘Not a hair, a whole plait,’ she replied.
After that, she began to have lovers. She was a splendid young creature, and was not going to sit down in her rather elegant flat in Berlin, to run to seed. Her husband was an officer in a crack regiment. Anita was superb to look at. He was proud to introduce her to his friends. Then, moreover, she had her own relatives in Berlin, aristocratic but also rich, and moving in the first society. So she began to take lovers.
Anita shows her breeding: erect, rather haughty, with a good-humoured kind of scorn. She is tall and strong, her brown eyes are full of scorn, and she has a downy, warm-coloured skin, brownish to match her black hair.
At last she came to love me a little. Her soul is unspoiled. I think she has almost the soul of a virgin. I think, perhaps, it frets her that she has never really loved. She has never had the real respect — Ehrfurcht — for a man. And she has been here with me in the Tyrol these last ten days. I love her, and I am not satisfied with myself. Perhaps I too shall fall short.
‘You have never loved your men?’ I asked her.
‘I loved them — but I have put them all in my pocket,’ she said, with just the faintest disappointment in her good humour. She shrugged her shoulders at my serious gaze.
I lay wondering if I too were going into Anita’s pocket, along with her purse and her perfume and the little sweets she loved. It would almost have been delicious to do so. A kind of voluptuousness urged me to let her have me, to let her put me in her pocket. It would be so nice. But I loved her: it would not be fair to her. I wanted to do more than give her pleasure.
Suddenly the door opened on my musing, and Anita came into my bedroom. Startled, I laughed in my very soul, and I adored her. She was so natural! She was dressed in a transparent lacy chemise, that was slipping over her shoulder, high boots, upon one of which her string-coloured stocking had fallen. And she wore an enormous hat, black, lined with white, and covered with a tremendous creamy-brown feather, that streamed like a flood of brownish foam, swaying lightly. It was an immense hat on top of her shamelessness, and the great, soft feather seemed to spill over, fall with a sudden gush, as she put back her head.
She looked at me, then went straight to the mirror.
‘How do you like my hat?’ she said.
She stood before the panel of looking-glass, conscious only of her hat, whose great feather-strands swung in a tide. Her bare shoulder glistened, and through the fine web of her chemise I could see all her body in warm silhouette, with golden reflections under the breasts and arms. The light ran in silver up her lifted arms, and the gold shadow stirred as she arranged her hat.
‘How do you like my hat?’ she repeated.
Then, as I did not answer, she turned to look at me. I was still lying on the bed. She must have seen that I had looked at her, instead of at her hat, for a quick darkness and a frown came into her eyes, cleared instantly, as she asked, in a slightly hard tone:
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘It’s rather splendid,’ I answered. ‘Where did it come from?’
‘From Berlin this morning — or last evening,’ she replied.
‘It’s a bit huge,’ I ventured.
She drew herself up.
‘Indeed not!’ she said, turning to the mirror.
I got up, dropped off my dressing-gown, put a silk hat quite correctly on my head, and then, naked save for a hat and a pair of gloves, I went forward to her.
‘How do you like my hat?’ I asked her.
She looked at me and went off into a fit of laughter. She dropped her hat on to a chair, and sank on to the bed, shaking with
laughter. Every now and then she lifted her head, gave one look from her dark eyes, then buried her face in the pillows. I stood before her clad in my hat, feeling a good bit of a fool. She peeped up again.
‘You are lovely, you are lovely!’ she cried.
With a grave and dignified movement I prepared to remove the hat, saying:
‘And even then, I lack high-laced boots and one stocking.’
But she flew at me, kept the hat on my head, and kissed me.
‘Don’t take it off,’ she implored. ‘I love you for it.’
So I sat down gravely and unembarrassed on the bed.
‘But don’t you like my hat?’ I said in injured tones. ‘I bought it in London last month.’
She looked up at me comically, and went into peals of laughter.
‘Think,’ she cried, ‘if all those Englishmen in Piccadilly went like that!’
That amused even me.
At last I assured her her hat was adorable, and, much to my relief, I got rid of my silk and into a dressing-gown.
‘You will cover yourself up,’ she said reproachfully. ‘And you look so nice with nothing on — but a hat.’
‘It’s that old Apple I can’t digest,’ I said.
She was quite happy in her shift and her high boots. I lay looking at her beautiful legs.
‘How many more men have you done that to?’ I asked.
‘What?’ she answered.
‘Gone into their bedrooms clad in a wisp of mist, trying a new hat on?’
She leaned over to me and kissed me.
‘Not many,’ she said. ‘I’ve not been quite so familiar before, I don’t think.’
‘I suppose you’ve forgotten,’ said I. ‘However, it doesn’t matter.’ Perhaps the slight bitterness in my voice touched her. She said almost indignantly:
‘Do you think I want to flatter you and make you believe you are the first that ever I really — really —’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘Neither you nor I are so easily deluded.’
She looked at me peculiarly and steadily.
‘I know all the time,’ said I, ‘that I am pro tem., and that I shan’t even last as long as most.’
‘You are sorry for yourself?’ she mocked.
I shrugged my shoulders, looking into her eyes. She caused me a good deal of agony, but I didn’t give into her.
‘I shan’t commit suicide,’ I replied.
‘On est mort pour si longtemps,’ she said, suddenly dancing on the bed. I loved her. She had the courage to live, almost joyously.
‘When you think back over your affairs — they are numerous, though you are only thirty-one —’
‘Not numerous — only several — and you do underline the thirty-one —,’ she laughed.
‘But how do you feel, when you think of them?’ I asked.
She knitted her eyebrows quaintly, and there was a shadow, more puzzled than anything, on her face.
‘There is something nice in all of them,’ she said. ‘Men are really fearfully good,’ she sighed.
‘If only they weren’t all pocket-editions,’ I mocked.
She laughed, then began drawing the silk cord through the lace of her chemise, pensively. The round caps of her shoulders gleamed like old ivory: there was a faint brown stain towards the arm-pit.
‘No,’ she said, suddenly lifting her head and looking me calmly into the eyes, ‘I have nothing to be ashamed of — that is, — no, I have nothing to be ashamed of!’
‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘And I don’t suppose you’ve done anything that even I shouldn’t be able to swallow —have you?’
I felt rather plaintive with my question. She looked at me and shrugged her shoulders.
‘I know you haven’t,’ I preached. ‘All your affairs have been rather decent. They’ve meant more to the men than they have to you.’
The shadows of her breasts, fine globes, shone warm through the linen veil. She was thinking.
‘Shall I tell you,’ she asked, ‘one thing I did?’
‘If you like,’ I answered. ‘But let me get you a wrap.’ I kissed her shoulder. It had the same fine, delicious coldness of ivory.
‘No — yes, you may,’ she replied.
I brought her a Chinese thing of black silk with gorgeous embroidered dragons, green as flame, writhing upon it.
‘How white against that black silk you are,’ I said, kissing the half globe of her breast, through the linen.
‘Lie there,’ she commanded me. She sat in the middle of the bed, whilst I lay looking at her. She picked up the black silk tassel of my dressing-gown and began flattening it out like a daisy.
‘Gretchen!’ I said.
‘ “Marguerite with one petal”,’ she answered in French, laughing. ‘I am ashamed of it, so you must be nice with me —’
‘Have a cigarette!’ I said.
She puffed wistfully for a few moments.
‘You’ve got to hear it,’ she said.
‘Go on!’
‘I was staying in Dresden in quite a grand hotel; which I rather enjoy: ringing bells, dressing three times a day, feeling half a great lady, half a cocotte. Don’t be cross with me for saying it: look at me! The man was at a garrison a little way off. I’d have married him if I could —’
She shrugged her brown, handsome shoulders, and puffed out a plume of smoke.
‘It began to bore me after three days. I was always alone, looking at shops alone, going to the opera alone — where the beastly men got behind their wives’ backs to look at me. In the end I got cross with my poor man, though of course it wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t come.’
She gave a little laugh as she took a draw at her cigarette.
‘The fourth morning I came downstairs — I was feeling fearfully good-looking and proud of myself. I know I had a sort of cafe’ au lait coat and skirt, very pale — and its fit was a joy!’
After a pause, she continued: ‘And a big black hat with a cloud of white ospreys. I nearly jumped when a man almost ran into me. O jeh! it was a young officer, just bursting with life, a splendid creature: the German aristocrat at his best. He wasn’t over tall, in his dark blue uniform, but simply firm with life. An electric shock went through me, it slipped down me like fire, when I looked into his eyes. O jeh ! they just flamed with consciousness of me — and they were just the same colour as the soft-blue reveres of his uniform. He looked at me — ha! — and then, he bowed, the sort of bow a woman enjoys like a caress.
‘ “Verzeihung, gnädiges Fräulein!”
‘I just inclined my head, and we went our ways. It felt as if something mechanical shifted us, not our wills.
‘I was restless that day, I could stay nowhere. Something stirred inside my veins. I was drinking tea on the Brühler Terasse, watching the people go by like a sort of mechanical procession, and the broad Elbe as a stiller background, when he stood before me, saluting, and taking a seat, half apologetically, half devil-may-care. I was not nearly so much surprised at him, as at the mechanical parading people. And I could see he thought me a cocotte —’
She looked thoughtfully across the room, the past roused dangerously in her dark eyes.
‘But the game amused and excited me. He told me he had to go to a Court ball tonight — and then he said, in his nonchalant yet pleadingly passionate way:
‘ “And afterwards —?”
‘ “And afterwards —!” I repeated.
‘ “May I —?” he asked.
‘Then I told him the number of my room.
‘I dawdled to the hotel, and dressed for dinner, and talked to somebody sitting next to me, but I was an hour or two ahead, when he would come. I arranged my silver and brushes and things, and I had ordered a great bunch of lilies of the valley; they were in a black bowl. There were delicate pink silk curtains, and the carpet was a cold colour, nearly white, with a tawny pink and turquoise ravelled border, a Persian thing, I should imagine. I know I liked it. And didn’t that room feel fresh
, full of expectation, like myself!
‘That last half-hour of waiting — so funny — I seemed to have no feeling, no consciousness. I lay in the dark, holding my nice pale blue gown of crêpe de Chine against my body for comfort. There was a fumble at the door, and I caught my breath! Quickly he came in, locked the door, and switched on all the lights. There he stood, the centre of everything, the light shining on his bright brown hair. He was holding something under his cloak. Now he came to me, and threw on me from out of his cloak a whole armful of red and pink roses. It was delicious! Some of them were cold, when they fell on me. He took off his cloak. I loved his figure in its blue uniform; and then, oh jeh! he picked me off the bed, the roses and all, and kissed me — how he kissed me!’
She paused at the recollection.
‘I could feel his mouth through my thin gown. Then, he went still and intense. He pulled off my saut-de-lit, and looked at me. He held me away from him, his mouth parted with wonder, and yet, as if the gods would envy him — wonder and adoration and pride! I liked his worship. Then he laid me on the bed again, and covered me up gently, and put my roses on the other side of me, a heap just near my hair, on the pillow.
‘Quite unashamed and not the least conscious of himself, he got out of his clothes. And he was adorable — so young, and rather spare, but with a rich body, that simply glowed with love of me. He stood looking at me, quite humbly; and I held out my hands to him.
‘All that night we loved each other. There were crushed, crumpled little rose-leaves on him when he sat up, almost like crimson blood! Oh, and he was fierce, and at the same time, tender!’
Anita’s lips trembled slightly, and she paused. Then, very slowly, she went on:
‘When I woke in the morning he was gone, and just a few passionate words on his dancing-card with a gold crown, on the little table beside me, imploring me to see him again in the Brühler Terasse in the afternoon. But I took the morning express to Berlin —’
We both were still. The river rustled far off in the morning.
‘And —?’ I said.
‘And I never saw him again.’
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 592