But Gerald was now on the scent of argument.
“A race may have its commercial aspect,” he said. “In fact it must. It is like a family. You
must
make provision. And to make provision you have got to strive against other families, other nations.
2
I don’t see why you shouldn’t.”
Again Hermione made a pause, domineering and cold, before she replied: “Yes, I think it is always wrong to provoke a spirit of rivalry. It makes bad blood. And bad blood accumulates.”
“But you can’t do away with the spirit of emulation altogether?” said Gerald. “It is one of the necessary incentives to production and improvement.”
“Yes,” came Hermione’s sauntering response. “I think you can do away with it.”
“I must say,” said Birkin, “I detest the spirit of emulation.” Hermione was biting a piece of bread, pulling it from beneath her teeth with her fingers, in a slow, slightly derisive movement. She turned to Birkin.
“You do hate it, yes,” she said, intimate and gratified.
“Detest it,” he repeated.
“Yes,” she murmured, assured and satisfied.
“But,” Gerald insisted, “you don’t allow one man to take away his neighbour’s living, so why should you allow one nation to take away the living from another nation?”
There was a long slow murmur from Hermione before she broke into speech, saying with a laconic indifference:
“It is not always a question of possessions, is it? It is not all a question of goods?”
Gerald was nettled by this implication of vulgar materialism.
“Yes, more or less,” he retorted. “If I go and take a man’s hat from off his head, that hat becomes a symbol of that man’s liberty. When he fights me for his hat, he is fighting me for his liberty.”
Hermione was nonplussed.
“Yes,” she said, irritated. “But that way of arguing by imaginary instances is not supposed to be genuine, is it? A man does not come and take my hat from off my head, does he?”
“Only because the law prevents him,” said Gerald.
“Not only,” said Birkin. “Ninety-nine men out of a hundred don’t want my hat.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” said Gerald.
“Or the hat,” laughed the bridegroom.
“And if he does want my hat, such as it is,” said Birkin, “why, surely it is open to me to decide, which is a greater loss to me, my hat, or my liberty as a free and indifferent man. If I am compelled to offer fight, I lose the latter. It is a question which is worth more to me, my pleasant liberty of conduct, or my hat.”
“Yes,” said Hermione, watching Birkin strangely. “Yes.”
“But would you let somebody come and snatch your hat off your head?” the bride asked of Hermione.
The face of the tall straight woman turned slowly and as if drugged to this new speaker.
“No,” she replied, in a low inhuman tone, that seemed to contain a chuckle. “No, I shouldn’t let anyone take my hat off my head.”
“How would you prevent it?” asked Gerald.
“I don’t know,” replied Hermione slowly. “Probably I should kill him.”
There was a strange chuckle in her tone, a dangerous and convincing humour in her bearing.
“Of course,” said Gerald, “I can see Rupert’s point. It is a question to him whether his hat or his peace of mind is more important.”
“Peace of body,” said Birkin.
“Well, as you like there,” replied Gerald. “But how are you going to decide this for a nation?”
“Heaven preserve me,” laughed Birkin.
“Yes, but suppose you have to?” Gerald persisted.
“Then it is the same. If the national crown-piece is an old hat, then the thieving gent may have it.”
“But
can
the national or racial hat be an old hat?” insisted Gerald.
“Pretty well bound to be, I believe,” said Birkin.
“I’m not so sure,” said Gerald.
“I don’t agree, Rupert,” said Hermione.
“All right,” said Birkin.
“I’m all for the old national hat,” laughed Gerald.
“And a fool you look in it,” cried Diana, his pert sister who was just in her teens.
“Oh, we’re quite out of our depths with these old hats,” cried Laura Crich. “Dry up now, Gerald. We’re going to drink toasts. Let us drink toasts. Toasts—glasses, glasses—now then, toasts! Speech! Speech!”
Birkin, thinking about race or national death, watched his glass being filled with champagne. The bubbles broke at the rim, the man withdrew, and feeling a sudden thirst at the sight of the fresh wine, Birkin drank up his glass. A queer little tension in the room roused him. He felt a sharp constraint.
“Did I do it by accident, or on purpose?” he asked himself And he decided that, according to the vulgar phrase, he had done it “accidentally on purpose.” He looked round at the hired footman. And the hired footman came, with a silent step of cold servant-like disapprobation. Birkin decided that he detested toasts, and footmen, and assemblies, and mankind altogether, in most of its aspects. Then he rose to make a speech. But he was somehow disgusted.
At length it was over, the meal. Several men strolled out into the garden. There was a lawn, and flower-beds, and at the boundary an iron fence shutting off the little field or park. The view was pleasant; a high-road curving round the edge of a low lake, under the trees. In the spring air, the water gleamed and the opposite woods were purplish with new life. Charming Jersey cattle came to the fence, breathing hoarsely from their velvet muzzles at the human beings, expecting perhaps a crust.
Birkin leaned on the fence. A cow was breathing wet hotness on his hand.
“Pretty cattle, very pretty,” said Marshall, one of the brothers-in-law. “They give the best milk you can have.”
“Yes,” said Birkin.
“Eh, my little beauty, eh, my beauty!” said Marshall, in a queer high falsetto voice, that caused the other man to have convulsions of laughter in his stomach.
“Who won the race, Lupton?” he called to the bridegroom, to hide the fact that he was laughing.
The bridegroom took his cigar from his mouth.
“The race?” he exclaimed. Then a rather thin smile came over his face. He did not want to say anything about the flight to the church door. “We got there together. At least she touched first, but I had my hand on her shoulder.”
“What’s this?” asked Gerald.
Birkin told him about the race of the bride and the bridegroom.
“H’m!” said Gerald, in disapproval. “What made you late then?”
“Lupton would talk about the immortality of the soul,” said Birkin, “and then he hadn’t got a button-hook.”
“Oh God!” cried Marshall. “The immortality of the soul on your wedding day! Hadn’t you got anything better to occupy your mind?”
“What’s wrong with it?” asked the bridegroom, a clean-shaven naval man, flushing sensitively.
“Sounds as if you were going to be executed instead of married.
The immortality of the soul!”
repeated the brother-in-law, with most killing emphasis.
But he fell quite flat.
“And what did you decide?” asked Gerald, at once pricking up his ears at the thought of a metaphysical discussion.
“You don’t want a soul to-day, my boy,” said Marshall. “It’d be in your road.”
“Christ! Marshall, go and talk to somebody else,” cried Gerald, with sudden impatience.
“By God, I’m willing,” said Marshall, in a temper. “Too much bloody soul and talk altogether—”
He withdrew in a dudgeon, Gerald staring after him with angry eyes, that grew gradually calm and amiable as the stoutly-built form of the other man passed into the distance.
“There’s one thing, Lupton,” said Gerald, turning suddenly to the bridegroom. “Laura won’t have brought such a fool into the family as Lottie did.”
“Comfort yourself with that,” laughed Birkin.
“I take no notice of them,” laughed the bridegroom.
“What about this race then—who began it?” Gerald asked.
“We were late. Laura was at the top of the churchyard steps when our cab came up. She saw Lupton bolting towards her. And she fled.—But why do you look so cross? Does it hurt your sense of the family dignity?”
“It does, rather,” said Gerald. “If you’re doing a thing, do it properly, and if you’re not going to do it properly, leave it alone.”
“Very nice aphorism,” said Birkin.
“Don’t you agree?” asked Gerald.
“Quite,” said Birkin. “Only it bores me rather, when you become aphoristic.”
“Damn you, Rupert, you want all the aphorisms your own way,” said Gerald.
“No. I want them out of the way, and you’re always shoving them in it.”
Gerald smiled grimly at this humourism. Then he made a little gesture of dismissal, with his eyebrows.
“You don’t believe in having any standard of behavior at all, do you?” he challenged Birkin, censoriously.
“Standard—no. I hate standards. But they’re necessary for the common ruck. Anybody who is anything can just be himself and do as he likes.”
“But what do you mean by being himself?” said Gerald. “Is that an aphorism or a cliché?”
“I mean just doing what you want to do. I think it was perfect good form in Laura to bolt from Lupton to the church door. It was almost a masterpiece in good form. It’s the hardest thing in the world to act spontaneously on one’s impulses—and it’s the only really gentlemanly thing to do—provided you’re fit to do it.”
“You don’t expect me to take you seriously, do you?” asked Gerald.
“Yes, Gerald, you’re one of the very few people I do expect that f”.
“Then I’m afraid I can’t come up to your expectations here at any rate.—You think people should just do as they like.”
“I think they always do. But I should like them to like the purely individual thing in themselves, which makes them act in singleness. And they only like to do the collective thing.”
“And I,” said Gerald grimly, “shouldn’t like to be in a world of people who acted individually and spontaneously, as you call it. We should have everybody cutting everybody else’s throat in five minutes.”
“That means
you
would like to be cutting everybody’s throat,” said Birkin.
“How does that follow?” asked Gerald crossly.
“No man,” said Birkin, “cuts another man’s throat unless he wants to cut it, and unless the other man wants it cut. This is a complete truth. It takes two people to make a murderer: a murder and a murderee. And a murderee is a man who is murderable. And a man who is murderable is a man who in a profound if hidden lust desires to be murdered.”
“Sometimes you talk pure nonsense,” said Gerald to Birkin. “As a matter of fact, none of us wants our throat cut and most other people would like to cut it for us—some time or other—”
“It’s a nasty view of things, Gerald,” said Birkin, “and no wonder you are afraid of yourself and your own unhappiness.”
“How am I afraid of myself?” said Gerald; “and I don’t think I am unhappy.”
“You seem to have a lurking desire to have your gizzard slit, and imagine every man has his knife up his sleeve for you,” Birkin said.
“How do you make that out?” said Gerald.
“From you,” said Birkin.
There was a pause of strange enmity between the two men, that was very near to love. It was always the same between them; always their talk brought them into a deadly nearness of contact, a strange, perilous intimacy which was either hate or love, or both. They parted with apparent unconcern, as if their going apart were a trivial occurrence. And they really kept it to the level of trivial occurrence. Yet the heart of each burned from the other. They burned with each other, inwardly. This they would never admit. They intended to keep their relationship a casual free and easy friendship, they were not going to be so unmanly and unnatural as to allow any heart-burning between them. They had not the faintest belief in deep relationship between men and men, and their disbelief prevented any development of their powerful but suppressed friendliness.
CHAPTER III
Class-Room
A SCHOOL-DAY WAS DRAWING to a close. In the class-room the last lesson was in progress, peaceful and still. It was elementary botany. The desks were littered with catkins, hazel and willow, which the children had been sketching. But the sky had come over dark, as the end of the afternoon approached: there was scarcely light to draw any more. Ursula stood in front of the class, leading the children by questions to understand the structure and the meaning of the catkins.
A heavy copper-coloured beam of light came in at the west window, gilding the outlines of the children’s heads with red gold, and falling on the wall opposite in a rich, ruddy illumination. Ursula, however, was scarcely conscious of it. She was busy, the end of the day was here, the work went on as a peaceful tide that is at flood, hushed to retire.
This day had gone by like so many more, in an activity that was like a trance. At the end there was a little haste, to finish what was in hand. She was pressing the children with questions, so that they should know all they were to know, by the time the gong went. She stood in shadow in front of the class, with catkins in her hand, and she leaned towards the children, absorbed in the passion of instruction.
She heard, but did not notice the click of the door. Suddenly she started. She saw, in the shaft of ruddy, copper-coloured light near her, the face of a man. It was gleaming like fire, watching her, waiting for her to be aware. It startled her terribly. She thought she was going to faint. All her suppressed, subconscious fear sprang into being, with anguish.
“Did I startle you?” said Birkin, shaking hands with her. “I thought you had heard me come in.”
“No,” she faltered, scarcely able to speak. He laughed, saying he was sorry. She wondered why it amused him.
“It is so dark,” he said. “Shall we have the light?”
And moving aside, he switched on the strong electric lights. The class-room was distinct and hard, a strange place after the soft dim magic that filled it before he came. Birkin turned curiously to look at Ursula. Her eyes were round and wondering, bewildered, her mouth quivered slightly. She looked like one who is suddenly wakened. There was a living, tender beauty, like a tender light of dawn shining from her face. He looked at her with a new pleasure, feeling gay in his heart, irresponsible.