“Some—irregularly. She can sell her models. She has a certain réclame.”
“How much for?”
“A guinea, ten guineas.”
“And are they good? What are they?”
“I think sometimes they are marvellously good. That is hers, those two wagtails in Hermione’s boudoir—you’ve seen them—they are carved in wood and painted.”
“I thought it was savage carving again.”
“No, hers. That’s what they are—animals and birds, sometimes odd small people in everyday dress, really rather wonderful when they come off. They have a sort of funniness that is quite unconscious and subtle.”
“She might be a well-known artist one day?” mused Gerald.
“She might. But I think she won’t. She drops her art if anything else catches her. Her contrariness prevents her taking it seriously—she must never be too serious, she feels she might give herself away. And she won’t give herself away—she’s always on the defensive. That’s what I can’t stand about her type. By the way, how did things go off with Pussum after I left you? I haven’t heard anything.”
“Oh, rather disgusting. Halliday turned objectionable, and I only just saved myself from jumping in his stomach, in a real old-fashioned row.”
Birkin was silent.
“Of course,” he said, “Julius is somewhat insane. On the one hand he’s had religious mania, and on the other, he is fascinated by obscenity. Either he’s a pure servant, washing the feet of Christ, or else he is making obscene drawings of Jesus—action and reaction—and between the two, nothing. He is really insane. He wants a pure lily, another girl, with a Botticelli face, on the one hand, and on the other, he
must
have the Pussum, just to defile himself with her.”
“That’s what I can’t make out,” said Gerald. “Does he love her, the Pussum, or doesn’t he?”
“He neither does nor doesn’t. She is the harlot, the actual harlot of adultery to him. And he’s got a craving to throw himself into the filth of her. Then he gets up and calls on the name of the lily of purity, the baby-faced girl, and so enjoys himself all round. It’s the old story—action and reaction, and nothing between.”
“I don’t know,” said Gerald, after a pause, “that he does insult the Pussum so very much. She strikes me as being rather foul.”
“But I thought you liked her,” exclaimed Birkin. “I always felt fond of her. I never had anything to do with her, personally, that’s true.”
“I liked her all right, for a couple of days,” said Gerald. “But a week of her would have turned me over. There’s a certain smell about the skin of those women, that in the end is sickening beyond words—even if you like it at first.”
“I know,” said Birkin. Then he added, rather fretfully, “But go to bed, Gerald. God knows what time it is.”
Gerald looked at his watch, and at length rose off the bed, and went to his room. But he returned in a few minutes, in his shirt.
“One thing,” he said, seating himself on the bed again. “We finished up rather stormily, and I never had time to give her anything.”
“Money?” said Birkin. “She’ll get what she wants from Halliday or from one of her acquaintances.”
“But then,” said Gerald, “I’d rather give her her dues and settle the account.”
“She doesn’t care.”
“No, perhaps not. But one feels the account is left open, and one would rather it were closed.”
“Would you?” said Birkin. He was looking at the white legs of Gerald, as the latter sat on the side of the bed in his shirt. They were white-skinned, full, muscular legs, handsome and decided. Yet they moved Birkin with a sort of pathos, tenderness, as if they were childish.
“I think I’d rather close the account,” said Gerald, repeating himself vaguely.
“It doesn’t matter one way or another,” said Birkin.
“You always say it doesn’t matter,” said Gerald, a little puzzled, looking down at the face of the other man affectionately.
“Neither does it,” said Birkin.
“But she was a decent sort, really—”
“Render unto Cæsarina the things that are Cæsarina’s,”
aj
said Birkin, turning aside. It seemed to him Gerald was talking for the sake of talking. “Go away, it wearies me—its too late at night,” he said.
“I wish you’d tell me something that
did
matter,” said Gerald, looking down all the time at the face of the other man, waiting for something. But Birkin turned his face aside.
“All right then, go to sleep,” said Gerald, and he laid his hand affectionately on the other man’s shoulder, and went away.
In the morning when Gerald awoke and heard Birkin move, he called out: “I still think I ought to give the Pussum ten pounds.”
“Oh God!” said Birkin, “don’t be so matter-of-fact. Close the account in your own soul, if you like. It is there you can’t close it.”
“How do you know I can’t?”
“Knowing you,” came the laconic answer.
Gerald meditated for some moments.
“It seems to me the right thing to do, you know, with the Pussums, is to pay them.”
“And the right thing for mistresses: keep them. And the right thing for wives: live under the same roof with them. Integer vitæ scelerisque purus—”
ak
said Birkin.
“There’s no need to be nasty about it,” said Gerald.
“It bores me. I’m not interested in your peccadilloes.”
“And I don’t care whether you are or not—I am.”
The morning was again sunny. The maid had been in and brought the water, and had drawn the curtains. Birkin, sitting up in bed, looked lazily and pleasantly out on the park, that was so green and deserted, romantic, belonging to the past. He was thinking how lovely, how sure, how formed, how final all the things of the past were—the lovely accomplished past—this house, so still and golden, the park slumbering its centuries of peace. And then, what a snare and a delusion, this beauty of static things—what a horrible, dead prison Breadalby really was, what an intolerable confinement, the peace! Yet it was better than the sordid scrambling of the present. If only one might create the future after one’s own heart—for a little pure truth, a little unflinching application of simple truth to life, the heart cried out ceaselessly.
“I can’t see what you will leave me at all, to be interested in,” came Gerald’s voice from the lower room. “Neither the Pussums, nor the mines, nor anything else.”
“You be interested in what you can, Gerald. Only I’m not interested myself,” said Birkin.
“What am I to do at all, then?” came Gerald’s voice.
“What you like. What am I to do myself?”
In the silence Birkin could feel Gerald musing this fact.
“I’m blest if I know,” came the good-humoured answer.
“You see,” said Birkin, “part of you wants the Pussum, and nothing but the Pussum, part of you wants the mines, the business, and nothing but the business—and there you are—all in bits—”
“And part of me wants something else,” said Gerald, in a queer, quiet, real voice.
“What?” said Birkin, rather surprised.
“That’s what I hoped you could tell me,” said Gerald.
There was a silence for some time.
“I can’t tell you—I can’t find my own way, let alone yours. You might marry,” Birkin replied.
“Who—the Pussum?” asked Gerald.
“Perhaps,” said Birkin. And he rose and went to the window.
“That is your panacea,” said Gerald. “But you haven’t even tried it on yourself yet, and you are sick enough.”
“I am,” said Birkin. “Still, I shall come right.”
“Through marriage?”
“Yes,” Birkin answered obstinately.
“And no,” added Gerald. “No, no, no, my boy.”
There was a silence between them, and a strange tension of hostility. They always kept a gap, a distance between them, they wanted always to be free each of the other. Yet there was a curious heart-straining towards each other.
“Salvator femininus,”
al
said Gerald, satirically.
“Why not?” said Birkin.
“No reason at all,” said Gerald, “if it really works. But whom will you marry?”
“A woman,” said Birkin.
“Good,” said Gerald.
Birkin and Gerald were the last to come down to breakfast. Hermione liked everybody to be early. She suffered when she felt her day was diminished, she felt she had missed her life. She seemed to grip the hours by the throat, to force her life from them. She was rather pale and ghastly, as if left behind, in the morning. Yet she had her power, her will was strangely pervasive. With the entrance of the two young men a sudden tension was felt.
She lifted her face, and said, in her amused sing-song:
“Good morning! Did you sleep well? I’m so glad.”
And she turned away, ignoring them. Birkin, who knew her well, saw that she intended to discount his existence.
“Will you take what you want from the sideboard?” said Alexander, in a voice slightly suggesting disapprobation. “I hope the things aren’t cold. Oh no! Do you mind putting out the flame under the chafing-dish, Rupert? Thank you.”
Even Alexander was rather authoritative where Hermione was cool. He took his tone from her inevitably. Birkin sat down and looked at the table. He was so used to this house, to this room, to this atmosphere, through years of intimacy, and now he felt in complete opposition to it all, it had nothing to do with him. How well he knew Hermione, as she sat there, erect and silent and somewhat bemused, and yet so potent, so powerful! He knew her statically, so finally, that it was almost like a madness. It was difficult to believe one was not mad, that one was not a figure in the hall of kings in some Egyptian tomb, where the dead all sat immemorial and tremendous. How utterly he knew Joshua Malleson, who was talking in his harsh, yet rather mincing voice, endlessly, endlessly, always with a strong mentality working, always interesting, and yet always known, everything he said known beforehand, however novel it was, and clever. Alexander the up-to-date host, so bloodlessly free-and-easy, Fräulein so prettily chiming in just as she should, the little Italian Countess taking notice of everybody, only playing her little game, objective and cold, like a weasel watching everything, and extracting her own amusement, never giving herself in the slightest; then Miss Bradley, heavy and rather subservient, treated with cool, almost amused contempt by Hermione, and therefore slighted by everybody—how known it all was, like a game with the figures set out, the same figures, the Queen of chess, the knights, the pawns, the same now as they were hundreds of years ago, the same figures moving round in one of the innumerable permutations that make up the game. But the game is known, its going on is like a madness, it is so exhausted.
There was Gerald, an amused look on his face; the game pleased him. There was Gudrun, watching with steady, large, hostile eyes; the game fascinated her, and she loathed it. There was Ursula, with a slightly startled look on her face, as if she were hurt, and the pain were just outside her consciousness.
Suddenly Birkin got up and went out.
“That’s enough,” he said to himself involuntarily.
Hermione knew his motion, though not in her consciousness. She lifted her heavy eyes and saw him lapse suddenly away, on a sudden, unknown tide, and the waves broke over her. Only her indomitable will remained static and mechanical, she sat at the table making her musing, stray remarks. But the darkness had covered her, she was like a ship that has gone down. It was finished for her too, she was wrecked in the darkness. Yet the unfailing mechanism of her will worked on, she had that activity.
“Shall we bathe this morning?” she said, suddenly looking at them all.
“Splendid,” said Joshua. “It is a perfect morning.”
“Oh, it is beautiful,” said Fräulein.
“Yes, let us bathe,” said the Italian woman.
“We have no bathing suits,” said Gerald.
“Have mine,” said Alexander. “I must go to church and read the lessons. They expect me.”
“Are you a Christian?” asked the Italian Countess, with sudden interest.
“No,” said Alexander. “I’m not. But I believe in keeping up the old institutions.”
“They are so beautiful,” said Fräulein daintily.
“Oh, they are,” cried Miss Bradley.
They all trailed out on to the lawn. It was a sunny, soft morning in early summer, when life ran in the world subtly, like a reminiscence. The church bells were ringing a little way off, not a cloud was in the sky, the swans were like lilies on the water below, the peacocks walked with long, prancing steps across the shadow and into the sunshine of the grass. One wanted to swoon into the by-gone perfection of it all.
“Good-bye,” called Alexander, waving his gloves cheerily, and he disappeared behind the bushes, on his way to church.
“Now,” said Hermione, “shall we all bathe?”
“I won’t,” said Ursula.
“You don’t want to?” said Hermione, looking at her slowly.
“No. I don’t want to,” said Ursula.
“Nor I,” said Gudrun.
“What about my suit?” asked Gerald.
“I don’t know,” laughed Hermione, with an odd, amused intonation. “Will a handkerchief do—a large handkerchief?”
“That will do,” said Gerald.
“Come along then,” sang Hermione.
The first to run across the lawn was the little Italian, small and like a cat, her white legs twinkling as she went, ducking slightly her head, that was tied in a gold silk kerchief. She tripped through the gate and down the grass, and stood, like a tiny figure of ivory and bronze, at the water’s edge, having dropped off her towelling, watching the swans, which came up in surprise. Then out ran Miss Bradley, like a large, soft plum in her dark-blue suit. Then Gerald came, a scarlet silk kerchief round his loins, his towels over his arms. He seemed to flaunt himself a little in the sun, lingering and laughing, strolling easily, looking white but natural in his nakedness. Then came Sir Joshua, in an overcoat, and lastly Hermione, striding with stiff grace from out of a great mantle of purple silk, her head tied up in purple and gold. Handsome was her stiff, long body, her straight-stepping white legs, there was a static magnificence about her as she let the cloak float loosely away from her striding. She crossed the lawn like some strange memory, and passed slowly and statelily towards the water.