Gudrun went away, back to Winifred. Mademoiselle had left, Gudrun stayed a good deal at Shortlands, and a tutor came in to carry on Winifred’s education. But he did not live in the house, he was connected with the Grammar School.
One day, Gudrun was to drive with Winifred and Gerald and Birkin to town, in the car. It was a dark, showery day. Winifred and Gudrun were ready and waiting at the door. Winifred was very quiet, but Gudrun had not noticed. Suddenly the child asked, in a voice of unconcern:
“Do you think my father’s going to die, Miss Brangwen?”
Gudrun started.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“Don’t you truly?”
“Nobody knows for certain. He may die, of course.”
The child pondered a few moments, then she asked:
“But do you think he will die?”
It was put almost like a question in geography or science, insistent, as if she would force an admission from the adult. The watchful, slightly triumphant child was almost diabolical.
“Do I think he will die?” repeated Gudrun. “Yes, I do.”
But Winifred’s large eyes were fixed on her, and the girl did not move.
“He is very ill,” said Gudrun.
A small smile came over Winifred’s face, subtle and sceptical.
“I
don’t believe he will,” the child asserted, mockingly, and she moved away into the drive. Gudrun watched the isolated figure, and her heart stood still. Winifred was playing with a little rivulet of water, absorbedly as if nothing had been said.
“I’ve made a proper dam,” she said, out of the moist distance.
Gerald came to the door from out of the hall behind.
“It is just as well she doesn’t choose to believe it,” he said.
Gudrun looked at him. Their eyes met; and they exchanged a sardonic understanding.
“Just as well,” said Gudrun.
He looked at her again, and a fire flickered up in his eyes.
“Best to dance while Rome burns, since it must burn, don’t you think?” he said.
She was rather taken aback. But, gathering herself together, she replied:
“Oh—better dance than wail, certainly.”
“So I think.”
And they both felt the subterranean desire to let go, to fling away everything, and lapse into a sheer unrestraint, brutal and licentious. A strange black passion surged up pure in Gudrun. She felt strong. She felt her hands so strong, as if she could tear the world asunder with them. She remembered the abandonments of Roman licence, and her heart grew hot. She knew she wanted this herself also—or something, something equivalent. Ah, if that which was unknown and suppressed in her were once let loose, what an orgiastic and satisfying event it would be. And she wanted it, she trembled slightly from the proximity of the man, who stood just behind her, suggestive of the same black licentiousness that rose in herself She wanted it with him, this unacknowledged frenzy. For a moment the clear perception of this preoccupied her, distinct and perfect in its final reality. Then she shut it off completely, saying:
“We might as well go down to the lodge after Winifred—we can get in the car there.”
“So we can,” he answered, going with her.
They found Winifred at the lodge admiring the litter of pure-bred white puppies. The girl looked up, and there was a rather ugly, unseeing cast in her eyes as she turned to Gerald and Gudrun. She did not want to see them.
“Look!” she cried. “Three new puppies! Marshall says this one seems perfect. Isn’t it a sweetling? But it isn’t so nice as its mother.” She turned to caress the fine white bull-terrier bitch that stood uneasily near her.
“My dearest Lady Crich,” she said, “you are beautiful as an angel on earth. Angel—angel—don’t you think she’s good enough and beautiful enough to go to heaven, Gudrun? They will be in heaven, won’t they—and especially my darling Lady Crich! Mrs. Marshall, I say!”
“Yes, Miss Winifred?” said the woman, appearing at the door.
“Oh do call this one Lady Winifred, if she turns out perfect, will you? Do tell Marshall to call it Lady Winifred.”
“I’ll tell him—but I’m afraid that’s a gentleman puppy, Miss Winifred.”
“Oh
no
!” There was the sound of a car. “There’s Rupert!” cried the child, and she ran to the gate.
Birkin, driving his car, pulled up outside the lodge gate.
“We’re ready!” cried Winifred. “I want to sit in front with you, Rupert. May I?”
“I’m afraid you’ll fidget about and fall out,” he said.
“No I won’t. I do want to sit in front next to you. It makes my feet so lovely and warm, from the engines.”
Birkin helped her up, amused at sending Gerald to sit by Gudrun in the body of the car.
“Have you any news, Rupert?” Gerald called, as they rushed along the lanes.
“News?” exclaimed Birkin.
“Yes.” Gerald looked at Gudrun, who sat by his side, and he said, his eyes narrowly laughing, “I want to know whether I ought to congratulate him, but I can’t get anything definite out of him.”
Gudrun flushed deeply.
“Congratulate him on what?” she asked.
“There was some mention of an engagement—at least, he said something to me about it.”
Gudrun flushed darkly.
“You mean with Ursula?” she said, in challenge.
“Yes. That is so, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think there’s any engagement,” said Gudrun, coldly.
“That so? Still no developments, Rupert?” he called.
“Where? Matrimonial? No.”
“How’s that?” called Gudrun.
Birkin glanced quickly round. There was irritation in his eyes also.
“Why?” he replied. “What do you think of it, Gudrun?”
“Oh,” she cried, determined to fling her stone also into the pool, since they had begun, “I don’t think she wants an engagement. Naturally, she’s a bird that prefers the bush.” Gudrun’s voice was clear and gong-like. It reminded Rupert of her father’s, so strong and vibrant.
“And I,” said Birkin, his face playful but yet determined, “I want a binding contract, and am not keen on love, particularly free love.”
They were both amused.
Why
this public avowal? Gerald seemed suspended a moment, in amusement.
“Love isn’t good enough for you?”
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he called.
“No!” shouted Birkin.
“Ha, well that’s being over-refined,” said Gerald, and the car ran through the mud.
“What’s the matter really?” said Gerald, turning to Gudrun.
This was an assumption of a sort of intimacy that irritated Gudrun almost like an affront. It seemed to her that Gerald was deliberately insulting her, and infringing on the decent privacy of them all.
“What is it?” she said, in her high, repellant voice. “Don’t ask me!—I know nothing about ultimate marriage, I assure you: or even penultimate.”
“Only the ordinary unwarrantable brand!” replied Gerald. “Just so—same here. I am no expert on marriage, and degrees of ultimate-ness. It seems to be a bee that buzzes loudly in Rupert’s bonnet.”
“Exactly! But that is his trouble, exactly! Instead of wanting a woman for herself, he wants his ideas fulfilled. Which, when it comes to actual practice, is not good enough.”
“Oh, no. Best go slap for what’s womanly in woman, like a bull at a gate.” Then he seemed to glimmer in himself. “You think love is the ticket, do you?” he asked.
“Certainly, while it lasts—you only can’t insist on permanency,” came Gudrun’s voice, strident above the noise.
“Marriage or no marriage, ultimate or penultimate or just so-so?—take the love as you find it.”
“As you please, or as you don’t please,” she echoed. “Marriage is a social arrangement, I take it, and has nothing to do with the question of love.”
His eyes were flickering on her all the time. She felt as if he were kissing her freely and malevolently. It made the colour burn in her cheeks, but her heart was quite firm and unfailing.
“You think Rupert is off his head a bit?” Gerald asked.
Her eyes flashed with acknowledgment.
“As regards a woman, yes,” she said, “I do. There is such a thing as two people being in love for the whole of their lives—perhaps. But marriage is neither here nor there, even then. If they are in love, well and good. If not—why break eggs about it!”
“Yes,” said Gerald. “That’s how it strikes me. But what about Rupert?”
“I can’t make out—neither can he nor anybody. He seems to think that if you marry you can get through marriage into a third heaven, or something—all very vague.”
“Very! And who wants a third heaven? As a matter of fact, Rupert has a great yearning to be
safe-to
tie himself to the mast.”
cb
“Yes. It seems to me he’s mistaken there too,” said Gudrun. “I’m sure a mistress is more likely to be faithful than a wife—just because she is her own mistress. No—he says he believes that a man and wife can go further than any other two beings—but
where,
is not explained. They can know each other, heavenly and hellish, but particularly hellish, so perfectly that they go beyond heaven and hell—into—there it all breaks down—into nowhere.”
“Into Paradise, he says,” laughed Gerald.
Gudrun shrugged her shoulders.
“Je m’en fiche
of your Paradise!” she said.
“Not being a Mohammedan,”
cc
said Gerald. Birkin sat motionless, driving the car, quite unconscious of what they said. And Gudrun, sitting immediately behind him, felt a sort of ironic pleasure in thus exposing him.
“He says,” she added, with a grimace of irony, “that you can find an eternal equilibrium in marriage, if you accept the unison, and still leave yourself separate, don’t try to fuse.”
“Doesn’t inspire me,” said Gerald.
“That’s just it,” said Gudrun.
“I believe in love, in a real abandon, if you’re capable of it,” said Gerald.
“So do I,” said she.
“And so does Rupert, too—though he is always shouting.”
“No,” said Gudrun. “He won’t abandon himself to the other person. You can’t be sure of him. That’s the trouble I think.”
“Yet he wants marriage! Marriage—
et puis?”
“Le paradis!”
mocked Gudrun.
Birkin, as he drove, felt a creeping of the spine, as if somebody were threatening his neck. But he shrugged with indifference. It began to rain. Here was a change. He stopped the car and got down to put up the hood.
CHAPTER XXII
Woman to Woman
THEY CAME TO THE town, and left Gerald at the railway station. Gudrun and Winifred were to come to tea with Birkin, who expected Ursula also. In the afternoon, however, the first person to turn up was Hermione. Birkin was out, so she went in the drawing-room, looking at his books and papers, and playing on the piano. Then Ursula arrived. She was surprised, unpleasantly so, to see Hermione, of whom she had heard nothing for some time.
“It is a surprise to see you,” she said.
“Yes,” said Hermione—“I’ve been away at Aix—”
“Oh, for your health?”
“Yes.”
The two women looked at each other. Ursula resented Hermione’s long, grave, downward-looking face. There was something of the stupidity and the unenlightened self-esteem of a horse in it. “She’s got a horse-face,” Ursula said to herself, “she runs between blinkers.” It did seem as if Hermione, like the moon, had only one side to her penny. There was no obverse. She stared out all the time on the narrow, but to her, complete world of the extant consciousness. In the darkness, she did not exist. Like the moon, one half of her was lost to life. Her self was all in her head, she did not know what it was, spontaneously to run or move, like a fish in the water, or a weasel on the grass. She must always know.
But Ursula only suffered from Hermione’s one-sidedness. She only felt Hermione’s cool evidence, which seemed to put her down as nothing. Hermione, who brooded and brooded till she was exhausted with the ache of her effort at consciousness, spent and ashen in her body, who gained so slowly and with such effort her final and barren conclusions of knowledge, was apt, in the presence of other women, whom she thought simply female, to wear the conclusions of her bitter assurance like jewels which conferred on her an unquestionable distinction, established her in a higher order of life. She was apt, mentally, to condescend to women such as Ursula, whom she regarded as purely emotional. Poor Hermione, it was her one possession, this aching certainty of hers, it was her only justification. She must be confident here, for God knows, she felt rejected and deficient enough elsewhere. In the life of thought, of the spirit, she was one of the elect. And she wanted to be universal. But there was a devastating cynicism at the bottom of her. She did not believe in her own universals—they were sham. She did not believe in the inner life—it was a trick, not a reality. She did not believe in the spiritual world—it was an affectation. In the last resort, she believed in Mammon, the flesh, and the devil—these at least were not sham. She was a priestess without belief, without conviction, suckled in a creed outworn,
1
and condemned to the reiteration of mysteries that were not divine to her. Yet there was no escape. She was a leaf upon a dying tree. What help was there then, but to fight still for the old, withered truths, to die for the old, outworn belief, to be a sacred and inviolate priestess of desecrated mysteries? The old great truths
had
been true. And she was a leaf of the old great tree of knowledge that was withering now. To the old and last truth then she must be faithful even though cynicism and mockery took place at the bottom of her soul.
“I am so glad to see you,” she said to Ursula, in her slow voice, that was like an incantation. “You and Rupert have become quite friends?”
“Oh, yes,” said Ursula. “He is always somewhere in the background.”
Hermione paused before she answered. She saw perfectly well the other woman’s vaunt: it seemed truly vulgar.