He looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and soft and unfolded, with a stricken look that roused him.
“No,” she murmured at length. “I don’t understand anything about these things.”
“Just as well not,” he said. “I say, won’t you have a cigarette?—do!” He quickly fetched the box, and held her a light. Then he stood before her on the hearth again.
“No,” he said, “we’ve never had much illness in the house, either—not till father.” He seemed to meditate a while. Then looking down at her, with strangely communicative blue eyes, that filled her with dread, he continued: “It’s something you don’t reckon with, you know, till it is there. And then you realise that it was there all the time—it was always there—you understand what I mean?—the possibility of this incurable illness, this slow death.”
He moved his feet uneasily on the marble hearth, and put his cigarette to his mouth, looking up at the ceiling.
“I know,” murmured Gudrun, “it is dreadful.”
He smoked without knowing. Then he took the cigarette from his lips, bared his teeth, and putting the tip of his tongue between his teeth spat off a grain of tobacco, turning slightly aside, like a man who is alone, or who is lost in thought.
“I don’t know what the effect actually is, on one,” he said and again he looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and stricken with knowledge, looking into his. He saw her submerged, and he turned aside his face. “But I absolutely am not the same. There’s nothing left, if you understand what I mean. You seem to be clutching at the void—and at the same time you are void yourself. And so you don’t know what to do.”
“No,” she murmured. A heavy thrill ran down her nerves, heavy, almost pleasure, almost pain. “What can be done?” she added.
He turned, and flipped the ash from his cigarette on to the great marble hearth-stones, that lay bare in the room, without fender or bar.
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” he replied. “But I do think you’ve got to find some way of resolving the situation—not because you want to, but because you’ve got to, otherwise you’re done. The whole of everything, and yourself included, is just on the point of caving in, and you are just holding it up with your hands. Well, it’s a situation that obviously can’t continue. You can’t stand holding the roof up with your hands, for ever. You know that sooner or later you’ll
have
to let go. Do you understand what I mean? And so something’s got to be done, or there’s a universal collapse—as far as you yourself are concerned.”
He shifted slightly on the hearth, crunching a cinder under his heel. He looked down at it. Gudrun was aware of the beautiful old marble panels of the fireplace, swelling softly carved, round him and above him. She felt as if she were caught at last by fate, imprisoned in some horrible and fatal trap.
“But what
can
be done?” she murmured humbly. “You must use me if I can be of any help at all—but how can I? I don’t see how I can help you.”
He looked down at her critically.
“I don’t want you to help,” he said, slightly irritated, “because there’s nothing to be
done.
I only want sympathy, do you see: I want somebody I can talk to sympathetically. That eases the strain. And there is nobody to talk to sympathetically. That’s the curious thing. There is nobody. There’s Rupert Birkin. But then he
isn’t
sympathetic, he wants to
dictate.
And that is no use whatsoever.”
She was caught in a strange snare. She looked down at her hands.
Then there was the sound of the door softly opening. Gerald started. He was chagrined. It was his starting that really startled Gudrun. Then he went forward, with quick, graceful, intentional courtesy.
“Oh, mother!” he said. “How nice of you to come down. How are you?”
The elderly woman, loosely and bulkily wrapped in a purple gown, came forward silently, slightly hulked, as usual. Her son was at her side. He pushed her up a chair, saying “You know Miss Brangwen, don’t you?”
The mother glanced at Gudrun indifferently.
“Yes,” she said. Then she turned her wonderful, forget-me-not blue eyes up to her son, as she slowly sat down in the chair he had brought her.
“I came to ask you about your father,” she said, in her rapid, scarcely-audible voice. “I didn’t know you had company.”
“No? Didn’t Winifred tell you? Miss Brangwen stayed to dinner, to make us a little more lively—”
Mrs. Crich turned slowly round to Gudrun, and looked at her, but with unseeing eyes.
“I’m afraid it would be no treat to her.” Then she turned again to her son. “Winifred tells me the doctor had something to say about your father. What is it?”
“Only that the pulse is very weak—misses altogether a good many times—so that he might not last the night out,” Gerald replied.
Mrs. Crich sat perfectly impassive, as if she had not heard. Her bulk seemed hunched in the chair, her fair hair hung slack over her ears. But her skin was clear and fine, her hands, as she sat with them forgotten and folded, were quite beautiful, full of potential energy. A great mass of energy seemed decaying up in that silent, hulking form.
She looked up at her son, as he stood, keen and soldierly, near to her. Her eyes were most wonderfully blue, bluer than forget-me-nots. She seemed to have a certain confidence in Gerald, and to feel a certain motherly mistrust of him.
“How are you?” she muttered, in her strangely quiet voice, as if nobody should hear but him. “You’re not getting into a state, are you? You’re not letting it make you hysterical?”
The curious challenge in the last words startled Gudrun.
“I don’t think so, mother,” he answered, rather coldly cheery. “Somebody’s got to see it through, you know.”
“Have they? Have they?” answered his mother rapidly. “Why should
you
take it on yourself? What have you got to do, seeing it through. It will see itself through. You are not needed.”
“No, I don’t suppose I can do any good,” he answered. “It’s just how it affects us, you see.”
“You like to be affected—don’t you? It’s quite nuts for you? You would have to be important. You have no need to stop at home. Why don’t you go away!”
These sentences, evidently the ripened grain of many dark hours, took Gerald by surprise.
“I don’t think it’s any good going away now, mother, at the last minute,” he said, coldly.
“You take care,” replied his mother. “You mind
yourself
—that’s your business. You take too much on yourself. You mind yourself, or you’ll find yourself in Queer Street, that’s what will happen to you. You’re hysterical, always were.”
“I’m all right, mother,” he said. “There’s no need to worry about
me,
I assure you.”
“Let the dead bury their dead—don’t go and bury yourself along with them—that’s what I tell you. I know you well enough.”
He did not answer this, not knowing what to say. The mother sat bunched up in silence, her beautiful white hands, that had no rings whatsoever, clasping the pommels of her arm-chair.
“You can’t do it,” she said, almost bitterly. “You haven’t the nerve. You’re as weak as a cat, really—always were. Is this young woman staying here?”
“No,” said Gerald. “She is going home to-night.”
“Then she’d better have the dog-cart. Does she go far?”
“Only to Beldover.”
“Ah!” The elderly woman never looked at Gudrun, yet she seemed to take knowledge of her presence.
“You are inclined to take too much on yourself, Gerald,” said the mother, pulling herself to her feet, with a little difficulty.
“Will you go, mother?” he asked, politely.
“Yes, I’ll go up again,” she replied. Turning to Gudrun, she bade her “Good-night.” Then she went slowly to the door, as if she were unaccustomed to walking. At the door she lifted her face to him, implicitly. He kissed her.
“Don’t come any further with me,” she said, in her barely audible voice. “I don’t want you any further.”
He bade her good-night, watched her across to the stairs and mount slowly. Then he closed the door and came back to Gudrun. Gudrun rose also, to go.
“A queer being, my mother,” he said.
“Yes,” replied Gudrun.
“She has her own thoughts.”
“Yes,” said Gudrun.
Then they were silent.
“You want to go?” he asked. “Half a minute, I’ll just have a horse put in—”
“No,” said Gudrun. “I want to walk.”
He had promised to walk with her down the long, lonely mile of drive, and she wanted this.
“You
might just
as well drive,” he said.
“I’d
much rather
walk,” she asserted, with emphasis.
“You would! Then I will come along with you. You know where your things are? I’ll put boots on.”
He put on a cap, and an overcoat over his evening dress. They went out into the night.
“Let us light a cigarette,” he said, stopping in a sheltered angle of the porch. “You have one too.”
So, with the scent of tobacco on the night air, they set off down the dark drive that ran between close-cut hedges through sloping meadows.
He wanted to put his arm round her. If he could put his arm round her, and draw her against him as they walked, he would equilibriate himself. For now he felt like a pair of scales, the half of which tips down and down into an indefinite void. He must recover some sort of balance. And here was the hope and the perfect recovery.
Blind to her, thinking only of himself, he slipped his arm softly round her waist, and drew her to him. Her heart fainted, feeling herself taken. But then, his arm was so strong, she quailed under its powerful close grasp. She died a little death, and was drawn against him as they walked down the stormy darkness. He seemed to balance her perfectly in opposition to himself, in their dual motion of walking. So, suddenly, he was liberated and perfect, strong, heroic.
He put his hand to his mouth and threw his cigarette away, a gleaming point, into the unseen hedge. Then he was quite free to balance her.
“That’s better,” he said, with exultancy.
The exultation in his voice was like a sweetish, poisonous drug to her. Did she then mean so much to him! She sipped the poison.
“Are you happier?” she asked, wistfully.
“Much better,” he said, in the same exultant voice, “and I was rather far gone.”
She nestled against him. He felt her all soft and warm, she was the rich, lovely substance of his being. The warmth and motion of her walk suffused through him wonderfully.
“I’m
so
glad if I help you,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered. “There’s nobody else could do it, if you wouldn’t.”
“That is true,” she said to herself, with a thrill of strange, fatal elation.
As they walked, he seemed to lift her nearer and nearer to himself, till she moved upon the firm vehicle of his body. He was so strong, so sustaining, and he could not be opposed. She drifted along in a wonderful interfusion of physical motion, down the dark, blowy hillside. Far across shone the little yellow lights of Beldover, many of them, spread in a thick patch on another dark hill. But he and she were walking in perfect, isolated darkness, outside the world.
“But how much do you care for me!” came her voice, almost querulous. “You see, I don’t know, I don’t understand!”
“How much!” His voice rang with a painful elation. “I don’t know either—but everything.” He was startled by his own declaration. It was true. So he stripped himself of every safeguard, in making this admission to her. He cared everything for her—she was everything.
“But I can’t believe it,” said her low voice, amazed, trembling. She was trembling with doubt and exultance. This was the thing she wanted to hear, only this. Yet now she heard it, heard the strange clapping vibration of truth in his voice as he said it, she could not believe. She could not believe—she did not believe. Yet she believed, triumphantly, with fatal exultance.
“Why not?” he said. “Why don’t you believe it? It’s true. It is true, as we stand at this moment—” he stood still with her in the wind. “I care for nothing on earth, or in heaven, outside this spot where we are. And it isn’t my own presence I care about, it is all yours. I’d sell my soul a hundred times—but I couldn’t bear not to have you here. I couldn’t bear to be alone. My brain would burst. It is true.” He drew her closer to him, with definite movement.
“No,” she murmured, afraid. Yet this was what she wanted. Why did she so lose courage?
They resumed their strange walk. They were such strangers—and yet they were so frightfully, unthinkably near. It was like a madness. Yet it was what she wanted, it was what she wanted. They had descended the hill, and now they were coming to the square arch where the road passed under the colliery railway. The arch, Gudrun knew, had walls of squared stone, mossy on one side with water that trickled down, dry on the other side. She had stood under it to hear the train rumble thundering over the logs overhead. And she knew that under this dark and lonely bridge the young colliers stood in the darkness with their sweethearts, in rainy weather. And so she wanted to stand under the bridge with her sweetheart, and be kissed under the bridge in the invisible darkness. Her steps dragged as she drew near.
So, under the bridge, they came to a standstill, and he lifted her upon his breast. His body vibrated taut and powerful as he closed upon her and crushed her, breathless and dazed and destroyed, crushed her upon his breast. Ah, it was terrible, and perfect. Under this bridge, the colliers pressed their lovers to their breast. And now, under the bridge, the master of them all pressed her to himself! And how much more powerful and terrible was his embrace than theirs, how much more concentrated and supreme his love was, than theirs in the same sort! She felt she would swoon, die, under the vibrating, inhuman tension of his arms and his body—she would pass away. Then the unthinkable high vibration slackened and became more undulating; he slackened and drew her with him to stand with his back to the wall.