They were at Brussels—half an hour for breakfast. They got down. On the great station clock it said six o’clock. They had coffee and rolls and honey in the vast desert refreshment room, so dreary, always so dreary, dirty, so spacious, such desolation of space. But she washed her face and hands in hot water, and combed her hair—that was a blessing.
Soon they were in the train again and moving on. The greyness of dawn began. There were several people in the compartment, large florid Belgian business-men with long brown beards, talking incessantly in an ugly French she was too tired to follow.
It seemed the train ran by degrees out of the darkness into a faint light, then beat after beat into the day. Ah, how weary it was! Faintly, the trees showed, like shadows. Then a house, white, had a curious distinctness. How was it? Then she saw a village—there were always houses passing.
This was an old world she was still journeying through, winter-heavy and dreary. There was plough-land and pasture, and copses of bare trees, copses of bushes, and homesteads naked and work-bare. No new earth had come to pass.
She looked at Birkin’s face. It was white and still and eternal, too eternal. She linked her fingers imploringly in his, under the cover of her rug. His fingers responded, his eyes looked back at her. How dark, like a night, his eyes were, like another world beyond! Oh, if he were the world as well, if only the world were he! If only he could call a world into being, that should be their own world!
The Belgians left, the train ran on, through Luxembourg, through Alsace-Lorraine, through Metz. But she was blind, she could see no more. Her soul did not look out.
They came at last to Basle, to the hotel. It was all a drifting trance, from which she never came to. They went out in the morning, before the train departed. She saw the street, the river, she stood on the bridge. But it all meant nothing. She remembered some shops—one full of pictures, one with orange velvet and ermine. But what did these signify?—nothing.
She was not at ease till they were in the train again. Then she was relieved. So long as they were moving onwards, she was satisfied. They came to Zurich, then, before very long, ran under the mountains, that were deep in snow. At last she was drawing near. This was the other world now.
Innsbruck was wonderful, deep in snow, and evening. They drove in an open sledge over the snow: the train had been so hot and stifling. And the hotel, with the golden light glowing under the porch, seemed like a home.
They laughed with pleasure when they were in the hall. The place seemed full and busy.
“Do you know if Mr. and Mrs. Crich—English—from Paris, have arrived?” Birkin asked in German.
The porter reflected a moment, and was just going to answer, when Ursula caught sight of Gudrun, sauntering down the stairs, wearing her dark glossy coat, with grey fur.
“Gudrun! Gudrun!” she called, waving up the well of the staircase. “Shu-hu!”
Gudrun looked over the rail, and immediately lost her sauntering, diffident air. Her eyes flashed.
“Really—Ursula!” she cried. And she began to move downstairs as Ursula ran up. They met at a turn and kissed with laughter and exclamations inarticulate and stirring.
“But!” cried Gudrun, mortified. “We thought it was to-morrow you were coming! I wanted to come to the station.”
“No, we’ve come to-day!” cried Ursula. “Isn’t it lovely here!”
“Adorable!” said Gudrun. “Gerald’s just gone out to get something. Ursula, aren’t you
fearfully
tired?”
“No, not so very. But I look a filthy sight, don’t I?”
“No, you don’t. You look almost perfectly fresh. I like that fur cap
immensely!”
She glanced over Ursula, who wore a big soft coat with a collar of deep, soft, blond fur, and a soft blond cap of fur.
“And you!” cried Ursula. “What do you think
you
look like!”
Gudrun assumed an unconcerned, expressionless face. “Do you like it?” she said.
“It’s
very
fine!” cried Ursula, perhaps with a touch of satire.
“Go up—or come down,” said Birkin. For there the sisters stood, Gudrun with her hand on Ursula’s arm, on the turn of the stairs half way to the first landing, blocking the way, and affording full entertainment to the whole of the hall below from the door porter to the plump Jew in black clothes.
The two young women slowly mounted, followed by Birkin and the waiter.
“First floor?” asked Gudrun, looking back over her shoulder.
“Second, Madam—the lift!” the porter replied. And he darted to the elevator to forestall the two women. But they ignored him, as, chattering without heed, they set to mount the second flight. Rather chagrined, the porter followed.
It was curious, the delight of the sisters in each other, at this meeting. It was as if they met in exile, and united their solitary forces against all the world. Birkin looked on with some mistrust and wonder.
When they had bathed and changed, Gerald came in. He looked shining like the sun on frost.
“Go with Gerald and smoke,” said Ursula to Birkin. “Gudrun and I want to talk.”
Then the sisters sat in Gudrun’s bedroom, and talked clothes, and experiences. Gudrun told Ursula the experience of the Birkin letter in the café. Ursula was shocked and frightened.
“Where is the letter?” she asked.
“I kept it,” said Gudrun.
“You’ll give it me, won’t you?” she said.
But Gudrun was silent for some moments, before she replied:
“Do you really want it, Ursula?”
“I want to read it,” said Ursula.
“Certainly,” said Gudrun.
Even now, she could not admit, to Ursula, that she wanted to keep it, as a memento, or a symbol. But Ursula knew, and was not pleased. So the subject was switched off.
“What did you do in Paris?” asked Ursula.
“Oh,” said Gudrun laconically—“the usual things. We had a
fine
party one night in Fanny Bath’s studio.”
“Did you? And you and Gerald were there! Who else? Tell me about it.”
“Well,” said Gudrun. “There’s nothing particular to tell. You know Fanny is
frightfully
in love with that painter, Billy Macfarlane. He was there—so Fanny spared nothing, she spent
very
freely. It was really remarkable! Of course, everybody got fearfully drunk—but in an interesting way, not like that filthy London crowd. The fact is these were all people that matter, which makes all the difference. There was a Roumanian, a fine chap. He got completely drunk, and climbed to the top of a high studio ladder, and gave the most marvellous address, really, Ursula, it was wonderful! He began in French—La vie, c‘est une affaire d’âmes imperiales
cs
—in a most beautiful voice—he was a fine-looking chap—but he had got into Roumanian before he had finished, and not a soul understood. But Donald Gilchrist was worked to a frenzy. He dashed his glass to the ground, and declared, by God, he was glad he had been born, by God, it was a miracle to be alive. And do you know, Ursula, so it was—” Gudrun laughed rather hollowly.
“But how was Gerald among them all?” asked Ursula.
“Gerald! Oh, my word, he came out like a dandelion in the sun!
He’s
a whole saturnalia in himself, once he is roused. I shouldn’t like to say whose waist his arm did not go round. Really, Ursula, he seems to reap the women like a harvest. There wasn’t one that would have resisted him. It was too amazing! Can you understand it?”
Ursula reflected, and a dancing light came into her eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “I can. He is such a whole-hogger.”
“Whole-hogger! I should think so!” exclaimed Gudrun. “But it is true, Ursula, every woman in the room was ready to surrender to him. Chanticleer isn’t in it—even Fanny Bath, who is
genuinely
in love with Billy Macfarlane! I never was more amazed in my life! And you know, afterwards—I felt I was a whole
roomful
of women. I was no more myself to him, than I was Queen Victoria. I was a whole roomful of women at once. It was most astounding! But my eye, I’d caught a Sultan that time—”
Gudrun’s eyes were flashing, her cheek was hot, she looked strange, exotic, satiric. Ursula was fascinated at once—and yet uneasy.
They had to get ready for dinner. Gudrun came down in a daring gown of vivid green silk and tissue of gold, with green velvet bodice and a strange black-and-white band round her hair. She was really brilliantly beautiful and everybody noticed her. Gerald was in that full-blooded, gleaming state when he was most handsome. Birkin watched them with quick, laughing, half-sinister eyes, Ursula quite lost her head. There seemed a spell, almost a blinding spell, cast round their table, as if they were lighted up more strongly than the rest of the dining-room.
“Don’t you love to be in this place?” cried Gudrun. “Isn’t the snow wonderful! Do you notice how it exalts everything? It is simply marvelous. One really does feel
übermenschlich—more
than human.”
“One does,” cried Ursula. “But isn’t that partly the being out of England?”
“Oh, of course,” cried Gudrun. “One could never feel like this in England, for the simple reason that the damper is
never
lifted off one, there. It is quite impossible really to let go, in England, of that I am assured.”
And she turned again to the food she was eating. She was fluttering with vivid intensity.
“It’s quite true,” said Gerald, “it never is
quite
the same in England. But perhaps we don’t want it to be—perhaps it’s like bringing the light a little too near the powder-magazine, to let go altogether in England. One is afraid what might happen,
if everybody else
let go.”
“My God!” cried Gudrun. “But wouldn’t it be wonderful, if all England
did
suddenly go off like a display of fireworks.”
“It couldn’t,” said Ursula. “They are all too damp, the powder is damp in them.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Gerald.
“Nor I,” said Birkin. “When the English really begin to go off,
en masse,
it’ll be time to shut your ears and run.”
“They never will,” said Ursula.
“We’ll see,” he replied.
“Isn’t it marvellous,” said Gudrun, “how thankful one can be, to be out of one’s country. I cannot believe myself, I am so transported, the moment I set foot on a foreign shore. I say to myself ‘Here steps a new creature into life.’ ”
“Don’t be too hard on poor old England,” said Gerald. “Though we curse it, we love it really.”
1
To Ursula, there seemed a fund of cynicism in these words.
“We may,” said Birkin. “But it’s a damnably uncomfortable love: like a love for an aged parent who suffers horribly from a complication of diseases, for which there is no hope.”
Gudrun looked at him with dilated dark eyes.
“You think there is no hope?” she asked, in her pertinent fashion.
But Birkin backed away. He would not answer such a question.
“Any hope of England’s becoming real? God knows. It’s a great actual unreality now, an aggregation into unreality. It might be real, if there were no Englishmen.”
“You think the English will have to disappear?” persisted Gudrun. It was strange, her pointed interest in his answer. It might have been her own fate she was inquiring after. Her dark, dilated eyes rested on Birkin, as if she could conjure the truth of the future out of him, as out of some instrument of divination.
He was pale. Then, reluctantly, he answered:
“Well—what else is in front of them, but disappearance? They’ve got to disappear from their own special brand of Englishness, anyhow.”
Gudrun watched him as if in a hypnotic state, her eyes wide and fixed on him.
“But in what way do you mean, disappear?—” she persisted.
“Yes, do you mean a change of heart?” put in Gerald.
“I don’t mean anything, why should I?” said Birkin. “I’m an Englishman, and I’ve paid the price of it. I can’t talk about England—I can only speak for myself.”
“Yes,” said Gudrun slowly, “you love England immensely,
immensely,
Rupert.”
“And leave her,” he replied.
“No, not for good. You’ll come back,” said Gerald, nodding sagely.
“They say the lice crawl off a dying body,” said Birkin, with a glare of bitterness. “So I leave England.”
“Ah, but you’ll come back,” said Gudrun, with a sardonic smile.
“Tant pis pour moi,” he replied.
“Isn’t he angry with his mother country!” laughed Gerald, amused.
“Ah, a patriot!” said Gudrun, with something like a sneer.
Birkin refused to answer any more.
Gudrun watched him still for a few seconds. Then she turned away. It was finished, her spell of divination in him. She felt already purely cynical. She looked at Gerald. He was wonderful like a piece of radium to her. She felt she could consume herself and know all, by means of this fatal, living metal. She smiled to herself at her fancy. And what would she do with herself, when she had destroyed herself? For if spirit, if integral being is destructible, Matter is indestructible.
He was looking bright and abstracted, puzzled, for the moment. She stretched out her beautiful arm, with its fluff of green tulle, and touched his chin with her subtle, artist’s fingers.
“What are they then?” she asked, with a strange, knowing smile.
“What?” he replied, his eyes suddenly dilating with wonder.
“Your thoughts.”
Gerald looked like a man coming awake.
“I think I had none,” he said.
“Really!” she said, with grave laughter in her voice.
And to Birkin it was as if she killed Gerald, with that touch.
“Ah but,” cried Gudrun, “let us drink to Britannia—let us drink to Britannia.”
It seemed there was wild despair in her voice. Gerald laughed, and filled the glasses.