Apart from these stories, they never talked of the future. They delighted most either in mocking imaginations of destruction, or in sentimental, fine marionette-shows of the past. It was a sentimental delight to reconstruct the world of Goethe at Weimar, or of Schiller and poverty and faithful love, or to see again Jean Jacques in his quakings, or Voltaire at Ferney, or Frederick the Great reading his own poetry.
They talked together for hours, of literature and sculpture and painting, amusing themselves with Flaxman and Blake and Fuseli with tenderness, and with Feuerbach and Böcklin. It would take them a lifetime, they felt, to live again in
petto
the lives of the great artists. But they preferred to stay in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.
They talked in a mixture of languages. The ground-work was French, in either case. But he ended most of his sentences in a stumble of English and a conclusion of German, she skilfully wove herself to her end in whatever phrase came to her. She took a peculiar delight in this conversation. It was full of odd, fantastic expression, of double meanings, of evasions, of suggestive vagueness. It was a real physical pleasure to her to make this thread of conversation out of the different coloured strands of three languages.
And all the while they two were hovering, hesitating round the flame of some invisible declaration. He wanted it, but was held back by some inevitable reluctance. She wanted it also, but she wanted to put it off, to put it off indefinitely, she still had some pity for Gerald, some connection with him. And the most fatal of all, she had the reminiscent sentimental compassion for herself in connection with him. Because of what
had
been, she felt herself held to him by immortal, invisible threads—because of what
had
been, because of his coming to her that first night, into her own house, in his extremity, because—
Gerald was gradually overcome with a revulsion of loathing for Loerke. He did not take the man seriously, he despised him merely, except as he felt in Gudrun’s veins the influence of the little creature. It was this that drove Gerald wild, the feeling in Gudrun’s veins of Loerke’s presence, Loerke’s being, flowing dominant through her.
“What makes you so smitten with that little vermin?” he asked, really puzzled. For he, man-like, could not see anything attractive or important
at all in
Loerke. Gerald expected to find some handsome-ness or nobleness, to account for a woman’s subjection. But he saw none here, only an insect-like repulsiveness.
Gudrun flushed deeply. It was these attacks she would never forgive.
“What do you mean?” she replied. “My God, what a mercy I am not married to you!”
Her voice of flouting and contempt scotched him. He was brought up short. But he recovered himself.
“Tell me, only tell me,” he reiterated in a dangerous narrowed voice—“tell me what it is that fascinates you in him.”
“I am not fascinated,” she said, with cold repelling innocence.
“Yes, you are. You are fascinated by that little dry snake, like a bird gaping ready to fall down its throat.”
She looked at him with black fury.
“I don’t choose to be discussed by you,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter whether you choose or not,” he replied, “that doesn’t alter the fact that you are ready to fall down and kiss the feet of that little insect. And I don’t want to prevent you—do it, fall down and kiss his feet. But I want to know, what it is that fascinates you—what is it?”
She was silent, suffused with black rage.
“How
dare
you come brow-beating me,” she cried, “how dare you, you little squire, you bully. What right have you over me, do you think?”
His face was white and gleaming, she knew by the light in his eyes that she was in his power—the wolf. And because she was in his power, she hated him with a force that she wondered did not kill him. In her will she killed him as he stood, effaced him.
“It is not a question of right,” said Gerald, sitting down on a chair. She watched the change in his body. She saw his clenched, mechanical body moving there like an obsession. Her hatred of him was tinged with fatal contempt.
“It’s not a question of my right over you—though I
have
some right, remember. I want to know, I only want to know what it is that subjugates you to that little scum of a sculptor downstairs, what it is that brings you down like a humble maggot, in worship of him. I want to know what you creep after.”
She stood over against the window, listening. Then she turned round.
“Do you?” she said, in her most easy, most cutting voice. “Do you want to know what it is in him? It’s because he has some understanding of a woman, because he is not stupid. That’s why it is.”
A queer, sinister, animal-like smile came over Gerald’s face.
“But what understanding is it?” he said. “The understanding of a flea, a hopping flea with a proboscis. Why should you crawl abject before the understanding of a flea?”
There passed through Gudrun’s mind Blake’s representation of the soul of a flea. She wanted to fit it to Loerke. Blake was a clown too. But it was necessary to answer Gerald.
“Don’t you think the understanding of a flea is more interesting than the understanding of a fool?” she asked.
“A fool!” he repeated.
“A fool, a conceited fool—a Dummkopf, ”
dk
she replied, adding the German word.
“Do you call me a fool?” he replied. “Well, wouldn’t I rather be the fool I am, than that flea downstairs?”
She looked at him. A certain blunt, blind stupidity in him palled on her soul, limiting her.
“You give yourself away by that last,” she said.
He sat and wondered.
“I shall go away soon,” he said.
She turned on him.
“Remember,” she said, “I am completely independent of you—completely. You make your arrangements, I make mine.”
He pondered this.
“You mean we are strangers from this minute?” he asked.
She halted and flushed. He was putting her in a trap, forcing her hand. She turned round on him.
“Strangers,” she said, “we can never be. But if you want to make any movement apart from me, then I wish you to know you are perfectly free to do so. Do not consider me in the slightest.”
Even so slight an implication that she needed him and was depending on him still was sufficient to rouse his passion. As he sat a change came over his body, the hot, molten stream mounted involuntarily through his veins. He groaned inwardly, under its bondage, but he loved it. He looked at her with clear eyes, waiting for her.
She knew at once, and was shaken with cold revulsion. How could he look at her with those clear, warm, waiting eyes, waiting for her, even now? What had been said between them, was it not enough to put them worlds asunder, to freeze them forever apart! And yet he was all transfused and roused, waiting for her.
It confused her. Turning her head aside, she said:
“I shall always tell you, whenever I am going to make any change—”
And with this she moved out of the room.
He sat suspended in a fine recoil of disappointment, that seemed gradually to be destroying his understanding. But the unconscious state of patience persisted in him. He remained motionless, without thought or knowledge, for a long time. Then he rose, and went downstairs, to play at chess with one of the students. His face was open and clear, with a certain innocent
laisser-aller
dl
that troubled Gudrun most, made her almost afraid of him, whilst she disliked him deeply for it.
It was after this that Loerke, who had never yet spoken to her personally, began to ask her of her state.
“You are not married at all, are you?” he asked.
She looked full at him.
“Not in the least,” she replied, in her measured way. Loerke laughed, wrinkling up his face oddly. There was a thin wisp of his hair straying on his forehead, she noticed that his skin was of a clear brown colour, his hands, his wrists. And his hands seemed closely prehensile. He seemed like topaz, so strangely brownish and pellucid.
“Good,” he said.
Still it needed some courage for him to go on.
“Was Mrs. Birkin your sister?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And was
she
married?”
“She was married.”
“Have you parents, then?”
“Yes,” said Gudrun, “we have parents.”
And she told him, briefly, laconically, her position. He watched her closely, curiously all the while.
“So!” he exclaimed, with some surprise. “And the Herr Crich, is he rich?”
“Yes, he is rich, a coal owner.”
“How long has your friendship with him lasted?”
“Some months.”
There was a pause.
“Yes, I am surprised,” he said at length. “The English, I thought they were so—cold. And what do you think to do when you leave here?”
“What do I think to do?” she repeated.
“Yes. You cannot go back to the teaching. No—” he shrugged his shoulders—“that is impossible. Leave that to the
canaille
dm
who can do nothing else. You, for your part—you know, you are a remarkable woman, eine seltsame Frau.
dn
Why deny it—why make any question of it? You are an extraordinary woman, why should you follow the ordinary course, the ordinary life?”
Gudrun sat looking at her hands, flushed. She was pleased that he said, so simply, that she was a remarkable woman. He would not say that to flatter her—he was far too self-opinionated and objective by nature. He said it as he would say a piece of sculpture was remarkable, because he knew it was so.
And it gratified her to hear it from him. Other people had such a passion to make everything of one degree, of one pattern. In England it was chic to be perfectly ordinary. And it was a relief to her to be acknowledged extraordinary. Then she need not fret about the common standards.
“You see,” she said, “I have no money whatsoever.”
“Ach, money!” he cried, lifting his shoulders. “When one is grown up, money is lying about at one’s service. It is only when one is young that it is rare. Take no thought for money—that always lies to hand.”
“Does it?” she said, laughing.
“Always. Der Gerald will give you a sum, if you ask him for it—”
She flushed deeply.
“I will ask anybody else,” she said, with some difficulty—“but not him.”
Loerke looked closely at her.
“Good,” he said. “Then let it be somebody else. Only don’t go back to that England, that school. No, that is stupid.”
Again there was a pause. He was afraid to ask her outright to go with him, he was not even quite sure he wanted her; and she was afraid to be asked. He begrudged his own isolation, was
very
chary of sharing his life, even for a day.
“The only other place I know is Paris,” she said, “and I can’t stand that.”
She looked with her wide, steady eyes full at Loerke. He lowered his head and averted his face.
“Paris, no!” he said. “Between the religion
d‘amour,
and the latest ’ism, and the new turning to Jesus, one had better ride on a carrousel all day. But come to Dresden. I have a studio there—I can give you work—oh, that would be easy enough. I haven’t seen any of your things, but I believe in you. Come to Dresden—that is a fine town to be in, and as good a life as you can expect of a town. You have everything there, without the foolishness of Paris or the beer of Munich.”
He sat and looked at her, coldly. What she liked about him was that he spoke to her simple and flat, as to himself. He was a fellow craftsman, a fellow being to her, first.
“No—Paris,” he resumed, “it makes me sick. Pah—l‘amour. I detest it. L’amour, l’amour, die Liebe
do
—I detest it in every language. Women and love, there is no greater tedium,” he cried.
She was slightly offended. And yet, this was her own basic feeling. Men, and love—there was no greater tedium.
“I think the same,” she said.
“A bore,” he repeated. “What does it matter whether I wear this hat or another? So love. I needn’t wear a hat at all, only for convenience. Neither need I love except for convenience. I tell you what, gnädige Frau—” and he leaned towards her—then he made a quick, odd gesture, as of striking something aside—“gnadige Fraulein, never mind—I tell you what, I would give everything, everything, all your love, for a little companionship in intelligence—” his eyes flickered darkly, evilly at her. “You understand?” he asked, with a faint smile. “It wouldn’t matter if she were a hundred years old, a thousand—it would be all the same to me, so that she can
understand.”
He shut his eyes with a little snap.
Again Gudrun was rather offended. Did he not think her good-looking, then? Suddenly she laughed.
“I shall have to wait about eighty years to suit you, at that,” she said. “I am ugly enough, aren’t I?”
He looked at her with an artist’s sudden, critical, estimating eye.
“You are beautiful,” he said, “and I am glad of it. But it isn’t that—it isn’t that,” he cried, with emphasis that flattered her. “It is that you have a certain wit, it is the kind of understanding. For me, I am little, chétif,
dp
insignificant. Good! Do not ask me to be strong and handsome, then. But it is the
me
—“ he put his fingers to his mouth, oddly—”it is the me that is looking for a mistress, and my
me
is waiting for the thee of the mistress, for the match to my particular intelligence. You understand?”
“Yes,” she said, “I understand.”
“As for the other, this amour—” he made a gesture, dashing his hand aside, as if to dash away something troublesome—“it is unimportant, unimportant. Does it matter, whether I drink white wine this evening, or whether I drink nothing? It does not matter, it does not matter. So this love, this amour, this
baiser.
Yes or no, soit ou soit pas,
dq
to-day, to-morrow, or never, it is all the same, it does not matter—no more than the white wine.”