Gudrun were to walk over for them, in the afternoon.
It was a wintry afternoon, with red in the sky, when they arrived at
the house. The windows were dark and blank, already the place was
frightening. A stark, void entrance-hall struck a chill to the hearts
of the girls.
'I don't believe I dare have come in alone,' said Ursula. 'It frightens
me.'
'Ursula!' cried Gudrun. 'Isn't it amazing! Can you believe you lived in
this place and never felt it? How I lived here a day without dying of
terror, I cannot conceive!'
They looked in the big dining-room. It was a good-sized room, but now a
cell would have been lovelier. The large bay windows were naked, the
floor was stripped, and a border of dark polish went round the tract of
pale boarding.
In the faded wallpaper were dark patches where furniture had stood,
where pictures had hung. The sense of walls, dry, thin, flimsy-seeming
walls, and a flimsy flooring, pale with its artificial black edges, was
neutralising to the mind. Everything was null to the senses, there was
enclosure without substance, for the walls were dry and papery. Where
were they standing, on earth, or suspended in some cardboard box? In
the hearth was burnt paper, and scraps of half-burnt paper.
'Imagine that we passed our days here!' said Ursula.
'I know,' cried Gudrun. 'It is too appalling. What must we be like, if
we are the contents of THIS!'
'Vile!' said Ursula. 'It really is.'
And she recognised half-burnt covers of 'Vogue'--half-burnt
representations of women in gowns--lying under the grate.
They went to the drawing-room. Another piece of shut-in air; without
weight or substance, only a sense of intolerable papery imprisonment in
nothingness. The kitchen did look more substantial, because of the
red-tiled floor and the stove, but it was cold and horrid.
The two girls tramped hollowly up the bare stairs. Every sound reechoed
under their hearts. They tramped down the bare corridor. Against the
wall of Ursula's bedroom were her things--a trunk, a work-basket, some
books, loose coats, a hat-box, standing desolate in the universal
emptiness of the dusk.
'A cheerful sight, aren't they?' said Ursula, looking down at her
forsaken possessions.
'Very cheerful,' said Gudrun.
The two girls set to, carrying everything down to the front door. Again
and again they made the hollow, re-echoing transit. The whole place
seemed to resound about them with a noise of hollow, empty futility. In
the distance the empty, invisible rooms sent forth a vibration almost
of obscenity. They almost fled with the last articles, into the
out-of-door.
But it was cold. They were waiting for Birkin, who was coming with the
car. They went indoors again, and upstairs to their parents' front
bedroom, whose windows looked down on the road, and across the country
at the black-barred sunset, black and red barred, without light.
They sat down in the window-seat, to wait. Both girls were looking over
the room. It was void, with a meaninglessness that was almost dreadful.
'Really,' said Ursula, 'this room COULDN'T be sacred, could it?'
Gudrun looked over it with slow eyes.
'Impossible,' she replied.
'When I think of their lives--father's and mother's, their love, and
their marriage, and all of us children, and our bringing-up--would you
have such a life, Prune?'
'I wouldn't, Ursula.'
'It all seems so NOTHING--their two lives--there's no meaning in it.
Really, if they had NOT met, and NOT married, and not lived
together--it wouldn't have mattered, would it?'
'Of course--you can't tell,' said Gudrun.
'No. But if I thought my life was going to be like it--Prune,' she
caught Gudrun's arm, 'I should run.'
Gudrun was silent for a few moments.
'As a matter of fact, one cannot contemplate the ordinary life--one
cannot contemplate it,' replied Gudrun. 'With you, Ursula, it is quite
different. You will be out of it all, with Birkin. He's a special case.
But with the ordinary man, who has his life fixed in one place,
marriage is just impossible. There may be, and there ARE, thousands of
women who want it, and could conceive of nothing else. But the very
thought of it sends me MAD. One must be free, above all, one must be
free. One may forfeit everything else, but one must be free--one must
not become 7, Pinchbeck Street--or Somerset Drive--or Shortlands. No
man will be sufficient to make that good--no man! To marry, one must
have a free lance, or nothing, a comrade-in-arms, a Glckstritter. A man
with a position in the social world--well, it is just impossible,
impossible!'
'What a lovely word--a Glckstritter!' said Ursula. 'So much nicer than
a soldier of fortune.'
'Yes, isn't it?' said Gudrun. 'I'd tilt the world with a Glcksritter.
But a home, an establishment! Ursula, what would it mean?--think!'
'I know,' said Ursula. 'We've had one home--that's enough for me.'
'Quite enough,' said Gudrun.
'The little grey home in the west,' quoted Ursula ironically.
'Doesn't it sound grey, too,' said Gudrun grimly.
They were interrupted by the sound of the car. There was Birkin. Ursula
was surprised that she felt so lit up, that she became suddenly so free
from the problems of grey homes in the west.
They heard his heels click on the hall pavement below.
'Hello!' he called, his voice echoing alive through the house. Ursula
smiled to herself. HE was frightened of the place too.
'Hello! Here we are,' she called downstairs. And they heard him quickly
running up.
'This is a ghostly situation,' he said.
'These houses don't have ghosts--they've never had any personality, and
only a place with personality can have a ghost,' said Gudrun.
'I suppose so. Are you both weeping over the past?'
'We are,' said Gudrun, grimly.
Ursula laughed.
'Not weeping that it's gone, but weeping that it ever WAS,' she said.
'Oh,' he replied, relieved.
He sat down for a moment. There was something in his presence, Ursula
thought, lambent and alive. It made even the impertinent structure of
this null house disappear.
'Gudrun says she could not bear to be married and put into a house,'
said Ursula meaningful--they knew this referred to Gerald.
He was silent for some moments.
'Well,' he said, 'if you know beforehand you couldn't stand it, you're
safe.'
'Quite!' said Gudrun.
'Why DOES every woman think her aim in life is to have a hubby and a
little grey home in the west? Why is this the goal of life? Why should
it be?' said Ursula.
'Il faut avoir le respect de ses btises,' said Birkin.
'But you needn't have the respect for the BETISE before you've
committed it,' laughed Ursula.
'Ah then, des betises du papa?'
'Et de la maman,' added Gudrun satirically.
'Et des voisins,' said Ursula.
They all laughed, and rose. It was getting dark. They carried the
things to the car. Gudrun locked the door of the empty house. Birkin
had lighted the lamps of the automobile. It all seemed very happy, as
if they were setting out.
'Do you mind stopping at Coulsons. I have to leave the key there,' said
Gudrun.
'Right,' said Birkin, and they moved off.
They stopped in the main street. The shops were just lighted, the last
miners were passing home along the causeways, half-visible shadows in
their grey pit-dirt, moving through the blue air. But their feet rang
harshly in manifold sound, along the pavement.
How pleased Gudrun was to come out of the shop, and enter the car, and
be borne swiftly away into the downhill of palpable dusk, with Ursula
and Birkin! What an adventure life seemed at this moment! How deeply,
how suddenly she envied Ursula! Life for her was so quick, and an open
door--so reckless as if not only this world, but the world that was
gone and the world to come were nothing to her. Ah, if she could be
JUST LIKE THAT, it would be perfect.
For always, except in her moments of excitement, she felt a want within
herself. She was unsure. She had felt that now, at last, in Gerald's
strong and violent love, she was living fully and finally. But when she
compared herself with Ursula, already her soul was jealous,
unsatisfied. She was not satisfied--she was never to be satisfied.
What was she short of now? It was marriage--it was the wonderful
stability of marriage. She did want it, let her say what she might. She
had been lying. The old idea of marriage was right even now--marriage
and the home. Yet her mouth gave a little grimace at the words. She
thought of Gerald and Shortlands--marriage and the home! Ah well, let
it rest! He meant a great deal to her--but--! Perhaps it was not in her
to marry. She was one of life's outcasts, one of the drifting lives
that have no root. No, no it could not be so. She suddenly conjured up
a rosy room, with herself in a beautiful gown, and a handsome man in
evening dress who held her in his arms in the firelight, and kissed
her. This picture she entitled 'Home.' It would have done for the Royal
Academy.
'Come with us to tea--DO,' said Ursula, as they ran nearer to the
cottage of Willey Green.
'Thanks awfully--but I MUST go in--' said Gudrun. She wanted very much
to go on with Ursula and Birkin.
That seemed like life indeed to her. Yet a certain perversity would not
let her.
'Do come--yes, it would be so nice,' pleaded Ursula.
'I'm awfully sorry--I should love to--but I can't--really--'
She descended from the car in trembling haste.
'Can't you really!' came Ursula's regretful voice.
'No, really I can't,' responded Gudrun's pathetic, chagrined words out
of the dusk.
'All right, are you?' called Birkin.
'Quite!' said Gudrun. 'Good-night!'
'Good-night,' they called.
'Come whenever you like, we shall be glad,' called Birkin.
'Thank you very much,' called Gudrun, in the strange, twanging voice of
lonely chagrin that was very puzzling to him. She turned away to her
cottage gate, and they drove on. But immediately she stood to watch
them, as the car ran vague into the distance. And as she went up the
path to her strange house, her heart was full of incomprehensible
bitterness.
In her parlour was a long-case clock, and inserted into its dial was a
ruddy, round, slant-eyed, joyous-painted face, that wagged over with
the most ridiculous ogle when the clock ticked, and back again with the
same absurd glad-eye at the next tick. All the time the absurd smooth,
brown-ruddy face gave her an obtrusive 'glad-eye.' She stood for
minutes, watching it, till a sort of maddened disgust overcame her, and
she laughed at herself hollowly. And still it rocked, and gave her the
glad-eye from one side, then from the other, from one side, then from
the other. Ah, how unhappy she was! In the midst of her most active
happiness, ah, how unhappy she was! She glanced at the table.
Gooseberry jam, and the same home-made cake with too much soda in it!
Still, gooseberry jam was good, and one so rarely got it.
All the evening she wanted to go to the Mill. But she coldly refused to
allow herself. She went the next afternoon instead. She was happy to
find Ursula alone. It was a lovely, intimate secluded atmosphere. They
talked endlessly and delightedly. 'Aren't you FEARFULLY happy here?'
said Gudrun to her sister glancing at her own bright eyes in the
mirror. She always envied, almost with resentment, the strange positive
fullness that subsisted in the atmosphere around Ursula and Birkin.
How really beautifully this room is done,' she said aloud. 'This hard
plaited matting--what a lovely colour it is, the colour of cool light!'
And it seemed to her perfect.
'Ursula,' she said at length, in a voice of question and detachment,
'did you know that Gerald Crich had suggested our going away all
together at Christmas?'
'Yes, he's spoken to Rupert.'
A deep flush dyed Gudrun's cheek. She was silent a moment, as if taken
aback, and not knowing what to say.
'But don't you thing,' she said at last, 'it is AMAZINGLY COOL!'
Ursula laughed.
'I like him for it,' she said.
Gudrun was silent. It was evident that, whilst she was almost mortified
by Gerald's taking the liberty of making such a suggestion to Birkin,
yet the idea itself attracted her strongly.
'There's rather lovely simplicity about Gerald, I think,' said Ursula,
'so defiant, somehow! Oh, I think he's VERY lovable.'
Gudrun did not reply for some moments. She had still to get over the
feeling of insult at the liberty taken with her freedom.
'What did Rupert say--do you know?' she asked.
'He said it would be most awfully jolly,' said Ursula.
Again Gudrun looked down, and was silent.
'Don't you think it would?' said Ursula, tentatively. She was never
quite sure how many defences Gudrun was having round herself.
Gudrun raised her face with difficulty and held it averted.
'I think it MIGHT be awfully jolly, as you say,' she replied. 'But
don't you think it was an unpardonable liberty to take--to talk of such
things to Rupert--who after all--you see what I mean, Ursula--they
might have been two men arranging an outing with some little TYPE
they'd picked up. Oh, I think it's unforgivable, quite!' She used the
French word 'TYPE.'
Her eyes flashed, her soft face was flushed and sullen. Ursula looked
on, rather frightened, frightened most of all because she thought
Gudrun seemed rather common, really like a little TYPE. But she had not
the courage quite to think this--not right out.
'Oh no,' she cried, stammering. 'Oh no--not at all like that--oh no!
No, I think it's rather beautiful, the friendship between Rupert and
Gerald. They just are simple--they say anything to each other, like
brothers.'
Gudrun flushed deeper. She could not BEAR it that Gerald gave her
away--even to Birkin.
'But do you think even brothers have any right to exchange confidences
of that sort?' she asked, with deep anger.
'Oh yes,' said Ursula. 'There's never anything said that isn't
perfectly straightforward. No, the thing that's amazed me most in
Gerald--how perfectly simple and direct he can be! And you know, it
takes rather a big man. Most of them MUST be indirect, they are such
cowards.'
But Gudrun was still silent with anger. She wanted the absolute secrecy
kept, with regard to her movements.
'Won't you go?' said Ursula. 'Do, we might all be so happy! There is
something I LOVE about Gerald--he's MUCH more lovable than I thought
him. He's free, Gudrun, he really is.'
Gudrun's mouth was still closed, sullen and ugly. She opened it at
length.
'Do you know where he proposes to go?' she asked.
'Yes--to the Tyrol, where he used to go when he was in Germany--a
lovely place where students go, small and rough and lovely, for winter
sport!'
Through Gudrun's mind went the angry thought--'they know everything.'
'Yes,' she said aloud, 'about forty kilometres from Innsbruck, isn't
it?'
'I don't know exactly where--but it would be lovely, don't you think,
high in the perfect snow--?'
'Very lovely!' said Gudrun, sarcastically.
Ursula was put out.
'Of course,' she said, 'I think Gerald spoke to Rupert so that it
shouldn't seem like an outing with a TYPE--'
'I know, of course,' said Gudrun, 'that he quite commonly does take up
with that sort.'
'Does he!' said Ursula. 'Why how do you know?'
'I know of a model in Chelsea,' said Gudrun coldly. Now Ursula was
silent. 'Well,' she said at last, with a doubtful laugh, 'I hope he has
a good time with her.' At which Gudrun looked more glum.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
GUDRUN IN THE POMPADOUR
Christmas drew near, all four prepared for flight. Birkin and Ursula
were busy packing their few personal things, making them ready to be
sent off, to whatever country and whatever place they might choose at
last. Gudrun was very much excited. She loved to be on the wing.
She and Gerald, being ready first, set off via London and Paris to
Innsbruck, where they would meet Ursula and Birkin. In London they
stayed one night. They went to the music-hall, and afterwards to the
Pompadour Cafe.
Gudrun hated the Cafe, yet she always went back to it, as did most of
the artists of her acquaintance. She loathed its atmosphere of petty
vice and petty jealousy and petty art. Yet she always called in again,
when she was in town. It was as if she HAD to return to this small,
slow, central whirlpool of disintegration and dissolution: just give it
a look.
She sat with Gerald drinking some sweetish liqueur, and staring with
black, sullen looks at the various groups of people at the tables. She
would greet nobody, but young men nodded to her frequently, with a kind
of sneering familiarity. She cut them all. And it gave her pleasure to
sit there, cheeks flushed, eyes black and sullen, seeing them all
objectively, as put away from her, like creatures in some menagerie of
apish degraded souls. God, what a foul crew they were! Her blood beat
black and thick in her veins with rage and loathing. Yet she must sit
and watch, watch. One or two people came to speak to her. From every
side of the Cafe, eyes turned half furtively, half jeeringly at her,
men looking over their shoulders, women under their hats.
The old crowd was there, Carlyon in his corner with his pupils and his
girl, Halliday and Libidnikov and the Pussum--they were all there.
Gudrun watched Gerald. She watched his eyes linger a moment on
Halliday, on Halliday's party. These last were on the look-out--they
nodded to him, he nodded again. They giggled and whispered among
themselves. Gerald watched them with the steady twinkle in his eyes.
They were urging the Pussum to something.
She at last rose. She was wearing a curious dress of dark silk splashed
and spattered with different colours, a curious motley effect. She was
thinner, her eyes were perhaps hotter, more disintegrated. Otherwise
she was just the same. Gerald watched her with the same steady twinkle
in his eyes as she came across. She held out her thin brown hand to
him.
'How are you?' she said.
He shook hands with her, but remained seated, and let her stand near
him, against the table. She nodded blackly to Gudrun, whom she did not
know to speak to, but well enough by sight and reputation.
'I am very well,' said Gerald. 'And you?'
'Oh I'm all wight. What about Wupert?'
'Rupert? He's very well, too.'
'Yes, I don't mean that. What about him being married?'
'Oh--yes, he is married.'
The Pussum's eyes had a hot flash.
'Oh, he's weally bwought it off then, has he? When was he married?'
'A week or two ago.'
'Weally! He's never written.'
'No.'
'No. Don't you think it's too bad?'
This last was in a tone of challenge. The Pussum let it be known by her
tone, that she was aware of Gudrun's listening.
'I suppose he didn't feel like it,' replied Gerald.
'But why didn't he?' pursued the Pussum.
This was received in silence. There was an ugly, mocking persistence in
the small, beautiful figure of the short-haired girl, as she stood near
Gerald.
'Are you staying in town long?' she asked.
'Tonight only.'
'Oh, only tonight. Are you coming over to speak to Julius?'
'Not tonight.'
'Oh very well. I'll tell him then.' Then came her touch of diablerie.
'You're looking awf'lly fit.'
'Yes--I feel it.' Gerald was quite calm and easy, a spark of satiric
amusement in his eye.
'Are you having a good time?'
This was a direct blow for Gudrun, spoken in a level, toneless voice of
callous ease.
'Yes,' he replied, quite colourlessly.
'I'm awf'lly sorry you aren't coming round to the flat. You aren't very
faithful to your fwiends.'
'Not very,' he said.
She nodded them both 'Good-night', and went back slowly to her own set.
Gudrun watched her curious walk, stiff and jerking at the loins. They
heard her level, toneless voice distinctly.
'He won't come over;--he is otherwise engaged,' it said. There was more
laughter and lowered voices and mockery at the table.
'Is she a friend of yours?' said Gudrun, looking calmly at Gerald.
'I've stayed at Halliday's flat with Birkin,' he said, meeting her
slow, calm eyes. And she knew that the Pussum was one of his
mistresses--and he knew she knew.
She looked round, and called for the waiter. She wanted an iced
cocktail, of all things. This amused Gerald--he wondered what was up.
The Halliday party was tipsy, and malicious. They were talking out
loudly about Birkin, ridiculing him on every point, particularly on his
marriage.
'Oh, DON'T make me think of Birkin,' Halliday was squealing. 'He makes
me perfectly sick. He is as bad as Jesus. "Lord, WHAT must I do to be
saved!"'
He giggled to himself tipsily.
'Do you remember,' came the quick voice of the Russian, 'the letters he
used to send. "Desire is holy-"'
'Oh yes!' cried Halliday. 'Oh, how perfectly splendid. Why, I've got
one in my pocket. I'm sure I have.'
He took out various papers from his pocket book.
'I'm sure I've--HIC! OH DEAR!--got one.'
Gerald and Gudrun were watching absorbedly.
'Oh yes, how perfectly--HIC!--splendid! Don't make me laugh, Pussum, it
gives me the hiccup. Hic!--' They all giggled.
'What did he say in that one?' the Pussum asked, leaning forward, her
dark, soft hair falling and swinging against her face. There was
something curiously indecent, obscene, about her small, longish, dark
skull, particularly when the ears showed.
'Wait--oh do wait! NO-O, I won't give it to you, I'll read it aloud.
I'll read you the choice bits,--hic! Oh dear! Do you think if I drink
water it would take off this hiccup? HIC! Oh, I feel perfectly
helpless.'
'Isn't that the letter about uniting the dark and the light--and the
Flux of Corruption?' asked Maxim, in his precise, quick voice.
'I believe so,' said the Pussum.
'Oh is it? I'd forgotten--HIC!--it was that one,' Halliday said,
opening the letter. 'HIC! Oh yes. How perfectly splendid! This is one
of the best. "There is a phase in every race--"' he read in the
sing-song, slow, distinct voice of a clergyman reading the Scriptures,
'"When the desire for destruction overcomes every other desire. In the
individual, this desire is ultimately a desire for destruction in the
self"--HIC!--' he paused and looked up.
'I hope he's going ahead with the destruction of himself,' said the
quick voice of the Russian. Halliday giggled, and lolled his head back,
vaguely.
'There's not much to destroy in him,' said the Pussum. 'He's so thin
already, there's only a fag-end to start on.'
'Oh, isn't it beautiful! I love reading it! I believe it has cured my
hiccup!' squealed Halliday. 'Do let me go on. "It is a desire for the
reduction process in oneself, a reducing back to the origin, a return
along the Flux of Corruption, to the original rudimentary conditions of
being--!" Oh, but I DO think it is wonderful. It almost supersedes the
Bible-'
'Yes--Flux of Corruption,' said the Russian, 'I remember that phrase.'
'Oh, he was always talking about Corruption,' said the Pussum. 'He must
be corrupt himself, to have it so much on his mind.'
'Exactly!' said the Russian.
'Do let me go on! Oh, this is a perfectly wonderful piece! But do
listen to this. "And in the great retrogression, the reducing back of
the created body of life, we get knowledge, and beyond knowledge, the
phosphorescent ecstasy of acute sensation." Oh, I do think these
phrases are too absurdly wonderful. Oh but don't you think they
ARE--they're nearly as good as Jesus. "And if, Julius, you want this
ecstasy of reduction with the Pussum, you must go on till it is
fulfilled. But surely there is in you also, somewhere, the living
desire for positive creation, relationships in ultimate faith, when all
this process of active corruption, with all its flowers of mud, is
transcended, and more or less finished--" I do wonder what the flowers
of mud are. Pussum, you are a flower of mud.'
'Thank you--and what are you?'
'Oh, I'm another, surely, according to this letter! We're all flowers
of mud--FLEURS--HIC! DU MAL! It's perfectly wonderful, Birkin harrowing
Hell--harrowing the Pompadour--HIC!'
'Go on--go on,' said Maxim. 'What comes next? It's really very
interesting.'
'I think it's awful cheek to write like that,' said the Pussum.
'Yes--yes, so do I,' said the Russian. 'He is a megalomaniac, of
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