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Women in Love

D >> D.H. Lawrence >> Women in Love




'Why wouldn't you bathe?' he asked her again, later, when he was once
more the properly-dressed young Englishman.

She hesitated a moment before answering, opposing his persistence.

'Because I didn't like the crowd,' she replied.

He laughed, her phrase seemed to re-echo in his consciousness. The
flavour of her slang was piquant to him. Whether he would or not, she
signified the real world to him. He wanted to come up to her standards,
fulfil her expectations. He knew that her criterion was the only one
that mattered. The others were all outsiders, instinctively, whatever
they might be socially. And Gerald could not help it, he was bound to
strive to come up to her criterion, fulfil her idea of a man and a
human-being.

After lunch, when all the others had withdrawn, Hermione and Gerald and
Birkin lingered, finishing their talk. There had been some discussion,
on the whole quite intellectual and artificial, about a new state, a
new world of man. Supposing this old social state WERE broken and
destroyed, then, out of the chaos, what then?

The great social idea, said Sir Joshua, was the SOCIAL equality of man.
No, said Gerald, the idea was, that every man was fit for his own
little bit of a task--let him do that, and then please himself. The
unifying principle was the work in hand. Only work, the business of
production, held men together. It was mechanical, but then society WAS
a mechanism. Apart from work they were isolated, free to do as they
liked.

'Oh!' cried Gudrun. 'Then we shan't have names any more--we shall be
like the Germans, nothing but Herr Obermeister and Herr Untermeister. I
can imagine it--"I am Mrs Colliery-Manager Crich--I am Mrs
Member-of-Parliament Roddice. I am Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen." Very
pretty that.'

'Things would work very much better, Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen,' said
Gerald.

'What things, Mr Colliery-Manager Crich? The relation between you and
me, PAR EXEMPLE?'

'Yes, for example,' cried the Italian. 'That which is between men and
women--!'

'That is non-social,' said Birkin, sarcastically.

'Exactly,' said Gerald. 'Between me and a woman, the social question
does not enter. It is my own affair.'

'A ten-pound note on it,' said Birkin.

'You don't admit that a woman is a social being?' asked Ursula of
Gerald.

'She is both,' said Gerald. 'She is a social being, as far as society
is concerned. But for her own private self, she is a free agent, it is
her own affair, what she does.'

'But won't it be rather difficult to arrange the two halves?' asked
Ursula.

'Oh no,' replied Gerald. 'They arrange themselves naturally--we see it
now, everywhere.'

'Don't you laugh so pleasantly till you're out of the wood,' said
Birkin.

Gerald knitted his brows in momentary irritation.

'Was I laughing?' he said.

'IF,' said Hermione at last, 'we could only realise, that in the SPIRIT
we are all one, all equal in the spirit, all brothers there--the rest
wouldn't matter, there would be no more of this carping and envy and
this struggle for power, which destroys, only destroys.'

This speech was received in silence, and almost immediately the party
rose from the table. But when the others had gone, Birkin turned round
in bitter declamation, saying:

'It is just the opposite, just the contrary, Hermione. We are all
different and unequal in spirit--it is only the SOCIAL differences that
are based on accidental material conditions. We are all abstractly or
mathematically equal, if you like. Every man has hunger and thirst, two
eyes, one nose and two legs. We're all the same in point of number. But
spiritually, there is pure difference and neither equality nor
inequality counts. It is upon these two bits of knowledge that you must
found a state. Your democracy is an absolute lie--your brotherhood of
man is a pure falsity, if you apply it further than the mathematical
abstraction. We all drank milk first, we all eat bread and meat, we all
want to ride in motor-cars--therein lies the beginning and the end of
the brotherhood of man. But no equality.

'But I, myself, who am myself, what have I to do with equality with any
other man or woman? In the spirit, I am as separate as one star is from
another, as different in quality and quantity. Establish a state on
THAT. One man isn't any better than another, not because they are
equal, but because they are intrinsically OTHER, that there is no term
of comparison. The minute you begin to compare, one man is seen to be
far better than another, all the inequality you can imagine is there by
nature. I want every man to have his share in the world's goods, so
that I am rid of his importunity, so that I can tell him: "Now you've
got what you want--you've got your fair share of the world's gear. Now,
you one-mouthed fool, mind yourself and don't obstruct me."'

Hermione was looking at him with leering eyes, along her cheeks. He
could feel violent waves of hatred and loathing of all he said, coming
out of her. It was dynamic hatred and loathing, coming strong and black
out of the unconsciousness. She heard his words in her unconscious
self, CONSCIOUSLY she was as if deafened, she paid no heed to them.

'It SOUNDS like megalomania, Rupert,' said Gerald, genially.

Hermione gave a queer, grunting sound. Birkin stood back.

'Yes, let it,' he said suddenly, the whole tone gone out of his voice,
that had been so insistent, bearing everybody down. And he went away.

But he felt, later, a little compunction. He had been violent, cruel
with poor Hermione. He wanted to recompense her, to make it up. He had
hurt her, he had been vindictive. He wanted to be on good terms with
her again.

He went into her boudoir, a remote and very cushiony place. She was
sitting at her table writing letters. She lifted her face abstractedly
when he entered, watched him go to the sofa, and sit down. Then she
looked down at her paper again.

He took up a large volume which he had been reading before, and became
minutely attentive to his author. His back was towards Hermione. She
could not go on with her writing. Her whole mind was a chaos, darkness
breaking in upon it, and herself struggling to gain control with her
will, as a swimmer struggles with the swirling water. But in spite of
her efforts she was borne down, darkness seemed to break over her, she
felt as if her heart was bursting. The terrible tension grew stronger
and stronger, it was most fearful agony, like being walled up.

And then she realised that his presence was the wall, his presence was
destroying her. Unless she could break out, she must die most
fearfully, walled up in horror. And he was the wall. She must break
down the wall--she must break him down before her, the awful
obstruction of him who obstructed her life to the last. It must be
done, or she must perish most horribly.

Terribly shocks ran over her body, like shocks of electricity, as if
many volts of electricity suddenly struck her down. She was aware of
him sitting silently there, an unthinkable evil obstruction. Only this
blotted out her mind, pressed out her very breathing, his silent,
stooping back, the back of his head.

A terrible voluptuous thrill ran down her arms--she was going to know
her voluptuous consummation. Her arms quivered and were strong,
immeasurably and irresistibly strong. What delight, what delight in
strength, what delirium of pleasure! She was going to have her
consummation of voluptuous ecstasy at last. It was coming! In utmost
terror and agony, she knew it was upon her now, in extremity of bliss.
Her hand closed on a blue, beautiful ball of lapis lazuli that stood on
her desk for a paper-weight. She rolled it round in her hand as she
rose silently. Her heart was a pure flame in her breast, she was purely
unconscious in ecstasy. She moved towards him and stood behind him for
a moment in ecstasy. He, closed within the spell, remained motionless
and unconscious.

Then swiftly, in a flame that drenched down her body like fluid
lightning and gave her a perfect, unutterable consummation, unutterable
satisfaction, she brought down the ball of jewel stone with all her
force, crash on his head. But her fingers were in the way and deadened
the blow. Nevertheless, down went his head on the table on which his
book lay, the stone slid aside and over his ear, it was one convulsion
of pure bliss for her, lit up by the crushed pain of her fingers. But
it was not somehow complete. She lifted her arm high to aim once more,
straight down on the head that lay dazed on the table. She must smash
it, it must be smashed before her ecstasy was consummated, fulfilled
for ever. A thousand lives, a thousand deaths mattered nothing now,
only the fulfilment of this perfect ecstasy.

She was not swift, she could only move slowly. A strong spirit in him
woke him and made him lift his face and twist to look at her. Her arm
was raised, the hand clasping the ball of lapis lazuli. It was her left
hand, he realised again with horror that she was left-handed.
Hurriedly, with a burrowing motion, he covered his head under the thick
volume of Thucydides, and the blow came down, almost breaking his neck,
and shattering his heart.

He was shattered, but he was not afraid. Twisting round to face her he
pushed the table over and got away from her. He was like a flask that
is smashed to atoms, he seemed to himself that he was all fragments,
smashed to bits. Yet his movements were perfectly coherent and clear,
his soul was entire and unsurprised.

'No you don't, Hermione,' he said in a low voice. 'I don't let you.'

He saw her standing tall and livid and attentive, the stone clenched
tense in her hand.

'Stand away and let me go,' he said, drawing near to her.

As if pressed back by some hand, she stood away, watching him all the
time without changing, like a neutralised angel confronting him.

'It is not good,' he said, when he had gone past her. 'It isn't I who
will die. You hear?'

He kept his face to her as he went out, lest she should strike again.
While he was on his guard, she dared not move. And he was on his guard,
she was powerless. So he had gone, and left her standing.

She remained perfectly rigid, standing as she was for a long time. Then
she staggered to the couch and lay down, and went heavily to sleep.
When she awoke, she remembered what she had done, but it seemed to her,
she had only hit him, as any woman might do, because he tortured her.
She was perfectly right. She knew that, spiritually, she was right. In
her own infallible purity, she had done what must be done. She was
right, she was pure. A drugged, almost sinister religious expression
became permanent on her face.

Birkin, barely conscious, and yet perfectly direct in his motion, went
out of the house and straight across the park, to the open country, to
the hills. The brilliant day had become overcast, spots of rain were
falling. He wandered on to a wild valley-side, where were thickets of
hazel, many flowers, tufts of heather, and little clumps of young
firtrees, budding with soft paws. It was rather wet everywhere, there
was a stream running down at the bottom of the valley, which was
gloomy, or seemed gloomy. He was aware that he could not regain his
consciousness, that he was moving in a sort of darkness.

Yet he wanted something. He was happy in the wet hillside, that was
overgrown and obscure with bushes and flowers. He wanted to touch them
all, to saturate himself with the touch of them all. He took off his
clothes, and sat down naked among the primroses, moving his feet softly
among the primroses, his legs, his knees, his arms right up to the
arm-pits, lying down and letting them touch his belly, his breasts. It
was such a fine, cool, subtle touch all over him, he seemed to saturate
himself with their contact.

But they were too soft. He went through the long grass to a clump of
young fir-trees, that were no higher than a man. The soft sharp boughs
beat upon him, as he moved in keen pangs against them, threw little
cold showers of drops on his belly, and beat his loins with their
clusters of soft-sharp needles. There was a thistle which pricked him
vividly, but not too much, because all his movements were too
discriminate and soft. To lie down and roll in the sticky, cool young
hyacinths, to lie on one's belly and cover one's back with handfuls of
fine wet grass, soft as a breath, soft and more delicate and more
beautiful than the touch of any woman; and then to sting one's thigh
against the living dark bristles of the fir-boughs; and then to feel
the light whip of the hazel on one's shoulders, stinging, and then to
clasp the silvery birch-trunk against one's breast, its smoothness, its
hardness, its vital knots and ridges--this was good, this was all very
good, very satisfying. Nothing else would do, nothing else would
satisfy, except this coolness and subtlety of vegetation travelling
into one's blood. How fortunate he was, that there was this lovely,
subtle, responsive vegetation, waiting for him, as he waited for it;
how fulfilled he was, how happy!

As he dried himself a little with his handkerchief, he thought about
Hermione and the blow. He could feel a pain on the side of his head.
But after all, what did it matter? What did Hermione matter, what did
people matter altogether? There was this perfect cool loneliness, so
lovely and fresh and unexplored. Really, what a mistake he had made,
thinking he wanted people, thinking he wanted a woman. He did not want
a woman--not in the least. The leaves and the primroses and the trees,
they were really lovely and cool and desirable, they really came into
the blood and were added on to him. He was enrichened now immeasurably,
and so glad.

It was quite right of Hermione to want to kill him. What had he to do
with her? Why should he pretend to have anything to do with human
beings at all? Here was his world, he wanted nobody and nothing but the
lovely, subtle, responsive vegetation, and himself, his own living
self.

It was necessary to go back into the world. That was true. But that did
not matter, so one knew where one belonged. He knew now where he
belonged. This was his place, his marriage place. The world was
extraneous.

He climbed out of the valley, wondering if he were mad. But if so, he
preferred his own madness, to the regular sanity. He rejoiced in his
own madness, he was free. He did not want that old sanity of the world,
which was become so repulsive. He rejoiced in the new-found world of
his madness. It was so fresh and delicate and so satisfying.

As for the certain grief he felt at the same time, in his soul, that
was only the remains of an old ethic, that bade a human being adhere to
humanity. But he was weary of the old ethic, of the human being, and of
humanity. He loved now the soft, delicate vegetation, that was so cool
and perfect. He would overlook the old grief, he would put away the old
ethic, he would be free in his new state.

He was aware of the pain in his head becoming more and more difficult
every minute. He was walking now along the road to the nearest station.
It was raining and he had no hat. But then plenty of cranks went out
nowadays without hats, in the rain.

He wondered again how much of his heaviness of heart, a certain
depression, was due to fear, fear lest anybody should have seen him
naked lying against the vegetation. What a dread he had of mankind, of
other people! It amounted almost to horror, to a sort of dream
terror--his horror of being observed by some other people. If he were
on an island, like Alexander Selkirk, with only the creatures and the
trees, he would be free and glad, there would be none of this
heaviness, this misgiving. He could love the vegetation and be quite
happy and unquestioned, by himself.

He had better send a note to Hermione: she might trouble about him, and
he did not want the onus of this. So at the station, he wrote saying:

I will go on to town--I don't want to come back to Breadalby for the
present. But it is quite all right--I don't want you to mind having
biffed me, in the least. Tell the others it is just one of my moods.
You were quite right, to biff me--because I know you wanted to. So
there's the end of it.

In the train, however, he felt ill. Every motion was insufferable pain,
and he was sick. He dragged himself from the station into a cab,
feeling his way step by step, like a blind man, and held up only by a
dim will.

For a week or two he was ill, but he did not let Hermione know, and she
thought he was sulking; there was a complete estrangement between them.
She became rapt, abstracted in her conviction of exclusive
righteousness. She lived in and by her own self-esteem, conviction of
her own rightness of spirit.




CHAPTER IX.



COAL-DUST


Going home from school in the afternoon, the Brangwen girls descended
the hill between the picturesque cottages of Willey Green till they
came to the railway crossing. There they found the gate shut, because
the colliery train was rumbling nearer. They could hear the small
locomotive panting hoarsely as it advanced with caution between the
embankments. The one-legged man in the little signal-hut by the road
stared out from his security, like a crab from a snail-shell.

Whilst the two girls waited, Gerald Crich trotted up on a red Arab
mare. He rode well and softly, pleased with the delicate quivering of
the creature between his knees. And he was very picturesque, at least
in Gudrun's eyes, sitting soft and close on the slender red mare, whose
long tail flowed on the air. He saluted the two girls, and drew up at
the crossing to wait for the gate, looking down the railway for the
approaching train. In spite of her ironic smile at his picturesqueness,
Gudrun liked to look at him. He was well-set and easy, his face with
its warm tan showed up his whitish, coarse moustache, and his blue eyes
were full of sharp light as he watched the distance.

The locomotive chuffed slowly between the banks, hidden. The mare did
not like it. She began to wince away, as if hurt by the unknown noise.
But Gerald pulled her back and held her head to the gate. The sharp
blasts of the chuffing engine broke with more and more force on her.
The repeated sharp blows of unknown, terrifying noise struck through
her till she was rocking with terror. She recoiled like a spring let
go. But a glistening, half-smiling look came into Gerald's face. He
brought her back again, inevitably.

The noise was released, the little locomotive with her clanking steel
connecting-rod emerged on the highroad, clanking sharply. The mare
rebounded like a drop of water from hot iron. Ursula and Gudrun pressed
back into the hedge, in fear. But Gerald was heavy on the mare, and
forced her back. It seemed as if he sank into her magnetically, and
could thrust her back against herself.

'The fool!' cried Ursula loudly. 'Why doesn't he ride away till it's
gone by?'

Gudrun was looking at him with black-dilated, spellbound eyes. But he
sat glistening and obstinate, forcing the wheeling mare, which spun and
swerved like a wind, and yet could not get out of the grasp of his
will, nor escape from the mad clamour of terror that resounded through
her, as the trucks thumped slowly, heavily, horrifying, one after the
other, one pursuing the other, over the rails of the crossing.

The locomotive, as if wanting to see what could be done, put on the
brakes, and back came the trucks rebounding on the iron buffers,
striking like horrible cymbals, clashing nearer and nearer in frightful
strident concussions. The mare opened her mouth and rose slowly, as if
lifted up on a wind of terror. Then suddenly her fore feet struck out,
as she convulsed herself utterly away from the horror. Back she went,
and the two girls clung to each other, feeling she must fall backwards
on top of him. But he leaned forward, his face shining with fixed
amusement, and at last he brought her down, sank her down, and was
bearing her back to the mark. But as strong as the pressure of his
compulsion was the repulsion of her utter terror, throwing her back
away from the railway, so that she spun round and round, on two legs,
as if she were in the centre of some whirlwind. It made Gudrun faint
with poignant dizziness, which seemed to penetrate to her heart.

'No--! No--! Let her go! Let her go, you fool, you FOOL--!' cried
Ursula at the top of her voice, completely outside herself. And Gudrun
hated her bitterly for being outside herself. It was unendurable that
Ursula's voice was so powerful and naked.

A sharpened look came on Gerald's face. He bit himself down on the mare
like a keen edge biting home, and FORCED her round. She roared as she
breathed, her nostrils were two wide, hot holes, her mouth was apart,
her eyes frenzied. It was a repulsive sight. But he held on her
unrelaxed, with an almost mechanical relentlessness, keen as a sword
pressing in to her. Both man and horse were sweating with violence. Yet
he seemed calm as a ray of cold sunshine.

Meanwhile the eternal trucks were rumbling on, very slowly, treading
one after the other, one after the other, like a disgusting dream that
has no end. The connecting chains were grinding and squeaking as the
tension varied, the mare pawed and struck away mechanically now, her
terror fulfilled in her, for now the man encompassed her; her paws were
blind and pathetic as she beat the air, the man closed round her, and
brought her down, almost as if she were part of his own physique.

'And she's bleeding! She's bleeding!' cried Ursula, frantic with
opposition and hatred of Gerald. She alone understood him perfectly, in
pure opposition.

Gudrun looked and saw the trickles of blood on the sides of the mare,
and she turned white. And then on the very wound the bright spurs came
down, pressing relentlessly. The world reeled and passed into
nothingness for Gudrun, she could not know any more.

When she recovered, her soul was calm and cold, without feeling. The
trucks were still rumbling by, and the man and the mare were still
fighting. But she herself was cold and separate, she had no more
feeling for them. She was quite hard and cold and indifferent.

They could see the top of the hooded guard's-van approaching, the sound
of the trucks was diminishing, there was hope of relief from the
intolerable noise. The heavy panting of the half-stunned mare sounded
automatically, the man seemed to be relaxing confidently, his will
bright and unstained. The guard's-van came up, and passed slowly, the
guard staring out in his transition on the spectacle in the road. And,
through the man in the closed wagon, Gudrun could see the whole scene
spectacularly, isolated and momentary, like a vision isolated in
eternity.

Lovely, grateful silence seemed to trail behind the receding train. How
sweet the silence is! Ursula looked with hatred on the buffers of the
diminishing wagon. The gatekeeper stood ready at the door of his hut,
to proceed to open the gate. But Gudrun sprang suddenly forward, in
front of the struggling horse, threw off the latch and flung the gates
asunder, throwing one-half to the keeper, and running with the other
half, forwards. Gerald suddenly let go the horse and leaped forwards,
almost on to Gudrun. She was not afraid. As he jerked aside the mare's
head, Gudrun cried, in a strange, high voice, like a gull, or like a
witch screaming out from the side of the road:

'I should think you're proud.'

The words were distinct and formed. The man, twisting aside on his
dancing horse, looked at her in some surprise, some wondering interest.
Then the mare's hoofs had danced three times on the drum-like sleepers
of the crossing, and man and horse were bounding springily, unequally
up the road.

The two girls watched them go. The gate-keeper hobbled thudding over
the logs of the crossing, with his wooden leg. He had fastened the
gate. Then he also turned, and called to the girls:

'A masterful young jockey, that; 'll have his own road, if ever anybody
would.'

'Yes,' cried Ursula, in her hot, overbearing voice. 'Why couldn't he
take the horse away, till the trucks had gone by? He's a fool, and a
bully. Does he think it's manly, to torture a horse? It's a living
thing, why should he bully it and torture it?'

There was a pause, then the gate-keeper shook his head, and replied:

'Yes, it's as nice a little mare as you could set eyes on--beautiful
little thing, beautiful. Now you couldn't see his father treat any
animal like that--not you. They're as different as they welly can be,
Gerald Crich and his father--two different men, different made.'

Then there was a pause.

'But why does he do it?' cried Ursula, 'why does he? Does he think he's
grand, when he's bullied a sensitive creature, ten times as sensitive
as himself?'

Again there was a cautious pause. Then again the man shook his head, as
if he would say nothing, but would think the more.

'I expect he's got to train the mare to stand to anything,' he replied.
'A pure-bred Harab--not the sort of breed as is used to round
here--different sort from our sort altogether. They say as he got her
from Constantinople.'

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