CHAPTER XVI.
MAN TO MAN
He lay sick and unmoved, in pure opposition to everything. He knew hownear to breaking was the vessel that held his life. He knew also howstrong and durable it was. And he did not care. Better a thousand timestake one's chance with death, than accept a life one did not want. Butbest of all to persist and persist and persist for ever, till one weresatisfied in life.
He knew that Ursula was referred back to him. He knew his life restedwith her. But he would rather not live than accept the love sheproffered. The old way of love seemed a dreadful bondage, a sort ofconscription. What it was in him he did not know, but the thought oflove, marriage, and children, and a life lived together, in thehorrible privacy of domestic and connubial satisfaction, was repulsive.He wanted something clearer, more open, cooler, as it were. The hotnarrow intimacy between man and wife was abhorrent. The way they shuttheir doors, these married people, and shut themselves in to their ownexclusive alliance with each other, even in love, disgusted him. It wasa whole community of mistrustful couples insulated in private houses orprivate rooms, always in couples, and no further life, no furtherimmediate, no disinterested relationship admitted: a kaleidoscope ofcouples, disjoined, separatist, meaningless entities of marriedcouples. True, he hated promiscuity even worse than marriage, and aliaison was only another kind of coupling, reactionary from the legalmarriage. Reaction was a greater bore than action.
On the whole, he hated sex, it was such a limitation. It was sex thatturned a man into a broken half of a couple, the woman into the otherbroken half. And he wanted to be single in himself, the woman single inherself. He wanted sex to revert to the level of the other appetites,to be regarded as a functional process, not as a fulfilment. Hebelieved in sex marriage. But beyond this, he wanted a furtherconjunction, where man had being and woman had being, two pure beings,each constituting the freedom of the other, balancing each other liketwo poles of one force, like two angels, or two demons.
He wanted so much to be free, not under the compulsion of any need forunification, or tortured by unsatisfied desire. Desire and aspirationshould find their object without all this torture, as now, in a worldof plenty of water, simple thirst is inconsiderable, satisfied almostunconsciously. And he wanted to be with Ursula as free as with himself,single and clear and cool, yet balanced, polarised with her. Themerging, the clutching, the mingling of love was become madly abhorrentto him.
But it seemed to him, woman was always so horrible and clutching, shehad such a lust for possession, a greed of self-importance in love. Shewanted to have, to own, to control, to be dominant. Everything must bereferred back to her, to Woman, the Great Mother of everything, out ofwhom proceeded everything and to whom everything must finally berendered up.
It filled him with almost insane fury, this calm assumption of theMagna Mater, that all was hers, because she had borne it. Man was hersbecause she had borne him. A Mater Dolorosa, she had borne him, a MagnaMater, she now claimed him again, soul and body, sex, meaning, and all.He had a horror of the Magna Mater, she was detestable.
She was on a very high horse again, was woman, the Great Mother. Did henot know it in Hermione. Hermione, the humble, the subservient, whatwas she all the while but the Mater Dolorosa, in her subservience,claiming with horrible, insidious arrogance and female tyranny, her ownagain, claiming back the man she had borne in suffering. By her verysuffering and humility she bound her son with chains, she held him hereverlasting prisoner.
And Ursula, Ursula was the same--or the inverse. She too was the awful,arrogant queen of life, as if she were a queen bee on whom all the restdepended. He saw the yellow flare in her eyes, he knew the unthinkableoverweening assumption of primacy in her. She was unconscious of itherself. She was only too ready to knock her head on the ground beforea man. But this was only when she was so certain of her man, that shecould worship him as a woman worships her own infant, with a worship ofperfect possession.
It was intolerable, this possession at the hands of woman. Always a manmust be considered as the broken off fragment of a woman, and the sexwas the still aching scar of the laceration. Man must be added on to awoman, before he had any real place or wholeness.
And why? Why should we consider ourselves, men and women, as brokenfragments of one whole? It is not true. We are not broken fragments ofone whole. Rather we are the singling away into purity and clear being,of things that were mixed. Rather the sex is that which remains in usof the mixed, the unresolved. And passion is the further separating ofthis mixture, that which is manly being taken into the being of theman, that which is womanly passing to the woman, till the two are clearand whole as angels, the admixture of sex in the highest sensesurpassed, leaving two single beings constellated together like twostars.
In the old age, before sex was, we were mixed, each one a mixture. Theprocess of singling into individuality resulted into the greatpolarisation of sex. The womanly drew to one side, the manly to theother. But the separation was imperfect even them. And so ourworld-cycle passes. There is now to come the new day, when we arebeings each of us, fulfilled in difference. The man is pure man, thewoman pure woman, they are perfectly polarised. But there is no longerany of the horrible merging, mingling self-abnegation of love. There isonly the pure duality of polarisation, each one free from anycontamination of the other. In each, the individual is primal, sex issubordinate, but perfectly polarised. Each has a single, separatebeing, with its own laws. The man has his pure freedom, the woman hers.Each acknowledges the perfection of the polarised sex-circuit. Eachadmits the different nature in the other.
So Birkin meditated whilst he was ill. He liked sometimes to be illenough to take to his bed. For then he got better very quickly, andthings came to him clear and sure.
Whilst he was laid up, Gerald came to see him. The two men had a deep,uneasy feeling for each other. Gerald's eyes were quick and restless,his whole manner tense and impatient, he seemed strung up to someactivity. According to conventionality, he wore black clothes, helooked formal, handsome and COMME IL FAUT. His hair was fair almost towhiteness, sharp like splinters of light, his face was keen and ruddy,his body seemed full of northern energy. Gerald really loved Birkin,though he never quite believed in him. Birkin was too unreal;--clever,whimsical, wonderful, but not practical enough. Gerald felt that hisown understanding was much sounder and safer. Birkin was delightful, awonderful spirit, but after all, not to be taken seriously, not quiteto be counted as a man among men.
'Why are you laid up again?' he asked kindly, taking the sick man'shand. It was always Gerald who was protective, offering the warmshelter of his physical strength.
'For my sins, I suppose,' Birkin said, smiling a little ironically.
'For your sins? Yes, probably that is so. You should sin less, and keepbetter in health?'
'You'd better teach me.'
He looked at Gerald with ironic eyes.
'How are things with you?' asked Birkin.
'With me?' Gerald looked at Birkin, saw he was serious, and a warmlight came into his eyes.
'I don't know that they're any different. I don't see how they couldbe. There's nothing to change.'
'I suppose you are conducting the business as successfully as ever, andignoring the demand of the soul.'
'That's it,' said Gerald. 'At least as far as the business isconcerned. I couldn't say about the soul, I'am sure.'
'No.'
'Surely you don't expect me to?' laughed Gerald.
'No. How are the rest of your affairs progressing, apart from thebusiness?'
'The rest of my affairs? What are those? I couldn't say; I don't knowwhat you refer to.'
'Yes, you do,' said Birkin. 'Are you gloomy or cheerful? And what aboutGudrun Brangwen?'
'What about her?' A confused look came over Gerald. 'Well,' he added,'I don't know. I can only tell you she gave me a hit over the face lasttime I saw her.'
'A hit over the face! What for?'
'That I couldn't tell you, either.'
'Really! But when?'
'The night of the party--when Diana was drowned. She was driving thecattle up the hill, and I went after her--you remember.'
'Yes, I remember. But what made her do that? You didn't definitely askher for it, I suppose?'
'I? No, not that I know of. I merely said to her, that it was dangerousto drive those Highland bullocks--as it IS. She turned in such a way,and said--"I suppose you think I'm afraid of you and your cattle, don'tyou?" So I asked her "why," and for answer she flung me a back-handeracross the face.'
Birkin laughed quickly, as if it pleased him. Gerald looked at him,wondering, and began to laugh as well, saying:
'I didn't laugh at the time, I assure you. I was never so taken abackin my life.'
'And weren't you furious?'
'Furious? I should think I was. I'd have murdered her for two pins.'
'H'm!' ejaculated Birkin. 'Poor Gudrun, wouldn't she suffer afterwardsfor having given herself away!' He was hugely delighted.
'Would she suffer?' asked Gerald, also amused now.
Both men smiled in malice and amusement.
'Badly, I should think; seeing how self-conscious she is.'
'She is self-conscious, is she? Then what made her do it? For Icertainly think it was quite uncalled-for, and quite unjustified.'
'I suppose it was a sudden impulse.'
'Yes, but how do you account for her having such an impulse? I'd doneher no harm.'
Birkin shook his head.
'The Amazon suddenly came up in her, I suppose,' he said.
'Well,' replied Gerald, 'I'd rather it had been the Orinoco.'
They both laughed at the poor joke. Gerald was thinking how Gudrun hadsaid she would strike the last blow too. But some reserve made him keepthis back from Birkin.
'And you resent it?' Birkin asked.
'I don't resent it. I don't care a tinker's curse about it.' He wassilent a moment, then he added, laughing. 'No, I'll see it through,that's all. She seemed sorry afterwards.'
'Did she? You've not met since that night?'
Gerald's face clouded.
'No,' he said. 'We've been--you can imagine how it's been, since theaccident.'
'Yes. Is it calming down?'
'I don't know. It's a shock, of course. But I don't believe motherminds. I really don't believe she takes any notice. And what's sofunny, she used to be all for the children--nothing mattered, nothingwhatever mattered but the children. And now, she doesn't take any morenotice than if it was one of the servants.'
'No? Did it upset YOU very much?'
'It's a shock. But I don't feel it very much, really. I don't feel anydifferent. We've all got to die, and it doesn't seem to make any greatdifference, anyhow, whether you die or not. I can't feel any GRIEF youknow. It leaves me cold. I can't quite account for it.'
'You don't care if you die or not?' asked Birkin.
Gerald looked at him with eyes blue as the blue-fibred steel of aweapon. He felt awkward, but indifferent. As a matter of fact, he didcare terribly, with a great fear.
'Oh,' he said, 'I don't want to die, why should I? But I never trouble.The question doesn't seem to be on the carpet for me at all. It doesn'tinterest me, you know.'
'TIMOR MORTIS CONTURBAT ME,' quoted Birkin, adding--'No, death doesn'treally seem the point any more. It curiously doesn't concern one. It'slike an ordinary tomorrow.'
Gerald looked closely at his friend. The eyes of the two men met, andan unspoken understanding was exchanged.
Gerald narrowed his eyes, his face was cool and unscrupulous as helooked at Birkin, impersonally, with a vision that ended in a point inspace, strangely keen-eyed and yet blind.
'If death isn't the point,' he said, in a strangely abstract, cold,fine voice--'what is?' He sounded as if he had been found out.
'What is?' re-echoed Birkin. And there was a mocking silence.
'There's long way to go, after the point of intrinsic death, before wedisappear,' said Birkin.
'There is,' said Gerald. 'But what sort of way?' He seemed to press theother man for knowledge which he himself knew far better than Birkindid.
'Right down the slopes of degeneration--mystic, universal degeneration.There are many stages of pure degradation to go through: agelong. Welive on long after our death, and progressively, in progressivedevolution.'
Gerald listened with a faint, fine smile on his face, all the time, asif, somewhere, he knew so much better than Birkin, all about this: asif his own knowledge were direct and personal, whereas Birkin's was amatter of observation and inference, not quite hitting the nail on thehead:--though aiming near enough at it. But he was not going to givehimself away. If Birkin could get at the secrets, let him. Gerald wouldnever help him. Gerald would be a dark horse to the end.
'Of course,' he said, with a startling change of conversation, 'it isfather who really feels it. It will finish him. For him the worldcollapses. All his care now is for Winnie--he must save Winnie. He saysshe ought to be sent away to school, but she won't hear of it, andhe'll never do it. Of course she IS in rather a queer way. We're all ofus curiously bad at living. We can do things--but we can't get on withlife at all. It's curious--a family failing.'
'She oughtn't to be sent away to school,' said Birkin, who wasconsidering a new proposition.
'She oughtn't. Why?'
'She's a queer child--a special child, more special even than you. Andin my opinion special children should never be sent away to school.Only moderately ordinary children should be sent to school--so it seemsto me.'
'I'm inclined to think just the opposite. I think it would probablymake her more normal if she went away and mixed with other children.'
'She wouldn't mix, you see. YOU never really mixed, did you? And shewouldn't be willing even to pretend to. She's proud, and solitary, andnaturally apart. If she has a single nature, why do you want to makeher gregarious?'
'No, I don't want to make her anything. But I think school would begood for her.'
'Was it good for you?'
Gerald's eyes narrowed uglily. School had been torture to him. Yet hehad not questioned whether one should go through this torture. Heseemed to believe in education through subjection and torment.
'I hated it at the time, but I can see it was necessary,' he said. 'Itbrought me into line a bit--and you can't live unless you do come intoline somewhere.'
'Well,' said Birkin, 'I begin to think that you can't live unless youkeep entirely out of the line. It's no good trying to toe the line,when your one impulse is to smash up the line. Winnie is a specialnature, and for special natures you must give a special world.'
'Yes, but where's your special world?' said Gerald.
'Make it. Instead of chopping yourself down to fit the world, chop theworld down to fit yourself. As a matter of fact, two exceptional peoplemake another world. You and I, we make another, separate world. Youdon't WANT a world same as your brothers-in-law. It's just the specialquality you value. Do you WANT to be normal or ordinary! It's a lie.You want to be free and extraordinary, in an extraordinary world ofliberty.'
Gerald looked at Birkin with subtle eyes of knowledge. But he wouldnever openly admit what he felt. He knew more than Birkin, in onedirection--much more. And this gave him his gentle love for the otherman, as if Birkin were in some way young, innocent, child-like: soamazingly clever, but incurably innocent.
'Yet you are so banal as to consider me chiefly a freak,' said Birkinpointedly.
'A freak!' exclaimed Gerald, startled. And his face opened suddenly, asif lighted with simplicity, as when a flower opens out of the cunningbud. 'No--I never consider you a freak.' And he watched the other manwith strange eyes, that Birkin could not understand. 'I feel,' Geraldcontinued, 'that there is always an element of uncertainty aboutyou--perhaps you are uncertain about yourself. But I'm never sure ofyou. You can go away and change as easily as if you had no soul.'
He looked at Birkin with penetrating eyes. Birkin was amazed. Hethought he had all t
he soul in the world. He stared in amazement. AndGerald, watching, saw the amazing attractive goodliness of his eyes, ayoung, spontaneous goodness that attracted the other man infinitely,yet filled him with bitter chagrin, because he mistrusted it so much.He knew Birkin could do without him--could forget, and not suffer. Thiswas always present in Gerald's consciousness, filling him with bitterunbelief: this consciousness of the young, animal-like spontaneity ofdetachment. It seemed almost like hypocrisy and lying, sometimes, oh,often, on Birkin's part, to talk so deeply and importantly.
Quite other things were going through Birkin's mind. Suddenly he sawhimself confronted with another problem--the problem of love andeternal conjunction between two men. Of course this was necessary--ithad been a necessity inside himself all his life--to love a man purelyand fully. Of course he had been loving Gerald all along, and all alongdenying it.
He lay in the bed and wondered, whilst his friend sat beside him, lostin brooding. Each man was gone in his own thoughts.
'You know how the old German knights used to swear a BLUTBRUDERSCHAFT,'he said to Gerald, with quite a new happy activity in his eyes.
'Make a little wound in their arms, and rub each other's blood into thecut?' said Gerald.
'Yes--and swear to be true to each other, of one blood, all theirlives. That is what we ought to do. No wounds, that is obsolete. But weought to swear to love each other, you and I, implicitly, andperfectly, finally, without any possibility of going back on it.'
He looked at Gerald with clear, happy eyes of discovery. Gerald lookeddown at him, attracted, so deeply bondaged in fascinated attraction,that he was mistrustful, resenting the bondage, hating the attraction.
'We will swear to each other, one day, shall we?' pleaded Birkin. 'Wewill swear to stand by each other--be true to eachother--ultimately--infallibly--given to each other, organically--withoutpossibility of taking back.'
Birkin sought hard to express himself. But Gerald hardly listened. Hisface shone with a certain luminous pleasure. He was pleased. But hekept his reserve. He held himself back.
'Shall we swear to each other, one day?' said Birkin, putting out hishand towards Gerald.
Gerald just touched the extended fine, living hand, as if withheld andafraid.
'We'll leave it till I understand it better,' he said, in a voice ofexcuse.
Birkin watched him. A little sharp disappointment, perhaps a touch ofcontempt came into his heart.
'Yes,' he said. 'You must tell me what you think, later. You know whatI mean? Not sloppy emotionalism. An impersonal union that leaves onefree.'
They lapsed both into silence. Birkin was looking at Gerald all thetime. He seemed now to see, not the physical, animal man, which heusually saw in Gerald, and which usually he liked so much, but the manhimself, complete, and as if fated, doomed, limited. This strange senseof fatality in Gerald, as if he were limited to one form of existence,one knowledge, one activity, a sort of fatal halfness, which to himselfseemed wholeness, always overcame Birkin after their moments ofpassionate approach, and filled him with a sort of contempt, orboredom. It was the insistence on the limitation which so bored Birkinin Gerald. Gerald could never fly away from himself, in realindifferent gaiety. He had a clog, a sort of monomania.
There was silence for a time. Then Birkin said, in a lighter tone,letting the stress of the contact pass:
'Can't you get a good governess for Winifred?--somebody exceptional?'
'Hermione Roddice suggested we should ask Gudrun to teach her to drawand to model in clay. You know Winnie is astonishingly clever with thatplasticine stuff. Hermione declares she is an artist.' Gerald spoke inthe usual animated, chatty manner, as if nothing unusual had passed.But Birkin's manner was full of reminder.
'Really! I didn't know that. Oh well then, if Gudrun WOULD teach her,it would be perfect--couldn't be anything better--if Winifred is anartist. Because Gudrun somewhere is one. And every true artist is thesalvation of every other.'
'I thought they got on so badly, as a rule.'
'Perhaps. But only artists produce for each other the world that is fitto live in. If you can arrange THAT for Winifred, it is perfect.'
'But you think she wouldn't come?'
'I don't know. Gudrun is rather self-opinionated. She won't go cheapanywhere. Or if she does, she'll pretty soon take herself back. Sowhether she would condescend to do private teaching, particularly here,in Beldover, I don't know. But it would be just the thing. Winifred hasgot a special nature. And if you can put into her way the means ofbeing self-sufficient, that is the best thing possible. She'll neverget on with the ordinary life. You find it difficult enough yourself,and she is several skins thinner than you are. It is awful to thinkwhat her life will be like unless she does find a means of expression,some way of fulfilment. You can see what mere leaving it to fatebrings. You can see how much marriage is to be trusted to--look at yourown mother.'
'Do you think mother is abnormal?'
'No! I think she only wanted something more, or other than the commonrun of life. And not getting it, she has gone wrong perhaps.'
'After producing a brood of wrong children,' said Gerald gloomily.
'No more wrong than any of the rest of us,' Birkin replied. 'The mostnormal people have the worst subterranean selves, take them one byone.'
'Sometimes I think it is a curse to be alive,' said Gerald with suddenimpotent anger.
'Well,' said Birkin, 'why not! Let it be a curse sometimes to bealive--at other times it is anything but a curse. You've got plenty ofzest in it really.'
'Less than you'd think,' said Gerald, revealing a strange poverty inhis look at the other man.
There was silence, each thinking his own thoughts.
'I don't see what she has to distinguish between teaching at theGrammar School, and coming to teach Win,' said Gerald.
'The difference between a public servant and a private one. The onlynobleman today, king and only aristocrat, is the public, the public.You are quite willing to serve the public--but to be a private tutor--'
'I don't want to serve either--'
'No! And Gudrun will probably feel the same.'
Gerald thought for a few minutes. Then he said:
'At all events, father won't make her feel like a private servant. Hewill be fussy and greatful enough.'
'So he ought. And so ought all of you. Do you think you can hire awoman like Gudrun Brangwen with money? She is your equal likeanything--probably your superior.'
'Is she?' said Gerald.
'Yes, and if you haven't the guts to know it, I hope she'll leave youto your own devices.'
'Nevertheless,' said Gerald, 'if she is my equal, I wish she weren't ateacher, because I don't think teachers as a rule are my equal.'
'Nor do I, damn them. But am I a teacher because I teach, or a parsonbecause I preach?'
Gerald laughed. He was always uneasy on this score. He did not WANT toclaim social superiority, yet he WOULD not claim intrinsic personalsuperiority, because he would never base his standard of values on purebeing. So he wobbled upon a tacit assumption of social standing. No,Birkin wanted him to accept the fact of intrinsic difference betweenhuman beings, which he did not intend to accept. It was against hissocial honour, his principle. He rose to go.
'I've been neglecting my business all this while,' he said smiling.
'I ought to have reminded you before,' Birkin replied, laughing andmocking.
'I knew you'd say something like that,' laughed Gerald, ratheruneasily.
'Did you?'
'Yes, Rupert. It wouldn't do for us all to be like you are--we shouldsoon be in the cart. When I am above the world, I shall ignore allbusinesses.'
'Of course, we're not in the cart now,' said Birkin, satirically.
'Not as much as you make out. At any rate, we have enough to eat anddrink--'
'And be satisfied,' added Birkin.
Gerald came near the bed and stood looking down at Birkin whose throatwas exposed, whose tossed hair fell attractivel
y on the warm brow,above the eyes that were so unchallenged and still in the satiricalface. Gerald, full-limbed and turgid with energy, stood unwilling togo, he was held by the presence of the other man. He had not the powerto go away.
'So,' said Birkin. 'Good-bye.' And he reached out his hand from underthe bed-clothes, smiling with a glimmering look.
'Good-bye,' said Gerald, taking the warm hand of his friend in a firmgrasp. 'I shall come again. I miss you down at the mill.'
'I'll be there in a few days,' said Birkin.
The eyes of the two men met again. Gerald's, that were keen as ahawk's, were suffused now with warm light and with unadmitted love,Birkin looked back as out of a darkness, unsounded and unknown, yetwith a kind of warmth, that seemed to flow over Gerald's brain like afertile sleep.
'Good-bye then. There's nothing I can do for you?'
'Nothing, thanks.'
Birkin watched the black-clothed form of the other man move out of thedoor, the bright head was gone, he turned over to sleep.
Women in Love Page 16
