Now the poor Baroness felt very much as Gilbert himself felt. She would much rather have left her daughter comfortably behind with her young lover. But oh dear, was she not saddled with a mother’s duties. And having had all her life to enjoy an unfaithful, gambling husband, she naturally felt that a legal position was the only sure thing in a woman’s life. It was the only sure thing she had had. And here was Johanna going to play skittles with her legal surety: and for what? — for an escapade with an unknown young fellow of the lower classes, without money. Oh dear oh dear — the man was right enough. The Baroness quite liked him, and if he had been no more than a transient lover she would have winked quite gratefully at him. After all, she did not wish her daughters to know nothing but the long tied-up widowhood she had known herself.
But afterwards! afterwards! The money, the never-ending irritation of moneylessness — money was always lacking in the Hebenitz household. — And then the children — the two little children! Ach no, no, it was too hard for the Baroness. Why should all this misery and distraction take place! So, like a floundering swimmer who has lost his nerve, she lectured Gilbert, rather pathetically, and Gilbert got into a bull’s rage.
“You are young, ach, so young! You do not know the world, you do not know to keep a woman. Ach, you have all your life before you, and you would take a woman who has two children and a husband! Oh yea! Oh yea! Think what you do. Think what you do! You will spoil your life. You will spoil your life. And also Johanna’s life! Oh no! Ach, nein, es ist zuviel. Better you should go back to England.”
And she looked at him under her black eyebrows, and he scowled heavily in response. She could see he had no intention of going back to England.
“Better you go to England,” she insisted.
“No,” he said.
“You don’t want? Ach! Well, you must go somewhere and wait for her. You must wait — ”
“There’s Lotte!” cried Johanna. And sure enough there was Lotte coasting by gaily in her taxi, waving a handkerchief to the party at the little table.
“Gleich! Fiinf Minuten!” called the Baroness in a quaint, high shout, after the retreating car. Then, her face all lifted in upward-tending wrinkles of worry, she resumed to Gilbert.
“And Johanna’s father must write to her husband, and ask him for the divorce, if still she will not go back. And the divorce must be in America. But what will you do? How will you keep a woman? Where will you find the money?”
She looked at Gilbert from under her knitted brows, and he scowled back. “Ach, all things are against it. All things. — So you must wait. You must wait. I must take her back to her father tonight, and you must wait. You must go away somewhere where you can forget this. — And then her husband must give her the divorce — ”
So she went on, round and round in the same wheel, till Lotte appeared once more in the taxi.
“Shall we go for a walk?” said Johanna to him.
“Yes,” he answered.
“And you will bring her back at four o’clock — please? Yes? You will promise.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Oh thank you. Thank you. Her father is promised that she shall come home with me. Danke! Danke! Ja, auf wieder- sehen — Vier Uhr, weiss du, Hannele.”
Johanna moved off, and Gilbert, glancing round, saw the Baroness’ ample rear climbing into the motor-car. In another moment she drove by, looking like a child that has just got out of a row, and is going to enjoy itself.
Gilbert and Johanna walked away into the country, and she told him what a life they were leading her at home. Her father was dead against any breach with her husband.
“Poor Papa,” she said. “He is so unhappy. He said to me, ‘My Child, I know the world.’ But I said to him, ‘Not the best, Papa. Not the best. You don’t know that.’ And he didn’t answer. Poor Papa!”
“I don’t see what the world, or knowing the world has got to do with it,” said Gilbert.
“Ah, but they get so upset. And they are so frightened. I believe poor Papa sees a lost woman in me. Poor Papa, with his Elena in the back-ground, and his illegitimate son! How else could he see it.”
“Then why should he look! It’s not his affair.”
“Oh yes. Poor Papa. He does love me, in a way. And he was awfully fond of Everard. — Ach, it is all such a bother.”
“What shall you do then?”
“Oh I don’t know. Go back and let them talk. — But you — what shall you do?”
“I shall go to Joseph Heysers at Wensdorf, and wait.”
“Shall you wait? And will you come to me when I tell you?”
“Yes. But don’t be too long. How long do you think?”
“Ah!” she sighed. “I don’t know. They give me a hell of a time. I’m almost out of my mind. Ah, and they all say they love me. Ah — it is too much. What am I to do?”
“Let us go away together.”
“Yes! Yes! I know. But I’ve promised to go back tonight.”
“In a few days then. Don’t stop long, or God knows what will happen to you.”
“I know. They will drive me mad.”
“Then don’t stop long. And I will come whenever you let me know — and wherever you tell me.”
“Yes! Yes! If only I could get away.”
They walked away into the country, she holding his hand. In a world of floating straws he seemed for the moment solid.
So they stayed and kissed and made love in a dry ditch under a beech-tree. This was not the matrimonial bed Gilbert had prepared. But still, it was something. And that is always better than nothing.
So Johanna returned to Detsch, and saw the look of relief come over her father’s face when he caught sight of her in the railway carriage. He had come to the station to meet the train.
Gilbert returned to the Grúnwald.
“So the gnadige Frau is not staying?” said Fritz.
“No! She has had to go back to Detsch with her mother.”
“But I have changed all your things, and prepared the big room.” The inn-keeper’s tone was rather aggrieved, and there was a touch of impertinence.
“Yes. I know that. But she couldn’t stay.”
Gilbert closed so definitely, that the man said no more.
“I shall be going away tomorrow,” said Gilbert.
“In the morning?”
“Yes.”
“Very well.”
And so our hero went up to the room that smelled of lilies of the valley. And he slept alone in the big matrimonial bed. And next day he sat in the train and wound that wonderful way all along the Moselle valley to the Rhine at Coblenz — where he changed, and crossed the river — and changed again, and caught the train north for Cologne.
Chapter XVIII.
The First Round.
Dear Gilbert was not in one of his brilliant moods. He sat in a third-class carriage gazing vacantly out of the window of the Cologne express, while the peasants eyed him curiously. The ticket collector came slamming the doors. He glared at Gilbert’s ticket — then glared at Gilbert — and broke into a torrent of abuse in a vile Rhenish accent: again, we must say, like the tearing of badly made calico. Snarling and flourishing in the pretty Prussian official manner in front of the offender’s nose, whilst all the others in the carriage looked either virtuous or rebuked! Snarl snarl snarl went the beasdy person — and Gilbert’s brain turned to cork. He heard objectionable noises, but like a drowning man with the roar of eternity in his ears, he made out no earthly sense.
Till at last, funf Mark fiinfzig. Five and sixpence! — the damned fellow wanted five-and-sixpence! Out came the money, scribble went the ticket collector, and pushed a scrap of paper in the offender’s face.
“Ich verstehe gar nicht,” said Gilbert, like a turning worm. “I don’t understand at all.”
The ticket collector looked as if he would eat him in silence.
“Zuschlagen — zuschlagen — ” he snarled — and names of stations — Ehrenbreitstein, Niederlahnstein.
“Was meint zuschlagen?” said our innocent.
The ticket collector turned up his nose as if he meant to take Gilbert’s scalp with it. Then he departed, slamming the door. The peasants made round eyes, and Gilbert tried etymologically to extract some meaning out of the marvellous word zuschlagen.
Since he was destined to live and learn, he learned later that if when changing trains you take a Swift-train, whereas the previous train was but a Hurry-train, then you must present your ticket at the ticket-office of the change station, and zuschlagen — pay the transfer. All of which is system — wonderful system.
We would here offer an address to System, and German system in particular, if it weren’t already a thing of the past. Ah System, thou fallen but not yet shattered god of a mechanical age.
Dear Gilbert mused on the god-almighty ferocity of Prussian officials. Nay, the shabbiest porter was an Olympic — or at least a Wotan God — once he had put his holy cap on. And all the mere civilians grovelled before a peak-official-cap as before some nimbus. What a funny world! They saw in it the symbol of Germanic Over-Allness.
Gazing on the great Rhine — Rhenus Flux — with its castles and its cardboard scenery, our hero thought of Rome and the naked great Germanic tribes: of the amazing Middle Ages: and then of Luther and the Thirty Years War — and then of Frederick and the great Goethe.
Oh Goethe, what a fool you were. If only someone had given you a good kick in your toga-seat, when you were godlifying yourself and olympising yourself and setting up the stunt of German Godlikeness and superhumanness, what a lot it would have saved the world, and Germany in particular. If only Napoleon had not been taken in. If only that usually sensible person had exclaimed, not voila un homme! but voila un dieu gratuitel, and given the gratuitous God-Goethe a good old Napoleonic kick in the rump! Oh weh! Oh woe! When will mankind learn the right use of toe-caps and posteriors! It would save so many cannons later on.
Musing somewhat in this strain, our friend changed once more, and once more got into a simple Hurry-train. It was six o’clock when he changed for the last time, at Hennef. Every time he changed he seemed to metamorphose.
Hennef was a station in the midst of water-meadows. There was a stream of full, swift, silent water, and marsh-plants, and evening beginning to glow over the remote Rhineland.
He sat by the stream under the evening, while some birds swung past, and he felt himself in the middle of nowhere. And a great peace like an annunciation seemed to settle on his soul. He looked at the glowing west, the lush green water- land beneath. And he thought of Johanna, and felt filled with peace and an assurance that surpassed anything he had known: such a lovely sense of fulfilment in the future: peace like a full river flowing, flowing far-off, into the sunset. He sat quite still, near the station, waiting for his connection. And he felt a beautiful calm, a glamorous, holy calm, as if a sacred light were in the evening air.
And when he clambered into the mere Person-train, the Bummelzug that trotted in the open by the road-side, he was quite still and happy. There was the high-road in the twilight — and a stream — and the thick trees of the forest. And a lovely peace and bigness and breathing-room, such as he always imagined in the Middle-Ages: a peace not made up of quietness or of lovey-doveyness, but of room, room to move and breathe.
And now, gentle reader — aha, I feel you shy at those two words. Yes, I admit it, they are my Dilly-Dilly-Dilly, come and be killed. Yes, I am going to apostrophise or moralise: and why shouldn’t I? If you don’t want to read, turn on to page Gentle reader, I am going to let the cat out of the bag. I am going to do so, because I never ask anyone, even the most desirous, to buy a pig in a poke. After this very nice little peace-like-a-river touch, I am going to let the cat out of the bag. For I’m sure if I don’t, you’ll be yelling and saying I promised you two turtle-doves in a cage. Gentle reader, I have not got two turtle-doves in a cage for you. I’m sorry, but I’m not a dove and pigeon merchant.
An anonymous lady — she may even be yourself, gende reader — once wrote to me thus: “You, who can write so beautifully of stars and flowers, why will you grovel in the ditch?” I might answer her — or you, gentle reader — thus: “You, who wear such nice suede shoes, why do you blow your nose?”
However, gentle reader, I must invite you to grovel in the ditch with me. I am not a dove and pigeon merchant. Out of this very promising-looking bag of a story, which I have this minute shown you tied with a pretty blue ribbon of peace, I am going to let out, — what? — the cat! I am going to let the cat out of the bag. Or even two whirling, fur-flying cats, all claws and sparks.
Gentle reader, this peace was not the peace of the amorous coo of the ring-dove. Gentle reader, it was not the silent bliss of two elective affinities who were just about to fuse and make a holy and eternal oneness. It was the bridal peace — surely we are entitled to a little Wagnerian language here: it was the bridal peace of Gilbert and Johanna. It was the grail hovering before our hero, shedding its effulgence upon him.
It was the peace, gentle reader, of one who has found his opposite, his complementary opposite, and his meet adversary. The pleasant darling, he didn’t know it. And he wasn’t going to tumble to it till he’d had so many tumbles he was quite knocked out of his original shape. But whether he knew it or not isn’t the point. I know it, and I’m telling this history. And I like to let my cat out of the bag right off, so that nobody shall think it’s a chaste unicorn or a pair of doves in a cage.
Dear Gilbert, he had found his mate and his match. He had found one who would give him tit for tat, and tittle for tattle. He had found his soul’s affinity, and his body’s mate: a she-cat who would give him claw for claw, a bitch who would give him snarl for snarl, a falcon who would demand an eye for an eye. Here’s to them!
The love of two splendid opposites. My dear — I mean you, gende reader — all life and splendour is made up out of the union of indomitable opposites. We live, all of us balanced delicately on the rainbow, which is born of pure light and pure water. Think, gentle reader: out of the perfect consummating of sun and rain leaps the all-promising rainbow: leap also the yellow-and-white daisies, pink-and-gold roses, good green cabbages, caterpillars, serpents and all the rest. Out of what, gentle reader? The moment’s matching of the two terrible opposites, fire and water. The two eternal, universal enemies, you call them? I call them the man and the woman of the material universe, father and mother of all things. If you don’t believe me, that’s your affair.
Tell me, why are all royal things brindled: the tiger with his pointed flames of black and fire, the eagle with his bars of dusk and glow, the golden lion with his mane of smoke? It is, gentle reader, the eternal opposite elements lying side by side in him, magnificently juxtaposed, royally wedded, as man and woman lie like fire and smoke in the marriage bed, or like dark-rippled water.
Opposites! The magnificence of opposites. Not the horrible sticky merge of like things. The fight, gende reader, the fight! Up boys, and at ‘em! — ’em, of course, meaning the women. Up boys, and at ‘em!
Oh heaven, save me from a morass of people all alike to one another. The sharpest divergencies possible, the most miraculous of superb differences.
Opposition! Wonderful opposition! The whole universe rests on the magical opposition of fire and water, sun and rain. Is not every plant brindled? — dark and damp below earth, sunny above. Do not the watery thread-tender streams run forward to touch the thread-tender fiery beamlets of the sun, in every growing plant and every unfolding flower. Is it not a lion running out of the fiery desert, to meet a lioness of shadow? And is not the mating always half a fight. At least half a fight. Is not the very embrace at least half a fight. At least half a fight. Before a plant adds one new cell to its growing tip, has it not been the living battle field and marriage bed of fire and water: both. Is not the marriage bed a fiery battle field, as well as a perfect communion, both simultaneously. Till we know this, we know nothing. And till we fight our fights l
ike splendid royal tigers, in the wonderful connubial rage, we are nothing. We are at a dead-lock: either water-logged, or gone woody and dry. Water-logged and fat, or woody and dry and sapless.
Beautiful brindled creatures of fire and darkness, sun and smoke. What is your darkness but shadow, and what is your shadow but watery intervention, the cloud in the sun, against the sun. — Beautiful brindled creatures, snakes and tortoises, fish and wild-geese, tigers, wolves, trees. Only men are all white or all black. But then mankind itself is brindled. Never forget it.
Our Gilbert arrived at Wensdorf late at night, and was received and feasted by his friend and his friend’s wife Ulma. Joseph was a small official for the district.
And Gilbert was happy in the little flat over the village street where the oxen-wagons trundled slowly, far away in the Rhenish hinterland. He listened to the bells in the pointed steeple of the Lutheran church playing hard against the bells of the white catholic church. He saw the streams of peasants flowing in opposite directions and turning up their noses at one another. He drank beer in the vaulted chamber, where Joseph smoked his long pipe and talked in dialect and got mellow with the cronies of the inn. It seemed almost like the Middle-Ages: save of course for the recurrent stridency of Deutschland Uber Alles which crept out.
He liked Ulma, and her traditional German housekeeping. He liked the great basket of different breads, white bread and black bread and grey bread and Pommeland bread and Pumpernickel and Kringeln: always a choice of five different sorts of bread. Then the lovely linen and silver in abundance, in the quite small flat.
Then the long walks between the old, ragged, blossoming pear-trees of the unknown high-roads, to villages that never were and never will be known, lost behind great woods or great arable stretches: the sense of being in an upland region, yet having no big hills: the sense of the great lands going on and on, and not coming anywhere: the feeling of the ageless Rhine, some forty miles away. They drove in a little carriage far off: and always the same country. They went to a fair, and drank all manner of Schnapps and bought all manner of wonderful cakes, hearts and houses and horses and angels and children, every imaginable thing in sweet, spicy honey- tasting cakes. On a Sunday they went down to the Rhine and sailed on a steamer and went to some high, famous castle. And Gilbert did not like the Sunday crowd at all.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 289
