 The fourth part of Chapter 29 of Women in Love. It happened in the afternoon that Ursula sat in the rayonian zaal talking to Lurka. The letter had seemed unhappy lately. He was lively and full of mischievous humour, as usual. But Ursula had thought he was sulky about something. His partner, too, the big, fair, good-looking youth, was ill at ease, going about as if he belonged to nowhere, and was kept in some sort of subjection against which he was rebelling. Lurka had hardly talked to Gudrun. His associate, on the other hand, had paid her constantly a soft, over-deferential attention. Gudrun wanted to talk to Lurka. He was a sculptor, and she wanted to hear his view of his art. And his figure attracted her. There was the look of a little wastrel about him that intrigued her, and an old man's look that interested her, and then, beside this, an uncanny singleness, a quality of being by himself, not in contact with anybody else, that marked out an artist to her. He was a chatterer, a magpie, a maker of mischievous word-jokes that were sometimes very clever, but which often were not. And she could see in his brown gnome's eyes the black look of inorganic misery which lay behind all his small buffoonery. His figure interested her. The figure of a boy, almost a street-arab. He made no attempt to conceal it. He always wore a simple loaden suit with knee-breaches. His legs were thin, and he made no attempt to disguise the fact, which was of itself remarkable in a German. And he never ingratiated himself anywhere, not in the slightest, but kept to himself for all his apparent playfulness. Lightner, his companion, was a great sportsman, very handsome with his big limbs and his blue eyes. Lerker would go to boggling or skating in little snatches, but he was indifferent. And his fine, thin nostrils, the nostrils of a pure-bred street-arab would quiver with contempt at Lightner's splothering gymnastic displays. It was evident that the two men who had travelled and lived together sharing the same bedroom had now reached the stage of loathing. Lightner hated Lerker with an injured, rising, impotent hatred, and Lerker treated Lightner with a fine quivering contempt and sarcasm. Soon the two would have to go apart. Already they were rarely together. Lightner ran attaching himself to somebody or other, always deferring. Lerker was a good deal alone. Out of doors he wore a Westphalian cap, a close brown velvet head with big brown velvet flaps down over his ears, so that he looked like a loppy-ed rabbit or a troll. His face was brown-red with a dry bright skin that seemed to crinkle with his mobile expressions. His eyes were arresting, brown, full, like a rabbit's, or like a troll's, or like the eyes of a lost being, having a strange, dumb, depraved look of knowledge, and a quick spark of uncanny fire. Whenever Gudrun had tried to talk to him he had shied away unresponsive, looking at her with his watchful, dark eyes, but entering into no relation with her. He had made her feel that her slow French and her slower German were hateful to him. As for his own inadequate English he was much too awkward to try it at all, but he understood a good deal of what was said nevertheless, and Gudrun peaked, left him alone. This afternoon, however, she came into the lounge as he was talking to Ursula. Its fine black hair somehow reminded her of a bat, thin as it was on his full, sensitive-looking head, and worn away at the temples. He sat hunched up as if his spirit were bat-like, and Gudrun could see he was making some slow confidence to Ursula, unwilling, a slow, grudging, scanty self-revelation. She went and sat by her sister. He looked at her, then looked away again, as if he took no notice of her, but as a matter of fact she interested him deeply. Isn't it interesting, Prune? said Ursula, turning to her sister. Her lurker is doing a great freeze for a factory in Cologne, for the outside, the street. She looked at him, at his thin, brown, nervous hands that were prehensile, and somehow like talons, like grief, inhuman. What in, she asked? Asfars repeated Ursula. Granit, he replied. It had become immediately a laconic series of question and answer between fellow craftsmen. What is the relief? asked Gudrun. Actor il lievol. And at what height? It was very interesting to Gudrun to think of his making the great granite freeze for a great granite factory in Cologne. She got from him some notion of the design. It was a representation of a fair, with peasants and artisans in an orgy of enjoyment, drunk and absurd in their modern dress, whirling ridiculously in roundabouts, gaping at shows, kissing and staggering and rolling in knots, swinging in swing-boats, and firing down shooting galleries, a frenzy of chaotic motion. There was a swift discussion of technicalities. Gudrun was very much impressed. But how wonderful to have such a factory! cried Ursula. Is the whole building fine? Oh, yes, he replied. The freeze is part of the whole architecture. Yes, it is a colossal thing. Then he seemed to stiffen, shrugged his shoulders, and went on. Sculpture and architecture must go together. The day for irrelevant statues as for wall pictures is over. As a matter of fact, sculpture is always part of an architectural conception. And since churches are all museum stuff, since industry is our business now, then let us make our places of industry our art, our factory area our path and on echo. Ursula pondered. I suppose, she said, there is no need for our great works to be so hideous. Instantly he broke into motion. There you are, he cried. There you are. There is not only no need for our places of work to be ugly, but their ugliness ruins the work in the end. Men will not go on submitting to such intolerable ugliness. In the end it will hurt too much, and they will wither because of it. And this will wither the work as well. And they will think the work itself is ugly, the machines the very act of labour, whereas the machinery and the acts of labour are extremely maddeningly beautiful. But this will be the end of our civilisation when people will not work because work has become so intolerable to their senses, it nauseates them too much they would rather starve. Then we shall see the hammer used only for smashing, then we shall see it. Yet here we are. We have the opportunity to make beautiful factories, beautiful machine houses. We have the opportunity... Gudrun could only partly understand she could have cried with vexation. What does he say? She asked Ursula. And Ursula translated, stammering and brief. Lurker watched Gudrun's face to see her judgement. And do you think then, said Gudrun, that art should serve industry? Art should interpret industry, as art once interpreted religion, he said. But does your fair interpret industry? She asked him. Certainly. What is man doing when he is at a fair like this? He is fulfilling the counterpart of labour. The machine works him. Instead of he, the machine, he enjoys the mechanical motion in his own body. But is there nothing but work, mechanical work? said Gudrun. Nothing but work, he repeated, leaning forward, his eyes to darknesses with needle-points of light. No, it is nothing but this, serving a machine or enjoying the motion of a machine. Motion, that is all. You have never worked for hunger or you would know what God governs us. Gudrun quivered and flushed. For some reason she was almost in tears. No, I have not worked for hunger, she replied, but I have worked. Travailler, l'avorato, he asked. Que lavoro, que lavoro? Que travail es que vous avez fait? He broke into a mixture of Italian and French, instinctively using a foreign language when he spoke to her. You have never worked as the world works, he said to her with sarcasm. Yes, she said, I have, and I do. I work now for my daily bread. He paused, looked at her steadily, then dropped the subject entirely. She seemed to him to be trifling. But have you ever worked as the world works? Ursula asked him. He looked at her untrustful. Yes, he replied with a surly bark, I had known what it was to lie in bed for three days because I had nothing to eat. Gudrun was looking at him with large grave eyes that seemed to draw the confession from him as the marrow from his bones. All his nature held him back from confessing, and yet her large grave eyes upon him seemed to open some valve in his veins, and involuntarily he was telling. My father was a man who did not like work, and we had no mother. We lived in Austria, Polish Austria. How did we live? Ha! Somehow. Mostly in a room with three other families, one set in each corner, and the WC in the middle of the room a pan with a plank on it. Ha! I had two brothers and a sister, and there might be a woman with my father. He was a free being in his way, would fight with any man in the town, a garrison town, and was a little man too, but he wouldn't work for anybody, set his heart against it and wouldn't. And how did you live then? asked Ursula. He looked at her, then suddenly at Gudrun. Do you understand? he asked. Enough, she replied. Their eyes met for a moment. Then he looked away. He would say no more. And how did you become a sculptor? asked Ursula. How did I become a sculptor? he paused. So he resumed in a changed manner, and beginning to speak French. I became old enough. I used to steal from the marketplace. Later I went to work, imprinted the stamp on clay bottles before they were baked. It was an earthenware bottle factory. There I began making models. One day I had had enough. I lay in the sun and did not go to work. Then I walked to Munich. Then I walked to Italy, begging, begging everything. The Italians were very good to me. They were good and honourable to me. From Boson to Rome, almost every night I had a meal and a bed, perhaps of straw, with some peasant. I loved the Italian people with all my heart. Don Que Adesso, Manteno, I earn a thousand pounds in a year, or I earn two thousand. He looked down at the ground, his voice tailing off into silence. Gudrun looked at his fine, thin, shiny skin, reddish-brown from the sun, drawn tight over his full temples, and at his thin hair, and at the thick coarse brush-like moustache cut short about his mobile rather shapeless mouth. How old are you? she asked. He looked up at her with his full, elfin eyes startled. Vialte, he repeated, and he hesitated. It was evidently one of his reticences. How old are you? he replied, without answering. I am twenty-six, she answered. Twenty-six, he repeated, looking into her eyes. He paused. Then he said, Who asked Gudrun? Your husband, said Ursula, with a certain irony. I haven't got a husband, said Gudrun, in English. In German, she answered, he is thirty-one. But Lurker was watching closely, with his uncanny, full, suspicious eyes. Something in Gudrun seemed to accord with him. He was really like one of the little people who have no soul, who has found his mate in a human being. But he suffered in his discovery. She, too, was fascinated by him, fascinated as if some strange creature, a rabbit, or a bat, or a brown seal, had begun to talk to her. But also she knew what he was unconscious of, his tremendous power of understanding, of apprehending her living motion. He did not know his own power. He did not know how, with his full, submerged, watchful eyes, he could look into her, and see her, what she was, see her secrets. He would only want her to be herself. He knew her, verily, with a subconscious, sinister knowledge devoid of illusions and hopes. To Gudrun there was in Lurker the rock-bottom of all life. Everybody else had their illusion, must have their illusion, there before and after. But he, with a perfect stoicism, did without any before and after, dispensed with all illusion. He did not deceive himself in the last issue. In the last issue he cared about nothing, he was troubled about nothing. He made not the slightest attempt to be at one with anything. He existed a pure, unconnected will, stoical and momentaneous. There was only his work. It was curious, too, how his poverty, the degradation of his earlier life, attracted her. There was something insipid and tasteless to her in the idea of a gentleman, a man who had gone the usual course through school and university. A certain violent sympathy, however, came up in her for this mud-child. He seemed to be the very stuff of the underworld of life. There was no going beyond him. Ursula, too, was attracted by Lurker. In both sisters he commanded a certain homage. But there were moments when, to Ursula, he seemed indescribably inferior, false, a vulgarism. Both Birkin and Gerald disliked him, Gerald ignoring him with some contempt. Birkin exasperated. What do the women find so impressive in that little brat? Gerald asked. God alone knows, replied Birkin, unless it's some sort of appeal he makes to them which flatters them and has such a power over them. Gerald looked up in surprise. Does he make an appeal to them? he asked. Oh, yes, replied Birkin. He is the perfectly subjected being, existing almost like a criminal, and the women rush towards that, like a current of air towards a vacuum. Funny they should rush to that, said Gerald. Makes one mad, too, said Birkin. But he has the fascination of pity and repulsion for them. A little obscene monster of the darkness that he is. Gerald stood still, suspended in thought. What do women want at the bottom? he asked. Birkin shrugged his shoulders. God knows, he said, some satisfaction in basic repulsion, it seems to me. They seemed to creep down some ghastly tunnel of darkness and will never be satisfied till they'd come to the end. Gerald looked out into the mist of fine snow that was blowing by. Everywhere was blind today, horribly blind. And what is the end? he asked. Birkin shook his head. I've not got there yet, so I don't know. Ask Lurker, he's pretty near. He has a good many stages further than either you or I can go. Yes, but stages further in what? cried Gerald, irritated. Birkin sighed and gathered his brows into a knot of anger. Stages further in social hatred, he said. He lives like a rat in the river of corruption, just where it falls over into the bottomless pit. He's further on than we are. He hates the ideal more acutely. He hates the ideal utterly, yet it still dominates him. I expect he is a Jew or part Jewish. Probably, said Gerald. He is annoying little negation, annoying at the roots of life. But why does anybody care about him? cried Gerald. Because they hate the ideal also in their souls. They want to explore the sewers, and he's the wizard rat that swims ahead. Still Gerald stood and stared at the blind haze of snow outside. I don't understand your terms, really, he said in a flat, doomed voice. But it sounds a rum sort of desire. I suppose we want the same, said Birkin, only we want to take a quick jump downwards in a sort of ecstasy, and he ebbs with the stream, the sewer stream. Meanwhile Gudrun and Ursula waited for the next opportunity to talk to Lurka. It was no use beginning when the men were there. Then they could get into no touch with the isolated little sculptor. He had to be alone with them, and he preferred Ursula to be there as a sort of transmitter to Gudrun. Do you do nothing but architectural sculpture? Gudrun asked him one evening. Not now, he replied. I have done all sorts, except portraits. I never did portraits, but other things. What kind of things? asked Gudrun. He paused a moment, then rose and went out of the room. He returned almost immediately with a little roll of paper which he handed to her. She unrolled it. It was a photograph your reproduction of a statuette, signed F. Lurka. That is quite an early thing, not mechanical, he said, more popular. The statuette was of a naked girl, small, finely made, sitting on a great naked horse. The girl was young and tender, a mere bud. She was sitting sideways on the horse, her face in her hands, as if in shame and grief, in a little abandon. Her hair, which was short and must be flaxen, fell forward, divided, half covering her hands. Her limbs were young and tender, her legs scarcely formed yet, the legs of a maiden just passing towards cruel womanhood, dangled childishly over the side of the powerful horse, Percetically the small feet folded one over the other as if to hide, but there was no hiding, there she was exposed, naked, on the naked flank of the horse. The horse stood stock still, stretched in a kind of start. It was a massive, magnificent stallion, rigid with pent-up power. Its neck was arched and terrible, like a sickle, its flanks were pressed back, rigid with power. Gudrun went pale, and a darkness came over her eyes like shame. She looked up with a certain supplication, almost slave-like. He glanced at her and jerked his head a little. How big is it, she asked, in a toamless voice, persisting in appearing casual and unaffected. How big, he replied, glancing again at her. Without pedestal so high, he measured with his hand, with pedestal so. He looked at her steadily. There was a little brusque, turgid contempt for her in his swift gesture, and she seemed to cringe a little. And what is it done in, she asked, throwing back her head and looking at him with affected coldness. He still gazed at her steadily, and his dominance was not shaken. Bronze, green bronze. Green bronze, repeated Gudrun, coldly accepting his challenge. She was thinking of the slender, immature, tender limbs of the girl, smooth and cold in green bronze. Yes, beautiful, she murmured, looking up at him with a certain dark homage. He closed his eyes and looked aside, triumphant. Why, said Ursula, did you make the horse so stiff? It is as stiff as a block. Stiff? he repeated in arms at once. Yes, look how stark and stupid and brutal it is. Horse is as sensitive, quite delicate and sensitive, really. He raised his shoulders, spread his hands in a shrug of slow indifference, as much as to inform her she was an amateur and an impertinent nobody. Fish and sea, he said, with an insulting patience and condescension in his voice. That horse is a certain form, part of a whole form. It is part of a work of art, a piece of form. It is not a picture of a friendly horse to which you give a lump of sugar, do you see? It is part of a work of art. It has no relation to anything outside that work of art. Ursula, angry at being treated quite so insultingly, do oh, en barre, from the height of esoteric art to the depth of general exoteric amateurism, replied hotly, flushing and lifting her face. But it is a picture of a horse, nevertheless. He lifted his shoulders in another shrug, as you like. It is not a picture of a cow, certainly. Here Gudrun broke in, flushed and brilliant, anxious to avoid any more of this, any more of Ursula's foolish persistence in giving herself away. What do you mean by it is a picture of a horse? She cried at her sister. What do you mean by a horse? You mean an idea you have in your head and which you want to see represented. There is another idea altogether, quite another idea. Call it a horse, if you like, or say it is not a horse. I have just as much right to say that your horse isn't a horse, that it is a falsity of your own makeup. Ursula wavered, baffled. Then her words came. But why does he have this idea of a horse? She said, I know it is his idea. I know it is a picture of himself, really. Lurka snorted with rage. A picture of myself! He repeated in derision. This and seek, Nediga Frau, that is a Kunstwerk, a work of art. It is a work of art. It is a picture of nothing, of absolutely nothing. It has nothing to do with anything but itself. It has no relation with the everyday world of this and other. There is no connection between them, absolutely none. There are two different and distinct planes of existence. And to translate one into the other is worse and foolish. It is a darkening of all counsel and making confusion everywhere. Do you see? You must not confuse the relative work of action with the absolute world of art. That you must not do. That is quite true, cried Gudrun, let loose in a sort of rhapsody. The two things are quite and permanently apart. They have nothing to do with one another. I and my art. They have nothing to do with each other. My art stands in another world. I am in this world." Her face was flushed and transfigured. Lurker, who was sitting with his head ducked, like some creature at bay, looked up at her, swiftly, almost furtively, and murmured, Ya, zoistus, zoistus! Ursula was silent after this outburst. She was furious. She wanted to poke a hole into them both. It isn't a word of it true, of all this harangue you have made me, she replied, flatly. The horse is a picture of your own stock, stupid brutality, and the girl was a girl you loved and tortured and then ignored. He looked up at her with a small smile of contempt in his eyes. He would not trouble to answer this last charge. Gudrun, too, was silent in exasperated contempt. Ursula was such an insufferable outsider, rushing in where angels would fear to tread. But then fools must be suffered, if not gladly. But Ursula was persistent, too. As for your world of art and your world of reality, she replied, you have to separate the two, because you can't bear to know what you are. You can't bear to realise what a stock, stiff, hide-bound brutality you are, really. So you say it's the world of art. The world of art is only the truth about the real world, that's all. But you are too far gone to see it. She was white and trembling, intent. Gudrun and Lurka sat in stiff dislike of her. Gerald, too, who had come up in the beginning of the speech, stood looking at her in complete disapproval and opposition. He felt she was undignified. She put a sort of vulgarity over the esotericism which gave man his last distinction. He joined his forces with the other two. They all three wanted her to go away. But she sat on in silence, her soul weeping, throbbing violently, her fingers twisting her handkerchief. The others maintained a dead silence, letting the display of Ursula's obtrusiveness pass by. Then Gudrun asked, in a voice that was quite cool and casual, as if resuming a casual conversation, was the girl a model? An art student replied Gudrun. And how the situation revealed itself to her. She saw the girl art student, unformed and of pernicious recklessness, too young, her straight flaxen hair cut short, hanging just into her neck, curving inward slightly because it was rather thick. And Lurka, the well-known master sculptor, and the girl probably well brought up and of good family, making herself so great to be his mistress. Oh, how well she knew the common callousness of it all. Dresden, Paris or London, what did it matter? She knew it. Where is she now? Ursula asked. Lurka raised his shoulders to convey his complete ignorance and indifference. That is already six years ago, he said. She will be twenty-three years old, no more good. Gerald had picked up the picture and was looking at it. It attracted him also. He saw on the pedestal that the piece was called Lady Godiva. But this isn't Lady Godiva, he said, smiling good-humidly. She was the middle-aged wife of some Earl or other who covered herself with her long hair. Alla Maud Allen, said Gudrun with a mocking grimace. Why Maud Allen? he replied. Isn't it so? I always thought the legend was that. Yes, Gerald dear, I'm quite sure you've got the legend perfectly. She was laughing at him with a little mock, caressive contempt. To be sure, I'd rather see the woman than the hair. He laughed in return. Wouldn't you just mocked Gudrun? Ursula rose and went away, leaving the three together. Gudrun took the picture again from Gerald and sat looking at it closely. Of course, she said, turning to tease Lurka now, you understood your little Marle Shulerin. He raised his eyebrows and his shoulders in a complacent shrug. The little girl asked Gerald, pointing to the figure. Gudrun was sitting with the picture in her lap. She looked up at Gerald full into his eyes so that he seemed to be blinded. Didn't he understand her, she said to Gerald in a slightly mocking, humorous playfulness. You've only to look at the feet, aren't they, darling, so pretty and tender. Oh, they're really wonderful. They're really—she lifted her eyes slowly with a hot, flaming look into Lurka's eyes. His soul was filled with her burning recognition. He seemed to grow more upish and lordly. Gerald looked at the small, sculptured feet. They were turned together, half covering each other in pathetic shyness and fear. He looked at them a long time, fascinated. Then, in some pain, he put the picture away from him. He felt full of barrenness. What was her name? Gudrun asked Lurka. Annette von Weck, Lurka replied, reminiscent. Yes, Eva Hübsch. She was pretty, but she was tiresome. She was a nuisance. Not for a minute would she keep still, not until I had slapped her hard and made her cry. Then she'd sit for five minutes. He was thinking over the work, his work, the all-important to him. Did you really slap her? asked Gudrun, coolly. He glanced back at her, reading her challenge. Yes, I did, he said, nonchalant, harder than I have ever beat anything in my life. I had to. I had to. It was the only way I got the work done. Gudrun watched him with large, dark-filled eyes for some moments. She seemed to be considering his very soul. Then she looked down in silence. Why did you have such a younger diver, then? asked Gerald. She is so small besides on the horse, not big enough for it, such a child. A queer spasm went over Lurka's face. Yes, he said, I don't like them any bigger, any older. Then they are beautiful at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. After that they are no use to me. There was a moment's pause. Why not? asked Gerald. Lurka shrugged his shoulders. I don't find them interesting or beautiful. They are no good to me for my work. Do you mean to say a woman isn't beautiful after she is twenty? asked Gerald. For me, no. Before twenty she is small and fresh and tender and slight. After that, let her be what she likes, she has nothing for me. The Venus of Milo is a bourgeois, so are they all. And you don't care for women at all after twenty? asked Gerald. They are no good to me, they are of no use in my art. Lurka repeated impatiently, I don't find them beautiful. Here you are in Epicure, said Gerald, with a slight sarcastic laugh. And what about men? asked Gudrun suddenly. Yes, they are good at all ages, replied Lurka. A man should be big and powerful, whether he is old or young is of no account. So he has the size, something of massiveness and stupid form. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ruth Golding. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence, the fifth part of Chapter 29, Continental. Ursula went out alone into the world of pure new snow. But the dazzling whiteness seemed to beat upon her till it hurt her. She felt the cold was slowly strangling her soul. Her head felt dazed and numb. Suddenly she wanted to go away. It occurred to her like a miracle that she might go away into another world. She had felt so doomed up here in the eternal snow as if there were no beyond. Now suddenly, as by a miracle, she remembered that a way beyond below her lay the dark, fruitful earth. That towards the south there were stretches of land dark with orange trees and cypress, grey with olives. That Ilex trees lifted wonderful, plumy tufts in shadow against a blue sky. Miracle of miracles. This utterly silent, frozen world of the mountaintops was not universal. One might leave it and have done with it. One might go away. She wanted to realise the miracle at once. She wanted at this instant to have done with the snow world the terrible, static, ice-built mountaintops. She wanted to see the dark earth, to smell it earthy for cundity, to see the patient wintry vegetation, to feel the sunshine touch a response in the buds. She went back gladly to the house full of hope. Birkin was reading, lying in bed. "'Rupert!' she said, bursting in on him. "'I want to go away!' he looked up at her slowly. "'Do you?' he replied mildly. She sat by him and put her arms round his neck. It surprised her that he was so little surprised. "'Don't you?' she asked, troubled. "'I hadn't thought about it,' he said. "'But I'm sure I do.' She sat up, suddenly erect. "'I hate it!' she said. "'I hate the snow and the unnaturalness of it, the unnatural light it throws on everybody, the ghastly glamour, the unnatural feelings it makes everybody have.' He lay still and laughed, meditating. "'Well,' he said, "'we can go away. We can go to Morrow. "'We'll go to Morrow to Verona and find Romeo and Juliet, and sit in the amphitheatre, shall we?' Suddenly she hid her face against his shoulder, with perplexity and shyness. He lay so untrammeled. "'Yes,' she said softly, filled with relief. She felt her soul had new wings. Now he was so uncaring. "'I shall love to be Romeo and Juliet,' she said, "'my love.' "'Though a fearfully cold wind blows in Verona,' he said, "'from out of the Alps, we shall have the smell of the snow in our noses.' She sat up and looked at him. "'Are you glad to go?' she asked, troubled. His eyes were inscrutable and laughing. She hid her face against his neck, clinging close to him, pleading, "'Don't laugh at me! Don't laugh at me!' "'Why, how's that?' he laughed, putting his arms round her. "'Because I don't want to be laughed at,' she whispered. He laughed more as he kissed her delicate, finely perfumed hair. "'Do you love me?' she whispered in wild seriousness. "'Yes,' he answered, laughing. Suddenly she lifted her mouth to be kissed. Her lips were taut and quivering and strenuous. His were soft, deep, and delicate. He waited a few moments in the kiss. Then a shade of sadness went over his soul. "'Your mouth is so hard,' he said, in a faint reproach. "'And yours is so soft and nice,' she said gladly. "'But why do you always grip your lips?' he asked, regretful. "'Never mind,' she said swiftly. "'It is my way.' She knew he loved her. She was sure of him, yet she could not let go a certain hold over herself. She could not bear him to question her. She gave herself up in delight to being loved by him. She knew that, in spite of his joy when she abandoned herself, he was a little bit saddened, too. She could give herself up to his activity, but she could not be herself. She dared not come forth quite nakedly to his nakedness, abandoning all adjustment, lapsing in pure faith with him. She abandoned herself to him, or she took hold of him and gathered her joy of him, and she enjoyed him fully. But they were never quite together at the same moment. One was always a little left out. Nevertheless, she was glad in hope, glorious and free, full of life and liberty, and he was still and soft and patient for the time. They made their preparations to leave the next day. First they went to Gudrun's room, where she and Gerald were just dressed ready for the evening indoors. "'Proon,' said Ursula, "'I think we shall go away to-morrow. I can't stand the snow any more. It hurts my skin and my soul.' "'Does it really hurt your soul, Ursula?' asked Gudrun in some surprise. "'I can believe quite it hurts your skin. It is terrible, but I thought it was admirable for the soul.' "'No, not for mine. It just injures it,' said Ursula. "'Really?' cried Gudrun. There was a silence in the room, and Ursula and Birkin could feel that Gudrun and Gerald were relieved by their going. "'You will go south,' said Gerald, a little ring of uneasiness in his voice. "'Yes,' said Birkin, turning away. There was a queer, indefinable hostility between the two men lately. Birkin was on the whole dim and indifferent, drifting along in a dim, easy flow, unnoticing and patient since he came abroad, whilst Gerald, on the other hand, was intense and gripped into white light, agonisties. The two men revoked one another. Gerald and Gudrun were very kind to the two who were departing, solicitous for their welfare as if they were two children. Gudrun came to Ursula's bedroom with three pairs of the coloured stockings for which she was notorious, and she threw them on the bed. But these were thick silk stockings for million cornflower blue and grey bought in Paris. The grey ones were knitted, seamless and heavy. Ursula was in raptures. She knew Gudrun must be feeling very loving to give away such treasures. I can't take them from you, prune, she cried. I can't possibly deprive you of them, the jewels. Aren't they jewels? cried Gudrun, eyeing her gifts with an envious eye. Aren't they real lands? Yes, you must keep them, said Ursula. I don't want them. I've got three more pairs. I want you to keep them. I want you to have them. They're yours there." And with trembling, excited hands she put the coveted stockings under Ursula's pillow. One gets the greatest joy of all out of really lovely stockings, said Ursula. One does, replied Gudrun, the greatest joy of all. And she sat down in the chair. It was evident she had come for a last talk. Ursula, not knowing what she wanted, waited in silence. Do you feel, Ursula, Gudrun began rather skeptically, that you are going away forever never to return, sort of thing? Oh, we shall come back, said Ursula. It isn't a question of train journeys. Yes, I know, but spiritually, so to speak, you are going away from us all. Ursula quivered. I don't know a bit what is going to happen, she said. I only know we're going somewhere. Gudrun waited. And you are glad, she asked. Ursula meditated for a moment. I believe I am very glad, she replied. But Gudrun read the unconscious brightness on her sister's face, rather than the uncertain tones of her speech. But don't you think you'll want the old connection with the world, father and the rest of us and all that it means, England and the world of thought? Don't you think you'll need that, really, to make a world? Ursula was silent, trying to imagine. I think, she said at length involuntarily, that Rupert is right. One wants a new space to be in, and one falls away from the old. Gudrun watched her sister with impassive face and steady eyes. One wants a new space to be in, I quite agree, she said. But I think that a new world is a development from this world, and that to isolate oneself with one other person isn't to find a new world at all, but only to secure oneself in one's illusions. Ursula looked out of the window. In her soul she began to wrestle, and she was frightened. She was always frightened of words, because she knew that mere word-force could always make her believe what she did not believe. Perhaps, she said, full of mistrust of herself and everybody. But, she added, I do think that one can't have anything new whilst one cares for the old. Do you know what I mean? Even fighting the old is belonging to it. I know one is tempted to stop with the world just to fight it, but then it isn't worth it. Gudrun considered herself. Yes, she said. In a way one is of the world if one lives in it, but isn't it really an illusion to think that you can get out of it? After all, a cottage in the Abruzzi, or wherever it may be, isn't a new world. No, the only thing to do with the world is to see it through. Ursula looked away. She was so frightened of argument. But there can be something else, can't there? She said. One can see it through in one's soul long enough before it sees itself through in actuality. And then, when one has seen one's soul, one is something else. Can one see it through in one's soul? asked Gudrun. If you mean that you can see to the end of what will happen, I don't agree. I really can't agree. And anyhow, you can't suddenly fly off onto a new planet because you think you can see to the end of this. Ursula suddenly straightened herself. Yes, she said. Yes, one knows. One has no more connections here. One has a sort of other self that belongs to a new planet, not to this. You've got to hop off. Gudrun reflected for a few moments. Then a smile of ridicule, almost of contempt, came over her face. And what will happen when you find yourself in space? she cried in derision. After all, the great ideas of the world are the same there. You above everybody can't get away from the fact that love, for instance, is the supreme thing in space as well as on earth. No, said Ursula. It isn't. Love is too human and little. I believe in something inhuman of which love is only a little part. I believe what we must fulfil comes out of the unknown to us. And it is something infinitely more than love. It isn't so merely human. Gudrun looked at Ursula with steady balancing eyes. She admired and despised her sister so much, both. Then suddenly she averted her face, saying coldly, uglyly, Well, I've got no further than love yet. Over Ursula's mind flashed the thought, Because you never have loved, you can't get beyond it. Gudrun rose, came over to Ursula and put her arm round her neck. Go and find your new world dear, she said, her voice clanging with false benignity. After all, the happiest voyage is the quest of Rupert's blessed aisles. Her arm rested around Ursula's neck, her fingers on Ursula's cheek for a few moments. Ursula was supremely uncomfortable, meanwhile. There was an insult in Gudrun's protective patronage that was really too hurting. Feeling her sister's resistance, Gudrun drew awkwardly away, turned over the pillow and disclosed the stockings again. Ha! Ha! She laughed rather hollily. How we do talk, indeed, new worlds and old! And they passed to the familiar worldly subjects. Gerald and Birkin had walked on ahead, waiting for the Sledge to overtake them, conveying the departing guests. How much longer will you stay here? asked Birkin, glancing up at Gerald's very red, almost blank face. Oh, I can't say! Gerald replied. Till we get tired of it! You're not afraid of the snow melting first? asked Birkin. Gerald laughed. Does it melt? he said. Things are all right with you, then? said Birkin. Gerald screwed up his eyes a little. All right, he said. I never know what those common words mean. All right and all wrong, don't they become synonymous somewhere? Yes, I suppose. How about going back? asked Birkin. Oh, I don't know. We may never get back. I don't look before and after, said Gerald. Nor pine for what is not, said Birkin. Gerald looked into the distance with the small pupil's abstract eyes of a hawk. No, there's something final about this, and Gudrun seems like the end to me. I don't know, but she seems so soft, her skin like silk, her arms heavy and soft, and it withers my consciousness somehow, it burns the pith of my mind. He went on a few paces, staring ahead, his eyes fixed, looking like a mask used in ghastly religions of the barbarians. It blasts your soul's eye, he said, and leaves you cyclous. Yet you want to be cyclous, you want to be blasted, you don't want it any different. He was speaking as if in a trance, verbal and blank. Then suddenly he braced himself up with a kind of rhapsody, put Birkin with vindictive, cowed eyes, saying, Do you know what it is to suffer when you are with a woman? She's so beautiful, so perfect, you find her so good. It tears you like a silk, and every stroke and bit cuts hot. Ha! That perfection, when you blast yourself, you blast yourself. And then he stopped on the snow and suddenly opened his clenched hands. It's nothing. Your brain might have gone charred as rags, and he looked round into the air with a queer, histrionic movement. It's blasting. You understand what I mean? It is a great experience, something final. And then you're shriveled as if struck by electricity. He walked on in silence. It seemed like bragging, but like a man in extremity bragging truthfully. Of course, he resumed, I wouldn't not have had it. It's a complete experience, and she's a wonderful woman. But how I hate her somewhere. It's curious. Birkin looked at him, at his strange, scarcely conscious face. Gerald seemed blank before his own words. But you've had enough now, said Birkin. You have had your experience. Why work on an old wound? Oh, said Gerald. I don't know. It's not finished. And the two walked on. I've loved you, as well as Gudrun. Don't forget, said Birkin bitterly. Gerald looked at him, strangely, abstractedly. Have you, he said, with icy scepticism? Or do you think you have? He was hardly responsible for what he said. The sledge came. Gudrun dismounted, and they all made their farewell. They wanted to go apart, all of them. Birkin took his place, and the sledge drove away, leaving Gudrun and Gerald standing on the snow, waving. Something froze Birkin's heart, seeing them standing there in the isolation of the snow, growing smaller and more isolated. End of Chapter 29. Recording by Ruth Golding Chapter 30 of Women in Love When Ursula and Birkin were gone, Gudrun felt herself free in her contest with Gerald. As they grew more used to each other, he seemed to press upon her more and more. At first she could manage him, so that her own will was always left free. But very soon he began to ignore her female tactics. He dropped his respect for her whims and her privacies. He began to exert his own will blindly, without submitting to hers. Already a vital conflict had set in which frightened them both. But he was alone, whilst already she had begun to cast ground for external resource. When Ursula had gone, Gudrun felt her own existence had become stark and elemental. She went and crouched alone in her bedroom, looking out of the window at the big flashing stars. In front was the faint shadow of the mountain knot. That was the pivot. She felt strange and inevitable, as if she were centred upon the pivot of all existence. There was no further reality. Presently Gerald opened the door. She knew he would not be long before he came. She was rarely alone. He pressed upon her like a frost, deadening her. Are you alone in the dark? he said, and she could tell by his tone he resented it. He resented this isolation she had drawn round herself. Yet feeling static and inevitable, she was kind towards him. Would you like to light the candle? she asked. He did not answer, but came and stood behind her in the darkness. Look, she said, at that lovely star up there, do you know its name? He crouched beside her to look through the low window. No, he said, it is very fine. Isn't it beautiful? Do you notice how it darts different coloured fires? It flashes really superbly. They remained in silence. With a mute, heavy gesture, she put her hand on his knee and took his hand. Are you regretting Ursula? he asked. No, not at all, she said. Then in a slow mood she asked, how much do you love me? He stiffened himself further against her. How much do you think I do? he asked. I don't know, she replied. But what is your opinion? he asked. There was a pause. At length in the darkness came her voice, hard and indifferent. Very little indeed, she said, coldly, almost flippant. His heart went icy at the sound of her voice. Why then I love you? he asked, as if admitting the truth of her accusation, yet hating her for it. I don't know why you don't. I've been good to you. You were in a fearful state when you came to me. Her heart was beating to suffocate her, yet she was strong and unrelenting. When was I in a fearful state? he asked. When you first came to me, I had to take pity on you, but it was never love. It was that statement, it was never love, which sounded in his ears with madness. I must you repeat it so often that there is no love. He said in a voice strangled with rage. Well, you don't think you love, do you? she asked. He was silent with cold passion of anger. You don't think you can love me, do you? she repeated, almost with a sneer. No, he said. You know you never have loved me, don't you? I don't know what you mean by the word love, he replied. Yes, you do. You know all right that you have never loved me. Have you, do you, think? No, he said, prompted by some barren spirit of truthfulness and obstinacy. And you never will love me, she said, finally. Will you? There was a diabolic coldness in her. Too much to bear. No, he said. Then she replied, what have you against me? He was silent in cold, frightened rage and despair. If only I could kill her. His heart was whispering repeatedly, if only I could kill her, I should be free. It seemed to him that death was the only severing of this Gordian knot. Why do you torture me, he said. She flung her arms round his neck. I don't want to torture you, she said, pityingly, as if she were comforting a child. The impertinence made his veins go cold. He was insensible. She held her arms round his neck in a triumph of pity. And her pity for him was as cold as stone. Its deepest motive was hate of him and fear of his power over her, which she must always counter-foil. Say you love me, she pleaded. Say you will love me forever. Won't you? Won't you? But it was her voice only that coaxed him. Her senses were entirely apart from him, cold and destructive of him. It was her overbearing will that insisted. Won't you say you love me always, she coaxed. Say it, even if it isn't true. Say it, Gerald, do. I will love you always, he repeated, in real agony, forcing the words out. She gave him a quick kiss. Fancy your actually having said it, she said, with a touch of railery. He stood as if he had been beaten. Try to love me a little more, and to want me a little less, she said, in a half-contemptuous, half-coaxing tone. The darkness seemed to be swaying in waves across his mind, great waves of darkness plunging across his mind. It seemed to him he was degraded at the very quick, made of no account. You mean you don't want me, he said. You are so insistent, and there is so little grace in you, so little fineness. You are so crude, you break me, you only waste me. It is horrible to me. Horrible to you, he repeated. Yes. Don't you think I might have a room to myself? No, Ursula has gone. You can say you want a dressing room. You do as you like. You can leave altogether if you like. He managed to articulate. Yes, I know that, she replied. So can you. You can leave me whenever you like, without notice even. The great tides of darkness were swinging across his mind. He could hardly stand upright. A terrible weariness overcame him. He felt he must lie on the floor. Dropping off his clothes he got into bed, and lay like a man suddenly overcome by drunkenness, the darkness lifting and plunging as if he were lying on a black, giddy sea. He lay still in this strange, horrific reeling for some time, purely unconscious. At length she slipped from her own bed and came over to him. He remained rigid, his back to her. He was all but unconscious. She put her arms round his terrifying, insentient body, and laid her cheek against his hard shoulder. Gerald! she whispered. Gerald! There was no change in him. She caught him against her. She pressed her breasts against his shoulders. She kissed his shoulder through the sleeping jacket. Her mind wandered over his rigid, unliving body. She was bewildered and insistent. Only her will was set for him to speak to her. Gerald! my dear! She whispered, bending over him, kissing his ear. Her warm breath, playing, flying rhythmically over his ear, seemed to relax the tension. She could feel his body gradually relaxing a little, losing its terrifying unnatural rigidity. Her hands clutched his limbs, his muscles, going over him spasmodically. The hot blood began to flow again through his veins, his limbs relaxed. Turn round to me, she whispered, forlorn with insistence and triumph. So at last he was given again warm and flexible. He turned and gathered her in his arms, and feeling her soft against him, so perfectly and wondrously soft and recipient. His arms tightened on her. She was, as if crushed, powerless in him. His brain seemed hard and invincible now, like a jewel. There was no resisting him. His passion was awful to her. Tense and ghastly and impersonal, like a destruction ultimate. She felt it would kill her. She was being killed. My God! My God! She cried in anguish in his embrace, feeling her life being killed within her. And when he was kissing her, soothing her, her breath came slowly, as if she were really spent dying. Shall I die? Shall I die? She repeated to herself. And in the night and in him there was no answer to the question. And yet, next day, the fragment of her which was not destroyed remained intact and hostile. She did not go away. She remained to finish the holiday admitting nothing. He scarcely ever left her alone, but followed her like a shadow. He was like a doom upon her, a continual thou shalt, thou shalt not. Sometimes it was he who seemed strongest, whilst she was almost gone, creeping near the earth like a spent wind. Sometimes it was the reverse. But always it was this eternal seesaw, one destroyed that the other might exist, one ratified because the other was nulled. In the end, she said to herself, I shall go away from him. Can be free of her, he said to himself in his paroxysms of suffering, and he set himself to be free. He even prepared to go away to leave her in the lurch, but for the first time there was a flaw in his will. Where shall I go? he asked himself. Can't you be self-sufficient? he replied to himself, putting himself upon his pride. Self-sufficient! he repeated. It seemed to him that Gudrun was sufficient under herself, closed round, and completed like a thing in a case. In the calm, static reason of his soul he recognised this, and admitted it was her right to be closed round upon herself self-complete without desire. He realised it, he admitted it. It only needed one last effort on his own part to win for himself the same completeness. He knew that it only needed one convulsion of his will for him to be able to turn upon himself also to close upon himself as a stone fixes upon itself and is impervious, self-completed, a thing isolated. This knowledge threw him into a terrible chaos because however much he might mentally will to be immune and self-complete the desire for this state was lacking and he could not create it. He could see that to exist at all he must be perfectly free of Gudrun, leave her if she wanted to be left, demand nothing of her, have no claim upon her. But then to have no claim upon her he must stand by himself in sheer nothingness and his brain turned to naught at the idea it was a state of nothingness. On the other hand he might give in and fawn to her or finally he might kill her or he might become just indifferent purposeless, dissipated, momentaneous. But his nature was too serious not gay enough or subtle enough for mocking licentiousness. A strange rent had been torn in him like a victim that is torn open and given to the heavens so he had been torn apart and given to Gudrun. How should he close again? This wound, this strange infinitely sensitive opening of his soul where he was exposed like an open flower to all the universe and in which he was given to his complement the other, the unknown. This wound, this disclosure, this unfolding of his own covering leaving him incomplete, limited, unfinished like an open flower under the sky. This was his cruelest joy. Why then should he forego it? Why should he close up and become impervious, immune like a partial thing in a sheath when he had broken forth like a seed that has germinated to issue forth in being embracing the unrealised heavens? He would keep the unfinished bliss of his own yearning even through the torture she inflicted upon him. A strange obstinacy possessed him. He would not go away from her whatever she said or did. A strange deathly yearning carried him along with her. She was the determining influence of his very being though she treated him with contempt, repeated rebuffs and denials. Still he would never be gone since in being near her even he felt the quickening, the going forth in him, the release, the knowledge of his own limitation and the magic of the promise as well as the mystery of his own destruction and annihilation. She tortured the open heart of him even as he turned to her. And she was tortured herself. It may have been her will was stronger. She felt with horror as if he tore at the bud of her heart, tore it open like an irreverent, persistent being. Like a boy who pulls off a fly's wings or tears open a bud to see what is in the flower, he tore at her privacy, at her very life. He would destroy her as an immature bud torn open is destroyed. She might open towards him a long while hence in her dreams when she was a pure spirit but now she was not to be violated and ruined. She closed against him fiercely. They climbed together at evening up the high slope to see the sunset. In the finely breathing keen wind they stood and watched the yellow sun sink in crimson and disappear. Then in the east the peaks and ridges glowed with living rose incandescent like immortal flowers against a brown-purple sky, a miracle. Whilst down below the world was a bluish shadow and above like an annunciation hovered a rosy transport in mid-air. To her it was so beautiful. It was a delirium. She wanted to gather the glowing eternal peaks to her breast and die. He saw them, saw they were beautiful but there arose no clamour in his breast only a bitterness that was visionary in itself. He wished the peaks were grey and un-beautiful so that she should not get her support from them. Why did she betray the two of them so terribly in embracing the glow of the evening? Why did she leave him standing there with the ice-wind blowing through his heart like death to gratify herself among the rosy snow-tips? What does the twilight matter? He said. Why do you grovel before it? Is it so important to you? She winced in violation and in fury. Go away! she cried, and leave me to it. It is beautiful, beautiful! she sang in strange, rhapsodic tones. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. Don't try to come between it and me. Take yourself away, you are out of place. He stood back a little and left her standing there, stacked you like, transported into the mystic glowing east. Already the rose was fading, large white stars were flashing out. He waited. He would forgo everything but the yearning. That was the most perfect thing I have ever seen. She said in cold, brutal tones when at last she turned round to him. It amazes me that you should want to destroy it. If you can't see it yourself, why try to debar me? But in reality he had destroyed it for her. She was straining after a dead effect. One day he said softly, looking up at her, I shall destroy you as you stand looking at the sunset because you are such a liar. There was a soft, voluptuous promise to himself in the words. She was chilled but arrogant. Ha! she said, I am not afraid of your threats. She denied herself to him. She kept her room rigidly private to herself. But he waited on in a curious patience, belonging to his yearning for her. In the end he said to himself with real voluptuous promise when it reaches that point I shall do away with her. And he trembled delicately in every limb in anticipation as he trembled in his most violent accesses of passionate approach to her, trembling with too much desire. She had a curious sort of allegiance with lurker all the while now, something insidious and traitorous. Gerald knew of it. But in the unnatural state of patience and the unwillingness to harden himself against her in which he found himself he took no notice. Although her soft kindliness to the other man whom he hated as a noxious insect made him shiver again with an access of the strange shuddering that came over him repeatedly. He left her alone only when he went skiing a sport he loved and which she did not practice. Then he seemed to sweep out of life to be a projectile into the beyond. And often when he went away she talked to the little German sculptor. They had an invariable topic in their art. They were almost of the same ideas. He hated Mestrovitch, was not satisfied with the futurists. He liked the West African wooden figures, the Aztec art, Mexican and Central American. He saw the grotesque and a curious sort of mechanical motion intoxicated him, a confusion in nature. They had a curious game with each other, Gudrun and Lurker, of infinite suggestivity, strange and leering, as if they had some esoteric understanding of life they alone were initiated into the fearful central secrets that the world dared not know. Their whole correspondence was in a strange, barely comprehensible suggestivity. They kindled themselves at the subtle lust of the Egyptians or the Mexicans. The whole game was one of subtle inter-suggestivity and they wanted to keep it on the plane of suggestion. From their verbal and physical nuances they got the highest satisfaction in the nerves from a queer interchange of half-suggested ideas, looks, expressions and gestures which were quite intolerable, though incomprehensible to Gerald. He had no terms in which to think of their commerce. His terms were much too gross. The suggestion of primitive art was their refuge and the inner mysteries of sensation their object of worship. Art and life were to them the reality and the unreality. Of course, said Gudrun, life doesn't really matter. It is one's art which is central. What one does in one's life has per de rapport. It doesn't signify much. Yes, that is so exactly, replied the sculptor. What one does in one's art, that is the breath of one's being. What one does in one's life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about. It was curious what a sense of elation and freedom Gudrun found in this communication she felt established for ever. Of course Gerald was bagatelle. Love was one of the temporal things in her life except insofar as she was an artist. She thought of Cleopatra. Cleopatra must have been an artist. She reaped the essential from a man. She harvested the ultimate sensation and threw away the husk. And Mary's Stuart and the great Rachel panting with her lovers after the theatre were the exoteric exponents of love. After all, what was the lover but fuel for the transport of this subtle knowledge for a female art? The art of pure, perfect knowledge in sensuous understanding. End of the first part of chapter 30 Recording by Ruth Golding