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Women in Love

One evening Gerald was arguing with Loerke about Italy and Tripoli. The Englishman was in a strange, inflammable state, the German was excited. It was a contest of words, but it meant a conflict of spirit between the two men. And all the while Gudrun could see in Gerald an arrogant English contempt for a foreigner. Although Gerald was quivering, his eyes flashing, his face flushed, in his argument there was a brusqueness, a savage contempt in his manner, that made Gudrun's blood flare up, and made Loerke keen and mortified. For Gerald came down like a sledge-hammer with his assertions, anything the little German said was merely contemptible rubbish. At last Loerke turned to Gudrun, raising his hands in helpless irony, a shrug of ironical dismissal, something appealing and child-like. 'Sehen sie, gnadige Frau-' he began. 'Bitte sagen Sie nicht immer, gnadige Frau,' cried Gudrun, her eyes flashing, her cheeks burning. She looked like a vivid Medusa. Her voice was loud and clamorous, the other people in the room were startled. 'Please don't call me Mrs Crich,' she cried aloud. The name, in Loerke's mouth particularly, had been an intolerable humiliation and constraint upon her, these many days. The two men looked at her in amazement. Gerald went white at the cheek-bones. 'What shall I say, then?' asked Loerke, with soft, mocking insinuation. 'Sagen Sie nur nicht das,' she muttered, her cheeks flushed crimson. 'Not that, at least.' She saw, by the dawning look on Loerke's face, that he had understood. She was NOT Mrs Crich! So-o-, that explained a great deal. 'Soll ich Fraulein sagen?' he asked, malevolently. 'I am not married,' she said, with some hauteur. Her heart was fluttering now, beating like a bewildered bird. She knew she had dealt a cruel wound, and she could not bear it. Gerald sat erect, perfectly still, his face pale and calm, like the face of a statue. He was unaware of her, or of Loerke or anybody. He sat perfectly still, in an unalterable calm. Loerke, meanwhile, was crouching and glancing up from under his ducked head. Gudrun was tortured for something to say, to relieve the suspense. She twisted her face in a smile, and glanced knowingly, almost sneering, at Gerald. 'Truth is best,' she said to him, with a grimace. But now again she was under his domination; now, because she had dealt him this blow; because she had destroyed him, and she did not know how he had taken it. She watched him. He was interesting to her. She had lost her interest in Loerke. Gerald rose at length, and went over in a leisurely still movement, to the Professor. The two began a conversation on Goethe. She was rather piqued by the simplicity of Gerald's demeanour this evening. He did not seem angry or disgusted, only he looked curiously innocent and pure, really beautiful. Sometimes it came upon him, this look of clear distance, and it always fascinated her. She waited, troubled, throughout the evening. She thought he would avoid her, or give some sign. But he spoke to her simply and unemotionally, as he would to anyone else in the room. A certain peace, an abstraction possessed his soul. She went to his room, hotly, violently in love with him. He was so beautiful and inaccessible. He kissed her, he was a lover to her. And she had extreme pleasure of him. But he did not come to, he remained remote and candid, unconscious. She wanted to speak to him. But this innocent, beautiful state of unconsciousness that had come upon him prevented her. She felt tormented and dark. In the morning, however, he looked at her with a little aversion, some horror and some hatred darkening into his eyes. She withdrew on to her old ground. But still he would not gather himself together, against her. Loerke was waiting for her now. The little artist, isolated in his own complete envelope, felt that here at last was a woman from whom he could get something. He was uneasy all the while, waiting to talk with her, subtly contriving to be near her. Her presence filled him with keenness and excitement, he gravitated cunningly towards her, as if she had some unseen force of attraction. He was not in the least doubtful of himself, as regards Gerald. Gerald was one of the outsiders. Loerke only hated him for being rich and proud and of fine appearance. All these things, however, riches, pride of social standing, handsome physique, were externals. When it came to the relation with a woman such as Gudrun, he, Loerke, had an approach and a power that Gerald never dreamed of. How should Gerald hope to satisfy a woman of Gudrun's calibre? Did he think that pride or masterful will or physical strength would help him? Loerke knew a secret beyond these things. The greatest power is the one that is subtle and adjusts itself, not one which blindly attacks. And he, Loerke, had understanding where Gerald was a calf. He, Loerke, could penetrate into depths far out of Gerald's knowledge. Gerald was left behind like a postulant in the ante-room of this temple of mysteries, this woman. But he Loerke, could he not penetrate into the inner darkness, find the spirit of the woman in its inner recess, and wrestle with it there, the central serpent that is coiled at the core of life. What was it, after all, that a woman wanted? Was it mere social effect, fulfilment of ambition in the social world, in the community of mankind? Was it even a union in love and goodness? Did she want 'goodness'? Who but a fool would accept this of Gudrun? This was but the street view of her wants. Cross the threshold, and you found her completely, completely cynical about the social world and its advantages. Once inside the house of her soul and there was a pungent atmosphere of corrosion, an inflamed darkness of sensation, and a vivid, subtle, critical consciousness, that saw the world distorted, horrific. What then, what next? Was it sheer blind force of passion that would satisfy her now? Not this, but the subtle thrills of extreme sensation in reduction. It was an unbroken will reacting against her unbroken will in a myriad subtle thrills of reduction, the last subtle activities of analysis and breaking down, carried out in the darkness of her, whilst the outside form, the individual, was utterly unchanged, even sentimental in its poses. But between two particular people, any two people on earth, the range of pure sensational experience is limited. The climax of sensual reaction, once reached in any direction, is reached finally, there is no going on. There is only repetition possible, or the going apart of the two protagonists, or the subjugating of the one will to the other, or death. Gerald had penetrated all the outer places of Gudrun's soul. He was to her the most crucial instance of the existing world, the NE PLUS ULTRA of the world of man as it existed for her. In him she knew the world, and had done with it. Knowing him finally she was the Alexander seeking new worlds. But there WERE no new worlds, there were no more MEN, there were only creatures, little, ultimate CREATURES like Loerke. The world was finished now, for her. There was only the inner, individual darkness, sensation within the ego, the obscene religious mystery of ultimate reduction, the mystic frictional activities of diabolic reducing down, disintegrating the vital organic body of life. All this Gudrun knew in her subconsciousness, not in her mind. She knew her next step-she knew what she should move on to, when she left Gerald. She was afraid of Gerald, that he might kill her. But she did not intend to be killed. A fine thread still united her to him. It should not be HER death which broke it. She had further to go, a further, slow exquisite experience to reap, unthinkable subtleties of sensation to know, before she was finished. Of the last series of subtleties, Gerald was not capable. He could not touch the quick of her. But where his ruder blows could not penetrate, the fine, insinuating blade of Loerke's insect-like comprehension could. At least, it was time for her now to pass over to the other, the creature, the final craftsman. She knew that Loerke, in his innermost soul, was detached from everything, for him there was neither heaven nor earth nor hell. He admitted no allegiance, he gave no adherence anywhere. He was single and, by abstraction from the rest, absolute in himself. Whereas in Gerald's soul there still lingered some attachment to the rest, to the whole. And this was his limitation. He was limited, BORNE, subject to his necessity, in the last issue, for goodness, for righteousness, for oneness with the ultimate purpose. That the ultimate purpose might be the perfect and subtle experience of the process of death, the will being kept unimpaired, that was not allowed in him. And this was his limitation. There was a hovering triumph in Loerke, since Gudrun had denied her marriage with Gerald. The artist seemed to hover like a creature on the wing, waiting to settle. He did not approach Gudrun violently, he was never ill-timed. But carried on by a sure instinct in the complete darkness of his soul, he corresponded mystically with her, imperceptibly, but palpably. For two days, he talked to her, continued the discussions of art, of life, in which they both found such pleasure. They praised the by-gone things, they took a sentimental, childish delight in the achieved perfections of the past. Particularly they liked the late eighteenth century, the period of Goethe and of Shelley, and Mozart. They played with the past, and with the great figures of the past, a sort of little game of chess, or marionettes, all to please themselves. They had all the great men for their marionettes, and they two were the God of the show, working it all. As for the future, that they never mentioned except one laughed out some mocking dream of the destruction of the world by a ridiculous catastrophe of man's invention: a man invented such a perfect explosive that it blew the earth in two, and the two halves set off in different directions through space, to the dismay of the inhabitants: or else the people of the world divided into two halves, and each half decided IT was perfect and right, the other half was wrong and must be destroyed; so another end of the world. Or else, Loerke's dream of fear, the world went cold, and snow fell everywhere, and only white creatures, polar-bears, white foxes, and men like awful white snow-birds, persisted in ice cruelty. Apart from these stories, they never talked of the future. They delighted most either in mocking imaginations of destruction, or in sentimental, fine marionette-shows of the past. It was a sentimental delight to reconstruct the world of Goethe at Weimar, or of Schiller and poverty and faithful love, or to see again Jean Jacques in his quakings, or Voltaire at Ferney, or Frederick the Great reading his own poetry. They talked together for hours, of literature and sculpture and painting, amusing themselves with Flaxman and Blake and Fuseli, with tenderness, and with Feuerbach and Bocklin. It would take them a life-time, they felt to live again, IN PETTO, the lives of the great artists. But they preferred to stay in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. They talked in a mixture of languages. The ground-work was French, in either case. But he ended most of his sentences in a stumble of English and a conclusion of German, she skilfully wove herself to her end in whatever phrase came to her. She took a peculiar delight in this conversation. It was full of odd, fantastic expression, of double meanings, of evasions, of suggestive vagueness. It was a real physical pleasure to her to make this thread of conversation out of the different-coloured stands of three languages. And all the while they two were hovering, hesitating round the flame of some invisible declaration. He wanted it, but was held back by some inevitable reluctance. She wanted it also, but she wanted to put it off, to put it off indefinitely, she still had some pity for Gerald, some connection with him. And the most fatal of all, she had the reminiscent sentimental compassion for herself in connection with him. Because of what HAD been, she felt herself held to him by immortal, invisible threads-because of what HAD been, because of his coming to her that first night, into her own house, in his extremity, because— Gerald was gradually overcome with a revulsion of loathing for Loerke. He did not take the man seriously, he despised him merely, except as he felt in Gudrun's veins the influence of the little creature. It was this that drove Gerald wild, the feeling in Gudrun's veins of Loerke's presence, Loerke's being, flowing dominant through her. 'What makes you so smitten with that little vermin?' he asked, really puzzled. For he, man-like, could not see anything attractive or important AT ALL in Loerke. Gerald expected to find some handsomeness or nobleness, to account for a woman's subjection. But he saw none here, only an insect-like repulsiveness. Gudrun flushed deeply. It was these attacks she would never forgive. 'What do you mean?' she replied. 'My God, what a mercy I am NOT married to you!' Her voice of flouting and contempt scotched him. He was brought up short. But he recovered himself. 'Tell me, only tell me,' he reiterated in a dangerous narrowed voice—'tell me what it is that fascinates you in him.' 'I am not fascinated,' she said, with cold repelling innocence. 'Yes, you are. You are fascinated by that little dry snake, like a bird gaping ready to fall down its throat.' She looked at him with black fury. 'I don't choose to be discussed by you,' she said. 'It doesn't matter whether you choose or not,' he replied, 'that doesn't alter the fact that you are ready to fall down and kiss the feet of that little insect. And I don't want to prevent you—do it, fall down and kiss his feet. But I want to know, what it is that fascinates you—what is it?' She was silent, suffused with black rage. 'How DARE you come brow-beating me,' she cried, 'how dare you, you little squire, you bully. What right have you over me, do you think?' His face was white and gleaming, she knew by the light in his eyes that she was in his power—the wolf. And because she was in his power, she hated him with a power that she wondered did not kill him. In her will she killed him as he stood, effaced him. 'It is not a question of right,' said Gerald, sitting down on a chair. She watched the change in his body. She saw his clenched, mechanical body moving there like an obsession. Her hatred of him was tinged with fatal contempt. 'It's not a question of my right over you—though I HAVE some right, remember. I want to know, I only want to know what it is that subjugates you to that little scum of a sculptor downstairs, what it is that brings you down like a humble maggot, in worship of him. I want to know what you creep after.' She stood over against the window, listening. Then she turned round. 'Do you?' she said, in her most easy, most cutting voice. 'Do you want to know what it is in him? It's because he has some understanding of a woman, because he is not stupid. That's why it is.' A queer, sinister, animal-like smile came over Gerald's face. 'But what understanding is it?' he said. 'The understanding of a flea, a hopping flea with a proboscis. Why should you crawl abject before the understanding of a flea?' There passed through Gudrun's mind Blake's representation of the soul of a flea. She wanted to fit it to Loerke. Blake was a clown too. But it was necessary to answer Gerald. 'Don't you think the understanding of a flea is more interesting than the understanding of a fool?' she asked. 'A fool!' he repeated. 'A fool, a conceited fool—a Dummkopf,' she replied, adding the German word. 'Do you call me a fool?' he replied. 'Well, wouldn't I rather be the fool I am, than that flea downstairs?' She looked at him. A certain blunt, blind stupidity in him palled on her soul, limiting her. 'You give yourself away by that last,' she said. He sat and wondered. 'I shall go away soon,' he said. She turned on him. 'Remember,' she said, 'I am completely independent of you—completely. You make your arrangements, I make mine.' He pondered this. 'You mean we are strangers from this minute?' he asked. She halted and flushed. He was putting her in a trap, forcing her hand. She turned round on him. 'Strangers,' she said, 'we can never be. But if you WANT to make any movement apart from me, then I wish you to know you are perfectly free to do so. Do not consider me in the slightest.' Even so slight an implication that she needed him and was depending on him still was sufficient to rouse his passion. As he sat a change came over his body, the hot, molten stream mounted involuntarily through his veins. He groaned inwardly, under its bondage, but he loved it. He looked at her with clear eyes, waiting for her. She knew at once, and was shaken with cold revulsion. HOW could he look at her with those clear, warm, waiting eyes, waiting for her, even now? What had been said between them, was it not enough to put them worlds asunder, to freeze them forever apart! And yet he was all transfused and roused, waiting for her. It confused her. Turning her head aside, she said: 'I shall always TELL you, whenever I am going to make any change—' And with this she moved out of the room. He sat suspended in a fine recoil of disappointment, that seemed gradually to be destroying his understanding. But the unconscious state of patience persisted in him. He remained motionless, without thought or knowledge, for a long time. Then he rose, and went downstairs, to play at chess with one of the students. His face was open and clear, with a certain innocent LAISSER-ALLER that troubled Gudrun most, made her almost afraid of him, whilst she disliked him deeply for it. It was after this that Loerke, who had never yet spoken to her personally, began to ask her of her state. 'You are not married at all, are you?' he asked. She looked full at him. 'Not in the least,' she replied, in her measured way. Loerke laughed, wrinkling up his face oddly. There was a thin wisp of his hair straying on his forehead, she noticed that his skin was of a clear brown colour, his hands, his wrists. And his hands seemed closely prehensile. He seemed like topaz, so strangely brownish and pellucid. 'Good,' he said. Still it needed some courage for him to go on. 'Was Mrs Birkin your sister?' he asked. 'Yes.' 'And was SHE married?' 'She was married.' 'Have you parents, then?' 'Yes,' said Gudrun, 'we have parents.' And she told him, briefly, laconically, her position. He watched her closely, curiously all the while. 'So!' he exclaimed, with some surprise. 'And the Herr Crich, is he rich?' 'Yes, he is rich, a coal owner.' 'How long has your friendship with him lasted?' 'Some months.' There was a pause. 'Yes, I am surprised,' he said at length. 'The English, I thought they were so—cold. And what do you think to do when you leave here?' 'What do I think to do?' she repeated. 'Yes. You cannot go back to the teaching. No—' he shrugged his shoulders—'that is impossible. Leave that to the CANAILLE who can do nothing else. You, for your part—you know, you are a remarkable woman, eine seltsame Frau. Why deny it—why make any question of it? You are an extraordinary woman, why should you follow the ordinary course, the ordinary life?' Gudrun sat looking at her hands, flushed. She was pleased that he said, so simply, that she was a remarkable woman. He would not say that to flatter her—he was far too self-opinionated and objective by nature. He said it as he would say a piece of sculpture was remarkable, because he knew it was so. And it gratified her to hear it from him. Other people had such a passion to make everything of one degree, of one pattern. In England it was chic to be perfectly ordinary. And it was a relief to her to be acknowledged extraordinary. Then she need not fret about the common standards. 'You see,' she said, 'I have no money whatsoever.' 'Ach, money!' he cried, lifting his shoulders. 'When one is grown up, money is lying about at one's service. It is only when one is young that it is rare. Take no thought for money—that always lies to hand.' 'Does it?' she said, laughing. 'Always. The Gerald will give you a sum, if you ask him for it—' She flushed deeply. 'I will ask anybody else,' she said, with some difficulty—'but not him.' Loerke looked closely at her. 'Good,' he said. 'Then let it be somebody else. Only don't go back to that England, that school. No, that is stupid.' Again there was a pause. He was afraid to ask her outright to go with him, he was not even quite sure he wanted her; and she was afraid to be asked. He begrudged his own isolation, was VERY chary of sharing his life, even for a day. 'The only other place I know is Paris,' she said, 'and I can't stand that.' She looked with her wide, steady eyes full at Loerke. He lowered his head and averted his face. 'Paris, no!' he said. 'Between the RELIGION D'AMOUR, and the latest 'ism, and the new turning to Jesus, one had better ride on a carrousel all day. But come to Dresden. I have a studio there—I can give you work,—oh, that would be easy enough. I haven't seen any of your things, but I believe in you. Come to Dresden—that is a fine town to be in, and as good a life as you can expect of a town. You have everything there, without the foolishness of Paris or the beer of Munich.' He sat and looked at her, coldly. What she liked about him was that he spoke to her simple and flat, as to himself. He was a fellow craftsman, a fellow being to her, first. 'No—Paris,' he resumed, 'it makes me sick. Pah—l'amour. I detest it. L'amour, l'amore, die Liebe—I detest it in every language. Women and love, there is no greater tedium,' he cried. She was slightly offended. And yet, this was her own basic feeling. Men, and love—there was no greater tedium. 'I think the same,' she said. 'A bore,' he repeated. 'What does it matter whether I wear this hat or another. So love. I needn't wear a hat at all, only for convenience. Neither need I love except for convenience. I tell you what, gnadige Frau—' and he leaned towards her—then he made a quick, odd gesture, as of striking something aside—'gnadige Fraulein, never mind—I tell you what, I would give everything, everything, all your love, for a little companionship in intelligence—' his eyes flickered darkly, evilly at her. 'You understand?' he asked, with a faint smile. 'It wouldn't matter if she were a hundred years old, a thousand—it would be all the same to me, so that she can UNDERSTAND.' He shut his eyes with a little snap. Again Gudrun was rather offended. Did he not think her good looking, then? Suddenly she laughed. 'I shall have to wait about eighty years to suit you, at that!' she said. 'I am ugly enough, aren't I?' He looked at her with an artist's sudden, critical, estimating eye. 'You are beautiful,' he said, 'and I am glad of it. But it isn't that—it isn't that,' he cried, with emphasis that flattered her. 'It is that you have a certain wit, it is the kind of understanding. For me, I am little, chetif, insignificant. Good! Do not ask me to be strong and handsome, then. But it is the ME—' he put his fingers to his mouth, oddly—'it is the ME that is looking for a mistress, and my ME is waiting for the THEE of the mistress, for the match to my particular intelligence. You understand?' 'Yes,' she said, 'I understand.' 'As for the other, this amour—' he made a gesture, dashing his hand aside, as if to dash away something troublesome—'it is unimportant, unimportant. Does it matter, whether I drink white wine this evening, or whether I drink nothing? IT DOES NOT MATTER, it does not matter. So this love, this amour, this BAISER. Yes or no, soit ou soit pas, today, tomorrow, or never, it is all the same, it does not matter—no more than the white wine.' He ended with an odd dropping of the head in a desperate negation. Gudrun watched him steadily. She had gone pale. Suddenly she stretched over and seized his hand in her own. 'That is true,' she said, in rather a high, vehement voice, 'that is true for me too. It is the understanding that matters.' He looked up at her almost frightened, furtive. Then he nodded, a little sullenly. She let go his hand: he had made not the lightest response. And they sat in silence. 'Do you know,' he said, suddenly looking at her with dark, self-important, prophetic eyes, 'your fate and mine, they will run together, till—' and he broke off in a little grimace. 'Till when?' she asked, blanched, her lips going white. She was terribly susceptible to these evil prognostications, but he only shook his head. 'I don't know,' he said, 'I don't know.' <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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