He smiled faintly, thinking these things. Yet he was tense, feeling that he and the elderly, estranged woman were conferring together like traitors, like enemies within the camp of the other people. He resembled a deer, that throws one ear back upon the trail behind, and one ear forward, to know what is ahead.
“People don’t really matter,” he said, rather unwilling to continue.
The mother looked up at him with sudden, dark interrogation, as if doubting his sincerity.
“How do you mean, matter?” she asked sharply.
“Not many people are anything at all,” he answered, forced to go deeper than he wanted to. “They jingle and giggle. It would be much better if they were just wiped out. Essentially, they don’t exist, they aren’t there.”
She watched him steadily while he spoke.
“But we didn’t imagine them,” she said sharply.
“There’s nothing to imagine, that’s why they don’t exist.”
“Well,” she said, “I would hardly go as far as that. There they are, whether they exist or no. It doesn’t rest with me to decide on their existence. I only know that I can’t be expected to take count of them all. You can’t expect me to know them, just because they happen to be there. As far as I go they might as well not be there.”
“Exactly,” he replied.
“Mightn’t they?” she asked again.
“Just as well,” he repeated. And there was a little pause.
“Except that they are there, and that’s a nuisance,” she said. “There are my sons-in-law,” she went on, in a sort of monologue. “Now Laura’s got married, there’s another. And I really don’t know John from James yet. They come up to me and call me mother. I know what they will say—‘how are you, mother?’ I ought to say, ‘I am not your mother, in any sense.’ But what is the use? There they are. I have had children of my own. I suppose I know them from another woman’s children.”
“One would suppose so,” he said.
She looked at him, somewhat surprised, forgetting perhaps that she was talking to him. And she lost her thread.
She looked round the room, vaguely. Birkin could not guess what she was looking for, nor what she was thinking. Evidently she noticed her sons.
“Are my children all there?” she asked him abruptly.
He laughed, startled, afraid perhaps.
“I scarcely know them, except Gerald,” he replied.
“Gerald!” she exclaimed. “He’s the most wanting of them all. You’d never think it, to look at him now, would you?”
“No,” said Birkin.
The mother looked across at her eldest son, stared at him heavily for some time.
“Ay,” she said, in an incomprehensible monosyllable, that sounded profoundly cynical. Birkin felt afraid, as if he dared not realise. And Mrs. Crich moved away, forgetting him. But she returned on her traces.
“I should like him to have a friend,” she said. “He has never had a friend.”
Birkin looked down into her eyes, which were blue, and watching heavily. He could not understand them. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” he said to himself, almost flippantly.
Then he remembered, with a slight shock, that that was Cain’s cry. And Gerald was Cain, if anybody. Not that he was Cain, either, although he had slain his brother. There was such a thing as pure accident, and the consequences did not attach to one, even though one had killed one’s brother in such wise. Gerald as a boy had accidentally killed his brother. What then? Why seek to draw a brand and a curse across the life that had caused the accident? A man can live by accident, and die by accident. Or can he not? Is every man’s life subject to pure accident, is it only the race, the genus, the species, that has a universal reference? Or is this not true, is there no such thing as pure accident? Has everything that happens a universal significance? Has it? Birkin, pondering as he stood there, had forgotten Mrs. Crich, as she had forgotten him.
He did not believe that there was any such thing as accident. It all hung together, in the deepest sense.
Just as he had decided this, one of the Crich daughters came up, saying:
“Won’t you come and take your hat off, mother dear? We shall be sitting down to eat in a minute, and it’s a formal occasion, darling, isn’t it?” She drew her arm through her mother’s, and they went away. Birkin immediately went to talk to the nearest man.
The gong sounded for the luncheon. The men looked up, but no move was made to the dining-room. The women of the house seemed not to feel that the sound had meaning for them. Five minutes passed by. The elderly manservant, Crowther, appeared in the doorway exasperatedly. He looked with appeal at Gerald. The latter took up a large, curved conch shell, that lay on a shelf, and without reference to anybody, blew a shattering blast. It was a strange rousing noise, that made the heart beat. The summons was almost magical. Everybody came running, as if at a signal. And then the crowd in one impulse moved to the dining-room.
Gerald waited a moment, for his sister to play hostess. He knew his mother would pay no attention to her duties. But his sister merely crowded to her seat. Therefore the young man, slightly too dictatorial, directed the guests to their places.
There was a moment’s lull, as everybody looked at the hors d’oeuvres that were being handed round. And out of this lull, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, with her long hair down her back, said in a calm, self-possessed voice:
“Gerald, you forget father, when you make that unearthly noise.”
“Do I?” he answered. And then, to the company, “Father is lying down, he is not quite well.”
“How is he, really?” called one of the married daughters, peeping round the immense wedding cake that towered up in the middle of the table shedding its artificial flowers.
“He has no pain, but he feels tired,” replied Winifred, the girl with the hair down her back.
The wine was filled, and everybody was talking boisterously. At the far end of the table sat the mother, with her loosely-looped hair. She had Birkin for a neighbour. Sometimes she glanced fiercely down the rows of faces, bending forwards and staring unceremoniously. And she would say in a low voice to Birkin:
“Who is that young man?”
“I don’t know,” Birkin answered discreetly.
“Have I seen him before?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. I haven’t,” he replied. And she was satisfied. Her eyes closed wearily, a peace came over her face, she looked like a queen in repose. Then she started, a little social smile came on her face, for a moment she looked the pleasant hostess. For a moment she bent graciously, as if everyone were welcome and delightful. And then immediately the shadow came back, a sullen, eagle look was on her face, she glanced from under her brows like a sinister creature at bay, hating them all.
“Mother,” called Diana, a handsome girl a little older than Winifred, “I may have wine, mayn’t I?”
“Yes, you may have wine,” replied the mother automatically, for she was perfectly indifferent to the question.
And Diana beckoned to the footman to fill her glass.
“Gerald shouldn’t forbid me,” she said calmly, to the company at large.
“All right, Di,” said her brother amiably. And she glanced challenge at him as she drank from her glass.