'Oh, rather disgusting. Halliday turned objectionable, and I only just saved myself from jumping in his stomach, in a real old-fash- ioned row.'
Birkin was silent.
'Of course,' he said, 'Julius is somewhat insane. On the one hand he's had religious mania, and on the other, he is fascinated by obscenity. Either he is a pure servant, washing the feet of Christ, or else he is making obscene drawings of Jesus--action and reaction--and between the two, nothing. He is really insane. He wants a pure lily, another girl, with a baby face, on the one hand, and on the other, he MUST have the Pussum, just to defile himself with her.'
'That's what I can't make out,' said Gerald. 'Does he love her, the Pussum, or doesn't he?'
'He neither does nor doesn't. She is the harlot, the actual harlot of adultery to him. And he's got a craving to throw himself into the filth of her. Then he gets up and calls on the name of the lily of purity, the baby-faced girl, and so enjoys himself all round. It's the old story--action and reaction, and nothing between.'
'I don't know,' said Gerald, after a pause, 'that he does insult the Pussum so very much. She strikes me as being rather foul.'
'But I thought you liked her,' exclaimed Birkin. 'I always felt fond of her. I never had anything to do with her, personally, that's true.'
'I liked her all right, for a couple of days,' said Gerald. 'But a week of her would have turned me over. There's a certain smell about
the skin of those women, that in the end is sickening beyond words--even if you like it at first.'
'I know,' said Birkin. Then he added, rather fretfully, 'But go to bed, Gerald. God knows what time it is.'
Gerald looked at his watch, and at length rose off the bed, and went to his room. But he returned in a few minutes, in his shirt.
'One thing,' he said, seating himself on the bed again. 'We finished up rather stormily, and I never had time to give her anything.'
'Money?' said Birkin. 'She'll get what she wants from Halliday or from one of her acquaintances.'
'But then,' said Gerald, 'I'd rather give her her dues and settle the account.'
'She doesn't care.'
57
'No, perhaps not. But one feels the account is left open, and one would rather it were closed.'
'Would you?' said Birkin. He was looking at the white legs of Gerald, as the latter sat on the side of the bed in his shirt. They were white-skinned, full, muscular legs, handsome and decided. Yet they moved Birkin with a sort of pathos, tenderness, as if they were childish.
'I think I'd rather close the account,' said Gerald, repeating himself vaguely.
'It doesn't matter one way or another,' said Birkin.
'You always say it doesn't matter,' said Gerald, a little puzzled, looking down at the face of the other man affectionately.
'Neither does it,' said Birkin.
'But she was a decent sort, really--'
'Render unto Caesarina the things that are Caesarina's,' said Birkin, turning aside. It seemed to him Gerald was talking for the sake of talking. 'Go away, it wearies me--it's too late at night,' he said.
'I wish you'd tell me something that DID matter,' said Gerald, looking down all the time at the face of the other man, waiting for something. But Birkin turned his face aside.
'All right then, go to sleep,' said Gerald, and he laid his hand affectionately on the other man's shoulder, and went away.
In the morning when Gerald awoke and heard Birkin move, he called out: 'I still think I ought to give the Pussum ten pounds.'
'Oh God!' said Birkin, 'don't be so matter-of-fact. Close the account in your own soul, if you like. It is there you can't close it.'
'How do you know I can't?'
'Knowing you.'
Gerald meditated for some moments.
'It seems to me the right thing to do, you know, with the Pussums, is to pay them.'
'And the right thing for mistresses: keep them. And the right thing for wives: live under the same roof with them. Integer vitae sce-lerisque purus--' said Birkin.
'There's no need to be nasty about it,' said Gerald.
'It bores me. I'm not interested in your peccadilloes.'
'And I don't care whether you are or not--I am.'
The morning was again sunny. The maid had been in and brought the water, and had drawn the curtains. Birkin, sitting up in bed, looked lazily and pleasantly out on the park, that was so green and deserted, romantic, belonging to the past. He was thinking how lovely, how sure, how formed, how final all the things of the past were--the lovely accomplished past--this house, so still and gold-en, the park slumbering its centuries of peace. And then, what a snare and a delusion, this beauty of static things--what a horrible, dead prison Breadalby really was, what an intolerable confinement, the peace! Yet it was better than the sordid scrambling conflict of the present. If only one might create the future after one's own heart--for a little pure truth, a little unflinching application of simple truth to life, the heart cried out ceaselessly.
'I can't see what you will leave me at all, to be interested in,' came Gerald's voice from the lower room. 'Neither the Pussums, nor the mines, nor anything else.'
'You be interested in what you can, Gerald. Only I'm not interested myself,' said Birkin.
58
'What am I to do at all, then?' came Gerald's voice.
'What you like. What am I to do myself ?'
In the silence Birkin could feel Gerald musing this fact.
'I'm blest if I know,' came the good-humoured answer.
'You see,' said Birkin, 'part of you wants the Pussum, and nothing but the Pussum, part of you wants the mines, the business, and nothing but the business--and there you are--all in bits--'
'And part of me wants something else,' said Gerald, in a queer, quiet, real voice.
'What?' said Birkin, rather surprised.
'That's what I hoped you could tell me,' said Gerald. There was a silence for some time.
'I can't tell you--I can't find my own way, let alone yours. You might marry,' Birkin replied.
'Who--the Pussum?' asked Gerald.
'Perhaps,' said Birkin. And he rose and went to the window.
'That is your panacea,' said Gerald. 'But you haven't even tried it on yourself yet, and you are sick enough.'
'I am,' said Birkin. 'Still, I shall come right.'
'Through marriage?'
'Yes,' Birkin answered obstinately.
'And no,' added Gerald. 'No, no, no, my boy.'
There was a silence between them, and a strange tension of hostility. They always kept a gap, a distance between them, they wanted always to be free each of the other. Yet there was a curious heart-straining towards each other.
'Salvator femininus,' said Gerald, satirically.
'Why not?' said Birkin.
'No reason at all,' said Gerald, 'if it really works. But whom will you marry?'
'A woman,' said Birkin.
'Good,' said Gerald.
Birkin and Gerald were the last to come down to breakfast. Hermione liked everybody to be early. She suffered when she felt her
day was diminished,