But Gerald lingered a moment to speak to Gudrun.
'You don't like the water?' he said.
61
She looked at him with a long, slow inscrutable look, as he stood before her negligently, the water standing in beads all over his skin.
'I like it very much,' she replied.
He paused, expecting some sort of explanation.
'And you swim?'
'Yes, I swim.'
Still he would not ask her why she would not go in then. He could feel something ironic in her. He walked away, piqued for the first
time.
'Why wouldn't you bathe?' he asked her again, later, when he was once more the properly-dressed young Englishman. She hesitated a moment before answering, opposing his persistence.
'Because I didn't like the crowd,' she replied.
He laughed, her phrase seemed to re-echo in his consciousness. The flavour of her slang was piquant to him. Whether he would or not, she signified the real world to him. He wanted to come up to her standards, fulfil her expectations. He knew that her criterion was the only one that mattered. The others were all outsiders, instinctively, whatever they might be socially. And Gerald could not help it, he was bound to strive to come up to her criterion, fulfil her idea of a man and a human-being.
After lunch, when all the others had withdrawn, Hermione and Gerald and Birkin lingered, finishing their talk. There had been
some discussion, on the whole quite intellectual and artificial, about a new state, a new world of man. Supposing this old social state
WERE broken and destroyed, then, out of the chaos, what then?
The great social idea, said Sir Joshua, was the SOCIAL equality of man. No, said Gerald, the idea was, that every man was fit for his own little bit of a task--let him do that, and then please himself. The unifying principle was the work in hand. Only work, the business of production, held men together. It was mechanical, but then society WAS a mechanism. Apart from work they were isolated, free to do as they liked.
'Oh!' cried Gudrun. 'Then we shan't have names any more--we shall be like the Germans, nothing but Herr Obermeister and Herr Untermeister. I can imagine it--"I am Mrs Colliery-Manager Crich--I am Mrs Member-of-Parliament Roddice. I am Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen." Very pretty that.'
'Things would work very much better, Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen,' said Gerald.
'What things, Mr Colliery-Manager Crich? The relation between you and me, PAR EXEMPLE?'
'Yes, for example,' cried the Italian. 'That which is between men and women--!'
'That is non-social,' said Birkin, sarcastically.
'Exactly,' said Gerald. 'Between me and a woman, the social question does not enter. It is my own affair.'
'A ten-pound note on it,' said Birkin.
'You don't admit that a woman is a social being?' asked Ursula of Gerald.
'She is both,' said Gerald. 'She is a social being, as far as society is concerned. But for her own private self, she is a free agent, it is her own affair, what she does.'
'But won't it be rather difficult to arrange the two halves?' asked Ursula.
'Oh no,' replied Gerald. 'They arrange themselves naturally--we see it now, everywhere.'
62
'Don't you laugh so pleasantly till you're out of the wood,' said Birkin. Gerald knitted his brows in momentary irritation.
'Was I laughing?' he said.
'IF,' said Hermione at last, 'we could only realise, that in the SPIRIT we are all one, all equal in the spirit, all brothers there--the rest wouldn't matter, there would be no more of this carping and envy and this struggle for power, which destroys, only destroys.'
This speech was received in silence, and almost immediately the party rose from the table. But when the others had gone, Birkin turned round in bitter declamation, saying:
'It is just the opposite, just the contrary, Hermione. We are all different and unequal in spirit--it is only the SOCIAL differences
that are based on accidental material conditions. We are all abstractly or mathematically equal, if you like. Every man has hunger and thirst, two eyes, one nose and two legs. We're all the same in point of number. But spiritually, there is pure difference and neither equality nor inequality counts. It is upon these two bits of knowledge that you must found a state. Your democracy is an absolute lie--your brotherhood of man is a pure falsity, if you apply it further than the mathematical abstraction. We all drank milk first, we all eat bread and meat, we all want to ride in motor-cars--therein lies the beginning and the end of the brotherhood of man. But no equality.
'But I, myself, who am myself, what have I to do with equality with any other man or woman? In the spirit, I am as separate as one star is from another, as different in quality and quantity. Establish a state on THAT. One man isn't any better than another, not because they are equal, but because they are intrinsically OTHER, that there is no term of comparison. The minute you begin to compare, one man is seen to be far better than another, all the inequality you can imagine is there by nature. I want every man to have his share in the world's goods, so that I am rid of his importunity, so that I can tell him: "Now you've got what you want--you've got your fair share of the world's gear. Now, you one-mouthed fool, mind yourself and don't obstruct me."'
Hermione was looking at him with leering eyes, along her cheeks. He could feel violent waves of hatred and loathing of all he said, coming out of her. It was dynamic hatred and loathing, coming strong and black out of the unconsciousness. She heard his words in her unconscious self, CONSCIOUSLY she was as if deafened, she paid no heed to them.
'It SOUNDS like megalomania, Rupert,' said Gerald, genially. Hermione gave a queer, grunting sound. Birkin stood back.
'Yes, let it,' he said suddenly, the whole tone gone out of his voice, that had been so insistent, bearing everybody down. And he went away.
But he felt, later, a little compunction. He had been violent, cruel with poor Hermione. He wanted to recompense her, to make it up. He had hurt her, he had been vindictive. He wanted to be on good terms with her again.
He went into her boudoir, a remote and very cushiony place. She was sitting at her table writing letters. She lifted her face abstractedly when he entered, watched him go to the sofa, and sit down. Then she looked down at her paper again.
He took up a large volume which he had been reading before, and became minutely attentive to his author. His back was towards Hermione. She could not go on with her writing. Her whole mind was a chaos, darkness breaking in upon it, and herself struggling to gain control with her will, as a swimmer struggles with the swirling water. But in spite of her efforts she was borne down,
darkness seemed to break over her, she felt as if her heart was bursting. The terrible tension grew stronger and stronger, it was most fearful agony, like being walled up.
And then she realised that his presence was the wall, his presence was destroying her. Unless she could break out, she must die most fearfully, walled up in horror. And he was the wall. She must break down the wall--she must break him down before her, the awful obstruction of him who obstructed her life to the last. It must be done, or she must perish most horribly.
Terribly shocks ran over her body, like shocks of electricity, as if many volts of electricity suddenly struck her down. She was aware of him sitting silently there, an unthinkable evil obstruction. Only this blotted out her mind, pressed out her very breathing, his silent, stooping back, the back of his head.
63
A terrible voluptuous thrill ran down her arms--she was going to know her voluptuous consummation. Her arms quivered and were strong, immeasurably and irresistibly strong. What delight, what delight in strength, what delirium of pleasure! She was going to have her consummation of voluptuous ecstasy at last. It was coming! In utmost terror and agony,