‘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.
‘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, she felt she had missed her life. She seemed to grip the hours by the throat, to force her life from them. She was rather pale and ghastly, as if left behind, in the morning. Yet she had her power, her will was strangely pervasive. With the entrance of the two young men a sudden tension was felt.
She lifted her face, and said, in her amused sing-song:
‘Good morning! Did you sleep well? I’m so glad.’
And she turned away, ignoring them. Birkin, who knew her well, saw that she intended to discount his existence.
‘Will you take what you want from the sideboard?’ said Alexander, in a voice slightly suggesting disapprobation. ‘I hope the things aren’t cold. Oh no! Do you mind putting out the flame under the chafingdish, Rupert? Thank you.’
Even Alexander was rather authoritative where Hermione was cool. He took his tone from her, inevitably. Birkin sat down and looked at the table. He was so used to this house, to this room, to this atmosphere, through years of intimacy, and now he felt in complete opposition to it all, it had nothing to do with him. How well he knew Hermione, as she sat there, erect and silent and somewhat bemused, and yet so potent, so powerful! He knew her statically, so finally, that it was almost like a madness. It was difficult to believe one was not mad, that one was not a figure in the hall of kings in some Egyptian tomb, where the dead all sat immemorial and tremendous. How utterly he knew Joshua Mattheson, who was talking in his harsh, yet rather mincing voice, endlessly, endlessly, always with a strong mentality working, always interesting, and yet always known, everything he said known beforehand, however novel it was, and clever. Alexander the up-to-date host, so bloodlessly free-and-easy, Fraulein so prettily chiming in just as she should, the little Italian Countess taking notice of everybody, only playing her little game, objective and cold, like a weasel watching everything, and extracting her own amusement, never giving herself in the slightest; then Miss Bradley, heavy and rather subservient, treated with cool, almost amused contempt by Hermione, and therefore slighted by everybody — how known it all was, like a game with the figures set out, the same figures, the Queen of chess, the knights, the pawns, the same now as they were hundreds of years ago, the same figures moving round in one of the innumerable permutations that make up the game. But the game is known, its going on is like a madness, it is so exhausted.
There was Gerald, an amused look on his face; the game pleased him. There was Gudrun, watching with steady, large, hostile eyes; the game fascinated her, and she loathed it. There was Ursula, with a slightly startled look on her face, as if she were hurt, and the pain were just outside her consciousness.
Suddenly Birkin got up and went out.
‘That’s enough,’ he said to himself involuntarily.
Hermione knew his motion, though not in her consciousness. She lifted her heavy eyes and saw him lapse suddenly away, on a sudden, unknown tide, and the waves broke over her. Only her indomitable will remained static and mechanical, she sat at the table making her musing, stray remarks. But the darkness had covered her, she was like a ship that has gone down. It was finished for her too, she was wrecked in the darkness. Yet the unfailing mechanism of her will worked on, she had that activity.
‘Shall we bathe this morning?’ she said, suddenly looking at them all.
‘Splendid,’ said Joshua. ‘It is a perfect morning.’
‘Oh, it is beautiful,’ said Fraulein.
‘Yes, let us bathe,’ said the Italian woman.
‘We have no bathing suits,’ said Gerald.
‘Have mine,’ said Alexander. ‘I must go to church and read the lessons. They expect me.’
‘Are you a Christian?’ asked the Italian Countess, with sudden interest.
‘No,’ said Alexander. ‘I’m not. But I believe in keeping up the old institutions.’
‘They are so beautiful,’ said Fraulein daintily.
‘Oh, they are,’ cried Miss Bradley.
They all trailed out on to the lawn. It was a sunny, soft morning in early summer, when life ran in the world subtly, like a reminiscence. The church bells were ringing a little way off, not a cloud was in the sky, the swans were like lilies on the water below, the peacocks walked with long, prancing steps across the shadow and into the sunshine of the grass. One wanted to swoon into the by-gone perfection of it all.
‘Good-bye,’ called Alexander, waving his gloves cheerily, and he disappeared behind the bushes, on his way to church.
‘Now,’ said Hermione, ‘shall we all bathe?’
‘I won’t,’ said Ursula.
‘You don’t want to?’ said Hermione, looking at her slowly.
‘No. I don’t want to,’ said Ursula.
‘Nor I,’ said Gudrun.
‘What about my suit?’ asked Gerald.
‘I don’t know,’ laughed Hermione, with an odd, amused intonation. ‘Will a handkerchief do — a large handkerchief?’
‘That will do,’ said Gerald.
‘Come along then,’ sang