Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (62 page)

“So it is to me. But one must live somewhere.”

“Not somewhere—anywhere,” he said. “One should just live anywhere—not have a definite place. I don’t want a definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is
complete,
you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a horrible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is a co mmandment-stone.”

She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market.

“But what are we going to do?” she said. “We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural
grandeur
even,
splendour.”

“You’ll never get it in houses and furniture—or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you.
²
It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michael Angelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure.
³
You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside.”

She stood in the street contemplating.

“And we are never to have a complete place of our own—never a home?” she said.

“Pray God, in this world, no,” he answered.

“But there’s only this world,” she objected.

He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference.

“Meanwhile, then, we’ll avoid having things of our own,” he said.

“But you’ve just bought a chair,” she said.

“I can tell the man I don’t want it,” he replied.

She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face.

“No,” she said, “we don’t want it. I’m sick of old things.”

“New ones as well,” he said.

They retraced their steps.

There—in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow-faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned.

“Let us give it to
them,”
whispered Ursula. “Look, they are getting a home together.”

“
I
won’t aid and abet them in it,” he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female.

“Oh yes,” cried Ursula. “It’s right for them—there’s nothing else for them.”

“Very well,” said Birkin, “you offer it to them. I’ll watch.”

Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand—or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing.

“We bought a chair,” said Ursula, “and we don’t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would.”

The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them.

“Would you care for it?” repeated Ursula. “It’s really very pretty—but—but—” she smiled rather dazzingly.

The young couple only stared at her, and looked significantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curiously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, as a rat can.

“We wanted to
give
it to you,” explained Ursula, now overcome with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward consciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless trousers, he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a dark-eyed, silent rat.

Ursula had apprehended him with a fine frisson of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him.

“Won’t you have the chair?” she said.

The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain coster-monger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened.

“What’s the matter?” he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious, amiable, jeering warmth:

“What she warnt?—eh?” An odd smile writhed his lips.

Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids.

“To give you a chair—that—with the label on it,” he said pointing.

The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious freemasonry in male, outlawed understanding between the two men.

“What’s she warnt to give it
us
for, guvnor,” he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula.

“Thought you’d like it—its a pretty chair. We bought it and don’t want it. No need for you to have it, don’t be frightened,” said Birkin, with a wry smile.

The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising.

“Why don’t you want it for yourselves, if you’ve just bought it?” asked the woman coolly. “ ’Tain’t good enough for you, now you’ve had a look at it. Frightened it’s got something in it, I’ll bet.”

She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment.

“I’d never thought of that,” said Birkin. “But no, the wood’s too thin everywhere.”

“You see,” said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased.
“We
are just going to get married, and we thought we’d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn’t have furniture, we’d go abroad.”

The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence.

“It’s all right to be some folks,” said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness.

“Cawsts something to chynge your mind,” he said, in an incredibly low accent.

“Only ten shillings this time,” said Birkin.

The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure.

“Cheap at ’arf a quid,
^cl
guvnor,” he said. “Not like getting divawced.”

“We’re not married yet,” said Birkin.

“No, no more aren’t we,” said the young woman loudly. “But we shall be, a Saturday.”

Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, and Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness.

“Good luck to you,” said Birkin.

“Same to you,” said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: “When’s yours coming off, then?”

Birkin looked round at Ursula.

“It’s for the lady to say,” he replied. “We go to the registrar the moment she’s ready.”

Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment.

“No ’urry,” said the young man, grinning suggestive.

“Oh, don’t break your neck to get there,” said the young woman. “ ’Slike when you’re dead—you’re a long time married.”

The young man turned aside as if this hit him.

“The longer the better, let us hope,” said Birkin.

“That’s it, guvnor,” said the young man admiringly. “Enjoy it while it lasts—niver whip a dead donkey.”

“Only when he’s shamming dead,” said the young woman, looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of authority.

“Aw, there’s a difference,” he said satirically.

“What about the chair?” said Birkin.

“Yes, all right,” said the woman.

They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside.

“That’s it,” said Birkin. “Will you take it with you, or have the address altered?”

“Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ’ome.”

“Mike use of ’im,” said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking.

“ ’Ere’s mother’s cosy chair,” he said. “Warnts a cushion.” And he stood it down on the market stones.

“Don’t you think it’s pretty?” laughed Ursula.

“Oh, I do,” said the young woman.

“ ’Ave a sit in it, you’ll wish you’d kept it,” said the young man.

Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place.

“Awfully comfortable,” she said. “But rather hard. You try it.” She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat.

“Don’t spoil him,” said the young woman. “He’s not used to armchairs, ’e isn’t.”

The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin:

“Only warnts legs on ’is.”

The four parted. The young woman thanked them.

“Thank you for the chair—it’ll last till it gives way.”

“Keep it for an ornyment,” said the young man.

“Good afternoon—good afternoon,” said Ursula and Birkin.

“Goo’-luck to you,” said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin’s eyes, as he turned aside his head.

The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin’s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too.

“How strange they are!” said Ursula.

“Children of men,” he said. “They remind me of Jesus: ‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’ ”

“But they aren’t the meek,” said Ursula.

“Yes, I don’t know why, but they are,” he replied.

They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses.

“And are they going to inherit the earth?” she said.

“Yes—they.”

“Then what are we going to do?” she asked. “We’re not like them—are we? We’re not the meek?”

“No. We’ve got to live in the chinks they leave us.”

“How horrible!” cried Ursula. “I don’t want to live in chinks.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks.”

“All the world,” she said.

“Ah no—but some room.”

The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world.

“I don’t mind it even then,” said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. “It doesn’t concern me.”

“No more it does,” he replied, holding her hand. “One needn’t see. One goes one’s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious—”

“It is, my love, isn’t it?” she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them.

“And we will wander about on the face of the earth,” he said, “and we’ll look at the world beyond just this bit.”

There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking.

“I don’t want to inherit the earth,” she said. “I don’t want to inherit anything.”

He closed his hand over hers.

“Neither do I. I want to be disinherited.”

She clasped his fingers closely.

“We won’t care about
anything,”
she said.

He sat still, and laughed.

“And we’ll be married, and have done with them,” she added.

Again he laughed.

“It’s one way of getting rid of everything,” she said, “to get married.”

“And one way of accepting the whole world,” he added.

“A whole other world, yes,” she said happily.

“Perhaps there’s Gerald—and Gudrun—” he said.

“If there is there is, you see,” she said. “It’s no good our worrying. We can’t really alter them, can we?”

“No,” he said. “One has no right to try—not with the best intentions in the world.”

“Do you try to force them?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Why should I want him to be free, if it isn’t his business?”

She paused for a time.

“We can’t
make
him happy, anyhow,” she said. “He’d have to be it of himself.”

“I know,” he said. “But we want other people with us, don’t we?”