SUNDAY EVENING
As the day wore on, the life-blood seemed to ebb away from Ursula, and
within the emptiness a heavy despair gathered. Her passion seemed to
bleed to death, and there was nothing. She sat suspended in a state of
complete nullity, harder to bear than death.
“Unless something happens,” she said to herself, in the perfect
lucidity of final suffering, “I shall die. I am at the end of my line
of life.”
She sat crushed and obliterated in a darkness that was the border of
death. She realised how all her life she had been drawing nearer and
nearer to this brink, where there was no beyond, from which one had to
leap like Sappho into the unknown. The knowledge of the imminence of
death was like a drug. Darkly, without thinking at all, she knew that
she was near to death. She had travelled all her life along the line of
fulfilment, and it was nearly concluded. She knew all she had to know,
she had experienced all she had to experience, she was fulfilled in a
kind of bitter ripeness, there remained only to fall from the tree into
death. And one must fulfil one’s development to the end, must carry the
adventure to its conclusion. And the next step was over the border into
death. So it was then! There was a certain peace in the knowledge.
After all, when one was fulfilled, one was happiest in falling into
death, as a bitter fruit plunges in its ripeness downwards. Death is a
great consummation, a consummating experience. It is a development from
life. That we know, while we are yet living. What then need we think
for further? One can never see beyond the consummation. It is enough
that death is a great and conclusive experience. Why should we ask what
comes after the experience, when the experience is still unknown to us?
Let us die, since the great experience is the one that follows now upon
all the rest, death, which is the next great crisis in front of which
we have arrived. If we wait, if we baulk the issue, we do but hang
about the gates in undignified uneasiness. There it is, in front of us,
as in front of Sappho, the illimitable space. Thereinto goes the
journey. Have we not the courage to go on with our journey, must we cry
‘I daren’t’? On ahead we will go, into death, and whatever death may
mean. If a man can see the next step to be taken, why should he fear
the next but one? Why ask about the next but one? Of the next step we
are certain. It is the step into death.
“I shall die—I shall quickly die,” said Ursula to herself, clear as if
in a trance, clear, calm, and certain beyond human certainty. But
somewhere behind, in the twilight, there was a bitter weeping and a
hopelessness. That must not be attended to. One must go where the
unfaltering spirit goes, there must be no baulking the issue, because
of fear. No baulking the issue, no listening to the lesser voices. If
the deepest desire be now, to go on into the unknown of death, shall
one forfeit the deepest truth for one more shallow?
“Then let it end,” she said to herself. It was a decision. It was not a
question of taking one’s life—she would _never_ kill herself, that was
repulsive and violent. It was a question of _knowing_ the nextcstep.
And the next step led into the space of death. Did it?—or was there—?
Her thoughts drifted into unconsciousness, she sat as if asleep beside
the fire. And then the thought came back. The space of death! Could she
give herself to it? Ah yes—it was a sleep. She had had enough. So long
she had held out; and resisted. Now was the time to relinquish, not to
resist any more.
In a kind of spiritual trance, she yielded, she gave way, and all was
dark. She could feel, within the darkness, the terrible assertion of
her body, the unutterable anguish of dissolution, the only anguish that
is too much, the far-off, awful nausea of dissolution set in within the
body.
“Does the body correspond so immediately with the spirit?” she asked
herself. And she knew, with the clarity of ultimate knowledge, that the
body is only one of the manifestations of the spirit, the transmutation
of the integral spirit is the transmutation of the physical body as
well. Unless I set my will, unless I absolve myself from the rhythm of
life, fix myself and remain static, cut off from living, absolved
within my own will. But better die than live mechanically a life that
is a repetition of repetitions. To die is to move on with the
invisible. To die is also a joy, a joy of submitting to that which is
greater than the known, namely, the pure unknown. That is a joy. But to
live mechanised and cut off within the motion of the will, to live as
an entity absolved from the unknown, that is shameful and ignominious.
There is no ignominy in death. There is complete ignominy in an
unreplenished, mechanised life. Life indeed may be ignominious,
shameful to the soul. But death is never a shame. Death itself, like
the illimitable space, is beyond our sullying.
Tomorrow was Monday. Monday, the beginning of another school-week!
Another shameful, barren school-week, mere routine and mechanical
activity. Was not the adventure of death infinitely preferable? Was not
death infinitely more lovely and noble than such a life? A life of
barren routine, without inner meaning, without any real significance.
How sordid life was, how it was a terrible shame to the soul, to live
now! How much cleaner and more dignified to be dead! One could not bear
any more of this shame of sordid routine and mechanical nullity. One
might come to fruit in death. She had had enough. For where was life to
be found? No flowers grow upon busy machinery, there is no sky to a
routine, there is no space to a rotary motion. And all life was a
rotary motion, mechanised, cut off from reality. There was nothing to
look for from life—it was the same in all countries and all peoples.
The only window was death. One could look out on to the great dark sky
of death with elation, as one had looked out of the classroom window as
a child, and seen perfect freedom in the outside. Now one was not a
child, and one knew that the soul was a prisoner within this sordid
vast edifice of life, and there was no escape, save in death.
But what a joy! What a gladness to think that whatever humanity did, it
could not seize hold of the kingdom of death, to nullify that. The sea
they turned into a murderous alley and a soiled road of commerce,
disputed like the dirty land of a city every inch of it. The air they
claimed too, shared it up, parcelled it out to certain owners, they
trespassed in the air to fight for it. Everything was gone, walled in,
with spikes on top of the walls, and one must ignominiously creep
between the spiky walls through a labyrinth of life.
But the great, dark, illimitable kingdom of death, there humanity was
put to scorn. So much they could do upon earth, the multifarious little
gods that they were. But the kingdom of death put them all to scorn,
they dwindled into their true vulgar silliness in face of it.
How beautiful, how grand and perfect death was, how good to look
forward to. There one would wash off all the lies and ignominy and dirt
that had been put upon one here, a perfect bath of cleanness and glad
refreshment, and go unknown, unquestioned, unabased. After all, one was
rich, if only in the promise of perfect death. It was a gladness above
all, that this remained to look forward to, the pure inhuman otherness
of death.
Whatever life might be, it could not take away death, the inhuman
transcendent death. Oh, let us ask no question of it, what it is or is
not. To know is human, and in death we do not know, we are not human.
And the joy of this compensates for all the bitterness of knowledge and
the sordidness of our humanity. In death we shall not be human, and we
shall not know. The promise of this is our heritage, we look forward
like heirs to their majority.
Ursula sat quite still and quite forgotten, alone by the fire in the
drawing-room. The children were playing in the kitchen, all the others
were gone to church. And she was gone into the ultimate darkness of her
own soul.
She was startled by hearing the bell ring, away in the kitchen, the
children came scudding along the passage in delicious alarm.
“Ursula, there’s somebody.”
“I know. Don’t be silly,” she replied. She too was startled, almost
frightened. She dared hardly go to the door.
Birkin stood on the threshold, his rain-coat turned up to his ears. He
had come now, now she was gone far away. She was aware of the rainy
night behind him.
“Oh is it you?” she said.
“I am glad you are at home,” he said in a low voice, entering the
house.
“They are all gone to church.”
He took off his coat and hung it up. The children were peeping at him
round the corner.
“Go and get undressed now, Billy and Dora,” said Ursula. “Mother will
be back soon, and she’ll be disappointed if you’re not in bed.”
The children, in a sudden angelic mood, retired without a word. Birkin
and Ursula went into the drawing-room.
The fire burned low. He looked at her and wondered at the luminous
delicacy of her beauty, and the wide shining of her eyes. He watched
from a distance, with wonder in his heart, she seemed transfigured with
light.
“What have you been doing all day?” he asked her.
“Only sitting about,” she said.
He looked at her. There was a change in her. But she was separate from
him. She remained apart, in a kind of brightness. They both sat silent
in the soft light of the lamp. He felt he ought to go away again, he
ought not to have come. Still he did not gather enough resolution to
move. But he was _de trop_, her mood was absent and separate.
Then there came the voices of the two children calling shyly outside
the door, softly, with self-excited timidity:
“Ursula! Ursula!”
She rose and opened the door. On the threshold stood the two children
in their long nightgowns, with wide-eyed, angelic faces. They were
being very good for the moment, playing the rôle perfectly of two
obedient children.
“Shall you take us to bed!” said Billy, in a loud whisper.
“Why you _are_ angels tonight,” she said softly. “Won’t you come and
say good-night to Mr Birkin?”
The children merged shyly into the room, on bare feet. Billy’s face was
wide and grinning, but there was a great solemnity of being good in his
round blue eyes. Dora, peeping from the floss of her fair hair, hung
back like some tiny Dryad, that has no soul.
“Will you say good-night to me?” asked Birkin, in a voice that was
strangely soft and smooth. Dora drifted away at once, like a leaf
lifted on a breath of wind. But Billy went softly forward, slow and
willing, lifting his pinched-up mouth implicitly to be kissed. Ursula
watched the full, gathered lips of the man gently touch those of the
boy, so gently. Then Birkin lifted his fingers and touched the boy’s
round, confiding cheek, with a faint touch of love. Neither spoke.
Billy seemed angelic like a cherub boy, or like an acolyte, Birkin was
a tall, grave angel looking down to him.
“Are you going to be kissed?” Ursula broke in, speaking to the little
girl. But Dora edged away like a tiny Dryad that will not be touched.
“Won’t you say good-night to Mr Birkin? Go, he’s waiting for you,” said
Ursula. But the girl-child only made a little motion away from him.
“Silly Dora, silly Dora!” said Ursula.
Birkin felt some mistrust and antagonism in the small child. He could
not understand it.
“Come then,” said Ursula. “Let us go before mother comes.”
“Who’ll hear us say our prayers?” asked Billy anxiously.
“Whom you like.”
“Won’t you?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Ursula?”
“Well Billy?”
“Is it _whom_ you like?”
“That’s it.”
“Well what is _whom_?”
“It’s the accusative of who.”
There was a moment’s contemplative silence, then the confiding:
“Is it?”
Birkin smiled to himself as he sat by the fire. When Ursula came down
he sat motionless, with his arms on his knees. She saw him, how he was
motionless and ageless, like some crouching idol, some image of a
deathly religion. He looked round at her, and his face, very pale and
unreal, seemed to gleam with a whiteness almost phosphorescent.
“Don’t you feel well?” she asked, in indefinable repulsion.
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“But don’t you know without thinking about it?”
He looked at her, his eyes dark and swift, and he saw her revulsion. He
did not answer her question.
“Don’t you know whether you are unwell or not, without thinking about
it?” she persisted.
“Not always,” he said coldly.
“But don’t you think that’s very wicked?”
“Wicked?”
“Yes. I think it’s _criminal_ to have so little connection with your
own body that you don’t even know when you are ill.”
He looked at her darkly.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why don’t you stay in bed when you are seedy? You look perfectly
ghastly.”
“Offensively so?” he asked ironically.
“Yes, quite offensive. Quite repelling.”
“Ah!! Well that’s unfortunate.”
“And it’s raining, and it’s a horrible night. Really, you shouldn’t be
forgiven for treating your body like it—you _ought_ to suffer, a man
who takes as little notice of his body as that.”
“—takes as little notice of his body as that,” he echoed mechanically.
This cut her short, and there was silence.
The others came in from church, and the two had the girls to face, then
the mother and Gudrun, and then the father and the boy.
“Good-evening,” said Brangwen, faintly surprised. “Came to see me, did
you?”
“No,” said Birkin, “not about anything, in particular, that is. The day
was dismal, and I thought you wouldn’t mind if I called in.”
“It _has_ been a depressing day,” said Mrs Brangwen sympathetically. At
that moment the voices of the children were heard calling from
upstairs: “Mother! Mother!” She lifted her face and answered mildly
into the distance: “I shall come up to you in a minute, Doysie.” Then
to Birkin: “There is nothing fresh at Shortlands, I suppose? Ah,” she
sighed, “no, poor things, I should think not.”
“You’ve been over there today, I suppose?” asked the father.
“Gerald came round to tea with me, and I walked back with him. The
house is overexcited and unwholesome, I thought.”
“I should think they were people who hadn’t much restraint,” said
Gudrun.
“Or too much,” Birkin answered.
“Oh yes, I’m sure,” said Gudrun, almost vindictively, “one or the
other.”
“They all feel they ought to behave in some unnatural fashion,” said
Birkin. “When people are in grief, they would do better to cover their
faces and keep in retirement, as in the old days.”
“Certainly!” cried Gudrun, flushed and inflammable. “What can be worse
than this public grief—what is more horrible, more false! If _grief_ is
not private, and hidden, what is?”
“Exactly,” he said. “I felt ashamed when I was there and they were all
going about in a lugubrious false way, feeling they must not be natural
or ordinary.”
“Well—” said Mrs Brangwen, offended at this criticism, “it isn’t so
easy to bear a trouble like that.”
And she went upstairs to the children.
He remained only a few minutes longer, then took his leave. When he was
gone Ursula felt such a poignant hatred of him, that all her brain
seemed turned into a sharp crystal of fine hatred. Her whole nature
seemed sharpened and intensified into a pure dart of hate. She could
not imagine what it was. It merely took hold of her, the most poignant
and ultimate hatred, pure and clear and beyond thought. She could not
think of it at all, she was translated beyond herself. It was like a
possession. She felt she was possessed. And for several days she went
about possessed by this exquisite force of hatred against him. It
surpassed anything she had ever known before, it seemed to throw her
out of the world into some terrible region where nothing of her old
life held good. She was quite lost and dazed, really dead to her own
life.
It was so completely incomprehensible and irrational. She did not know
_why_ she hated him, her hate was quite abstract. She had only realised
with a shock that stunned her, that she was overcome by this pure
transportation. He was the enemy, fine as a diamond, and as hard and
jewel-like, the quintessence of all that was inimical.
She thought of his face, white and purely wrought, and of his eyes that
had such a dark, constant will of assertion, and she touched her own
forehead, to feel if she were mad, she was so transfigured in white
flame of essential hate.
It was not temporal, her hatred, she did not hate him for this or for
that; she did not want to do anything to him, to have any connection
with him. Her relation was ultimate and utterly beyond words, the hate
was so pure and gemlike. It was as if he were a beam of essential
enmity, a beam of light that did not only destroy her, but denied her
altogether, revoked her whole world. She saw him as a clear stroke of
uttermost contradiction, a strange gem-like being whose existence
defined her own non-existence. When she heard he was ill again, her
hatred only intensified itself a few degrees, if that were possible. It
stunned her and annihilated her, but she could not escape it. She could
not escape this transfiguration of hatred that had come upon her.