GUDRUN IN THE POMPADOUR
Christmas drew near, all four prepared for flight. Birkin and Ursula
were busy packing their few personal things, making them ready to be
sent off, to whatever country and whatever place they might choose at
last. Gudrun was very much excited. She loved to be on the wing.
She and Gerald, being ready first, set off via London and Paris to
Innsbruck, where they would meet Ursula and Birkin. In London they
stayed one night. They went to the music-hall, and afterwards to the
Pompadour Café.
Gudrun hated the Café, yet she always went back to it, as did most of
the artists of her acquaintance. She loathed its atmosphere of petty
vice and petty jealousy and petty art. Yet she always called in again,
when she was in town. It was as if she _had_ to return to this small,
slow, central whirlpool of disintegration and dissolution: just give it
a look.
She sat with Gerald drinking some sweetish liqueur, and staring with
black, sullen looks at the various groups of people at the tables. She
would greet nobody, but young men nodded to her frequently, with a kind
of sneering familiarity. She cut them all. And it gave her pleasure to
sit there, cheeks flushed, eyes black and sullen, seeing them all
objectively, as put away from her, like creatures in some menagerie of
apish degraded souls. God, what a foul crew they were! Her blood beat
black and thick in her veins with rage and loathing. Yet she must sit
and watch, watch. One or two people came to speak to her. From every
side of the Café, eyes turned half furtively, half jeeringly at her,
men looking over their shoulders, women under their hats.
The old crowd was there, Carlyon in his corner with his pupils and his
girl, Halliday and Libidnikov and the Pussum—they were all there.
Gudrun watched Gerald. She watched his eyes linger a moment on
Halliday, on Halliday’s party. These last were on the look-out—they
nodded to him, he nodded again. They giggled and whispered among
themselves. Gerald watched them with the steady twinkle in his eyes.
They were urging the Pussum to something.
She at last rose. She was wearing a curious dress of dark silk splashed
and spattered with different colours, a curious motley effect. She was
thinner, her eyes were perhaps hotter, more disintegrated. Otherwise
she was just the same. Gerald watched her with the same steady twinkle
in his eyes as she came across. She held out her thin brown hand to
him.
“How are you?” she said.
He shook hands with her, but remained seated, and let her stand near
him, against the table. She nodded blackly to Gudrun, whom she did not
know to speak to, but well enough by sight and reputation.
“I am very well,” said Gerald. “And you?”
“Oh I’m all wight. What about Wupert?”
“Rupert? He’s very well, too.”
“Yes, I don’t mean that. What about him being married?”
“Oh—yes, he is married.”
The Pussum’s eyes had a hot flash.
“Oh, he’s weally bwought it off then, has he? When was he married?”
“A week or two ago.”
“Weally! He’s never written.”
“No.”
“No. Don’t you think it’s too bad?”
This last was in a tone of challenge. The Pussum let it be known by her
tone, that she was aware of Gudrun’s listening.
“I suppose he didn’t feel like it,” replied Gerald.
“But why didn’t he?” pursued the Pussum.
This was received in silence. There was an ugly, mocking persistence in
the small, beautiful figure of the short-haired girl, as she stood near
Gerald.
“Are you staying in town long?” she asked.
“Tonight only.”
“Oh, only tonight. Are you coming over to speak to Julius?”
“Not tonight.”
“Oh very well. I’ll tell him then.” Then came her touch of diablerie.
“You’re looking awf’lly fit.”
“Yes—I feel it.” Gerald was quite calm and easy, a spark of satiric
amusement in his eye.
“Are you having a good time?”
This was a direct blow for Gudrun, spoken in a level, toneless voice of
callous ease.
“Yes,” he replied, quite colourlessly.
“I’m awf’lly sorry you aren’t coming round to the flat. You aren’t very
faithful to your fwiends.”
“Not very,” he said.
She nodded them both “Good-night’, and went back slowly to her own set.
Gudrun watched her curious walk, stiff and jerking at the loins. They
heard her level, toneless voice distinctly.
“He won’t come over;—he is otherwise engaged,” it said. There was more
laughter and lowered voices and mockery at the table.
“Is she a friend of yours?” said Gudrun, looking calmly at Gerald.
“I’ve stayed at Halliday’s flat with Birkin,” he said, meeting her
slow, calm eyes. And she knew that the Pussum was one of his
mistresses—and he knew she knew.
She looked round, and called for the waiter. She wanted an iced
cocktail, of all things. This amused Gerald—he wondered what was up.
The Halliday party was tipsy, and malicious. They were talking out
loudly about Birkin, ridiculing him on every point, particularly on his
marriage.
“Oh, _don’t_ make me think of Birkin,” Halliday was squealing. “He
makes me perfectly sick. He is as bad as Jesus. ‘Lord, _what_ must I do
to be saved!’”
He giggled to himself tipsily.
“Do you remember,” came the quick voice of the Russian, “the letters he
used to send. ‘Desire is holy—’”
“Oh yes!” cried Halliday. “Oh, how perfectly splendid. Why, I’ve got
one in my pocket. I’m sure I have.”
He took out various papers from his pocket book.
“I’m sure I’ve—_hic! Oh dear!_—got one.”
Gerald and Gudrun were watching absorbedly.
“Oh yes, how perfectly—_hic!_—splendid! Don’t make me laugh, Pussum, it
gives me the hiccup. Hic!—” They all giggled.
“What did he say in that one?” the Pussum asked, leaning forward, her
dark, soft hair falling and swinging against her face. There was
something curiously indecent, obscene, about her small, longish, dark
skull, particularly when the ears showed.
“Wait—oh do wait! _No-o_, I won’t give it to you, I’ll read it aloud.
I’ll read you the choice bits,—_hic!_ Oh dear! Do you think if I drink
water it would take off this hiccup? _Hic!_ Oh, I feel perfectly
helpless.”
“Isn’t that the letter about uniting the dark and the light—and the
Flux of Corruption?” asked Maxim, in his precise, quick voice.
“I believe so,” said the Pussum.
“Oh is it? I’d forgotten—_hic!_—it was that one,” Halliday said,
opening the letter. “_Hic!_ Oh yes. How perfectly splendid! This is one
of the best. ‘There is a phase in every race—’” he read in the
sing-song, slow, distinct voice of a clergyman reading the Scriptures,
“‘When the desire for destruction overcomes every other desire. In the
individual, this desire is ultimately a desire for destruction in the
self’—_hic!_—” he paused and looked up.
“I hope he’s going ahead with the destruction of himself,” said the
quick voice of the Russian. Halliday giggled, and lolled his head back,
vaguely.
“There’s not much to destroy in him,” said the Pussum. “He’s so thin
already, there’s only a fag-end to start on.”
“Oh, isn’t it beautiful! I love reading it! I believe it has cured my
hiccup!” squealed Halliday. “Do let me go on. ‘It is a desire for the
reduction process in oneself, a reducing back to the origin, a return
along the Flux of Corruption, to the original rudimentary conditions of
being—!’ Oh, but I _do_ think it is wonderful. It almost supersedes the
Bible—”
“Yes—Flux of Corruption,” said the Russian, “I remember that phrase.”
“Oh, he was always talking about Corruption,” said the Pussum. “He must
be corrupt himself, to have it so much on his mind.”
“Exactly!” said the Russian.
“Do let me go on! Oh, this is a perfectly wonderful piece! But do
listen to this. ‘And in the great retrogression, the reducing back of
the created body of life, we get knowledge, and beyond knowledge, the
phosphorescent ecstasy of acute sensation.’ Oh, I do think these
phrases are too absurdly wonderful. Oh but don’t you think they
_are_—they’re nearly as good as Jesus. ‘And if, Julius, you want this
ecstasy of reduction with the Pussum, you must go on till it is
fulfilled. But surely there is in you also, somewhere, the living
desire for positive creation, relationships in ultimate faith, when all
this process of active corruption, with all its flowers of mud, is
transcended, and more or less finished—’ I do wonder what the flowers
of mud are. Pussum, you are a flower of mud.”
“Thank you—and what are you?”
“Oh, I’m another, surely, according to this letter! We’re all flowers
of mud—_fleurs—hic! du mal!_ It’s perfectly wonderful, Birkin harrowing
Hell—harrowing the Pompadour—_Hic!_”
“Go on—go on,” said Maxim. “What comes next? It’s really very
interesting.”
“I think it’s awful cheek to write like that,” said the Pussum.
“Yes—yes, so do I,” said the Russian. “He is a megalomaniac, of course,
it is a form of religious mania. He thinks he is the Saviour of man—go
on reading.”
“Surely,” Halliday intoned, “‘surely goodness and mercy hath followed
me all the days of my life—’” he broke off and giggled. Then he began
again, intoning like a clergyman. “‘Surely there will come an end in us
to this desire—for the constant going apart,—this passion for putting
asunder—everything—ourselves, reducing ourselves part from
part—reacting in intimacy only for destruction,—using sex as a great
reducing agent, reducing the two great elements of male and female from
their highly complex unity—reducing the old ideas, going back to the
savages for our sensations,—always seeking to _lose_ ourselves in some
ultimate black sensation, mindless and infinite—burning only with
destructive fires, raging on with the hope of being burnt out
utterly—’”
“I want to go,” said Gudrun to Gerald, as she signalled the waiter. Her
eyes were flashing, her cheeks were flushed. The strange effect of
Birkin’s letter read aloud in a perfect clerical sing-song, clear and
resonant, phrase by phrase, made the blood mount into her head as if
she were mad.
She rose, whilst Gerald was paying the bill, and walked over to
Halliday’s table. They all glanced up at her.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Is that a genuine letter you are reading?”
“Oh yes,” said Halliday. “Quite genuine.”
“May I see?”
Smiling foolishly he handed it to her, as if hypnotised.
“Thank you,” she said.
And she turned and walked out of the Café with the letter, all down the
brilliant room, between the tables, in her measured fashion. It was
some moments before anybody realised what was happening.
From Halliday’s table came half articulate cries, then somebody booed,
then all the far end of the place began booing after Gudrun’s
retreating form. She was fashionably dressed in blackish-green and
silver, her hat was brilliant green, like the sheen on an insect, but
the brim was soft dark green, a falling edge with fine silver, her coat
was dark green, lustrous, with a high collar of grey fur, and great fur
cuffs, the edge of her dress showed silver and black velvet, her
stockings and shoes were silver grey. She moved with slow, fashionable
indifference to the door. The porter opened obsequiously for her, and,
at her nod, hurried to the edge of the pavement and whistled for a
taxi. The two lights of a vehicle almost immediately curved round
towards her, like two eyes.
Gerald had followed in wonder, amid all the booing, not having caught
her misdeed. He heard the Pussum’s voice saying:
“Go and get it back from her. I never heard of such a thing! Go and get
it back from her. Tell Gerald Crich—there he goes—go and make him give
it up.”
Gudrun stood at the door of the taxi, which the man held open for her.
“To the hotel?” she asked, as Gerald came out, hurriedly.
“Where you like,” he answered.
“Right!” she said. Then to the driver, “Wagstaff’s—Barton Street.”
The driver bowed his head, and put down the flag.
Gudrun entered the taxi, with the deliberate cold movement of a woman
who is well-dressed and contemptuous in her soul. Yet she was frozen
with overwrought feelings. Gerald followed her.
“You’ve forgotten the man,” she said cooly, with a slight nod of her
hat. Gerald gave the porter a shilling. The man saluted. They were in
motion.
“What was all the row about?” asked Gerald, in wondering excitement.
“I walked away with Birkin’s letter,” she said, and he saw the crushed
paper in her hand.
His eyes glittered with satisfaction.
“Ah!” he said. “Splendid! A set of jackasses!”
“I could have _killed_ them!” she cried in passion. “_Dogs!_—they are
dogs! Why is Rupert such a _fool_ as to write such letters to them? Why
does he give himself away to such _canaille?_ It’s a thing that _cannot
be borne._”
Gerald wondered over her strange passion.
And she could not rest any longer in London. They must go by the
morning train from Charing Cross. As they drew over the bridge, in the
train, having glimpses of the river between the great iron girders, she
cried:
“I feel I could _never_ see this foul town again—I couldn’t _bear_ to
come back to it.”