breaking down!’
Gerald was always uneasy under the slightly jeering tone of the other.
‘That their father is handicraft instructor in a school! What does it matter to me?’
Birkin laughed. Gerald looked at his face, as it lay there laughing and bitter and indifferent on the pillow, and he could not go away.
‘I don’t suppose you will see very much more of Gudrun, at least. She is a restless bird, she’ll be gone in a week or two,’ said Birkin.
‘Where will she go?’
‘London, Paris, Rome — heaven knows. I always expect her to sheer off to Damascus or San Francisco; she’s a bird of paradise. God knows what she’s got to do with Beldover. It goes by contraries, like dreams.’
Gerald pondered for a few moments.
‘How do you know her so well?’ he asked.
‘I knew her in London,’ he replied, ‘in the Algernon Strange set. She’ll know about Pussum and Libidnikov and the rest — even if she doesn’t know them personally. She was never quite that set — more conventional, in a way. I’ve known her for two years, I suppose.’
‘And she makes money, apart from her teaching?’ asked Gerald.
‘Some — irregularly. She can sell her models. She has a certain reclame.’
‘How much for?’
‘A guinea, ten guineas.’
‘And are they good? What are they?’
‘I think sometimes they are marvellously good. That is hers, those two wagtails in Hermione’s boudoir — you’ve seen them — they are carved in wood and painted.’
‘I thought it was savage carving again.’
‘No, hers. That’s what they are — animals and birds, sometimes odd small people in everyday dress, really rather wonderful when they come off. They have a sort of funniness that is quite unconscious and subtle.’
‘She might be a well-known artist one day?’ mused Gerald.
‘She might. But I think she won’t. She drops her art if anything else catches her. Her contrariness prevents her taking it seriously — she must never be too serious, she feels she might give herself away. And she won’t give herself away — she’s always on the defensive. That’s what I can’t stand about her type. By the way, how did things go off with Pussum after I left you? I haven’t heard anything.’
‘Oh, rather disgusting. Halliday turned objectionable, and I only just saved myself from jumping in his stomach, in a real old-fashioned row.’
Birkin was silent.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘Julius is somewhat insane. On the one hand he’s had religious mania, and on the other, he is fascinated by obscenity. Either he is a pure servant, washing the feet of Christ, or else he is making obscene drawings of Jesus — action and reaction — and between the two, nothing. He is really insane. He wants a pure lily, another girl, with a baby face, on the one hand, and on the other, he MUST have the Pussum, just to defile himself with her.’
‘That’s what I can’t make out,’ said Gerald. ‘Does he love her, the Pussum, or doesn’t he?’
‘He neither does nor doesn’t. She is the harlot, the actual harlot of adultery to him. And he’s got a craving to throw himself into the filth of her. Then he gets up and calls on the name of the lily of purity, the baby-faced girl, and so enjoys himself all round. It’s the old story — action and reaction, and nothing between.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Gerald, after a pause, ‘that he does insult the Pussum so very much. She strikes me as being rather foul.’
‘But I thought you liked her,’ exclaimed Birkin. ‘I always felt fond of her. I never had anything to do with her, personally, that’s true.’
‘I liked her all right, for a couple of days,’ said Gerald. ‘But a week of her would have turned me over. There’s a certain smell about the skin of those women, that in the end is sickening beyond words — even if you like it at first.’
‘I know,’ said Birkin. Then he added, rather fretfully, ‘But go to bed, Gerald. God knows what time it is.’
Gerald looked at his watch, and at length rose off the bed, and went to his room. But he returned in a few minutes, in his shirt.
‘One thing,’ he said, seating himself on the bed again. ‘We finished up rather stormily, and I never had time to give her anything.’
‘Money?’ said Birkin. ‘She’ll get what she wants from Halliday or from one of her acquaintances.’
‘But then,’ said Gerald, ‘I’d rather give her her dues and settle the account.’
‘She doesn’t care.’
‘No, perhaps not. But one feels the account is left open, and one would rather it were closed.’
‘Would you?’ said Birkin. He was looking at the white legs of Gerald, as the latter sat on the side of the bed in his shirt. They were white-skinned, full, muscular legs, handsome and decided. Yet they moved Birkin with a sort of pathos, tenderness, as if they were childish.
‘I think I’d rather close the account,’ said Gerald, repeating himself vaguely.
‘It doesn’t matter one way or another,’ said Birkin.
‘You always say it doesn’t matter,’ said Gerald, a little puzzled, looking down at the face of the other man affectionately.
‘Neither does it,’ said Birkin.
‘But she was a decent sort, really —’
‘Render unto Caesarina the things that are Caesarina’s,’ said Birkin, turning aside. It seemed to him Gerald was talking for the sake of talking. ‘Go away, it wearies me — it’s too late at night,’ he said.
‘I wish you’d tell me something that DID matter,’ said Gerald, looking down all the time at the face of the other man, waiting for something. But Birkin turned his face aside.
‘All right then, go to sleep,’ said Gerald, and he laid his hand affectionately on the other man’s shoulder, and went away.
In the morning when Gerald awoke and heard Birkin move, he called out: ‘I still think I ought to give the Pussum ten pounds.’
‘Oh God!’ said Birkin, ‘don’t be so matter-of-fact. Close the account in your own soul, if you like. It is there you can’t close it.’
‘How do you know I can’t?’
‘Knowing you.’
Gerald meditated for some moments.
‘It seems to me the right thing to do, you know, with the Pussums, is to pay them.’
‘And the right thing for mistresses: keep them. And the right thing for wives: live under the same roof with them. Integer vitae scelerisque purus —’ said Birkin.
‘There’s no need to be nasty about it,’ said Gerald.
‘It bores me. I’m not interested in your peccadilloes.’
‘And I don’t care whether you are or not — I am.’
The morning was again sunny. The maid had been in and brought the water, and had drawn the curtains. Birkin, sitting up in bed, looked lazily and pleasantly out on the park, that was so green and deserted, romantic, belonging to the past. He was thinking how lovely, how sure, how formed, how final all the things of the past were — the lovely accomplished past — this house, so still and golden, the park slumbering its centuries of peace. And then, what a snare and a delusion, this beauty of static things — what a horrible, dead prison