《恋爱中的女人》——  Women in Love 中英对照版【完结】_派派后花园

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[Novel] 《恋爱中的女人》——  Women in Love 中英对照版【完结】

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恋爱中的女人


《恋爱中的女人》,是D.H .劳伦斯最伟大、最有代表性、最脍炙人口的两部长篇小说之一(另一部是《虹》),他本人也认为它是他的“最佳作品”;它以英国小说中没有先例的热情与深度探索了有关恋爱的心理问题,代表了劳伦斯作品的最高成就,因此它同《虹》成为了现代小说的先驱。
《恋爱中的女人》代表了劳伦斯小说创作的最高成就。它以非凡的热情与深度探索了有关恋爱的心理问题。
小说以两姐妹为主人公,描述了她们不同的情感经历和恋爱体会。姐姐欧秀拉是一个温柔美丽的中学教师;妹妹古迪兰则是一个小有名气、恃才傲物的艺术家。古迪兰遇上了矿主的独生子杰拉德,原始的欲望点燃了爱的激情,然而在狂暴的激情过后,失望而痛苦的她与另一位艺术家又陷入了爱的狂欢。欧秀拉与本区督学伯基相爱了,她一心要让对方成为爱情的囚鸟,而对方却希望在灵与肉的交融中保持彼此心灵上的距离……
劳伦斯毕生致力于男女性爱题材小说创作,他在揭示男女情爱的同时,将性爱描写上升到哲学和美学的高度,而那伴随着炽烈的性爱体验的,是对历史、政治、宗教、经济等社会问题的严肃思考。
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。
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Chapter 1 Sisters


URSULA AND GUDRUN Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their father's house in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts strayed through their minds.
`Ursula,' said Gudrun, `don't you really want to get married?' Ursula laid her embroidery in her lap and looked up. Her face was calm and considerate.
`I don't know,' she replied. `It depends how you mean.'
Gudrun was slightly taken aback. She watched her sister for some moments.
`Well,' she said, ironically, `it usually means one thing! But don't you think anyhow, you'd be --' she darkened slightly -- `in a better position than you are in now.'
A shadow came over Ursula's face.
`I might,' she said. `But I'm not sure.'
Again Gudrun paused, slightly irritated. She wanted to be quite definite.
`You don't think one needs the experience of having been married?' she asked.
`Do you think it need be an experience?' replied Ursula.
`Bound to be, in some way or other,' said Gudrun, coolly. `Possibly undesirable, but bound to be an experience of some sort.'
`Not really,' said Ursula. `More likely to be the end of experience.'
Gudrun sat very still, to attend to this.
`Of course,' she said, `there's that to consider.' This brought the conversation to a close. Gudrun, almost angrily, took up her rubber and began to rub out part of her drawing. Ursula stitched absorbedly.
`You wouldn't consider a good offer?' asked Gudrun.
`I think I've rejected several,' said Ursula.
`Really!' Gudrun flushed dark -- `But anything really worth while? Have you really?'
`A thousand a year, and an awfully nice man. I liked him awfully,' said Ursula.
`Really! But weren't you fearfully tempted?'
`In the abstract but not in the concrete,' said Ursula. `When it comes to the point, one isn't even tempted -- oh, if I were tempted, I'd marry like a shot. I'm only tempted not to.' The faces of both sisters suddenly lit up with amusement.
`Isn't it an amazing thing,' cried Gudrun, `how strong the temptation is, not to!' They both laughed, looking at each other. In their hearts they were frightened.
There was a long pause, whilst Ursula stitched and Gudrun went on with her sketch. The sisters were women, Ursula twenty-six, and Gudrun twenty-five. But both had the remote, virgin look of modern girls, sisters of Artemis rather than of Hebe. Gudrun was very beautiful, passive, soft-skinned, soft-limbed. She wore a dress of dark-blue silky stuff, with ruches of blue and green linen lace in the neck and sleeves; and she had emerald-green stockings. Her look of confidence and diffidence contrasted with Ursula's sensitive expectancy. The provincial people, intimidated by Gudrun's perfect sang-froid and exclusive bareness of manner, said of her: `She is a smart woman.' She had just come back from London, where she had spent several years, working at an art-school, as a student, and living a studio life.
`I was hoping now for a man to come along,' Gudrun said, suddenly catching her underlip between her teeth, and making a strange grimace, half sly smiling, half anguish. Ursula was afraid.
`So you have come home, expecting him here?' she laughed.
`Oh my dear,' cried Gudrun, strident, `I wouldn't go out of my way to look for him. But if there did happen to come along a highly attractive individual of sufficient means -- well --' she tailed off ironically. Then she looked searchingly at Ursula, as if to probe her. `Don't you find yourself getting bored?' she asked of her sister. `Don't you find, that things fail to materialise? Nothing materialises! Everything withers in the bud.'
`What withers in the bud?' asked Ursula.
`Oh, everything -- oneself -- things in general.' There was a pause, whilst each sister vaguely considered her fate.
`It does frighten one,' said Ursula, and again there was a pause. `But do you hope to get anywhere by just marrying?'
`It seems to be the inevitable next step,' said Gudrun. Ursula pondered this, with a little bitterness. She was a class mistress herself, in Willey Green Grammar School, as she had been for some years.
`I know,' she said, `it seems like that when one thinks in the abstract. But really imagine it: imagine any man one knows, imagine him coming home to one every evening, and saying "Hello," and giving one a kiss --'
There was a blank pause.
`Yes,' said Gudrun, in a narrowed voice. `It's just impossible. The man makes it impossible.'
`Of course there's children --' said Ursula doubtfully.
Gudrun's face hardened.
`Do you really want children, Ursula?' she asked coldly. A dazzled, baffled look came on Ursula's face.
`One feels it is still beyond one,' she said.
`Do you feel like that?' asked Gudrun. `I get no feeling whatever from the thought of bearing children.'
Gudrun looked at Ursula with a masklike, expressionless face. Ursula knitted her brows.
`Perhaps it isn't genuine,' she faltered. `Perhaps one doesn't really want them, in one's soul -- only superficially.' A hardness came over Gudrun's face. She did not want to be too definite.
`When one thinks of other people's children --' said Ursula.
Again Gudrun looked at her sister, almost hostile.
`Exactly,' she said, to close the conversation.
The two sisters worked on in silence, Ursula having always that strange brightness of an essential flame that is caught, meshed, contravened. She lived a good deal by herself, to herself, working, passing on from day to day, and always thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it in her own understanding. Her active living was suspended, but underneath, in the darkness, something was coming to pass. If only she could break through the last integuments! She seemed to try and put her hands out, like an infant in the womb, and she could not, not yet. Still she had a strange prescience, an intimation of something yet to come.
She laid down her work and looked at her sister. She thought Gudrun so charming, so infinitely charming, in her softness and her fine, exquisite richness of texture and delicacy of line. There was a certain playfulness about her too, such a piquancy or ironic suggestion, such an untouched reserve. Ursula admired her with all her soul.
`Why did you come home, Prune?' she asked.
Gudrun knew she was being admired. She sat back from her drawing and looked at Ursula, from under her finely-curved lashes.
`Why did I come back, Ursula?' she repeated. `I have asked myself a thousand times.'
`And don't you know?'
`Yes, I think I do. I think my coming back home was just reculer pour mieux sauter.'
And she looked with a long, slow look of knowledge at Ursula.
`I know!' cried Ursula, looking slightly dazzled and falsified, and as if she did not know. `But where can one jump to?'
`Oh, it doesn't matter,' said Gudrun, somewhat superbly. `If one jumps over the edge, one is bound to land somewhere.'
`But isn't it very risky?' asked Ursula.
A slow mocking smile dawned on Gudrun's face.
`Ah!' she said laughing. `What is it all but words!' And so again she closed the conversation. But Ursula was still brooding.
`And how do you find home, now you have come back to it?' she asked.
Gudrun paused for some moments, coldly, before answering. Then, in a cold truthful voice, she said:
`I find myself completely out of it.'
`And father?'
Gudrun looked at Ursula, almost with resentment, as if brought to bay.
`I haven't thought about him: I've refrained,' she said coldly.
`Yes,' wavered Ursula; and the conversation was really at an end. The sisters found themselves confronted by a void, a terrifying chasm, as if they had looked over the edge.
They worked on in silence for some time, Gudrun's cheek was flushed with repressed emotion. She resented its having been called into being.
`Shall we go out and look at that wedding?' she asked at length, in a voice that was too casual.
`Yes!' cried Ursula, too eagerly, throwing aside her sewing and leaping up, as if to escape something, thus betraying the tension of the situation and causing a friction of dislike to go over Gudrun's nerves.
As she went upstairs, Ursula was aware of the house, of her home round about her. And she loathed it, the sordid, too-familiar place! She was afraid at the depth of her feeling against the home, the milieu, the whole atmosphere and condition of this obsolete life. Her feeling frightened her.
The two girls were soon walking swiftly down the main road of Beldover, a wide street, part shops, part dwelling-houses, utterly formless and sordid, without poverty. Gudrun, new from her life in Chelsea and Sussex, shrank cruelly from this amorphous ugliness of a small colliery town in the Midlands. Yet forward she went, through the whole sordid gamut of pettiness, the long amorphous, gritty street. She was exposed to every stare, she passed on through a stretch of torment. It was strange that she should have chosen to come back and test the full effect of this shapeless, barren ugliness upon herself. Why had she wanted to submit herself to it, did she still want to submit herself to it, the insufferable torture of these ugly, meaningless people, this defaced countryside? She felt like a beetle toiling in the dust. She was filled with repulsion.
They turned off the main road, past a black patch of common-garden, where sooty cabbage stumps stood shameless. No one thought to be ashamed. No one was ashamed of it all.
`It is like a country in an underworld,' said Gudrun. `The colliers bring it aboveground with them, shovel it up. Ursula, it's marvellous, it's really marvellous -- it's really wonderful, another world. The people are all ghouls, and everything is ghostly. Everything is a ghoulish replica of the real world, a replica, a ghoul, all soiled, everything sordid. It's like being mad, Ursula.'
The sisters were crossing a black path through a dark, soiled field. On the left was a large landscape, a valley with collieries, and opposite hills with cornfields and woods, all blackened with distance, as if seen through a veil of crape. White and black smoke rose up in steady columns, magic within the dark air. Near at hand came the long rows of dwellings, approaching curved up the hill-slope, in straight lines along the brow of the hill. They were of darkened red brick, brittle, with dark slate roofs. The path on which the sisters walked was black, trodden-in by the feet of the recurrent colliers, and bounded from the field by iron fences; the stile that led again into the road was rubbed shiny by the moleskins of the passing miners. Now the two girls were going between some rows of dwellings, of the poorer sort. Women, their arms folded over their coarse aprons, standing gossiping at the end of their block, stared after the Brangwen sisters with that long, unwearying stare of aborigines; children called out names.
Gudrun went on her way half dazed. If this were human life, if these were human beings, living in a complete world, then what was her own world, outside? She was aware of her grass-green stockings, her large grass-green velour hat, her full soft coat, of a strong blue colour. And she felt as if she were treading in the air, quite unstable, her heart was contracted, as if at any minute she might be precipitated to the ground. She was afraid.
She clung to Ursula, who, through long usage was inured to this violation of a dark, uncreated, hostile world. But all the time her heart was crying, as if in the midst of some ordeal: `I want to go back, I want to go away, I want not to know it, not to know that this exists.' Yet she must go forward.
Ursula could feel her suffering.
`You hate this, don't you?' she asked.
`It bewilders me,' stammered Gudrun.
`You won't stay long,' replied Ursula.
And Gudrun went along, grasping at release.
They drew away from the colliery region, over the curve of the hill, into the purer country of the other side, towards Willey Green. Still the faint glamour of blackness persisted over the fields and the wooded hills, and seemed darkly to gleam in the air. It was a spring day, chill, with snatches of sunshine. Yellow celandines showed out from the hedge-bottoms, and in the cottage gardens of Willey Green, currant-bushes were breaking into leaf, and little flowers were coming white on the grey alyssum that hung over the stone walls.
Turning, they passed down the high-road, that went between high banks towards the church. There, in the lowest bend of the road, low under the trees, stood a little group of expectant people, waiting to see the wedding. The daughter of the chief mine-owner of the district, Thomas Crich, was getting married to a naval officer.
`Let us go back,' said Gudrun, swerving away. `There are all those people.'
And she hung wavering in the road.
`Never mind them,' said Ursula, `they're all right. They all know me, they don't matter.'
`But must we go through them?' asked Gudrun.
`They're quite all right, really,' said Ursula, going forward. And together the two sisters approached the group of uneasy, watchful common people. They were chiefly women, colliers' wives of the more shiftless sort. They had watchful, underworld faces.
The two sisters held themselves tense, and went straight towards the gate. The women made way for them, but barely sufficient, as if grudging to yield ground. The sisters passed in silence through the stone gateway and up the steps, on the red carpet, a policeman estimating their progress.
`What price the stockings!' said a voice at the back of Gudrun. A sudden fierce anger swept over the girl, violent and murderous. She would have liked them all annihilated, cleared away, so that the world was left clear for her. How she hated walking up the churchyard path, along the red carpet, continuing in motion, in their sight.
`I won't go into the church,' she said suddenly, with such final decision that Ursula immediately halted, turned round, and branched off up a small side path which led to the little private gate of the Grammar School, whose grounds adjoined those of the church.
Just inside the gate of the school shrubbery, outside the churchyard, Ursula sat down for a moment on the low stone wall under the laurel bushes, to rest. Behind her, the large red building of the school rose up peacefully, the windows all open for the holiday. Over the shrubs, before her, were the pale roofs and tower of the old church. The sisters were hidden by the foliage.
Gudrun sat down in silence. Her mouth was shut close, her face averted. She was regretting bitterly that she had ever come back. Ursula looked at her, and thought how amazingly beautiful she was, flushed with discomfiture. But she caused a constraint over Ursula's nature, a certain weariness. Ursula wished to be alone, freed from the tightness, the enclosure of Gudrun's presence.
`Are we going to stay here?' asked Gudrun.
`I was only resting a minute,' said Ursula, getting up as if rebuked. `We will stand in the corner by the fives-court, we shall see everything from there.'
For the moment, the sunshine fell brightly into the churchyard, there was a vague scent of sap and of spring, perhaps of violets from off the graves. Some white daisies were out, bright as angels. In the air, the unfolding leaves of a copperbeech were blood-red.
Punctually at eleven o'clock, the carriages began to arrive. There was a stir in the crowd at the gate, a concentration as a carriage drove up, wedding guests were mounting up the steps and passing along the red carpet to the church. They were all gay and excited because the sun was shining.
Gudrun watched them closely, with objective curiosity. She saw each one as a complete figure, like a character in a book, or a subject in a picture, or a marionette in a theatre, a finished creation. She loved to recognise their various characteristics, to place them in their true light, give them their own surroundings, settle them for ever as they passed before her along the path to the church. She knew them, they were finished, sealed and stamped and finished with, for her. There was none that had anything unknown, unresolved, until the Criches themselves began to appear. Then her interest was piqued. Here was something not quite so preconcluded.
There came the mother, Mrs Crich, with her eldest son Gerald. She was a queer unkempt figure, in spite of the attempts that had obviously been made to bring her into line for the day. Her face was pale, yellowish, with a clear, transparent skin, she leaned forward rather, her features were strongly marked, handsome, with a tense, unseeing, predative look. Her colourless hair was untidy, wisps floating down on to her sac coat of dark blue silk, from under her blue silk hat. She looked like a woman with a monomania, furtive almost, but heavily proud.
Her son was of a fair, sun-tanned type, rather above middle height, well-made, and almost exaggeratedly well-dressed. But about him also was the strange, guarded look, the unconscious glisten, as if he did not belong to the same creation as the people about him. Gudrun lighted on him at once. There was something northern about him that magnetised her. In his clear northern flesh and his fair hair was a glisten like sunshine refracted through crystals of ice. And he looked so new, unbroached, pure as an arctic thing. Perhaps he was thirty years old, perhaps more. His gleaming beauty, maleness, like a young, good-humoured, smiling wolf, did not blind her to the significant, sinister stillness in his bearing, the lurking danger of his unsubdued temper. `His totem is the wolf,' she repeated to herself. `His mother is an old, unbroken wolf.' And then she experienced a keen paroxyism, a transport, as if she had made some incredible discovery, known to nobody else on earth. A strange transport took possession of her, all her veins were in a paroxysm of violent sensation. `Good God!' she exclaimed to herself, `what is this?' And then, a moment after, she was saying assuredly, `I shall know more of that man.' She was tortured with desire to see him again, a nostalgia, a necessity to see him again, to make sure it was not all a mistake, that she was not deluding herself, that she really felt this strange and overwhelming sensation on his account, this knowledge of him in her essence, this powerful apprehension of him. `Am I really singled out for him in some way, is there really some pale gold, arctic light that envelopes only us two?' she asked herself. And she could not believe it, she remained in a muse, scarcely conscious of what was going on around.
The bridesmaids were here, and yet the bridegroom had not come. Ursula wondered if something was amiss, and if the wedding would yet all go wrong. She felt troubled, as if it rested upon her. The chief bridesmaids had arrived. Ursula watched them come up the steps. One of them she knew, a tall, slow, reluctant woman with a weight of fair hair and a pale, long face. This was Hermione Roddice, a friend of the Criches. Now she came along, with her head held up, balancing an enormous flat hat of pale yellow velvet, on which were streaks of ostrich feathers, natural and grey. She drifted forward as if scarcely conscious, her long blanched face lifted up, not to see the world. She was rich. She wore a dress of silky, frail velvet, of pale yellow colour, and she carried a lot of small rosecoloured cyclamens. Her shoes and stockings were of brownish grey, like the feathers on her hat, her hair was heavy, she drifted along with a peculiar fixity of the hips, a strange unwilling motion. She was impressive, in her lovely paleyellow and brownish-rose, yet macabre, something repulsive. People were silent when she passed, impressed, roused, wanting to jeer, yet for some reason silenced. Her long, pale face, that she carried lifted up, somewhat in the Rossetti fashion, seemed almost drugged, as if a strange mass of thoughts coiled in the darkness within her, and she was never allowed to escape.
Ursula watched her with fascination. She knew her a little. She was the most remarkable woman in the Midlands. Her father was a Derbyshire Baronet of the old school, she was a woman of the new school, full of intellectuality, and heavy, nerve-worn with consciousness. She was passionately interested in reform, her soul was given up to the public cause. But she was a man's woman, it was the manly world that held her.
She had various intimacies of mind and soul with various men of capacity. Ursula knew, among these men, only Rupert Birkin, who was one of the schoolinspectors of the county. But Gudrun had met others, in London. Moving with her artist friends in different kinds of society, Gudrun had already come to know a good many people of repute and standing. She had met Hermione twice, but they did not take to each other. It would be queer to meet again down here in the Midlands, where their social standing was so diverse, after they had known each other on terms of equality in the houses of sundry acquaintances in town. For Gudrun had been a social success, and had her friends among the slack aristocracy that keeps touch with the arts.
Hermione knew herself to be well-dressed; she knew herself to be the social equal, if not far the superior, of anyone she was likely to meet in Willey Green. She knew she was accepted in the world of culture and of intellect. She was a Kulturtrager, a medium for the culture of ideas. With all that was highest, whether in society or in thought or in public action, or even in art, she was at one, she moved among the foremost, at home with them. No one could put her down, no one could make mock of her, because she stood among the first, and those that were against her were below her, either in rank, or in wealth, or in high association of thought and progress and understanding. So, she was invulnerable. All her life, she had sought to make herself invulnerable, unassailable, beyond reach of the world's judgment.
And yet her soul was tortured, exposed. Even walking up the path to the church, confident as she was that in every respect she stood beyond all vulgar judgment, knowing perfectly that her appearance was complete and perfect, according to the first standards, yet she suffered a torture, under her confidence and her pride, feeling herself exposed to wounds and to mockery and to despite. She always felt vulnerable, vulnerable, there was always a secret chink in her armour. She did not know herself what it was. It was a lack of robust self, she had no natural sufficiency, there was a terrible void, a lack, a deficiency of being within her.
And she wanted someone to close up this deficiency, to close it up for ever. She craved for Rupert Birkin. When he was there, she felt complete, she was sufficient, whole. For the rest of time she was established on the sand, built over a chasm, and, in spite of all her vanity and securities, any common maid-servant of positive, robust temper could fling her down this bottomless pit of insufficiency, by the slightest movement of jeering or contempt. And all the while the pensive, tortured woman piled up her own defences of aesthetic knowledge, and culture, and worldvisions, and disinterestedness. Yet she could never stop up the terrible gap of insufficiency.
If only Birkin would form a close and abiding connection with her, she would be safe during this fretful voyage of life. He could make her sound and triumphant, triumphant over the very angels of heaven. If only he would do it! But she was tortured with fear, with misgiving. She made herself beautiful, she strove so hard to come to that degree of beauty and advantage, when he should be convinced. But always there was a deficiency.
He was perverse too. He fought her off, he always fought her off. The more she strove to bring him to her, the more he battled her back. And they had been lovers now, for years. Oh, it was so wearying, so aching; she was so tired. But still she believed in herself. She knew he was trying to leave her. She knew he was trying to break away from her finally, to be free. But still she believed in her strength to keep him, she believed in her own higher knowledge. His own knowledge was high, she was the central touchstone of truth. She only needed his conjunction with her.
And this, this conjunction with her, which was his highest fulfilment also, with the perverseness of a wilful child he wanted to deny. With the wilfulness of an obstinate child, he wanted to break the holy connection that was between them.
He would be at this wedding; he was to be groom's man. He would be in the church, waiting. He would know when she came. She shuddered with nervous apprehension and desire as she went through the church-door. He would be there, surely he would see how beautiful her dress was, surely he would see how she had made herself beautiful for him. He would understand, he would be able to see how she was made for him, the first, how she was, for him, the highest. Surely at last he would be able to accept his highest fate, he would not deny her.
In a little convulsion of too-tired yearning, she entered the church and looked slowly along her cheeks for him, her slender body convulsed with agitation. As best man, he would be standing beside the altar. She looked slowly, deferring in her certainty.
And then, he was not there. A terrible storm came over her, as if she were drowning. She was possessed by a devastating hopelessness. And she approached mechanically to the altar. Never had she known such a pang of utter and final hopelessness. It was beyond death, so utterly null, desert.
The bridegroom and the groom's man had not yet come. There was a growing consternation outside. Ursula felt almost responsible. She could not bear it that the bride should arrive, and no groom. The wedding must not be a fiasco, it must not.
But here was the bride's carriage, adorned with ribbons and cockades. Gaily the grey horses curvetted to their destination at the church-gate, a laughter in the whole movement. Here was the quick of all laughter and pleasure. The door of the carriage was thrown open, to let out the very blossom of the day. The people on the roadway murmured faintly with the discontented murmuring of a crowd.
The father stepped out first into the air of the morning, like a shadow. He was a tall, thin, careworn man, with a thin black beard that was touched with grey. He waited at the door of the carriage patiently, self-obliterated.
In the opening of the doorway was a shower of fine foliage and flowers, a whiteness of satin and lace, and a sound of a gay voice saying:
`How do I get out?'
A ripple of satisfaction ran through the expectant people. They pressed near to receive her, looking with zest at the stooping blond head with its flower buds, and at the delicate, white, tentative foot that was reaching down to the step of the carriage. There was a sudden foaming rush, and the bride like a sudden surf-rush, floating all white beside her father in the morning shadow of trees, her veil flowing with laughter.
`That's done it!' she said.
She put her hand on the arm of her care-worn, sallow father, and frothing her light draperies, proceeded over the eternal red carpet. Her father, mute and yellowish, his black beard making him look more careworn, mounted the steps stiffly, as if his spirit were absent; but the laughing mist of the bride went along with him undiminished.
And no bridegroom had arrived! It was intolerable for her. Ursula, her heart strained with anxiety, was watching the hill beyond; the white, descending road, that should give sight of him. There was a carriage. It was running. It had just come into sight. Yes, it was he. Ursula turned towards the bride and the people, and, from her place of vantage, gave an inarticulate cry. She wanted to warn them that he was coming. But her cry was inarticulate and inaudible, and she flushed deeply, between her desire and her wincing confusion.
The carriage rattled down the hill, and drew near. There was a shout from the people. The bride, who had just reached the top of the steps, turned round gaily to see what was the commotion. She saw a confusion among the people, a cab pulling up, and her lover dropping out of the carriage, and dodging among the horses and into the crowd.
`Tibs! Tibs!' she cried in her sudden, mocking excitement, standing high on the path in the sunlight and waving her bouquet. He, dodging with his hat in his hand, had not heard.
`Tibs!' she cried again, looking down to him.
He glanced up, unaware, and saw the bride and her father standing on the path above him. A queer, startled look went over his face. He hesitated for a moment. Then he gathered himself together for a leap, to overtake her.
`Ah-h-h!' came her strange, intaken cry, as, on the reflex, she started, turned and fled, scudding with an unthinkable swift beating of her white feet and fraying of her white garments, towards the church. Like a hound the young man was after her, leaping the steps and swinging past her father, his supple haunches working like those of a hound that bears down on the quarry.
`Ay, after her!' cried the vulgar women below, carried suddenly into the sport.
She, her flowers shaken from her like froth, was steadying herself to turn the angle of the church. She glanced behind, and with a wild cry of laughter and challenge, veered, poised, and was gone beyond the grey stone buttress. In another instant the bridegroom, bent forward as he ran, had caught the angle of the silent stone with his hand, and had swung himself out of sight, his supple, strong loins vanishing in pursuit.
Instantly cries and exclamations of excitement burst from the crowd at the gate. And then Ursula noticed again the dark, rather stooping figure of Mr Crich, waiting suspended on the path, watching with expressionless face the flight to the church. It was over, and he turned round to look behind him, at the figure of Rupert Birkin, who at once came forward and joined him.
`We'll bring up the rear,' said Birkin, a faint smile on his face.
`Ay!' replied the father laconically. And the two men turned together up the path.
Birkin was as thin as Mr Crich, pale and ill-looking. His figure was narrow but nicely made. He went with a slight trail of one foot, which came only from selfconsciousness. Although he was dressed correctly for his part, yet there was an innate incongruity which caused a slight ridiculousness in his appearance. His nature was clever and separate, he did not fit at all in the conventional occasion. Yet he subordinated himself to the common idea, travestied himself.
He affected to be quite ordinary, perfectly and marvellously commonplace. And he did it so well, taking the tone of his surroundings, adjusting himself quickly to his interlocutor and his circumstance, that he achieved a verisimilitude of ordinary commonplaceness that usually propitiated his onlookers for the moment, disarmed them from attacking his singleness.
Now he spoke quite easily and pleasantly to Mr Crich, as they walked along the path; he played with situations like a man on a tight-rope: but always on a tightrope, pretending nothing but ease.
`I'm sorry we are so late,' he was saying. `We couldn't find a button-hook, so it took us a long time to button our boots. But you were to the moment.'
`We are usually to time,' said Mr Crich.
`And I'm always late,' said Birkin. `But today I was really punctual, only accidentally not so. I'm sorry.'
The two men were gone, there was nothing more to see, for the time. Ursula was left thinking about Birkin. He piqued her, attracted her, and annoyed her.
She wanted to know him more. She had spoken with him once or twice, but only in his official capacity as inspector. She thought he seemed to acknowledge some kinship between her and him, a natural, tacit understanding, a using of the same language. But there had been no time for the understanding to develop. And something kept her from him, as well as attracted her to him. There was a certain hostility, a hidden ultimate reserve in him, cold and inaccessible.
Yet she wanted to know him.
`What do you think of Rupert Birkin?' she asked, a little reluctantly, of Gudrun. She did not want to discuss him.
`What do I think of Rupert Birkin?' repeated Gudrun. `I think he's attractive -decidedly attractive. What I can't stand about him is his way with other people -his way of treating any little fool as if she were his greatest consideration. One feels so awfully sold, oneself.'
`Why does he do it?' said Ursula.
`Because he has no real critical faculty -- of people, at all events,' said Gudrun. `I tell you, he treats any little fool as he treats me or you -- and it's such an insult.'
`Oh, it is,' said Ursula. `One must discriminate.'
`One must discriminate,' repeated Gudrun. `But he's a wonderful chap, in other respects -- a marvellous personality. But you can't trust him.'
`Yes,' said Ursula vaguely. She was always forced to assent to Gudrun's pronouncements, even when she was not in accord altogether.
The sisters sat silent, waiting for the wedding party to come out. Gudrun was impatient of talk. She wanted to think about Gerald Crich. She wanted to see if the strong feeling she had got from him was real. She wanted to have herself ready.
Inside the church, the wedding was going on. Hermione Roddice was thinking only of Birkin. He stood near her. She seemed to gravitate physically towards him. She wanted to stand touching him. She could hardly be sure he was near her, if she did not touch him. Yet she stood subjected through the wedding service.
She had suffered so bitterly when he did not come, that still she was dazed. Still she was gnawed as by a neuralgia, tormented by his potential absence from her. She had awaited him in a faint delirium of nervous torture. As she stood bearing herself pensively, the rapt look on her face, that seemed spiritual, like the angels, but which came from torture, gave her a certain poignancy that tore his heart with pity. He saw her bowed head, her rapt face, the face of an almost demoniacal ecstatic. Feeling him looking, she lifted her face and sought his eyes, her own beautiful grey eyes flaring him a great signal. But he avoided her look, she sank her head in torment and shame, the gnawing at her heart going on. And he too was tortured with shame, and ultimate dislike, and with acute pity for her, because he did not want to meet her eyes, he did not want to receive her flare of recognition.
The bride and bridegroom were married, the party went into the vestry. Hermione crowded involuntarily up against Birkin, to touch him. And he endured it.
Outside, Gudrun and Ursula listened for their father's playing on the organ. He would enjoy playing a wedding march. Now the married pair were coming! The bells were ringing, making the air shake. Ursula wondered if the trees and the flowers could feel the vibration, and what they thought of it, this strange motion in the air. The bride was quite demure on the arm of the bridegroom, who stared up into the sky before him, shutting and opening his eyes unconsciously, as if he were neither here nor there. He looked rather comical, blinking and trying to be in the scene, when emotionally he was violated by his exposure to a crowd. He looked a typical naval officer, manly, and up to his duty.
Birkin came with Hermione. She had a rapt, triumphant look, like the fallen angels restored, yet still subtly demoniacal, now she held Birkin by the arm. And he was expressionless, neutralised, possessed by her as if it were his fate, without question.
Gerald Crich came, fair, good-looking, healthy, with a great reserve of energy. He was erect and complete, there was a strange stealth glistening through his amiable, almost happy appearance. Gudrun rose sharply and went away. She could not bear it. She wanted to be alone, to know this strange, sharp inoculation that had changed the whole temper of her blood.
 
在贝多弗父亲的房子里,布朗温家两姐妹厄秀拉和戈珍坐在凸肚窗窗台上,一边绣花、绘画,一边聊着。厄秀拉正绣一件色彩鲜艳的东西,戈珍膝盖上放着一块画板在画画儿。
她们默默地绣着、画着,想到什么就说点什么。
“厄秀拉,”戈珍说,“你真想结婚吗?”厄秀拉把刺绣摊在膝上抬起头来,神情平静、若有所思地说:
“我不知道,这要看怎么讲了。”
戈珍有点吃惊地看着姐姐,看了好一会儿。
“这个嘛,”戈珍调侃地说,“一般来说指的就是那回事!但是,你不觉得你应该,嗯,”她有点神色黯然地说,“不应该比现在的处境更好一点吗?”
厄秀拉脸上闪过一片阴影。
“应该,”她说,“不过我没把握。”
戈珍又不说话了,有点不高兴了,她原本要得到一个确切的答复。
“你不认为一个人需要结婚的经验吗?”她问。
“你认为结婚是一种经验吗?”厄秀拉反问。
“肯定是,不管怎样都是。”戈珍冷静地说,“可能这经验让人不愉快,但肯定是一种经验。”
“那不见得,”厄秀拉说,“也许倒是经验的结束呢。”
戈珍笔直地坐着,认真听厄秀拉说这话。
“当然了,”她说,“是要想到这个。”说完后,她们不再说话了。戈珍几乎是气呼呼地抓起橡皮,开始擦掉画上去的东西。厄秀拉专心地绣她的花儿。
“有象样的人求婚你不考虑接受吗?”戈珍问。
“我都回绝了好几个了。”厄秀拉说。
“真的!?”戈珍绯红了脸问:“什么值得你这么干?你真有什么想法吗?”
“一年中有好多人求婚,我喜欢上了一个非常好的人,太喜欢他了。”厄秀拉说。
“真的!是不是你让人家引诱了?”
“可以说是,也可以说不是。”厄秀拉说,“一到那时候,压根儿就没了引诱这一说。要是我让人家引诱了,我早立即结婚了。我受的是不结婚的引诱。”说到这里,两姐妹的脸色明朗起来,感到乐不可支。
“太棒了,”戈珍叫道,“这引诱力也太大了,不结婚!”她们两人相对大笑起来,但她们心里感到可怕。
这以后她们沉默了好久,厄秀拉仍旧绣花儿,戈珍照旧画她的素描。姐妹俩都是大姑娘了,厄秀拉二十六,戈珍二十五。但她们都象现代女性那样,看上去冷漠、纯洁,不象青春女神,反倒更象月神。戈珍很漂亮、皮肤柔嫩,体态婀娜,人也温顺。她身着一件墨绿色绸上衣,领口和袖口上都镶着蓝色和绿色的亚麻布褶边儿;脚上穿的袜子则是翠绿色的。她看上去与厄秀拉正相反。她时而自信,时而羞赦,而厄秀拉则敏感,充满信心。本地人被戈珍那泰然自若的神态和毫无掩饰的举止所惊诧,说她是个“伶俐的姑娘。”她刚从伦敦回来,在那儿住了几年,在一所艺术学校边工作边学习,俨然是个艺术家。
“我现在在等一个男人的到来,”戈珍说着,突然咬住下嘴唇,一半是狡猾的笑,一半是痛苦相,做了个奇怪的鬼脸。
厄秀拉被吓了一跳。
“你回家来,就是为了在这儿等他?”她笑道。
“得了吧,”戈珍刺耳地叫道,“我才不会犯神经去找他呢。不过嘛,要是真有那么一个人,相貌出众、丰采照人,又有足够的钱,那——”戈珍有点不好意思,话没说完。然后她盯着厄秀拉,好象要看透她似的。“你不觉得你都感到厌烦了吗?”她问姐姐,“你是否发现什么都无法实现?什么都实现不了!一切都还未等开花儿就凋谢了。”
“什么没开花就凋谢了?”厄秀拉问。
“嗨,什么都是这样,自己一般的事情都这样。”姐妹俩不说话了,都在朦朦胧胧地考虑着自己的命运。
“这是够可怕的。”厄秀拉说,停了一会儿又说:“不过你想通过结婚达到什么目的吗?”
“那是下一步的事儿,不可避免。”戈珍说。厄秀拉思考着这个问题,心中有点发苦。她在威利·格林中学教书,工作好几年了。
“我知道,”她说,“人一空想起来似乎都那样,可要是设身处地地想想就好了,想想吧,想想你了解的一个男人,每天晚上回家来,对你说声‘哈罗’,然后吻你——”
谁都不说话了。
“没错,”戈珍小声说,“这不可能。男人不可能这样。”
“当然还有孩子——”厄秀拉迟疑地说。
戈珍的表情严峻起来。
“你真想要孩子吗,厄秀拉?”她冷冷地问。听她这一问,厄秀拉脸上露出了迷惑不解的表情。
“我觉得这个问题离我还太远,”她说。
“你是这种感受吗?”戈珍问,“我从来没想过生孩子,没那感受。”
戈珍毫无表情地看着厄秀拉。厄秀拉皱起了眉头。
“或许这并不是真的,”她支吾道,“或许人们心里并不想要孩子,只是表面上这样而已。”戈珍的神态严肃起来。她并不需要太肯定的说法。
“可有时一个人会想到别人的孩子。”厄秀拉说。
戈珍又一次看看姐姐,目光中几乎有些敌意。
“是这样。”她说完不再说话了。
姐妹两人默默地绣花、绘画儿。厄秀拉总是那么精神抖擞,心中燃着一团扑扑作响、熊熊腾腾的火。她自己独立生活很久了,洁身自好,工作着,日复一日,总想把握住生活,照自己的想法去把握生活。表面上她停止了活跃的生活,可实际上,在冥冥中却有什么在生长出来。要是她能够冲破那最后的一层壳皮该多好啊!她似乎象一个胎儿那样伸出了双手,可是,她不能,还不能。她仍有一种奇特的预感,感到有什么将至。
她放下手中的刺绣,看看妹妹。她觉得戈珍太漂亮、实在太迷人了,她柔美、丰腴、线条纤细。她还有点顽皮、淘气、出言辛辣,真是个毫无修饰的处女。厄秀拉打心眼儿里羡慕她。
“你为什么回家来?”
戈珍知道厄秀拉羡慕她了。她直起腰来,线条优美的眼睫毛下目光凝视着厄秀拉。
“问我为什么回来吗,厄秀拉?”她重复道:“我自己已经问过自己一千次了。”
“你知道了吗?”
“知道了,我想我明白了。我觉得我退一步是为了更好地前进。”
说完她久久地盯着厄秀拉,目光寻问着她。
“我知道!”厄秀拉叫道,那神情有些迷茫,象是在说谎,好象她不明白一样。“可你要跳到哪儿去呢?”
“哦,无所谓,”戈珍说,口气有点超然。“一个人如果跳过了篱笆,他总能落到一个什么地方的。”
“可这不是在冒险吗?”厄秀拉说。
戈珍脸上渐渐掠过一丝嘲讽的笑意。
“嗨!”她笑道:“我们尽吵些什么呀!”她又不说话了,可厄秀拉仍然郁闷地沉思着。
“你回来了,觉得家里怎么样?”她问。
戈珍沉默了片刻,有点冷漠。然后冷冷地说:
“我发现我完全不是这儿的人了。”
“那爸爸呢?”
戈珍几乎有点反感地看看厄秀拉,有些被迫的样子,说:
“我还没想到他呢,我不让自己去想。”她的话很冷漠。
“好啊,”厄秀拉吞吞吐吐地说。她俩的对话的确进行不下去了。姐妹两人发现自己遇到了一条黑洞洞的深渊,很可怕,好象她们就在边上窥视一样。
她们又默默地做着自己的活儿。一会儿,戈珍的脸因为控制着情绪而通红起来。她不愿让脸红起来。
“我们出去看看人家的婚礼吧。”她终于说话了,口气很随便。
“好啊!”厄秀拉叫道,急切地把针线扔到一边,跳了起来,似乎要逃离什么东西一样。这么一来,反倒弄得很紧张,令戈珍感到不高兴。
往楼上走着,厄秀拉注意地看着这座房子,这是她的家。可是她讨厌这儿,这块肮脏、太让人熟习的地方!也许她内心深处对这个家是反感的,这周围的环境,整个气氛和这种陈腐的生活都让她反感。这种感觉令她恐怖。
两个姑娘很快就来到了贝多弗的主干道上,匆匆走着。这条街很宽,路旁有商店和住房,布局散乱,街面上也很脏,不过倒不显得贫寒。戈珍刚从彻西区①和苏塞克斯②来,对中部这座小小的矿区城十分厌恶,这儿真是又乱又脏。她朝前走着,穿过长长的砾石街道,把个混乱不堪、肮脏透顶、小气十足的场面尽收眼底。人们的目光都盯着她,她感到很难受。真不知道她为什么要回来,为什么要尝尝这乱七八糟、丑陋不堪的小城滋味。她为什么要向这些令人难以忍受的折磨,这些毫无意义的人和这座毫无光彩的农村小镇屈服呢?为什么她仍然要向这些东西屈服?她感到自己就象一只在尘土中蠕动的甲壳虫,这真令人反感。
①彻西区是伦敦聚集了文学艺术家的一个区。
②英国的一个郡。——译者注。以后所有的注释均为译者注。
她们走下主干道,从一座黑乎乎的公家菜园旁走过,园子里沾满煤炭的白菜根不识羞耻地散落着。没人感到难看,没人为这个感到不好意思。
“这真象地狱中的农村。”戈珍说,“矿工们把煤炭带到地面上来,带来这么多呀。厄秀拉,这可真太好玩了,太好了,真是太妙了,这儿又是一个世界。这儿的人全是些吃尸鬼,这儿什么东西都沾着鬼气。全是真实世界的鬼影,是鬼影、食尸鬼,全是些肮脏、龌龊的东西。厄秀拉,这简直让人发疯。”
姐妹俩穿过一片黑黝黝、肮脏不堪的田野。左边是散落着一座座煤矿的谷地,谷地上面的山坡上是小麦田和森林,远远一片黝黑,就象罩着一层黑纱一样。敦敦实实的烟窗里冒着白烟黑烟,象黑沉沉天空上在变魔术一样。近处是一排排的住房,顺山坡而上,一直通向山顶。这些房子用暗红砖砌成,房顶铺着石板,看上去很不结实。姐妹二人走的这条路也是黑乎乎的。路是让矿工们的脚一步步踩出来的,路旁围着铁栅栏,栅门也让进出的矿工们的厚毛布裤磨亮了。现在姐妹二人走在几排房屋中间的路上,这里可就寒酸了。女人们戴着围裙,双臂交叉着抱在胸前,站在远处窃窃私语,她们用一种不开化人的目光目不转睛地盯着布朗温姐妹;孩子们在叫骂着。
戈珍走着,被眼前的东西惊呆了。如果说这是人的生活,如果说这些是生活在一个完整世界中的人,那么她自己那个世界算什么呢?她意识到自己穿着绿草般鲜绿的袜子,戴着绿色的天鹅绒帽,柔软的长大衣也是绿的,颜色更深一点。她感到自己腾云驾雾般地走着,一点都不稳,她的心缩紧了,似乎她随时都会猝然摔倒在地。她怕了。
她紧紧偎依着厄秀拉,她对这个黑暗、粗鄙、充满敌意的世界早习以为常了。尽管有厄秀拉,戈珍还感到象是在受着苦刑,心儿一直在呼喊:“我要回去,要走,我不想知道这儿,不想知道这些东西。”可她不得不继续朝前走。
厄秀拉可以感觉到戈珍是在受罪。
“你讨厌这些,是吗?”她问。
“这儿让我吃惊。”戈珍结结巴巴地说。
“你别在这儿呆太久。”厄秀拉说。
戈珍松了一口气,继续朝前走。
她们离开了矿区,翻过山,进入了山后宁静的乡村,朝威利·格林中学走去。田野上仍有些煤炭,但好多了,山上的林子里也这样,似乎在闪着黑色的光芒。这是春天,春寒料峭,但尚有几许阳光。篱笆下冒出些黄色的花来,威利·格林的农家菜园里,覆盆子已经长出了叶子,伏种在石墙上的油菜,灰叶中已绽出些小白花儿。
她们转身走下了高高的田梗,中间是通向教堂的主干道。在转弯的低处,树下站着一群等着看婚礼的人们。这个地区的矿业主托玛斯·克里奇的女儿与一位海军军官的婚礼将要举行。
“咱们回去吧,”戈珍转过身说着,“全是些这种人。”
她在路上犹豫着。
“别管他们,”厄秀拉说,“他们都不错,都认识我,没事儿。”
“我们非得从他们当中穿过去吗?”戈珍问。
“他们都不错,真的。”厄秀拉说着继续朝前走。这姐妹两人一起接近了这群躁动不安、眼巴巴盯着看的人。这当中大多数是女人,矿工们的妻子,更是些混日子的人,她们脸上透着警觉的神色,一看就是下层人。
姐妹两人提心吊胆地直朝大门走去。女人们为她们让路,可让出来的就那么窄窄的一条缝,好象是在勉强放弃自己的地盘儿一样。姐妹俩默默地穿过石门踏上台阶,站在红色地毯上的一个警察盯着她们往前行进的步伐。
“这双袜子可够值钱的!”戈珍后面有人说。一听这话,戈珍浑身就燃起一股怒火,一股凶猛、可怕的火。她真恨不得把这些人全干掉,从这个世界上清除干净。她真讨厌在这些人注视下穿过教堂的院子沿着地毯往前走。
“我不进教堂了。”戈珍突然做出了最后的决定。她的话让厄秀拉立即停住脚步,转过身走上了旁边一条通向中学旁门的小路,中学就在教堂隔壁。
穿过学校与教堂中间的灌木丛进到学校里,厄秀拉坐在月桂树下的矮石墙上歇息。她身后学校高大的红楼静静地伫立着,假日里窗户全敞开着,面前灌木丛那边就是教堂淡淡的屋顶和塔楼。姐妹两人被掩映在树木中。
戈珍默默地坐了下来,紧闭着嘴,头扭向一边。她真后悔回到家来。厄秀拉看看她,觉得她漂亮极了,自己认输了,脸都红了。可她让厄秀拉感到紧张得有点累了。厄秀拉希望单独自处,脱离戈珍给她造成的透不过气来的紧张感。
“我们还要在这儿呆下去吗?”戈珍问。
“我就歇一小会儿,”厄秀拉说着站起身,象是受到戈珍的斥责一样。“咱们就站在隔壁球场的角落里,从那儿什么都看得见。”
太阳正辉煌地照耀着教堂墓地,空气中淡淡地弥漫着树脂的清香,那是春天的气息,或许是墓地黑紫罗兰散发着幽香的缘故。一些雏菊已绽开了洁白的花朵,象小天使一样漂亮。空中铜色山毛榉上舒展出血红色的树叶。
十一点时,马车准时到达。一辆车驶过来,门口人群拥挤起来,产生了一阵骚动。出席婚礼的宾客们徐徐走上台阶,沿着红地毯走向教堂。这天阳光明媚,人们个个兴高采烈。
戈珍用外来人那种好奇的目光仔细观察着这些人。她把每个人都整体地观察一通,或把他们看作书中的一个个人物,一幅画中的人物或剧院中的活动木偶,总之,完整地观察他们。她喜欢辨别他们不同的性格,将他们还其本来面目,给他们设置自我环境,在他们从她眼前走过的当儿就给他们下了个永久的定论。她了解他们了,对她来说他们是些完整的人,已经打上了烙印的完整的人。等到克里奇家的人开始露面时,再也没有什么未知、不能解决的问题了。她的兴趣被激发起来了,她发现这里有点什么东西是不那么容易提前下结论的。
那边走过来克里奇太太和她的儿子杰拉德。尽管她为了今天这个日子明显地修饰装扮了一番,但仍看得出她这人是不修边幅的。她脸色苍白,有点发黄,皮肤洁净透明,有点前倾的身体,线条分明,很健壮,看上去象是要鼓足力气不顾一切地去捕捉什么。她一头的白发一点都不整齐,几缕头发从绿绸帽里掉出来,飘到罩着墨绿绸衣的褶皱纱上。一看就知道她是个患偏执狂的女人,狡猾而傲慢。
她儿子本是个肤色白净的人,但让太阳晒黑了。他个头中等偏高,身材很好,穿着似乎有些过分的讲究。但他的神态却是那么奇异、警觉,脸上情不自禁地闪烁着光芒,似乎他同周围的这些人有着根本的不同。戈珍的目光在打量他,他身上某种北方人的东西迷住了戈珍。他那北方人纯净的肌肤和金色的头发象透过水晶折射的阳光一样在闪烁。他看上去是那么新奇的一个人,没有任何做作的痕迹,象北极的东西一样纯洁。他或许有三十岁了,或许更大些。他丰采照人,男子气十足,恰象一只脾气温和、微笑着的幼狼一样。但这副外表无法令她变得盲目,她还是冷静地看出他静态中存在着危险,他那扑食的习性是无法改变的。“他的图腾是狼,”她自己重复着这句话。“他母亲是一只毫不屈服的老狼。”想到此,她一阵狂喜,好象她有了一个全世界都不知道的令人难以置信的发现。一阵狂喜攫住了她,全身的血管一时间猛烈激动起来。“天啊!”她自己大叫着,“这是怎么一回事啊?”一会儿,她又自信地说,“我会更多地了解那个人的。”她要再次见到他,她被这种欲望折磨着,一定要再次见到他,这心情如同一种乡恋一样。她清楚,她没有错,她没有自欺欺人,她的确因为见到了他才产生了这种奇特而振奋人心的感觉。她从本质上了解了他,深刻地理解他,“难道我真地选中了他吗?难道真有一道苍白、金色的北极光把我们两人拴在一起了吗?”她对自己发问。她无法相信自己,她仍然沉思着,几乎意识不到周围都发生了什么事。
女傧相来了,但新娘还迟迟未到。厄秀拉猜想可能出了点差错,这场婚礼弄不好就办不成了。她为此感到忧虑,似乎婚礼成功与否是取决于她。主要的女傧相们都到了,厄秀拉看着她们走上台阶。她认识她们当中的一个,这人高高的个子,行动缓慢,长着一头金发,长长的脸,脸色苍白,一看就知道是个难以驾驭的人。她是克里奇家的朋友,叫赫麦妮·罗迪斯。她走过来了,昂着头,戴着一顶浅黄色天鹅绒宽沿帽,帽子上插着几根天然灰色鸵鸟羽毛。她飘然而过,似乎对周围视而不见,苍白的长脸向上扬起,并不留意周围。她很富有,今天穿了一件浅黄色软天鹅绒上衣,亮闪闪的,手上捧一束玫瑰色仙客来花儿;鞋和袜子的颜色很象帽子上羽毛的颜色,也是灰色的。她这人汗毛很重呢。走起路来臀部收得很紧,这是她的一大特点,那种悠悠然的样子跟众人就是不同,她的衣着由浅黄和暗灰搭配而成,衣服漂亮,人也很美,但有点可怕,有点让人生厌。她走过时,人们都静了下来,看来让她迷住了,继而人们又激动起来,想调侃几句,但终究不敢,又沉默了。她高扬着苍白的长脸,样子颇象罗塞蒂①,似乎有点麻木,似乎她黑暗的内心深处聚集了许许多多奇特的思想令她永远无法从中解脱。
①罗塞蒂(1830—1894),英国拉斐尔前派著名女诗人。她的诗多以田园牧歌诗为主,富有神秘宗教色彩。
厄秀拉出神地看着赫麦妮。她了解一点她的情况。赫麦妮是中原地区最出色的女人,父亲是德比郡的男爵,是个旧派人物,而她则全然新派,聪明过人且极有思想。她对改革充满热情,心思全用在社会事业上。可她还是终归嫁了人,仍然得受男性世界的左右。
她同各路有地位的男人都有神交。厄秀拉只知道其中有一位是学校监察员,名叫卢伯特·伯金。倒是戈珍在伦敦认识人更多些。她同搞艺术的朋友们出入各种社交圈子,已经认识了不少知名人士。她与赫麦妮打过两次交道,但她们两人话不投机。她们在伦敦城里各类朋友家以平等的身份相识,现在如果以如此悬殊的社会地位在中原相会将会令人很不舒服。戈珍在社会上一直是个佼佼者,与贵族中搞点艺术的有闲者交往密切。
赫麦妮知道自己穿得很漂亮,她知道自己在威利·格林可以平等地同任何她想认识的人打交道,或许想摆摆架子就摆摆架子。她知道她的地位在文化知识界的圈子里是得到认可的,她是文化意识的传播媒介。无论在社会上还是在思想意识方面甚至在艺术上,她都处在最高层次上,木秀于林,在这些方面她显得左右逢源。没谁能把她比下去,没谁能够让她出丑,因为她总是高居一流,而那些与她作对的人都在她之下,无论在等级上、财力上或是在高层次的思想交流,思想发展及领悟能力上都不如她。因此她是冒犯不得的人物。她一生中都努力不受人伤害或侵犯,要让人们无法判断她。
但是她的心在受折磨,这一点她无法掩饰。别看她在通往教堂的路上如此信步前行,确信庸俗的舆论对她毫无损伤,深信自己的形象完美无缺、属于第一流。但是她忍受着折磨,自信和傲慢只是表面现象而已,其实她感到自己伤痕累累,受着人们的嘲讽与蔑视。她总感到自己容易受到伤害,在她的盔甲下总有一道隐秘的伤口。她不知道这是怎么回事。其实这是因为她缺乏强健的自我,不具备天然的自负感。她有的只是一个可怕空洞的灵魂,缺乏生命的底蕴。
她需要有个人来充溢她生命的底蕴,永远这样。于是她极力追求卢伯特·伯金。当伯金在她身边时,她就感到自己是完整的,底气很足。而在其它时间里,她就感到摇摇欲跌,就象建立在断裂带之上的房屋一样。尽管她爱面子,掩饰自己,但任何一位自信、脾气倔犟的普通女佣都可以用轻微的嘲讽和蔑视举止将她抛入无底的深渊,令她感到自己无能。但是,这位忧郁、忍受着折磨的女人一直在进取,用美学、文化、上流社会的态度和大公无私的行为来保护自己。可她怎么也无法越过这道可怕的沟壑,总感到自己没有底气。
如果伯金能够保持跟她之间的密切关系,赫麦妮在人生这多愁多忧的航行中就会感到安全。伯金可以让她安全,让她成功,让她战胜天使。他要是这样就好了!可他没有。于是她就在恐怖与担心中受着折磨。她把自己装扮得很漂亮,尽量达到能令伯金相信的美与优越程度。可她总也不能。
他也不是个一般人。他把她击退了,总击退她。她越是要拉他,他越是要击退她。可他们几年来竟一直相爱着。天啊,这太令人厌倦痛苦了,可她依然很自信。她知道他试图离她而去,但她仍然自信有力量守住他,她对自己高深的学问深信不疑。伯金的知识水平很高,但赫麦妮则是真理的试金石,她要的是伯金跟她一条心。
他象一个有变态心理的任性孩子一样要否认与她的联系,否认了这个就是否认了自己的完美。他象一个任性的孩子,要打破他们两人之间的神圣联系。
他会来参加这场婚礼的,他要来当男傧相。他会早早来教堂等候的。赫麦妮走进教堂大门时想到这些,不禁怕起来,心里打了一个寒慄。他会在那里的,他肯定会看到她的衣服是多么漂亮,他肯定会明白她是为了他才把自己打扮得如此漂亮。他会明白的,他能够看得出她是为了他才把自己打扮得如此出众,无与伦比。他会认可自己最好的命运,最终他不会不接受她的。
渴望令她疲倦地抽搐了一下。她走进教堂的门后左右寻顾着找他,她苗条的躯体不安地颤动着。作为男傧相,他是应该站在祭坛边上的。她缓缓地充满自信地把目光投过去,但心中不免有点怀疑。
他没在那儿,这给了她一个可怕的打击,她好象要沉没了。毁灭性的失望感攫住了她。她木然地朝祭坛挪过去。她从来没有经历过这样彻底毁灭性的打击,它比死还可怕,那种感觉是如此空旷、荒芜。
新郎和伴郎还没有到。外面的人群渐渐乱动起来。厄秀拉感到自己似乎该对这件事负责。她不忍心看到新娘来了却没有新郎陪伴。这场婚礼千万不能失败,千万不能。
新娘的马车来了,马车上装饰着彩带和花结。灰马雀跃着奔向教堂大门,整个进程都充满了欢笑,这儿是所有欢笑与欢乐的中心。马车门开了,今天的花儿就要从车中出来了。
路上的人们稍有不满地窃窃私语。
先走出马车的是新娘的父亲,他就象一个阴影出现在晨空中。他高大、瘦削、一副饱经磨难的形象,唇上细细的一道黑髭已经有些灰白了。他忘我耐心地等在车门口。
车门一开,车上落下纷纷扬扬的漂亮叶子和鲜花,飘下来白色缎带,车中传出一个欢快的声音:
“我怎么出去呀?”
等待的人群中响起一片满意的议论声。大家靠近车门来迎她,眼巴巴地盯着她垂下去的头,那一头金发上沾满了花蕾。眼看着那只娇小的白色金莲儿试探着蹬到车梯上,一阵雪浪般的冲击,随之新娘呼地一下,拥向树荫下的父亲,她一团雪白,从面纱中荡漾出笑声来。
“这下好了!”
她用手挽住饱经风霜、面带病色的父亲,荡着一身白浪走上了红地毯。面色发黄的父亲沉默不语,黑髭令他看上去更显得饱经磨难。他快步踏上台阶,似乎头脑里一片空虚,可他身边的新娘却一直笑声不断。
可是新郎还没有到!厄秀拉简直对此无法忍受。她忧心忡忡地望着远山,希望那白色的下山路上会出现新郎的身影。那边驶来一辆马车,渐渐进入人们的视线。没错,是他来了。厄秀拉 
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

[ 此帖被゛臉紅紅....在2013-10-26 17:15重新编辑 ]
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举报 只看该作者 板凳   发表于: 2013-10-26 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 2 Shortlands


THE BRANGWENS went home to Beldover, the wedding-party gathered at Shortlands, the Criches' home. It was a long, low old house, a sort of manor farm, that spread along the top of a slope just beyond the narrow little lake of Willey Water. Shortlands looked across a sloping meadow that might be a park, because of the large, solitary trees that stood here and there, across the water of the narrow lake, at the wooded hill that successfully hid the colliery valley beyond, but did not quite hide the rising smoke. Nevertheless, the scene was rural and picturesque, very peaceful, and the house had a charm of its own.
It was crowded now with the family and the wedding guests. The father, who was not well, withdrew to rest. Gerald was host. He stood in the homely entrance hall, friendly and easy, attending to the men. He seemed to take pleasure in his social functions, he smiled, and was abundant in hospitality.
The women wandered about in a little confusion, chased hither and thither by the three married daughters of the house. All the while there could be heard the characteristic, imperious voice of one Crich woman or another calling `Helen, come here a minute,' `Marjory, I want you -- here.' `Oh, I say, Mrs Witham --.' There was a great rustling of skirts, swift glimpses of smartly-dressed women, a child danced through the hall and back again, a maidservant came and went hurriedly.
Meanwhile the men stood in calm little groups, chatting, smoking, pretending to pay no heed to the rustling animation of the women's world. But they could not really talk, because of the glassy ravel of women's excited, cold laughter and running voices. They waited, uneasy, suspended, rather bored. But Gerald remained as if genial and happy, unaware that he was waiting or unoccupied, knowing himself the very pivot of the occasion.
Suddenly Mrs Crich came noiselessly into the room, peering about with her strong, clear face. She was still wearing her hat, and her sac coat of blue silk.
`What is it, mother?' said Gerald.
`Nothing, nothing!' she answered vaguely. And she went straight towards Birkin, who was talking to a Crich brother-in-law.
`How do you do, Mr Birkin,' she said, in her low voice, that seemed to take no count of her guests. She held out her hand to him.
`Oh Mrs Crich,' replied Birkin, in his readily-changing voice, `I couldn't come to you before.'
`I don't know half the people here,' she said, in her low voice. Her son-in-law moved uneasily away.
`And you don't like strangers?' laughed Birkin. `I myself can never see why one should take account of people, just because they happen to be in the room with one: why should I know they are there?'
`Why indeed, why indeed!' said Mrs Crich, in her low, tense voice. `Except that they are there. I don't know people whom I find in the house. The children introduce them to me -- "Mother, this is Mr So-and-so." I am no further. What has Mr So-and-so to do with his own name? -- and what have I to do with either him or his name?'
She looked up at Birkin. She startled him. He was flattered too that she came to talk to him, for she took hardly any notice of anybody. He looked down at her tense clear face, with its heavy features, but he was afraid to look into her heavyseeing blue eyes. He noticed instead how her hair looped in slack, slovenly strands over her rather beautiful ears, which were not quite clean. Neither was her neck perfectly clean. Even in that he seemed to belong to her, rather than to the rest of the company; though, he thought to himself, he was always well washed, at any rate at the neck and ears.
He smiled faintly, thinking these things. Yet he was tense, feeling that he and the elderly, estranged woman were conferring together like traitors, like enemies within the camp of the other people. He resembled a deer, that throws one ear back upon the trail behind, and one ear forward, to know what is ahead.
`People don't really matter,' he said, rather unwilling to continue.
The mother looked up at him with sudden, dark interrogation, as if doubting his sincerity.
`How do you mean, matter?' she asked sharply.
`Not many people are anything at all,' he answered, forced to go deeper than he wanted to. `They jingle and giggle. It would be much better if they were just wiped out. Essentially, they don't exist, they aren't there.'
She watched him steadily while he spoke.
`But we didn't imagine them,' she said sharply.
`There's nothing to imagine, that's why they don't exist.'
`Well,' she said, `I would hardly go as far as that. There they are, whether they exist or no. It doesn't rest with me to decide on their existence. I only know that I can't be expected to take count of them all. You can't expect me to know them, just because they happen to be there. As far as I go they might as well not be there.'
`Exactly,' he replied.
`Mightn't they?' she asked again.
`Just as well,' he repeated. And there was a little pause.
`Except that they are there, and that's a nuisance,' she said. `There are my sons-inlaw,' she went on, in a sort of monologue. `Now Laura's got married, there's another. And I really don't know John from James yet. They come up to me and call me mother. I know what they will say -- "how are you, mother?" I ought to say, "I am not your mother, in any sense." But what is the use? There they are. I have had children of my own. I suppose I know them from another woman's children.'
`One would suppose so,' he said.
She looked at him, somewhat surprised, forgetting perhaps that she was talking to him. And she lost her thread.
She looked round the room, vaguely. Birkin could not guess what she was looking for, nor what she was thinking. Evidently she noticed her sons.
`Are my children all there?' she asked him abruptly.
He laughed, startled, afraid perhaps.
`I scarcely know them, except Gerald,' he replied.
`Gerald!' she exclaimed. `He's the most wanting of them all. You'd never think it, to look at him now, would you?'
`No,' said Birkin.
The mother looked across at her eldest son, stared at him heavily for some time.
`Ay,' she said, in an incomprehensible monosyllable, that sounded profoundly cynical. Birkin felt afraid, as if he dared not realise. And Mrs Crich moved away, forgetting him. But she returned on her traces.
`I should like him to have a friend,' she said. `He has never had a friend.'
Birkin looked down into her eyes, which were blue, and watching heavily. He could not understand them. `Am I my brother's keeper?' he said to himself, almost flippantly.
Then he remembered, with a slight shock, that that was Cain's cry. And Gerald was Cain, if anybody. Not that he was Cain, either, although he had slain his brother. There was such a thing as pure accident, and the consequences did not attach to one, even though one had killed one's brother in such wise. Gerald as a boy had accidentally killed his brother. What then? Why seek to draw a brand and a curse across the life that had caused the accident? A man can live by accident, and die by accident. Or can he not? Is every man's life subject to pure accident, is it only the race, the genus, the species, that has a universal reference? Or is this not true, is there no such thing as pure accident? Has everything that happens a universal significance? Has it? Birkin, pondering as he stood there, had forgotten Mrs Crich, as she had forgotten him.
He did not believe that there was any such thing as accident. It all hung together, in the deepest sense.
Just as he had decided this, one of the Crich daughters came up, saying:
`Won't you come and take your hat off, mother dear? We shall be sitting down to eat in a minute, and it's a formal occasion, darling, isn't it?' She drew her arm through her mother's, and they went away. Birkin immediately went to talk to the nearest man.
The gong sounded for the luncheon. The men looked up, but no move was made to the dining-room. The women of the house seemed not to feel that the sound had meaning for them. Five minutes passed by. The elderly manservant, Crowther, appeared in the doorway exasperatedly. He looked with appeal at Gerald. The latter took up a large, curved conch shell, that lay on a shelf, and without reference to anybody, blew a shattering blast. It was a strange rousing noise, that made the heart beat. The summons was almost magical. Everybody came running, as if at a signal. And then the crowd in one impulse moved to the dining-room.
Gerald waited a moment, for his sister to play hostess. He knew his mother would pay no attention to her duties. But his sister merely crowded to her seat. Therefore the young man, slightly too dictatorial, directed the guests to their places.
There was a moment's lull, as everybody looked at the bors d'oeuvres that were being handed round. And out of this lull, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, with her long hair down her back, said in a calm, self-possessed voice:
`Gerald, you forget father, when you make that unearthly noise.'
`Do I?' he answered. And then, to the company, `Father is lying down, he is not quite well.'
`How is he, really?' called one of the married daughters, peeping round the immense wedding cake that towered up in the middle of the table shedding its artificial flowers.
`He has no pain, but he feels tired,' replied Winifred, the girl with the hair down her back.
The wine was filled, and everybody was talking boisterously. At the far end of the table sat the mother, with her loosely-looped hair. She had Birkin for a neighbour. Sometimes she glanced fiercely down the rows of faces, bending forwards and staring unceremoniously. And she would say in a low voice to Birkin:
`Who is that young man?'
`I don't know,' Birkin answered discreetly.
`Have I seen him before?' she asked.
`I don't think so. I haven't,' he replied. And she was satisfied. Her eyes closed wearily, a peace came over her face, she looked like a queen in repose. Then she started, a little social smile came on her face, for a moment she looked the pleasant hostess. For a moment she bent graciously, as if everyone were welcome and delightful. And then immediately the shadow came back, a sullen, eagle look was on her face, she glanced from under her brows like a sinister creature at bay, hating them all.
`Mother,' called Diana, a handsome girl a little older than Winifred, `I may have wine, mayn't I?'
`Yes, you may have wine,' replied the mother automatically, for she was perfectly indifferent to the question.
And Diana beckoned to the footman to fill her glass.
`Gerald shouldn't forbid me,' she said calmly, to the company at large.
`All right, Di,' said her brother amiably. And she glanced challenge at him as she drank from her glass.
There was a strange freedom, that almost amounted to anarchy, in the house. It was rather a resistance to authority, than liberty. Gerald had some command, by mere force of personality, not because of any granted position. There was a quality in his voice, amiable but dominant, that cowed the others, who were all younger than he.
Hermione was having a discussion with the bridegroom about nationality.
`No,' she said, `I think that the appeal to patriotism is a mistake. It is like one house of business rivalling another house of business.'
`Well you can hardly say that, can you?' exclaimed Gerald, who had a real passion for discussion. `You couldn't call a race a business concern, could you? -- and nationality roughly corresponds to race, I think. I think it is meant to.'
There was a moment's pause. Gerald and Hermione were always strangely but politely and evenly inimical.
`Do you think race corresponds with nationality?' she asked musingly, with expressionless indecision.
Birkin knew she was waiting for him to participate. And dutifully he spoke up.
`I think Gerald is right -- race is the essential element in nationality, in Europe at least,' he said.
Again Hermione paused, as if to allow this statement to cool. Then she said with strange assumption of authority:
`Yes, but even so, is the patriotic appeal an appeal to the racial instinct? Is it not rather an appeal to the proprietory instinct, the commercial instinct? And isn't this what we mean by nationality?'
`Probably,' said Birkin, who felt that such a discussion was out of place and out of time.
But Gerald was now on the scent of argument.
`A race may have its commercial aspect,' he said. `In fact it must. It is like a family. You must make provision. And to make provision you have got to strive against other families, other nations. I don't see why you shouldn't.'
Again Hermione made a pause, domineering and cold, before she replied: `Yes, I think it is always wrong to provoke a spirit of rivalry. It makes bad blood. And bad blood accumulates.'
`But you can't do away with the spirit of emulation altogether?' said Gerald. `It is one of the necessary incentives to production and improvement.'
`Yes,' came Hermione's sauntering response. `I think you can do away with it.'
`I must say,' said Birkin, `I detest the spirit of emulation.' Hermione was biting a piece of bread, pulling it from between her teeth with her fingers, in a slow, slightly derisive movement. She turned to Birkin.
`You do hate it, yes,' she said, intimate and gratified.
`Detest it,' he repeated.
`Yes,' she murmured, assured and satisfied.
`But,' Gerald insisted, `you don't allow one man to take away his neighbour's living, so why should you allow one nation to take away the living from another nation?'
There was a long slow murmur from Hermione before she broke into speech, saying with a laconic indifference:
`It is not always a question of possessions, is it? It is not all a question of goods?'
Gerald was nettled by this implication of vulgar materialism.
`Yes, more or less,' he retorted. `If I go and take a man's hat from off his head, that hat becomes a symbol of that man's liberty. When he fights me for his hat, he is fighting me for his liberty.'
Hermione was nonplussed.
`Yes,' she said, irritated. `But that way of arguing by imaginary instances is not supposed to be genuine, is it? A man does not come and take my hat from off my head, does he?'
`Only because the law prevents him,' said Gerald.
`Not only,' said Birkin. `Ninety-nine men out of a hundred don't want my hat.'
`That's a matter of opinion,' said Gerald.
`Or the hat,' laughed the bridegroom.
`And if he does want my hat, such as it is,' said Birkin, `why, surely it is open to me to decide, which is a greater loss to me, my hat, or my liberty as a free and indifferent man. If I am compelled to offer fight, I lose the latter. It is a question which is worth more to me, my pleasant liberty of conduct, or my hat.'
`Yes,' said Hermione, watching Birkin strangely. `Yes.'
`But would you let somebody come and snatch your hat off your head?' the bride asked of Hermione.
The face of the tall straight woman turned slowly and as if drugged to this new speaker.
`No,' she replied, in a low inhuman tone, that seemed to contain a chuckle. `No, I shouldn't let anybody take my hat off my head.'
`How would you prevent it?' asked Gerald.
`I don't know,' replied Hermione slowly. `Probably I should kill him.'
There was a strange chuckle in her tone, a dangerous and convincing humour in her bearing.
`Of course,' said Gerald, `I can see Rupert's point. It is a question to him whether his hat or his peace of mind is more important.'
`Peace of body,' said Birkin.
`Well, as you like there,' replied Gerald. `But how are you going to decide this for a nation?'
`Heaven preserve me,' laughed Birkin.
`Yes, but suppose you have to?' Gerald persisted.
`Then it is the same. If the national crown-piece is an old hat, then the thieving gent may have it.'
`But can the national or racial hat be an old hat?' insisted Gerald.
`Pretty well bound to be, I believe,' said Birkin.
`I'm not so sure,' said Gerald.
`I don't agree, Rupert,' said Hermione.
`All right,' said Birkin.
`I'm all for the old national hat,' laughed Gerald.
`And a fool you look in it,' cried Diana, his pert sister who was just in her teens.
`Oh, we're quite out of our depths with these old hats,' cried Laura Crich. `Dry up now, Gerald. We're going to drink toasts. Let us drink toasts. Toasts -- glasses, glasses -- now then, toasts! Speech! Speech!'
Birkin, thinking about race or national death, watched his glass being filled with champagne. The bubbles broke at the rim, the man withdrew, and feeling a sudden thirst at the sight of the fresh wine, Birkin drank up his glass. A queer little tension in the room roused him. He felt a sharp constraint.
`Did I do it by accident, or on purpose?' he asked himself. And he decided that, according to the vulgar phrase, he had done it `accidentally on purpose.' He looked round at the hired footman. And the hired footman came, with a silent step of cold servant-like disapprobation. Birkin decided that he detested toasts, and footmen, and assemblies, and mankind altogether, in most of its aspects. Then he rose to make a speech. But he was somehow disgusted.
At length it was over, the meal. Several men strolled out into the garden. There was a lawn, and flower-beds, and at the boundary an iron fence shutting off the little field or park. The view was pleasant; a highroad curving round the edge of a low lake, under the trees. In the spring air, the water gleamed and the opposite woods were purplish with new life. Charming Jersey cattle came to the fence, breathing hoarsely from their velvet muzzles at the human beings, expecting perhaps a crust.
Birkin leaned on the fence. A cow was breathing wet hotness on his hand.
`Pretty cattle, very pretty,' said Marshall, one of the brothers-in-law. `They give the best milk you can have.'
`Yes,' said Birkin.
`Eh, my little beauty, eh, my beauty!' said Marshall, in a queer high falsetto voice, that caused the other man to have convulsions of laughter in his stomach.
`Who won the race, Lupton?' he called to the bridegroom, to hide the fact that he was laughing.
The bridegroom took his cigar from his mouth.
`The race?' he exclaimed. Then a rather thin smile came over his face. He did not want to say anything about the flight to the church door. `We got there together. At least she touched first, but I had my hand on her shoulder.'
`What's this?' asked Gerald.
Birkin told him about the race of the bride and the bridegroom.
`H'm!' said Gerald, in disapproval. `What made you late then?'
`Lupton would talk about the immortality of the soul,' said Birkin, `and then he hadn't got a button-hook.'
`Oh God!' cried Marshall. `The immortality of the soul on your wedding day! Hadn't you got anything better to occupy your mind?'
`What's wrong with it?' asked the bridegroom, a clean-shaven naval man, flushing sensitively.
`Sounds as if you were going to be executed instead of married. The immortality of the soul!' repeated the brother-in-law, with most killing emphasis.
But he fell quite flat.
`And what did you decide?' asked Gerald, at once pricking up his ears at the thought of a metaphysical discussion.
`You don't want a soul today, my boy,' said Marshall. `It'd be in your road.'
`Christ! Marshall, go and talk to somebody else,' cried Gerald, with sudden impatience.
`By God, I'm willing,' said Marshall, in a temper. `Too much bloody soul and talk altogether --'
He withdrew in a dudgeon, Gerald staring after him with angry eyes, that grew gradually calm and amiable as the stoutly-built form of the other man passed into the distance.
`There's one thing, Lupton,' said Gerald, turning suddenly to the bridegroom. `Laura won't have brought such a fool into the family as Lottie did.'
`Comfort yourself with that,' laughed Birkin.
`I take no notice of them,' laughed the bridegroom.
`What about this race then -- who began it?' Gerald asked.
`We were late. Laura was at the top of the churchyard steps when our cab came up. She saw Lupton bolting towards her. And she fled. But why do you look so cross? Does it hurt your sense of the family dignity?'
`It does, rather,' said Gerald. `If you're doing a thing, do it properly, and if you're not going to do it properly, leave it alone.'
`Very nice aphorism,' said Birkin.
`Don't you agree?' asked Gerald.
`Quite,' said Birkin. `Only it bores me rather, when you become aphoristic.'
`Damn you, Rupert, you want all the aphorisms your own way,' said Gerald.
`No. I want them out of the way, and you're always shoving them in it.'
Gerald smiled grimly at this humorism. Then he made a little gesture of dismissal, with his eyebrows.
`You don't believe in having any standard of behaviour at all, do you?' he challenged Birkin, censoriously.
`Standard -- no. I hate standards. But they're necessary for the common ruck. Anybody who is anything can just be himself and do as he likes.'
`But what do you mean by being himself?' said Gerald. `Is that an aphorism or a cliche?'
`I mean just doing what you want to do. I think it was perfect good form in Laura to bolt from Lupton to the church door. It was almost a masterpiece in good form. It's the hardest thing in the world to act spontaneously on one's impulses -- and it's the only really gentlemanly thing to do -- provided you're fit to do it.'
`You don't expect me to take you seriously, do you?' asked Gerald.
`Yes, Gerald, you're one of the very few people I do expect that of.'
`Then I'm afraid I can't come up to your expectations here, at any rate. You think people should just do as they like.'
`I think they always do. But I should like them to like the purely individual thing in themselves, which makes them act in singleness. And they only like to do the collective thing.'
`And I,' said Gerald grimly, `shouldn't like to be in a world of people who acted individually and spontaneously, as you call it. We should have everybody cutting everybody else's throat in five minutes.'
`That means you would like to be cutting everybody's throat,' said Birkin.
`How does that follow?' asked Gerald crossly.
`No man,' said Birkin, `cuts another man's throat unless he wants to cut it, and unless the other man wants it cutting. This is a complete truth. It takes two people to make a murder: a murderer and a murderee. And a murderee is a man who is murderable. And a man who is murderable is a man who in a profound if hidden lust desires to be murdered.'
`Sometimes you talk pure nonsense,' said Gerald to Birkin. `As a matter of fact, none of us wants our throat cut, and most other people would like to cut it for us -some time or other --'
`It's a nasty view of things, Gerald,' said Birkin, `and no wonder you are afraid of yourself and your own unhappiness.'
`How am I afraid of myself?' said Gerald; `and I don't think I am unhappy.'
`You seem to have a lurking desire to have your gizzard slit, and imagine every man has his knife up his sleeve for you,' Birkin said.
`How do you make that out?' said Gerald.
`From you,' said Birkin.
There was a pause of strange enmity between the two men, that was very near to love. It was always the same between them; always their talk brought them into a deadly nearness of contact, a strange, perilous intimacy which was either hate or love, or both. They parted with apparent unconcern, as if their going apart were a trivial occurrence. And they really kept it to the level of trivial occurrence. Yet the heart of each burned from the other. They burned with each other, inwardly. This they would never admit. They intended to keep their relationship a casual freeand-easy friendship, they were not going to be so unmanly and unnatural as to allow any heart-burning between them. They had not the faintest belief in deep relationship between men and men, and their disbelief prevented any development of their powerful but suppressed friendliness.
 
布朗温家姐妹两人回贝多弗家中去了,参加婚礼的人们则聚集在肖特兰兹的克里奇家。这座宅第坐落在窄小的威利湖对岸,沿着一面山坡的顶端长长地排了一溜房屋,房子又矮又旧,很象一个庄园。肖特兰兹下方那片舒缓下斜的草坪上长着几株孤伶伶的树,那儿可能是一个公园吧,草坪前是狭窄的湖泊。草坪和湖泊对面与肖特兰兹遥遥相望的是一座林木葱笼的小山,那山遮住了那边的煤矿谷地,可挡不住煤矿里上升着的黑烟。但不管怎样,这幅景象颇象田园风味的风景画,美丽而宁静,这座住宅建在这儿是别具一格的。
现在肖特兰兹挤满了克里奇的家人和参加婚礼的宾客。父亲身体不好,先退出去休息了,这样杰拉德就成了主人了。他站在简朴的客厅里迎接男宾们,态度友好,举止优雅。他几乎在社交中获得了快乐,笑容可掬,十分友好。
女仆们让克里奇家三位出嫁了的女儿驱使着忙东忙西,把场面搅得很乱。你总能听到这个或那个克里奇家的女儿那特有的命令:“海伦,到这儿来一下。”“麦泽莉,我让你到这——里——来。”“喂,我说惠特曼太太——”厅里裙裾擦动的“嚓嚓”声伴着漂亮的女人们匆匆而过,一个孩子在厅里跳舞般地穿梭,还有一个男仆也来去匆匆地忙着。
男宾们则三个一群五个一伙地默默地聚在一起,一边吸烟一边聊天,装作对女人世界那热闹的场面不屑一顾。可他们并不是在真正地谈话,他们仍观察着那些异常兴奋的女人,谛听她们那令人发冷的笑声和连珠炮似的说话声。他们等待着,焦躁不安,心里很恼火。可杰拉德看上去仍然那么和蔼可亲,那么幸福,不知道他是在等人还是清闲无事,只知道他是这个场合的中心人物。
突然,克里奇太太无声无息地进到房里来,表情刚烈、线条分明的脸向四周探视着。她仍旧戴着帽子,穿着罩有褶拖纱的蓝色绸衣。
“有事吗,妈妈?”杰拉德问。
“没什么事,没什么事!”她含糊其词地答道。然后她径直朝伯金走去,伯金此时正跟克里奇家的一位女婿谈天。
“你好啊,伯金先生,”她声音低沉地说,似乎她根本不把客人放在眼里。说着她向他伸出手来。
“哦,克里奇太太,”伯金随机应变与她搭讪着,“刚才我可是无法接近您呢。”
“这里有一半人我不认识,”她声音低沉地说。她的女婿趁这当儿不安地躲到一边去了。
“你不喜欢生客吗?”伯金笑道,“我从来不明白一个人为什么要重视那些偶然碰到一起的人,我干吗要去认识他们?”
“对!对!”克里奇太太压低嗓门,有些紧促地说。“他们来了,也不算数。我并不认识厅里这些人。孩子们向我介绍说:‘妈妈,这位是某某先生。’我再也不知道别的了。某某先生和他的头衔是什么关系?我跟他及他的头衔有什么关系呢?”
她说着抬起眼睛看看伯金,这一看把伯金吓了一跳。她能过来跟他说话,这令他感到受宠若惊,要知道她可不是把什么人都放在眼里的。他低下头看着她那张表情紧张、轮廓分明的脸,但他不敢凝视她那双凝重的蓝眼睛,于是他移开视线去看她的头发。在她漂亮的耳际上方,头发马马虎虎、松松散散地盘着,头发并不怎么清爽。她的脖颈也不怎么清爽。尽管如此,伯金还是觉得自己被她吸引着,而不是被别人。不过他心里想,自己可是常常仔细地洗一洗,至少脖颈和耳朵总要洗得干干净净。
想着这些事,他微微笑了。但他仍然很紧张,感到他和这个陌生的老女人象叛徒和敌人一样在别人的营帐里交谈。他就象一头鹿一样,一只耳朵撩到后面,另一只耳朵则向前伸着探寻着什么。
“别人其实无所谓。”他有点不想说话,搭讪着说。
这位母亲猛然带着深深的疑问抬起头看看他,似乎怀疑他的诚意。
“你怎么解释‘所谓’?”她尖刻地问。
“那么多人并不都很重要,”他回答,被迫把话题引深了。
“他们还说说笑笑呢,最好让他们全滚。从根本上说,他们并不存在,他们并没在那儿。”
她在他说话时一直凝视着他。
“我们才不想象他们的存在呢!”她刻薄地说。
“没什么好想象的,他们不存在。”
“哼,”她说,“我还不会那么想。他们就在那儿,不管他们是否存在,他们存在与否并不取决于我。我只知道,他们别想让我把他们放在眼里。不要以为他们来了我就得认识他们。在我眼中,他们跟没有一样。”
“没错儿,”他答道。
“是吗?”她又问。
“就跟没来一样,”他重复道。说到这儿他们都停下来不说话了。
“他们就是来了也不算数,真讨厌。”她说,“我的女婿们都来了。”她有点自言自语地说,“如今劳拉也结婚了,又多了个女婿,可我真分不清哪个是张三哪个是李四。他们来了,都叫我妈妈。我知道他们要说什么——‘你好,妈妈。’我真想说,‘我怎么也算不上是你们的妈妈。’可有什么用?他们来了。我有我自己的孩子,我还是能分辨出哪个是我的孩子,哪个是别的女人的孩子。”
“应该这样,”伯金说。
她有些吃惊地看看他,或许她早忘了是在跟谁说话。她说话的线索被打断了。
她漫不经心地扫视了一下房间。伯金猜不出她在找什么,也猜不出她在想什么。很明显她是在注意自己的儿子们。
“我的孩子们都在吗?”她突如其来地问他。
他笑笑,吃了一惊,也许是害怕。
“除了杰拉德,别人我不怎么认识。”他说。
“杰拉德!”她叫道。“他是孩子们当中最没用的一个。你没想到吧,是不是?”
“不会吧,”伯金说。
母亲远远地凝视了自己的长子好一会儿。
“喂,”她令人不可思议、嘲弄地吐出一个字来。这一声让伯金感到害怕,他似乎不敢正视现实。克里奇太太走开了,把他忘了,但一会儿又顺原路走回来了。
“我很愿意他有个朋友,”她说,“他从来就没有朋友。”
伯金低下头盯着她那双蓝色的凝眸,他理解不了她的目光。“我是我弟弟的看护人吗?”他轻声地自言自语道。
他记起来了,那是该隐①的叫声,他微微感到震惊。而杰拉德就是再世的该隐。当然他并不是该隐,但他确实杀害了他的弟弟。那纯属偶然,他也没有对杀害弟弟的后果负责。那是杰拉德小时候,在一次偶然事故中害死了自己的弟弟。不就是这么一当子事吗?为什么要给造成事故的生活打上罪恶的烙印并诅咒生活呢?一个人靠偶然活着,也因偶然而死,难道不是吗?一个人的生活是否取决于偶然因素?难道他的生活只与种族、种类和物种普遍相关联吗?如果不是这样,难道就没有纯粹偶然这一说吗?是否发生的任何事情都具有普遍意义?是吗?伯金站在那儿思忖着,忘了克里奇太太,正如她也忘记了他一样。
①《圣经》中亚当的长子,杀害其弟弟亚伯。
他不相信有偶然这回事。在最深刻的意义上说,这些都交织在一起。
就在他得出这个结论时,克里奇家的一个女儿走上前来说:
“亲爱的妈妈,来,把帽子摘掉吧,嗯?咱们就要坐下用餐了,这是个正式场合,不是吗,亲爱的?”说着她把手伸进妈妈的臂弯里,挽着她走了。伯金随后立刻走过去同最近的一位男士聊起来。
开餐的锣声响了,人们抬头看看,但谁也没向餐厅移动脚步。家中的女人们感到这锣声跟她们无关。五分钟过去了,老男仆克罗瑟焦急地出现在门道里,求助地看着杰拉德。杰拉德抓起架子上的一只弯曲的大海螺壳,没跟任何人打招呼就吹出了振聋发聩的一声。这奇特的海螺声令人心颤。这一招儿可真灵,人们纷纷动作起来,好象听到同一个信号指挥一样一齐向饭厅挪动。
杰拉德等了一会儿,等妹妹来做女主人。他知道他的母亲是不会尽心去尽她的义务的。可妹妹一来就急急忙忙奔向自己的座位去了。所以只好由这小伙子指引客人们入席了,他做这件事时显得有点太专横。
开始上餐前小吃了,饭厅里安静了下来。就在这时,一个留着长长披肩发的十三、四岁的姑娘沉着平静地说:
“杰拉德,你弄出那么可怕的声音来招呼客人,可你忘了招呼爸爸。”
“是吗?”他冲大伙儿说,“我父亲躺下休息了,他不太舒服。”
“他到底怎么样?”一位出嫁了的女儿问,眼睛却盯着桌子中间堆起的那块巨大的婚礼蛋糕,蛋糕上落下些假花儿来。
“他没病,只是感到疲劳。”留披肩发的温妮弗莱德回答道。
酒杯里斟满了酒,人们个个儿都兴高采烈地聊着天儿。远处的一桌旁坐着母亲,她的头发仍松松地盘着。伯金坐在她边上。有时她会恶狠狠地看一眼那一排排面孔,伸着头毫不客气地凝视一会儿,然后声音低沉地问伯金。
“那个年轻人是谁?”
“不知道,”伯金谨慎地回答。
“我以前见过他吗?”她问。
“不会吧。反正我没见过。”他答道。于是她满意了。她疲惫地合上了眼睛,现出一副安详的神态,看上去很象憩息中的女王。然后她又睁开眼,脸上露出上流社会人物的微笑,一时间她很象一位愉快的女主人了。她优雅地弯下腰去,似乎人人都深受欢迎,皆大欢喜。然后阴影突然回到她脸上,那是一种阴郁、鹰一样的表情,她象一头争斗的困兽那样,眉毛下露出凶光,似乎她仇视所有的人。
“妈妈,”迪安娜叫道,“我可以喝酒吗?”迪安娜比温妮弗莱德年长些,很漂亮。
“行,你喝吧,”母亲木然地回答,她对这个问题压根儿不感兴趣。
于是迪安娜示意下人为她斟酒。
“杰拉德不该限制我喝酒嘛,”她平静地对在座的人们说。
“好了,迪,”哥哥和蔼地说。迪安娜一边喝酒一边挑战般地扫了哥哥一眼。
这家人之间这样无拘无束,有点无政府主义的样子,真奇怪。这与其说是放任自由不如说是对权威的抵制。杰拉德在家中有点支配权,并不是因为他处在什么特殊位置上,而是因为他有压倒别人的性格。他的声音和蔼但富有支配力,这种声音的特质震住了他的姐妹们。
赫麦妮正同新郎官讨论民族问题。
“不,”她说,“我认为提倡爱国主义是一种错误,国与国之间的竞争就象商行与商行间的竞争一样。”
“哦,你可不能这么说,怎么能这么说呢?”杰拉德大声说。他很热衷于争论。“你不能把一个种族等同于一个商业康采恩。而民族大概指的就是种族,民族的意思就是种族。”
一时间大家都不说话了。杰拉德与赫麦妮之间总是这样令人奇怪地客客气气,但又相互敌视,他们两人可说的上是势均力敌。
“你以为种族等于民族吗?”她若有所思地问,脸上毫无表情,口气游移不定。
伯金知道赫麦妮在等他参加讨论,于是他恭顺地开口道:
“我觉得杰拉德说得对,种族是民族的根本因素,至少在欧洲是这样。”
赫麦妮又打住不说话了,似乎是要让这条论断冷却一下。
然后她作出一个奇怪的权威性论断:
“不错,就算是这样吧,那么提倡爱国主义不就是在提倡种族的本能吗?难道这不也是在提倡商业的本能?这是一种占有财富的本能。难道这就是我们所指的民族?”
“也许是,”伯金说,他心里感到现在讨论这个问题不合时宜,地点也不对。
可杰拉德现在已找到争论的线索了,仍要争论下去。
“一个种族可以有其商业性的一面,”他说,“事实上,它必须这样,这跟一个家族一样,人必须得有给养才行。为准备给养,你就得跟别的家族争斗,跟别的民族斗。不这样,反倒不可思议了。”
赫麦妮又不说话了,只是露出一副霸道、冷漠的神态。然后她才说:“是的,可以不这样,我觉得挑起敌对精神是不对的,这会造成仇恨并与日俱增。”
“可是你能够取消竞争精神吗?”杰拉德问。“竞争是生产与改进所必须的一种刺激。”
“没错,”赫麦妮轻描淡写地答道,“不过我觉得没有竞争也行。”
伯金说:“我声明我是厌恶竞争精神的。”赫麦妮正在吃一片面包,听伯金这样说,她忙把面包从牙缝中拉出来,那动作慢而可笑。她转向伯金亲昵,满意地说:
“你的确恨这种精神,没错儿。”
“厌恶它,”他重复道。
“对呀,”她自信而满意地轻声道。
“可是,”杰拉德坚持说,“既然你不允许一个人夺走他邻居的活路,那你为什么允许一个民族夺走另一个民族的活路呢?”
赫麦妮低声咕哝了好久才用讥讽、满不在乎的口吻说:
“这归根到底是个财富问题,对吗?但并不是所有的都是财富问题吧?”
杰拉德被她话语中流露出的庸俗唯物主义惹恼了。
“当然是,或多或少是这样,”他反击道。“如果我从一个人的头上摘走他的帽子,那帽子就变成了自由的象征。当他奋起夺回他的帽子时,他就是在为夺回自由而斗争。”
赫麦妮感到不知所措了。
“错是没错,”她恼火地说,“可想象出一个事例来进行争论算不得是真诚吧?没有哪个人会过来从我头上摘走我的帽子的,会吗?”
“那是因为刑法制止了他这样做。”杰拉德说。
“不对,”伯金说,“百分之九十九的人不想要我的帽子。”
“那只是观点问题。”杰拉德说。
“也许是帽子的问题。”新郎官笑道。
“如果象你说的那样他想要我的帽子”,伯金说,“可以肯定说,我可以决断失去帽子还是失去自由的损失更大。我是个自由的毫无牵挂的人,如果我被迫去打架,我失去的就是自由。这是个哪一样对我来说价值更大的问题,是我行为的自由还是帽子的失去?”
“对,”赫麦妮奇怪地望着伯金说,“对。”
“那么,你允许有人过来夺走你头上的帽子吗?”新娘问赫麦妮。
这位高大、身板挺直的女人渐渐转过身来,似乎对这位插话人的问题麻木不仁。
“不,”她答道,那语调缓慢,似乎不是人的声音,那腔调中分明隐藏着一丝儿窃笑。“不,我不会让任何人从我头上摘走我的帽子。”
“可你怎么防止他这样做呢?”杰拉德问。
“我不知道,或许我会杀了他,”赫麦妮声调缓慢地说。
她的话音儿里隐藏着一声奇怪的窃笑,举止上带有一种威慑,自信的幽默。
“当然,”杰拉德说,“我可以理解卢伯特的想法。对他来说,问题是他的帽子重要还是他心境的安宁重要。”
“是身心的安宁。”伯金说。
“好,随你怎么说吧,”杰拉德说,“可是你怎么能以此来解决一个民族的问题呢?”
“上帝保佑我,”伯金笑道。
“可要让你真去解决问题呢?”杰拉德坚持说。
“如果民族的王冠是一顶旧帽子,窃贼就可以摘走它。”
“可一个民族或一个种族的王冠能是一顶旧帽子吗?”杰拉德坚持说。
“肯定是,我相信,”伯金说。
“我还不太能肯定,”杰拉德说。
“我不赞成这种说法,卢伯特,”赫麦妮说。
“好吧,”伯金说。
“我十分赞成说民族的王冠是一顶旧帽子的说法。”杰拉德笑道。
“你戴上它就象个傻瓜一样。”迪安娜说。迪安娜是他十几岁的小妹妹,说话很冒失。
“我们真无法理解这些破帽子。”劳拉·克里奇叫道,“别说了吧,杰拉德,我们要祝酒了,咱们祝酒吧。满上,满上,好,干杯!祝酒词!祝酒词!”
伯金目睹着他的杯子让人斟满了香槟酒,脑子里还想着种族与民族灭亡的问题。泡沫溢出了酒杯,斟酒的人忙往后倾斜了身体。看到新鲜的香槟酒,伯金突然感到一阵干渴,将杯中酒一饮而尽。屋里的气氛搅得他心烦意乱,他感到心头压抑得很。
“我是偶然为之还是出于什么目的?”他自问着。他得出结论,用个庸俗的词来形容,他这样做是出自“偶然的目的性”。他扫视了一下走过来的男仆,发现他走起路来静悄悄的,态度冷漠,怀有侍从那种不满情绪。伯金发现自己厌恶祝酒、讨厌男仆、讨厌集会,甚至讨厌人类。待他起身祝酒时,不知为什么他竟感到些儿恶心。
终于结束了,这顿饭。几位男士散步来到花园里。这里有一块草坪,摆着几个花坛,小小的花园边上隔着一道铁栅栏。这儿的景色颇为宜人,从这里可以看到一条林荫公路沿着山下的湖泊蜿蜒而至。春光明媚,水波潋滟。湖对面的林子呈现出棕色,溶满了生机。一群漂亮的泽西种乳牛来到铁栅栏前,光滑的嘴和鼻子中喷着粗气,可能是盼望人们给面包干吃吧。
伯金倚着栅栏,一头母牛往他手上喷着热气。
“漂亮,这牛真漂亮,”克里奇家的一位女婿马歇尔说,“这种牛的奶质量最好了。”
“对,”伯金说。
“啊,我的小美人儿,哦,小美人儿!”马歇尔假声假气地说,这奇怪的声调让伯金笑得喘不过气来。
“你们那阵子赛跑,谁胜了,鲁普顿?”伯金问新郎,以掩盖自己的笑声。
新郎从口中拔出雪茄烟。
“赛跑?”说着脸上浮起一层笑意,他并不想提刚才往教33恋爱中的女人堂门口跑的事。“我们同时到达。至少是,她先用手摸到了门儿,我的手摸到了她的肩膀。”
“说什么呢?”杰拉德问。
伯金告诉他说的是刚才新郎新娘赛跑的事。
“哼!”杰拉德不满地说,“你怎么会迟到呢?”
“鲁普顿先是谈论了一阵子灵魂不朽,”伯金说,“然后我们找不到钮扣钩了。”
“天啊!”马歇尔叫道,“在你结婚的日子里谈什么灵魂不朽!你脑子里就没别的事好想了吗?”
“这有什么错儿?”面庞修饰得干干净净的海军军官敏感地红了脸问。
“听起来你不是来结婚的,倒象是被处死。谈哪门子灵魂不死!”这位连襟加重语气说。
他的话太无聊了。
“那你得出了什么结论?”杰拉德问,竖起耳朵来准备听一场玄学讨论。
“今天你并不需要灵魂吧,小伙子?”马歇尔说,“它会妨碍你的。”
“行了!马歇尔,去跟别人聊吧。”杰拉德突然不耐烦地叫道。
“我保证,我是真心,”马歇尔有点发脾气地说,“说太多的灵魂——”
他愤愤然欲语还休,杰拉德生气地瞪着他。随着他胖胖的身体消失在远处,杰拉德的目光渐渐变得和缓、亲切了。
“有一点要对你说,鲁普顿,”杰拉德突然转向新郎说,“劳拉可不能象罗蒂这样给我们家带来这样一个傻瓜。”
“这你就放心吧。”伯金笑道。
“我没注意他们几个人。”新郎笑道。
“那,那场赛跑是怎么回事?谁开的头?”杰拉德问。
“我们来晚了。马车开到时,劳拉正站在教堂院子的台阶上。是她往前跑的。你干吗生气?这有伤你家的尊严吗?”
“是的,有点儿,”杰拉德说,“做什么事都要有个分寸才是,要是没法儿做得有分寸就别做什么事。”
“真是极妙的格言。”伯金说。
“你不同意我这样说吗?”杰拉德问。
“很同意,”伯金说,“只是当你用格言式的口吻说话让我感到别扭。”
“该死的卢伯特,你是想让所有的格言都为你自家垄断起来。”
杰拉德说。
“不,我要让什么格言都滚开,可你总让它们挡路。”
杰拉德对这种幽默付之一笑,然后又扬扬眉毛表示不屑一顾。
“你不相信有什么行为准则吗?”他苛刻地向伯金提出挑战。
“准则,不。我讨厌所有的准则。不过对乌合之众来说倒应该有些准则。任何一个人都有他的自我,他可以自行其是。”
“你说的那个自我是什么意思?”杰拉德问,“是一条格言还是一种陈词滥调?”
“我的意思是自行其是。我认为劳拉挣脱鲁普顿跑向教堂大门正是自行其是的绝好例子,妙极了。一个人最难能可贵的是循着自己的自然冲动做事,这才最有绅士风度。你要做得到你就是最有绅士风度的人。”
“你别指望我会认真对待你的话,你以为我会吗?”杰拉德问。
“是的,杰拉德,我只指望极少数人这样认真待我,你就是其中之一。”
“恐怕在这儿我无法满足你的期待,无论如何不能。你可是认为人人都可以自行其是。”
“我一直这样看。我希望人们喜欢他们自身纯个性化的东西,这样他们就可以自行其是了。可人们偏偏只爱集体行动。”
“可我,”杰拉德阴郁地说,“不喜欢象你说的那样置身于一个人们独自行事、顺着自然冲动行事的世界中。我希望人们在五分钟之内就相互残杀一通。”
“那就是说你想杀人,”伯金说。
“这是什么意思?”杰拉德气愤地问。
伯金说:“不想杀人的人是不会干出杀人的事来的,别人不想让他杀他也杀不了。这是一条十足的真理。杀人要有两个人才行:杀人凶手与被杀者。被杀的人就是适合于被人杀害的人,他身上潜伏着一种巨大的被害欲望。”
“有时你的话纯粹是胡说八道,”杰拉德对伯金说,“其实我们谁也不想被杀害,倒是有不少人愿意替我们去杀人,说不定什么时候呢。”
“这种观点真叫恶心,杰拉德,”伯金说,“怪不得你惧怕自己,害怕自己的幸福生活。”
“我何以惧怕自己?”杰拉德说,“再说我并不认为自己幸福。”
“你心里似乎潜伏着一种欲望,希望你的内脏被人剖开,于是你就想象别人的袖子里藏着刀子。”伯金说。
“何以见得?”杰拉德问。
“从你身上观察出来的。”
两个人对峙着。他们之间的恨是那样奇特,这恨已经跟爱差不多了。他们之间总是这样,对话总会导致一种接近,一种奇特、可怕的亲近,或恨、或爱、或两者兼而有之。他们总是满不在乎地分手,似乎分离是一件不起眼的小事,他们确实把它当作一件小事。可他们燃烧着的心相互映照着,一齐燃烧着,这一点他们是不会承认的。他们要保持一种漫不经心,轻松、毫无拘束的友谊,并不想把双方的关系搞得矫揉造作、没有男人味,不想那么心心相映、热热乎乎的。他们一点也不相信男人之间会过从甚密,因此,他们之间的巨大友情受到压抑而未能得到任何发展。
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

[ 此帖被゛臉紅紅....在2013-10-26 17:14重新编辑 ]
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等级: 内阁元老
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。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 3 Class-room


A SCHOOL-DAY was drawing to a close. In the class-room the last lesson was in progress, peaceful and still. It was elementary botany. The desks were littered with catkins, hazel and willow, which the children had been sketching. But the sky had come overdark, as the end of the afternoon approached: there was scarcely light to draw any more. Ursula stood in front of the class, leading the children by questions to understand the structure and the meaning of the catkins.
A heavy, copper-coloured beam of light came in at the west window, gilding the outlines of the children's heads with red gold, and falling on the wall opposite in a rich, ruddy illumination. Ursula, however, was scarcely conscious of it. She was busy, the end of the day was here, the work went on as a peaceful tide that is at flood, hushed to retire.
This day had gone by like so many more, in an activity that was like a trance. At the end there was a little haste, to finish what was in hand. She was pressing the children with questions, so that they should know all they were to know, by the time the gong went. She stood in shadow in front of the class, with catkins in her hand, and she leaned towards the children, absorbed in the passion of instruction.
She heard, but did not notice the click of the door. Suddenly she started. She saw, in the shaft of ruddy, copper-coloured light near her, the face of a man. It was gleaming like fire, watching her, waiting for her to be aware. It startled her terribly. She thought she was going to faint. All her suppressed, subconscious fear sprang into being, with anguish.
`Did I startle you?' said Birkin, shaking hands with her. `I thought you had heard me come in.'
`No,' she faltered, scarcely able to speak. He laughed, saying he was sorry. She wondered why it amused him.
`It is so dark,' he said. `Shall we have the light?'
And moving aside, he switched on the strong electric lights. The class-room was distinct and hard, a strange place after the soft dim magic that filled it before he came. Birkin turned curiously to look at Ursula. Her eyes were round and wondering, bewildered, her mouth quivered slightly. She looked like one who is suddenly wakened. There was a living, tender beauty, like a tender light of dawn shining from her face. He looked at her with a new pleasure, feeling gay in his heart, irresponsible.
`You are doing catkins?' he asked, picking up a piece of hazel from a scholar's desk in front of him. `Are they as far out as this? I hadn't noticed them this year.'
He looked absorbedly at the tassel of hazel in his hand.
`The red ones too!' he said, looking at the flickers of crimson that came from the female bud.
Then he went in among the desks, to see the scholars' books. Ursula watched his intent progress. There was a stillness in his motion that hushed the activities of her heart. She seemed to be standing aside in arrested silence, watching him move in another, concentrated world. His presence was so quiet, almost like a vacancy in the corporate air.
Suddenly he lifted his face to her, and her heart quickened at the flicker of his voice.
`Give them some crayons, won't you?' he said, `so that they can make the gynaecious flowers red, and the androgynous yellow. I'd chalk them in plain, chalk in nothing else, merely the red and the yellow. Outline scarcely matters in this case. There is just the one fact to emphasise.'
`I haven't any crayons,' said Ursula.
`There will be some somewhere -- red and yellow, that's all you want.'
Ursula sent out a boy on a quest.
`It will make the books untidy,' she said to Birkin, flushing deeply.
`Not very,' he said. `You must mark in these things obviously. It's the fact you want to emphasise, not the subjective impression to record. What's the fact? -- red little spiky stigmas of the female flower, dangling yellow male catkin, yellow pollen flying from one to the other. Make a pictorial record of the fact, as a child does when drawing a face -- two eyes, one nose, mouth with teeth -- so --' And he drew a figure on the blackboard.
At that moment another vision was seen through the glass panels of the door. It was Hermione Roddice. Birkin went and opened to her.
`I saw your car,' she said to him. `Do you mind my coming to find you? I wanted to see you when you were on duty.'
She looked at him for a long time, intimate and playful, then she gave a short little laugh. And then only she turned to Ursula, who, with all the class, had been watching the little scene between the lovers.
`How do you do, Miss Brangwen,' sang Hermione, in her low, odd, singing fashion, that sounded almost as if she were poking fun. `Do you mind my coming in?'
Her grey, almost sardonic eyes rested all the while on Ursula, as if summing her up.
`Oh no,' said Ursula.
`Are you sure?' repeated Hermione, with complete sang froid, and an odd, halfbullying effrontery.
`Oh no, I like it awfully,' laughed Ursula, a little bit excited and bewildered, because Hermione seemed to be compelling her, coming very close to her, as if intimate with her; and yet, how could she be intimate?
This was the answer Hermione wanted. She turned satisfied to Birkin.
`What are you doing?' she sang, in her casual, inquisitive fashion.
`Catkins,' he replied.
`Really!' she said. `And what do you learn about them?' She spoke all the while in a mocking, half teasing fashion, as if making game of the whole business. She picked up a twig of the catkin, piqued by Birkin's attention to it.
She was a strange figure in the class-room, wearing a large, old cloak of greenish cloth, on which was a raised pattern of dull gold. The high collar, and the inside of the cloak, was lined with dark fur. Beneath she had a dress of fine lavendercoloured cloth, trimmed with fur, and her hat was close-fitting, made of fur and of the dull, green-and-gold figured stuff. She was tall and strange, she looked as if she had come out of some new, bizarre picture.
`Do you know the little red ovary flowers, that produce the nuts? Have you ever noticed them?' he asked her. And he came close and pointed them out to her, on the sprig she held.
`No,' she replied. `What are they?'
`Those are the little seed-producing flowers, and the long catkins, they only produce pollen, to fertilise them.'
`Do they, do they!' repeated Hermione, looking closely.
`From those little red bits, the nuts come; if they receive pollen from the long danglers.'
`Little red flames, little red flames,' murmured Hermione to herself. And she remained for some moments looking only at the small buds out of which the red flickers of the stigma issued.
`Aren't they beautiful? I think they're so beautiful,' she said, moving close to Birkin, and pointing to the red filaments with her long, white finger.
`Had you never noticed them before?' he asked.
`No, never before,' she replied.
`And now you will always see them,' he said.
`Now I shall always see them,' she repeated. `Thank you so much for showing me. I think they're so beautiful -- little red flames --'
Her absorption was strange, almost rhapsodic. Both Birkin and Ursula were suspended. The little red pistillate flowers had some strange, almost mysticpassionate attraction for her.
The lesson was finished, the books were put away, at last the class was dismissed. And still Hermione sat at the table, with her chin in her hand, her elbow on the table, her long white face pushed up, not attending to anything. Birkin had gone to the window, and was looking from the brilliantly-lighted room on to the grey, colourless outside, where rain was noiselessly falling. Ursula put away her things in the cupboard.
At length Hermione rose and came near to her.
`Your sister has come home?' she said.
`Yes,' said Ursula.
`And does she like being back in Beldover?'
`No,' said Ursula.
`No, I wonder she can bear it. It takes all my strength, to bear the ugliness of this district, when I stay here. Won't you come and see me? Won't you come with your sister to stay at Breadalby for a few days? -- do --'
`Thank you very much,' said Ursula.
`Then I will write to you,' said Hermione. `You think your sister will come? I should be so glad. I think she is wonderful. I think some of her work is really wonderful. I have two water-wagtails, carved in wood, and painted -- perhaps you have seen it?'
`No,' said Ursula.
`I think it is perfectly wonderful -- like a flash of instinct.'
`Her little carvings are strange,' said Ursula.
`Perfectly beautiful -- full of primitive passion --'
`Isn't it queer that she always likes little things? -- she must always work small things, that one can put between one's hands, birds and tiny animals. She likes to look through the wrong end of the opera glasses, and see the world that way -why is it, do you think?'
Hermione looked down at Ursula with that long, detached scrutinising gaze that excited the younger woman.
`Yes,' said Hermione at length. `It is curious. The little things seem to be more subtle to her --'
`But they aren't, are they? A mouse isn't any more subtle than a lion, is it?'
Again Hermione looked down at Ursula with that long scrutiny, as if she were following some train of thought of her own, and barely attending to the other's speech.
`I don't know,' she replied.
`Rupert, Rupert,' she sang mildly, calling him to her. He approached in silence.
`Are little things more subtle than big things?' she asked, with the odd grunt of laughter in her voice, as if she were making game of him in the question.
`Dunno,' he said.
`I hate subtleties,' said Ursula.
Hermione looked at her slowly.
`Do you?' she said.
`I always think they are a sign of weakness,' said Ursula, up in arms, as if her prestige were threatened.
Hermione took no notice. Suddenly her face puckered, her brow was knit with thought, she seemed twisted in troublesome effort for utterance.
`Do you really think, Rupert,' she asked, as if Ursula were not present, `do you really think it is worth while? Do you really think the children are better for being roused to consciousness?'
A dark flash went over his face, a silent fury. He was hollow-cheeked and pale, almost unearthly. And the woman, with her serious, conscience-harrowing question tortured him on the quick.
`They are not roused to consciousness,' he said. `Consciousness comes to them, willy-nilly.'
`But do you think they are better for having it quickened, stimulated? Isn't it better that they should remain unconscious of the hazel, isn't it better that they should see as a whole, without all this pulling to pieces, all this knowledge?'
`Would you rather, for yourself, know or not know, that the little red flowers are there, putting out for the pollen?' he asked harshly. His voice was brutal, scornful, cruel.
Hermione remained with her face lifted up, abstracted. He hung silent in irritation.
`I don't know,' she replied, balancing mildly. `I don't know.'
`But knowing is everything to you, it is all your life,' he broke out. She slowly looked at him.
`Is it?' she said.
`To know, that is your all, that is your life -- you have only this, this knowledge,' he cried. `There is only one tree, there is only one fruit, in your mouth.'
Again she was some time silent.
`Is there?' she said at last, with the same untouched calm. And then in a tone of whimsical inquisitiveness: `What fruit, Rupert?'
`The eternal apple,' he replied in exasperation, hating his own metaphors.
`Yes,' she said. There was a look of exhaustion about her. For some moments there was silence. Then, pulling herself together with a convulsed movement, Hermione resumed, in a sing-song, casual voice:
`But leaving me apart, Rupert; do you think the children are better, richer, happier, for all this knowledge; do you really think they are? Or is it better to leave them untouched, spontaneous. Hadn't they better be animals, simple animals, crude, violent, anything, rather than this self-consciousness, this incapacity to be spontaneous.'
They thought she had finished. But with a queer rumbling in her throat she resumed, `Hadn't they better be anything than grow up crippled, crippled in their souls, crippled in their feelings -- so thrown back -- so turned back on themselves -- incapable --' Hermione clenched her fist like one in a trance -- `of any spontaneous action, always deliberate, always burdened with choice, never carried away.'
Again they thought she had finished. But just as he was going to reply, she resumed her queer rhapsody -- `never carried away, out of themselves, always conscious, always self-conscious, always aware of themselves. Isn't anything better than this? Better be animals, mere animals with no mind at all, than this, this nothingness --'
`But do you think it is knowledge that makes us unliving and selfconscious?' he asked irritably.
She opened her eyes and looked at him slowly.
`Yes,' she said. She paused, watching him all the while, her eyes vague. Then she wiped her fingers across her brow, with a vague weariness. It irritated him bitterly. `It is the mind,' she said, `and that is death.' She raised her eyes slowly to him: `Isn't the mind --' she said, with the convulsed movement of her body, `isn't it our death? Doesn't it destroy all our spontaneity, all our instincts? Are not the young people growing up today, really dead before they have a chance to live?'
`Not because they have too much mind, but too little,' he said brutally.
`Are you sure?' she cried. `It seems to me the reverse. They are overconscious, burdened to death with consciousness.'
`Imprisoned within a limited, false set of concepts,' he cried.
But she took no notice of this, only went on with her own rhapsodic interrogation.
`When we have knowledge, don't we lose everything but knowledge?' she asked pathetically. `If I know about the flower, don't I lose the flower and have only the knowledge? Aren't we exchanging the substance for the shadow, aren't we forfeiting life for this dead quality of knowledge? And what does it mean to me, after all? What does all this knowing mean to me? It means nothing.'
`You are merely making words,' he said; `knowledge means everything to you. Even your animalism, you want it in your head. You don't want to be an animal, you want to observe your own animal functions, to get a mental thrill out of them. It is all purely secondary -- and more decadent than the most hide-bound intellectualism. What is it but the worst and last form of intellectualism, this love of yours for passion and the animal instincts? Passion and the instincts -- you want them hard enough, but through your head, in your consciousness. It all takes place in your head, under that skull of yours. Only you won't be conscious of what actually is: you want the lie that will match the rest of your furniture.'
Hermione set hard and poisonous against this attack. Ursula stood covered with wonder and shame. It frightened her, to see how they hated each other.
`It's all that Lady of Shalott business,' he said, in his strong abstract voice. He seemed to be charging her before the unseeing air. `You've got that mirror, your own fixed will, your immortal understanding, your own tight conscious world, and there is nothing beyond it. There, in the mirror, you must have everything. But now you have come to all your conclusions, you want to go back and be like a savage, without knowledge. You want a life of pure sensation and "passion."'
He quoted the last word satirically against her. She sat convulsed with fury and violation, speechless, like a stricken pythoness of the Greek oracle.
`But your passion is a lie,' he went on violently. `It isn't passion at all, it is your will. It's your bullying will. You want to clutch things and have them in your power. You want to have things in your power. And why? Because you haven't got any real body, any dark sensual body of life. You have no sensuality. You have only your will and your conceit of consciousness, and your lust for power, to know.'
He looked at her in mingled hate and contempt, also in pain because she suffered, and in shame because he knew he tortured her. He had an impulse to kneel and plead for forgiveness. But a bitterer red anger burned up to fury in him. He became unconscious of her, he was only a passionate voice speaking.
`Spontaneous!' he cried. `You and spontaneity! You, the most deliberate thing that ever walked or crawled! You'd be verily deliberately spontaneous -- that's you. Because you want to have everything in your own volition, your deliberate voluntary consciousness. You want it all in that loathsome little skull of yours, that ought to be cracked like a nut. For you'll be the same till it is cracked, like an insect in its skin. If one cracked your skull perhaps one might get a spontaneous, passionate woman out of you, with real sensuality. As it is, what you want is pornography -- looking at yourself in mirrors, watching your naked animal actions in mirrors, so that you can have it all in your consciousness, make it all mental.'
There was a sense of violation in the air, as if too much was said, the unforgivable. Yet Ursula was concerned now only with solving her own problems, in the light of his words. She was pale and abstracted.
`But do you really want sensuality?' she asked, puzzled.
Birkin looked at her, and became intent in his explanation.
`Yes,' he said, `that and nothing else, at this point. It is a fulfilment -- the great dark knowledge you can't have in your head -- the dark involuntary being. It is death to one's self -- but it is the coming into being of another.'
`But how? How can you have knowledge not in your head?' she asked, quite unable to interpret his phrases.
`In the blood,' he answered; `when the mind and the known world is drowned in darkness everything must go -- there must be the deluge. Then you find yourself a palpable body of darkness, a demon --'
`But why should I be a demon --?' she asked.
`"Woman wailing for her demon lover" --' he quoted -- `why, I don't know.'
Hermione roused herself as from a death -- annihilation.
`He is such a dreadful satanist, isn't he?' she drawled to Ursula, in a queer resonant voice, that ended on a shrill little laugh of pure ridicule. The two women were jeering at him, jeering him into nothingness. The laugh of the shrill, triumphant female sounded from Hermione, jeering him as if he were a neuter.
`No,' he said. `You are the real devil who won't let life exist.'
She looked at him with a long, slow look, malevolent, supercilious.
`You know all about it, don't you?' she said, with slow, cold, cunning mockery.
`Enough,' he replied, his face fixing fine and clear like steel. A horrible despair, and at the same time a sense of release, liberation, came over Hermione. She turned with a pleasant intimacy to Ursula.
`You are sure you will come to Breadalby?' she said, urging.
`Yes, I should like to very much,' replied Ursula.
Hermione looked down at her, gratified, reflecting, and strangely absent, as if possessed, as if not quite there.
`I'm so glad,' she said, pulling herself together. `Some time in about a fortnight. Yes? I will write to you here, at the school, shall I? Yes. And you'll be sure to come? Yes. I shall be so glad. Good-bye! Good-bye!'
Hermione held out her hand and looked into the eyes of the other woman. She knew Ursula as an immediate rival, and the knowledge strangely exhilarated her. Also she was taking leave. It always gave her a sense of strength, advantage, to be departing and leaving the other behind. Moreover she was taking the man with her, if only in hate.
Birkin stood aside, fixed and unreal. But now, when it was his turn to bid goodbye, he began to speak again.
`There's the whole difference in the world,' he said, `between the actual sensual being, and the vicious mental-deliberate profligacy our lot goes in for. In our night-time, there's always the electricity switched on, we watch ourselves, we get it all in the head, really. You've got to lapse out before you can know what sensual reality is, lapse into unknowingness, and give up your volition. You've got to do it. You've got to learn not-to-be, before you can come into being.
`But we have got such a conceit of ourselves -- that's where it is. We are so conceited, and so unproud. We've got no pride, we're all conceit, so conceited in our own papier-mache realised selves. We'd rather die than give up our little selfrighteous self-opinionated self-will.'
There was silence in the room. Both women were hostile and resentful. He sounded as if he were addressing a meeting. Hermione merely paid no attention, stood with her shoulders tight in a shrug of dislike.
Ursula was watching him as if furtively, not really aware of what she was seeing. There was a great physical attractiveness in him -- a curious hidden richness, that came through his thinness and his pallor like another voice, conveying another knowledge of him. It was in the curves of his brows and his chin, rich, fine, exquisite curves, the powerful beauty of life itself. She could not say what it was. But there was a sense of richness and of liberty.
`But we are sensual enough, without making ourselves so, aren't we?' she asked, turning to him with a certain golden laughter flickering under her greenish eyes, like a challenge. And immediately the queer, careless, terribly attractive smile came over his eyes and brows, though his mouth did not relax.
`No,' he said, `we aren't. We're too full of ourselves.'
`Surely it isn't a matter of conceit,' she cried.
`That and nothing else.'
She was frankly puzzled.
`Don't you think that people are most conceited of all about their sensual powers?' she asked.
`That's why they aren't sensual -- only sensuous -- which is another matter. They're always aware of themselves -- and they're so conceited, that rather than release themselves, and live in another world, from another centre, they'd --'
`You want your tea, don't you,' said Hermione, turning to Ursula with a gracious kindliness. `You've worked all day --'
Birkin stopped short. A spasm of anger and chagrin went over Ursula. His face set. And he bade good-bye, as if he had ceased to notice her.
They were gone. Ursula stood looking at the door for some moments. Then she put out the lights. And having done so, she sat down again in her chair, absorbed and lost. And then she began to cry, bitterly, bitterly weeping: but whether for misery or joy, she never knew.
 
学校的一天就要结束了。教室里正上最后一堂课,宁静,安谧。这堂课讲的是基础植物学。桌子上摆满了杨花,榛子和柳枝供孩子们临描。天色变暗了,下午就要结束了,教室里光线暗极了,孩子们无法再画下去了。厄秀拉站在前面给孩子们提着问题,帮助他们了解杨花的结构和意义。
西面的窗户晖映着一抹浓重的桔黄色,给孩子们的头上勾勒出一圈火红金黄的轮廓,对面的墙壁也涂上了一层瑰丽的血红。可厄秀拉对这幅景色并不怎么在意,她太忙了,白天已进入尾声了,一天的工作象退潮时平静的潮水一样,渐渐收尾了。
这一天就象许多天一样恍恍惚惚地过去了。最后她有点急匆匆地处理完了手头的事。她给孩子们提着问题,催促着他们,为的是在下课的锣声敲响时他们弄懂这天应该知道的问题。她手里拿着杨花站在教室前的阴影中,身体微微前倾向着孩子们讲着,沉浸在教学的激情中。
她听到门“咔嗒”响了一声,但没去注意。突然她浑身一惊:她看到一个男人的脸出现在那一道血红金黄的光线中,就在她身边。他浑身红焰一般闪着光,看着她,等着她去注意他。这个身影简直把她吓坏了,她觉得自己就要昏过去了。
她心中压抑着的潜意识恐怖感立时痛苦地爆发出来了。
“我让你吃惊了吧?”伯金同她握着手说,“我以为你听到我进来的声音了。”
“没有,”她迟疑着,几乎说不出话来。他笑着说他很抱歉。她不明白这有什么好笑的。
“太黑了,”他说,“开开灯好吗?”
说着他挪到边上打开了电灯,灯光很强。教室里清晰多了,跟刚才他来时比显得陌生了,刚才这儿溶满了舒缓黛色的魔幻色彩。伯金转过身好奇地看着厄秀拉。她的眼睛惊诧地睁圆了,由于惊恐,嘴唇都有点哆嗦了,看上去她就象一个刚刚被惊醒的人一样。她的面庞洋溢着一种活生生、温柔的美,就象柔和的夕阳一样在闪烁。他看着她,又添一分喜悦,满心的欢乐,轻松愉快。
“你正摆弄杨花?”他问着,顺手从讲台上拣起一颗榛子。
“都长成这么大了吗?今年我还没有留意过呢。”
他手中捏着雄花,看上去很入迷。
“还有红的!”他看着雌蕊中落出的绯红色说。
然后他在课桌中穿行着去看学术书,厄秀拉看着他稳步走来走去,他的稳重令她屏息。她似乎静静地站在一旁,眼看着他在另一个世界里聚精会神地走动着。他那静悄悄的身影几乎象凝结着的空气中的一个空洞。
突然他向她扬起脸来说话,听到他的声音她的心跳加快了。
“给他们一些彩笔吧,”他说,“让他们把雌性花涂上红色,雄性花涂成黄色。我只画不着色的画儿,只涂红、黄两种颜色。在这种情况下素描没什么不好的,要强调的就是这一点。”
“我这儿没有彩笔。”厄秀拉说。
“别处会有的,红的和黄的,你只需要这两种。”
厄秀拉打发一个男孩子去找。
“彩笔会把书弄脏的。”厄秀拉对伯金说,脸红透了。
“没那么严重,”他说,“你必须把这些东西标明,这是你要强调的事实,而不是记录主观印象。而这种事实就是雌花儿的小红斑点儿和悬坠着的黄色雄性杨花,黄色的花粉从这儿飞到那儿。将这事实绘成图,就象孩子画脸谱一样——两只眼,一只鼻子,嘴里长着牙齿,就这样——”说着他在黑板上画出一个人形来。
就在这时,玻璃门外出现了另一个人的身影。来人是赫麦妮·罗迪斯。伯金走过去为她打开门。
“我看到了你的汽车。”她对他说,“我进来找你,你不介意吧?我想看看你履行公务时的样子。”
她亲昵愉快地看了他好半天,然后笑了一下。接着她自己朝厄秀拉转过身来,厄秀拉和她的学生们一直在看着这对情人间的一幕。
“你好,布朗温小姐,”赫麦妮唱歌般地同厄秀拉打招呼,那声音低沉,奇妙,象在唱歌,又象在打趣。“我进来,你不介意吧?”
她那双灰色、几乎充满讽刺意味的眼睛一直看着厄秀拉,似乎要把她看透。
“哦,不介意的。”厄秀拉说。
“真的吗?”赫麦妮追问,态度镇定,毫不掩饰自己的霸道专横。
“哦,不介意,我很高兴,”厄秀拉笑道,既激动又惊恐,因为赫麦妮似乎在逼近她,那样子似乎跟她很亲昵,其实她怎么能亲近厄秀拉呢?
赫麦妮需要的正是这样的回答。她转身满意地对伯金说:
“你做什么呢?”那声音是漫不经心的。
“摆弄杨花,”他回答。
“真的!”她说。“那你都学到了什么?”她一直用一种嘲弄、玩笑的口吻说话,似乎这一切都是一场游戏。她拣起一枚杨花,吸引了伯金的注意力。
她身穿一件宽大的绿色大衣,大衣上透着凸出的图案,显得她在教室里有点怪模怪样的。大衣高领和大衣的衬里都是用黑色皮毛做的,里面着一件香草色的上衣,边儿上镶着皮毛,很合适的皮帽子上拼着暗绿和暗黄色的图案。她高大,模样很怪,就象从什么希奇古怪的图画上走下来的人一样。
“你认识这红色的小椭圆花儿吗?它可以产坚果呢。你注意过它们吗?”他问赫麦妮,说着他走近她,指点着她手中的枝子。
“没有,”她回答,“是什么?”
“这些是产籽的花儿,这长长的杨花只生产使它们受精的花粉。”
“是吗?是吗!”赫麦妮重复着,看得很仔细。
“坚果就从这些红红的小东西里长出来,当然它们要先受精。”
“小小的红色火焰,红色火焰,”赫麦妮自言自语着。好半天,她只是盯着那长出红花儿的小花蕾看来看去。
“多么好看啊,我觉得它们太美了,”她凑近伯金,细长,苍白的手指指点着红红的花丝说。
“你以前注意过吗?”他问。
“没有,从来没有。”她答道。
“以后总要看到这些了。”他说。
“对,我会注意的。”她重复他的话说,“谢谢你给我看了这么多,它们太美了,小小的红火苗儿——”
她对此那么入迷,几乎有些发狂,这可有点不正常。厄秀拉和伯金都感到迷惑不解。这些红雌蕊竟对赫麦妮有某种奇妙的吸引力,几乎令她产生了神秘的激情。
这一课上完了,教科书放到一边不用了,学生们终于放学了。但赫麦妮仍然坐在桌前,双肘支在桌上,两手托着下腭,苍白的长脸向上仰着,不知在看什么。伯金走到窗前,从灯光明亮的屋里朝外观望,外面灰濛濛的,细雨已悄然落下。
厄秀拉把她的东西都归置到柜子里去。
赫麦妮终于站起身走近厄秀拉问道:
“你妹妹回家来了?”
“回来了。”厄秀拉说。
“她愿意回贝多弗来吗?”
“不愿意。”厄秀拉说。
“不会吧,我想她能够忍受。我呆在这里就得竭尽全力忍受这个地区的丑陋面目。你愿意来看我吗?和你妹妹一起来布莱德比住几天,好吗?”
“那太谢谢您了。”厄秀拉说。
“那好,我会给你写信的,”赫麦妮说,“你觉得你妹妹会来吗?她如果能来我会很高兴的。我觉得她这个人很好,她的一些作品真是优秀之作。我有她的一幅木刻,上了色的,刻的是两只水鹡鸰,也许你没见过吧?”
“没有。”厄秀拉说。
“我觉得那幅作品妙极了,全然是本能的闪光——”
“她的雕刻很古怪。”厄秀拉说。
“十足得美妙,充满了原始激情——”
“真奇怪,她为什么总喜欢一些小东西呢?她一定经常画些小东西,小鸟儿啦,或者小动物什么的,人们可以捧在手中把玩。她总喜欢透过望远镜的反面观察事物,观察世界,你知道这是为什么?”
赫麦妮俯视着厄秀拉,用那种超然、审视的目光久久地盯着她,这目光令厄秀拉激动。
“是啊,”赫麦妮终于说,“这真奇怪。那些小东西似乎对她来说更难以捉摸——”
“可其实不然,对吗?一只老鼠并不比一头狮子难以捉摸,不是吗?”
赫麦妮再一次俯视着厄秀拉,仍然审视地看着她,似乎她仍然按照自己的思路想着什么,一点也不在意对方在说什么。
“我不知道。”她回答。
“卢伯特,卢伯特,”她唱歌般地叫他过来,他就默默地靠近了她。
“小东西比大东西更微妙吗?”她问道,喉咙里憋着一声奇特的笑,似乎她不是在提问而是在做游戏。
“不知道。”他说。
“我讨厌微妙不可捉摸的东西。”厄秀拉说。
赫麦妮缓缓地巡视她,问:
“是吗?”
“我总认为小东西表现出的是软弱。”厄秀拉说着抬起了胳膊,似乎她的尊严受到了威胁。
赫麦妮对此没有注意。突然她的面部皱了起来,眉头紧锁着,似乎她想着什么,竭力要表达自己。
“卢伯特,你真地以为,”她视厄秀拉旁若无人一般,问道:“你真地以为唤醒了孩子们的思想是件值得的事吗?”
伯金脸上闪过一道阴影,他生气了。他的两腮下陷着,脸色苍白,几乎没有人样儿了。这个女人用她那严肃、扰乱人意识的问题折磨他,说到了他的痛处。
“他们不是被唤醒的,他们自然会有思想的,不管愿意不愿意。”
“可是,你以为加快或刺激他们的思想发展会更好吗?让他们不知道榛子为何物不是更好吗?为什么要把榛子弄成一点点的,把知识分割成一点点的?让他们识其全豹不是更好?”
“不管你懂不懂吧,你是否希望让这些小红花儿在这儿受精呢?”他严厉地问。他的语调残酷、尖刻、蛮横。
赫麦妮的脸仍然仰着,茫茫然。伯金在生闷气。
“我不懂,”她和解地说,“我是不懂。”
“可知识对你来说就是一切,是你的全部生命,”他忿忿地脱口而出。她缓缓地巡视他。
“是吗?”她说。
“知识,是全部的你,你的生命——你只有这个,知识,”
他叫道,“只有一棵树,你的口中只有一颗果子。”
她又沉默了一会儿。
“是吗?”她终于无动于衷地说。然后她又怪声怪气地问:
“什么果子,卢伯特?”
“那永恒的苹果,①”他气愤地答道,连自己都仇恨这个比喻。
①这里指“智慧树”上的果子,象征知识和理智。
“是的,”她说道,看上去很疲惫。一时间大家都沉默了。然后,她竭尽全力振作起精神,又恢复了那漫不经心歌唱般的语调。
“别考虑我,卢伯特。你是否认为孩子们有了这些知识会变得更好、更富有,更幸福?你真是这么想的吗?是不是让他们不受影响,顺其自然?让他们仍然是动物,简单的动物,粗犷、凶暴。怎么样都可以,就是不能因为有自我意识而无法顺其自然。”
大家以为她说完了,可她喉咙奇怪地咕哝一下,又说了起来:“让他们怎么着都行,就是不要长大了灵魂残废,感情上残废,最后自食其果,无法——”赫麦妮象一个神情恍惚的人一样握紧了拳头——“无法顺其自然地行事,总是谋划什么,总是选择来选择去一事无成。”
大家又以为她的话说完了。可就在伯金要回答她时,她又狂热地说:“总是无法自行其事,总那么清醒,自我意识过强,时时注意自己,难道没有比这更好的吗?最好是动物,一点头脑都没有的动物,也比这强,这样太不值了。”
“难道你认为是知识使得我们失去了生气,让我们有了自我意识?”伯金气恼地问。
她睁大眼睛打量着他说:
“是的,”她停顿一下,茫然地看着他。然后她用手指抹了一下眉毛,显得有点疲惫。这个动作令他反感极了。“头脑这东西,”她说,“就是死亡。”她渐渐抬起眼皮看着他说:
“难道头脑,”她浑身抽动着说:“不是我们的末日吗?难道它不是毁灭了我们的自然属性,毁灭了我们全部的本能吗?难道今日的年轻人不是在长大以后连活的机会都没有就死了吗?”
“但那不是因为他们太有头脑,而是因为太没有头脑了。”
他粗暴地说。
“你敢肯定吗?”她叫道。“我觉得恰恰相反。他们的意识太强了,一直到死都受着沉重的意识的重压。”
“受着有限的,虚假的思想的禁锢。”他叫着。
赫麦妮对他的话一点也不注意,仍旧狂热地发问:
“当我们有了知识时,我们就牺牲了一切,就只剩下知识了,不是吗?”她颇为动情地问道。“如果我懂得了这花儿是怎么回事,难道我不是失去了花朵,只剩下了那么点知识?难道我们不是在用实体换来影子,难道我们不是为了这种僵死的知识而失去了生命?可这对我来说究竟意味着什么?这一切知识对我意味着什么?什么也不是。”
“你只是在搬弄词藻,”伯金说,“可知识对你来说意味着一切。甚至你的人同野兽的理论,也不过是你头脑里的东西。你并不想成为野兽,你只是想理论一下你的动物功能,从而获得一种精神上的刺激。这都是次要的,比最墨守成规的唯理智论更没落。你爱激情,爱野兽的本能,这不过是唯理智论最坏的表现形式,难道不是吗?激情和本能,你苦苦地思念这些,可只是在你的头脑中,在你的意识中。这些都发生在你的头脑中,发生在那个脑壳里。只是你无法意识到这是怎么一回事罢了:他要的是用谎言来代替真实。”
对伯金的攻击赫麦妮报之以冷酷刻毒的表情。厄秀拉站在那儿,一脸的惊诧与羞赧。他们相互这样反目,把厄秀拉吓坏了。
“这全是夏洛特小姐①那一套,”他用令人难以捉摸的口吻说。他似乎是在冲着一片空荡荡的空间说着指责她的话。“你有了那面镜子,那是你顽固的意志,是你一成不变的领悟能力,你缜密的意识世界,除此以外再没别的了。在这面镜子里你一定获得了一切。可是现在你清醒了,你要返璞归真了,想成为野蛮人,不要知识了。你要的是一种纯粹感觉与‘激情’的生活。”
①《亚瑟王传奇》中的一女子,她单相思爱上了一位骑士,苦恋而死。
他用一个“激情”来反讽她。她气得浑身直打颤,无言以对,那副样子很象古希腊神谕宣示所里的女巫。
“可你的所谓激情是骗人的,”他激烈地继续说,“压根儿不是什么激情,而是你的意志。你要抓住什么东西,为的是控制它们。为什么?因为你没有一具真正的躯体,一具黑暗、富有肉感的生命之躯。你没有性欲,有的只是你的意志,意识思想和权力欲、知识欲。”
他又恨又蔑视地看着她,同时因为她在痛苦自己也感到痛苦。他感到羞耻,因为他知道他折磨着她。他真想跪下肯求她的宽恕,可他又无法平息心中的怒火。他忘却了她的存在,仅仅变成了一个充满激情的声音:
“顺其自然!”他叫道,“你还顺其自然!你比谁都老谋深算!你顺的是你的老谋深算,这才是你,你要用你的意志去控制一切,你要的是老谋深算与主观意志。你那可恶的小脑壳里装的全是这些,应该象砸坚果一样把它砸碎,因为不砸碎它你仍然会是这样,就象包着壳的昆虫一样。如果有人砸碎了你的脑壳,他就可以让你成为一个自然的、有激情的、有真正肉欲的女人。可你呢,你需要的淫荡——从镜子中观看你自己,观看你赤裸裸的动物行为,从而你就可以将其意识化。”
空气中有一种亵渎的气氛,似乎他说了太多不能令人原谅的话。但厄秀拉关心的是借助伯金的话解决自己的问题。她脸色苍白,很茫然地问:
“你真地需要肉欲吗?”
伯金看看她,认真地解释道:
“是的,恰恰需要这个,而不是别的。这是一种满足和完善——你的头脑无法获得的伟大的黑暗知识——黑暗的非自主存在。它是你自己本身的死亡,可却是另一个自我的复活。”
“可这是怎样的呢?你怎么能够让知识不存在于头脑中呢?”她无法解释他的话。
“在血液中,”他回答,“当意识和已知世界沉入黑暗中时——什么都一样——就一定有一场大雨。然后你发现自己处在一个可以感知的黑暗躯体中,变成了一个魔鬼——”
“可我为什么要变成一个魔鬼呢?”她问。
“‘女人嚎叫着寻找她的魔鬼情人,①’”他说道,“我不知道这是为什么。”
①引自S·T·柯勒律治(1772—1834)《忽必烈汗》。
赫麦妮似乎从死亡中醒来了。
“他是一个可怕的撒旦主义者,不是吗?”她拉长声音对厄秀拉说,那奇怪的共鸣声在结尾处又添一声嘲弄的尖笑。这两个女人在嘲笑他,笑得他一无是处。赫麦妮那尖声、凯旋般的女人的笑在嘲弄他,似乎他是个阉人。
“我不是,”他说,“你们是真正的魔鬼,你们不允许生命存在。”
赫麦妮缓缓地审视了他好久,那目光恶毒、傲慢。
“你什么都懂,不是吗?”她语调缓慢、冷漠,透着狡猾的嘲弄味儿。
“够了,”他说,他的面庞钢铁般生硬。赫麦妮立时感到一阵可怕的失落,同时又感到释然。她转身亲昵地对厄秀拉说:
“你们肯定会来布莱德比吗?”
“是的,我很乐意去。”厄秀拉说。
赫麦妮满意地看看她,心不在焉地想着什么,似乎丢了魂一样。
“我太高兴了。”她说着振作起了精神,“两周之内的什么时候来,行吗?我就把信写到这里来,写到学校,行吗?好吧。你肯定会来吗?好。我太高兴了。再见!再见!”
赫麦妮对厄秀拉伸出手来凝视着她。她知道厄秀拉是她的直接情故,这可把她高兴坏了,真有点奇怪。现在她要告辞了。与别人告别,把别人留在原地总让她感到有力量,感到占了便宜。再说,她在仇恨中带走了这个男人,这更是再好不过了。
伯金站在一旁,失神地一动不动。可当他告别时,他又开始讲起来:
“在这个世界上,实际的肉欲与我们命中注定的罪恶的放荡性意淫之间是不可同日而语的。晚上,我们总要扭开电灯在灯光下观看我们自己,于是我们把这东西都注入头脑里了,真的。你要想知道肉欲的真实,你就先要沉迷,坠入无知中,放弃你的意志。你必须这样。你要生,首先要学会死。
“可我们太自傲了,就这么回事。我们太自傲,而不是自豪。我们没一点自豪感,我们傲气十足,自造假象欺骗自己。我们宁可死也不放弃自己那一丁点自以为是,固步自封的自我意志。”
屋里一片安宁。两个女人充满了敌意和不满。而他却好象在什么大会上做讲演。赫麦妮几乎连听都不听,自顾耸耸肩表示厌恶。
厄秀拉似乎在偷偷看着他,并不真地知道自己看的是什么。他身上有一种巨大的魅力——某种内在的奇特的低沉声音发自这个瘦削,苍白的人,象另外一个人的声音在传达着对他的认识。他眉毛和下腭的曲线变幻多端,漂亮、优雅的曲线展示着生命本身强有力的美。她说不清这是怎么回事,但她感到一种满足与畅快。
“可是,尽管我们有肉欲,但我们没有这样做,是吗?”她转身问他,蓝色的眼睛闪烁着金色的光芒,她在笑,象对他挑战一样。于是,他的眼睛与眉毛立时露出神奇、毫无拘束、令人心动的迷人的微笑,但他的嘴唇丝毫没有动一动。
“不,我们没有,”他说,“我们太为自我所充溢。”
“肯定地说,这并不是自傲的问题。”她叫了起来。
“是的,不会是别的。”
她简直迷惑了。
“你不认为人们都为自己的肉欲力量感到骄傲吗?”她问。
“这说明他们并不是肉欲者,而是感觉者,这是另一个问题。人们总意识到自己,又那么自傲,并不是解放自己,让自己生活在另一个世界中,并不是来自另一个中心,他们——”
“你要用茶点了吧,嗯?”赫麦妮转身优雅、和蔼地对厄秀拉说。“你工作了一整天了呀——”
伯金的话戛然而止。厄秀拉感到一股怒火涌上心头,她感到懊悔。伯金绷起脸道别,似乎他不再注意她了。
他们走了,厄秀拉盯着门看了好一会儿。然后她关掉了电灯,又一次坐在椅子上失魂落魄起来。她哭了,伤心地啜泣着,很伤心,是喜是悲?她弄不清。
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

゛臉紅紅....

ZxID:704295


等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
举报 只看该作者 4楼  发表于: 2013-10-26 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 4 Diver


THE WEEK passed away. On the Saturday it rained, a soft drizzling rain that held off at times. In one of the intervals Gudrun and Ursula set out for a walk, going towards Willey Water. The atmosphere was grey and translucent, the birds sang sharply on the young twigs, the earth would be quickening and hastening in growth. The two girls walked swiftly, gladly, because of the soft, subtle rush of morning that filled the wet haze. By the road the black-thorn was in blossom, white and wet, its tiny amber grains burning faintly in the white smoke of blossom. Purple twigs were darkly luminous in the grey air, high hedges glowed like living shadows, hovering nearer, coming into creation. The morning was full of a new creation.
When the sisters came to Willey Water, the lake lay all grey and visionary, stretching into the moist, translucent vista of trees and meadow. Fine electric activity in sound came from the dumbles below the road, the birds piping one against the other, and water mysteriously plashing, issuing from the lake.
The two girls drifted swiftly along. In front of them, at the corner of the lake, near the road, was a mossy boat-house under a walnut tree, and a little landing-stage where a boat was moored, wavering like a shadow on the still grey water, below the green, decayed poles. All was shadowy with coming summer.
Suddenly, from the boat-house, a white figure ran out, frightening in its swift sharp transit, across the old landing-stage. It launched in a white arc through the air, there was a bursting of the water, and among the smooth ripples a swimmer was making out to space, in a centre of faintly heaving motion. The whole otherworld, wet and remote, he had to himself. He could move into the pure translucency of the grey, uncreated water.
Gudrun stood by the stone wall, watching.
`How I envy him,' she said, in low, desirous tones.
`Ugh!' shivered Ursula. `So cold!'
`Yes, but how good, how really fine, to swim out there!' The sisters stood watching the swimmer move further into the grey, moist, full space of the water, pulsing with his own small, invading motion, and arched over with mist and dim woods.
`Don't you wish it were you?' asked Gudrun, looking at Ursula.
`I do,' said Ursula. `But I'm not sure -- it's so wet.'
`No,' said Gudrun, reluctantly. She stood watching the motion on the bosom of the water, as if fascinated. He, having swum a certain distance, turned round and was swimming on his back, looking along the water at the two girls by the wall. In the faint wash of motion, they could see his ruddy face, and could feel him watching them.
`It is Gerald Crich,' said Ursula.
`I know,' replied Gudrun.
And she stood motionless gazing over the water at the face which washed up and down on the flood, as he swam steadily. From his separate element he saw them and he exulted to himself because of his own advantage, his possession of a world to himself. He was immune and perfect. He loved his own vigorous, thrusting motion, and the violent impulse of the very cold water against his limbs, buoying him up. He could see the girls watching him a way off, outside, and that pleased him. He lifted his arm from the water, in a sign to them.
`He is waving,' said Ursula.
`Yes,' replied Gudrun. They watched him. He waved again, with a strange movement of recognition across the difference.
`Like a Nibelung,' laughed Ursula. Gudrun said nothing, only stood still looking over the water.
Gerald suddenly turned, and was swimming away swiftly, with a side stroke. He was alone now, alone and immune in the middle of the waters, which he had all to himself. He exulted in his isolation in the new element, unquestioned and unconditioned. He was happy, thrusting with his legs and all his body, without bond or connection anywhere, just himself in the watery world.
Gudrun envied him almost painfully. Even this momentary possession of pure isolation and fluidity seemed to her so terribly desirable that she felt herself as if damned, out there on the high-road.
`God, what it is to be a man!' she cried.
`What?' exclaimed Ursula in surprise.
`The freedom, the liberty, the mobility!' cried Gudrun, strangely flushed and brilliant. `You're a man, you want to do a thing, you do it. You haven't the thousand obstacles a woman has in front of her.'
Ursula wondered what was in Gudrun's mind, to occasion this outburst. She could not understand.
`What do you want to do?' she asked.
`Nothing,' cried Gudrun, in swift refutation. `But supposing I did. Supposing I want to swim up that water. It is impossible, it is one of the impossibilities of life, for me to take my clothes off now and jump in. But isn't it ridiculous, doesn't it simply prevent our living!'
She was so hot, so flushed, so furious, that Ursula was puzzled.
The two sisters went on, up the road. They were passing between the trees just below Shortlands. They looked up at the long, low house, dim and glamorous in the wet morning, its cedar trees slanting before the windows. Gudrun seemed to be studying it closely.
`Don't you think it's attractive, Ursula?' asked Gudrun.
`Very,' said Ursula. `Very peaceful and charming.'
`It has form, too -- it has a period.'
`What period?'
`Oh, eighteenth century, for certain; Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Austen, don't you think?'
Ursula laughed.
`Don't you think so?' repeated Gudrun.
`Perhaps. But I don't think the Criches fit the period. I know Gerald is putting in a private electric plant, for lighting the house, and is making all kinds of latest improvements.'
Gudrun shrugged her shoulders swiftly.
`Of course,' she said, `that's quite inevitable.'
`Quite,' laughed Ursula. `He is several generations of youngness at one go. They hate him for it. He takes them all by the scruff of the neck, and fairly flings them along. He'll have to die soon, when he's made every possible improvement, and there will be nothing more to improve. He's got go, anyhow.'
`Certainly, he's got go,' said Gudrun. `In fact I've never seen a man that showed signs of so much. The unfortunate thing is, where does his go go to, what becomes of it?'
`Oh I know,' said Ursula. `It goes in applying the latest appliances!'
`Exactly,' said Gudrun.
`You know he shot his brother?' said Ursula.
`Shot his brother?' cried Gudrun, frowning as if in disapprobation.
`Didn't you know? Oh yes! -- I thought you knew. He and his brother were playing together with a gun. He told his brother to look down the gun, and it was loaded, and blew the top of his head off. Isn't it a horrible story?'
`How fearful!' cried Gudrun. `But it is long ago?'
`Oh yes, they were quite boys,' said Ursula. `I think it is one of the most horrible stories I know.'
`And he of course did not know that the gun was loaded?'
`Yes. You see it was an old thing that had been lying in the stable for years. Nobody dreamed it would ever go off, and of course, no one imagined it was loaded. But isn't it dreadful, that it should happen?'
`Frightful!' cried Gudrun. `And isn't it horrible too to think of such a thing happening to one, when one was a child, and having to carry the responsibility of it all through one's life. Imagine it, two boys playing together -- then this comes upon them, for no reason whatever -- out of the air. Ursula, it's very frightening! Oh, it's one of the things I can't bear. Murder, that is thinkable, because there's a will behind it. But a thing like that to happen to one --'
`Perhaps there was an unconscious will behind it,' said Ursula. `This playing at killing has some primitive desire for killing in it, don't you think?'
`Desire!' said Gudrun, coldly, stiffening a little. `I can't see that they were even playing at killing. I suppose one boy said to the other, "You look down the barrel while I pull the trigger, and see what happens." It seems to me the purest form of accident.'
`No,' said Ursula. `I couldn't pull the trigger of the emptiest gun in the world, not if some-one were looking down the barrel. One instinctively doesn't do it -- one can't.'
Gudrun was silent for some moments, in sharp disagreement.
`Of course,' she said coldly. `If one is a woman, and grown up, one's instinct prevents one. But I cannot see how that applies to a couple of boys playing together.'
Her voice was cold and angry.
`Yes,' persisted Ursula. At that moment they heard a woman's voice a few yards off say loudly:
`Oh damn the thing!' They went forward and saw Laura Crich and Hermione Roddice in the field on the other side of the hedge, and Laura Crich struggling with the gate, to get out. Ursula at once hurried up and helped to lift the gate.
`Thanks so much,' said Laura, looking up flushed and amazon-like, yet rather confused. `It isn't right on the hinges.'
`No,' said Ursula. `And they're so heavy.'
`Surprising!' cried Laura.
`How do you do,' sang Hermione, from out of the field, the moment she could make her voice heard. `It's nice now. Are you going for a walk? Yes. Isn't the young green beautiful? So beautiful -- quite burning. Good morning -- good morning -- you'll come and see me? -- thank you so much -- next week -- yes -good-bye, g-o-o-d b-y-e.'
Gudrun and Ursula stood and watched her slowly waving her head up and down, and waving her hand slowly in dismissal, smiling a strange affected smile, making a tall queer, frightening figure, with her heavy fair hair slipping to her eyes. Then they moved off, as if they had been dismissed like inferiors. The four women parted.
As soon as they had gone far enough, Ursula said, her cheeks burning,
`I do think she's impudent.'
`Who, Hermione Roddice?' asked Gudrun. `Why?'
`The way she treats one -- impudence!'
`Why, Ursula, what did you notice that was so impudent?' asked Gudrun rather coldly.
`Her whole manner. Oh, It's impossible, the way she tries to bully one. Pure bullying. She's an impudent woman. "You'll come and see me," as if we should be falling over ourselves for the privilege.'
`I can't understand, Ursula, what you are so much put out about,' said Gudrun, in some exasperation. `One knows those women are impudent -- these free women who have emancipated themselves from the aristocracy.'
`But it is so Unnecessary -- so vulgar,' cried Ursula.
`No, I don't see it. And if I did -- pour moi, elle n'existe pas. I don't grant her the power to be impudent to me.'
`Do you think she likes you?' asked Ursula.
`Well, no, I shouldn't think she did.'
`Then why does she ask you to go to Breadalby and stay with her?'
Gudrun lifted her shoulders in a low shrug.
`After all, she's got the sense to know we're not just the ordinary run,' said Gudrun. `Whatever she is, she's not a fool. And I'd rather have somebody I detested, than the ordinary woman who keeps to her own set. Hermione Roddice does risk herself in some respects.'
Ursula pondered this for a time.
`I doubt it,' she replied. `Really she risks nothing. I suppose we ought to admire her for knowing she can invite us -- school teachers -- and risk nothing.'
`Precisely!' said Gudrun. `Think of the myriads of women that daren't do it. She makes the most of her privileges -- that's something. I suppose, really, we should do the same, in her place.'
`No,' said Ursula. `No. It would bore me. I couldn't spend my time playing her games. It's infra dig.'
The two sisters were like a pair of scissors, snipping off everything that came athwart them; or like a knife and a whetstone, the one sharpened against the other.
`Of course,' cried Ursula suddenly, `she ought to thank her stars if we will go and see her. You are perfectly beautiful, a thousand times more beautiful than ever she is or was, and to my thinking, a thousand times more beautifully dressed, for she never looks fresh and natural, like a flower, always old, thought-out; and we are more intelligent than most people.'
`Undoubtedly!' said Gudrun.
`And it ought to be admitted, simply,' said Ursula.
`Certainly it ought,' said Gudrun. `But you'll find that the really chic thing is to be so absolutely ordinary, so perfectly commonplace and like the person in the street, that you really are a masterpiece of humanity, not the person in the street actually, but the artistic creation of her --'
`How awful!' cried Ursula.
`Yes, Ursula, it is awful, in most respects. You daren't be anything that isn't amazingly a terre, so much a terre that it is the artistic creation of ordinariness.'
`It's very dull to create oneself into nothing better,' laughed Ursula.
`Very dull!' retorted Gudrun. `Really Ursula, it is dull, that's just the word. One longs to be high-flown, and make speeches like Corneille, after it.'
Gudrun was becoming flushed and excited over her own cleverness.
`Strut,' said Ursula. `One wants to strut, to be a swan among geese.'
`Exactly,' cried Gudrun, `a swan among geese.'
`They are all so busy playing the ugly duckling,' cried Ursula, with mocking laughter. `And I don't feel a bit like a humble and pathetic ugly duckling. I do feel like a swan among geese -- I can't help it. They make one feel so. And I don't care what they think of me. fe m'en fiche.'
Gudrun looked up at Ursula with a queer, uncertain envy and dislike.
`Of course, the only thing to do is to despise them all -- just all,' she said.
The sisters went home again, to read and talk and work, and wait for Monday, for school. Ursula often wondered what else she waited for, besides the beginning and end of the school week, and the beginning and end of the holidays. This was a whole life! Sometimes she had periods of tight horror, when it seemed to her that her life would pass away, and be gone, without having been more than this. But she never really accepted it. Her spirit was active, her life like a shoot that is growing steadily, but which has not yet come above ground.
 
一个星期过去了。星期六这天下起了细细的毛毛雨,时下时停。潇潇雨歇之际,戈珍和厄秀拉出来散步,朝威利湖走去。天色空濛,鸟儿在新枝上鸣啭,大地上万物竞相勃发。姐妹两人在清晨柔和、细腻的雨雾中兴致勃勃地疾行。路边黑刺李绽开了湿漉漉的白花瓣儿,那小小的棕色果粒在一团团烟儿似的白花中若隐若现。灰蒙蒙的大气中,紫色的树枝显得黯淡,高大的篱笆象活生生的阴影在闪动,忽闪忽闪的,走近了才看得清。早晨,万象更新。
姐妹两人来到威利湖畔,但见湖面一片朦胧,幻影般地向着湿漉漉空濛濛的树林和草坪伸延开去。道路下方传来微弱的电机声,鸟儿对唱着,湖水神秘地汩汩淌了出来。
两位姑娘飘然而至。前面,湖的角落里,离大路不远处,一棵胡桃树掩映着一座爬满鲜苔的停船房,还有一座浮码头,码头上停泊着一条船,象影子一样在绿色朽柱下的湖水上荡漾着。夏天就要到来了,到处都笼罩着阴影。
突然,从停船房里闪出一个白色的身影,疾速飞掠过旧浮码头。随着一道白色的孤光在空中划过,水面上飞溅起一团浪花,接着舒缓的涟漪中钻出一个游泳者。他置身的是另一个水淋淋、遥远的世界。他竟钻入了这纯洁透明的天然水域中。
戈珍站在石墙边看着。
“我真羡慕他呀。”她低沉、满怀渴望地说。
“嚯!”厄秀拉颤抖着说:“好冷!”
“是啊,可在湖里游泳是多么棒啊,真了不起!”姐妹两人站着,看着泳者游向浩淼的空濛水面,他动作很小地朝远处游着,渐渐水雾和朦胧的树林溶为一体。
“你不希望这是你自己吗?”戈珍看着厄秀拉问。
“我希望这样,”厄秀拉说,“不过我不敢肯定,这水太凉了。”
“是啊,”戈珍勉强地说。她仍然入迷地看着那人在湖心里游动。他游了一程后就翻过身来仰泳,眼睛却看着墙下的两个姑娘。她们可以看到微波中闪现出他红润的面庞,可以感到他在看她们。
“是杰拉德·克里奇。”厄秀拉说。
“我知道的,”戈珍说。
她伫立着,凝视他的脸在水上起伏,盯着他稳健地游着。他边游边看她们,他为自己深深地感到自豪,他处在优越的位置上,自己拥有一个世界。他我行我素,丝毫不受他人的影响。他喜爱自己那强有力的击水动作,喜爱冰冷的水猛烈撞击他的四肢将他浮起。他可以看到湖边上的姑娘们在看他,这真让他高兴。于是他在水中举起手臂向她们打招呼。
“他在挥动胳膊呢。”厄秀拉说。
“是啊。”戈珍回答道。她们仍然看着他。他又一次挥舞着手臂,表示看到了她们,那动作很怪。
“很象一个尼伯龙根家的人。①”厄秀拉笑道。可戈珍什么也没说,仍然默立着俯视水面。
①参见德国英雄史诗《尼伯龙根之歌》。
杰拉德突然一个翻身,用侧泳的姿式快速划走。他现在孤身一人独处湖心,拥有这里的一切。在新的环境中,他毫无疑问是兴高采烈的,他喜欢这种孤独。他幸福地舒展双腿,舒展全身,没有任何束缚,也不同任何东西发生联系,在这个水的世界中只有他自己。
戈珍太羡慕他了,就是他拥有那纯粹的孤独与流水的那一刻都让她那样渴望,她太渴望得到那一刻了。为此她感到似乎自己站在公路上受着诅咒。
“天啊,作一个男人是多么好啊!”她叫道。
“什么?”厄秀拉惊叫道。
“自由,解放,灵活!”戈珍脸色出奇地红润,光采照人地叫着。“你是一个男人,想做什么就可以做。没有女人那许许多多的障碍。”
厄秀拉弄不清戈珍脑子里在想些什么,怎么会这样突如其来地大叫。她不明白。
“那你想做什么呢?”她问道。
“什么也没有,”戈珍立即叫着驳斥她。“只是假设而已。假设我要在这水中游泳吧,可这不可能,我生活中不可能有这等事,我就不能脱掉衣服跳进水中去。可这是多么不合理啊,简直阻碍着我生活嘛!”
戈珍的脸涨得通红,她太生气了,这让厄秀拉不知所措。
姐妹两人继续在路上走着。她们这时刚好穿过肖特兰兹下方的林子。她们抬头看去,但见那一长溜矮矮的房屋在湿漉漉的清晨朦胧而富有魅力,更有棵棵雪松掩映着一扇扇窗口。戈珍似乎认真地琢磨着这幅图景。
“你不觉得它迷人吗,厄秀拉?”戈珍问。
“太迷人了,”厄秀拉说,“淡泊而迷人。”
“它是有一定风格的,属于某个时期。”
“哪个时期?”
“肯定是十八世纪,朵拉茜·华滋华斯①和简·奥斯汀那个时代,你说呢?”
①朵拉茜·华滋华斯(1771—1855),女批评家,威廉·华滋华斯的妹妹。
厄秀拉笑了。
“难道不是吗?”戈珍又问。
“也许是吧,不过我觉得克里奇家的人跟那个时期不般配。我知道,杰拉德正建一座私人发电厂,为室内供电,他还着手进行最时髦的改进呢。”
戈珍迅速耸耸肩说:
“那当然,这是不可避免的嘛。”
“对呀,”厄秀拉笑道。“他一下子就做了几代人的事。为这个,人们都恨他。他强抓住别人的脖领子拖着人家走。等到他把可能改进的都改进了,再也没有什么需要改进的时候,他就会立即死去。当然,他应该做这些。”
“当然,他应该做。”戈珍说,“说实在的,我还没见过象他这么显身手的人。不幸的是,他这样做会走向何方,后果是什么?”
“我知道,”厄秀拉说,“就是推行最新的机器呗!”
“太对了!”戈珍说。
“你知道他杀死了他的弟弟吗?”厄秀拉问。
“杀死他弟弟?”戈珍大叫着皱起了眉头,似乎她不同意这么说。
“你还不知道?是这样!我还以为你知道了呢。他和弟弟一起玩一支熗。他让弟弟低头看着装了子弹的熗筒,他开了熗,把他弟弟的头打破了,这太可怕了!”
“多么可怕!”戈珍叫道,“不过这是很久以前的事了吧?”
“对,当他们很小的时候。”厄秀拉说,“我觉得这是我所知道的最可怕的事儿。”
“他并不知道熗里上着子弹,对吗?”
“对,那是一支在马厩里藏了好多年的老熗了。没人知道它还会响,更没人知道它里面还上着子弹。可发生这样的事,真是吓死人啊!”
“活吓死人!”戈珍叫道,“同样可怕的是孩提时代出了这样的事,一生都要负疚,想想都害怕。想想这事儿,两个男孩子一起玩得好好的,不知为什么,这场祸从天而降。厄秀拉,这太可怕了!我受不了。要是谋杀还可以理解,因为那是有意的。可这种事发生在一个人身上,这——”
“或许真是有意的,它藏在潜意识中。”厄秀拉说,“这种漫不经心的杀戮中隐藏着一个原始的杀人欲,你说呢?”
“杀人欲!”戈珍冷漠、有点生硬地说。“我认为这连杀人都不算。我猜可能是这么回事:一个孩子说:‘你看着熗口,我拉一下板机,看看有什么情况。’我觉得这纯粹是偶然事故。”
“不,”厄秀拉说。“如果别人低头看熗口时,我是不会扣动板机的。人的本能使得人不会这样做,不会的。”
戈珍沉默了,但心里十分不服气。
“那当然,”她冷冷地说。“如果是个女人,是个成年女人,她的本能会阻止她这样做。可两个一起玩的男孩子就会这样。”
她既冷酷又生气。
“不会的,”厄秀拉坚持说。就在这时她们听到几码开外有个女人在大叫:
“哎呀,该死的东西!”她们走上前去,发现劳拉·克里奇和赫麦妮·罗迪斯在篱笆墙里,劳拉·克里奇使劲弄着门要出来。厄秀拉忙上前帮她打开门。
“谢谢您,”劳拉说着抬起头,脸红得象个悍妇,不解地说:“铰链掉了。”
“是的,”厄秀拉说,“这门也太沉了。”
“真奇怪!”劳拉大叫着。
“您好啊,”赫麦妮一开口便歌唱般地说。“天儿很好。你们来散步吗?好。这青枝绿叶美吗?太美了,太美了。早晨好——早晨好,你们会来看我吗?谢谢了,下星期,好,再见——再——见。”
戈珍和厄秀拉站着,见她缓缓地点头,缓缓地挥手告别。她故作微笑,浓密的头发滑到了眉际,看上去高大、奇怪、令人胆寒。然后姐妹两人走开了,似乎低人三分,让人家打发走了一样。四个女人就这样分别了。
她们走到比较远的地方时,厄秀拉红着脸说:
“我觉得她太没礼貌了。”
“谁?赫麦妮·罗迪斯?”戈珍问,“为什么?”
“她待人的态度,没礼貌!”
“怎么了,厄秀拉,她哪点没礼貌了?”戈珍有点冷漠地问。
“她的全部举止,哼,她想欺侮人,没礼貌。她就是欺侮人,这个无礼的女人。‘你们会来看我’,好象我们会爬在地上抢这份恩赐似的。”
“我不明白,厄秀拉,你这是生的什么气,”戈珍有点恼火地说,“那些女人才无礼——那些脱离了贵族阶层的女人。”
“可是这太庸俗了,多余。”厄秀拉叫道。
“不,我看不出来。如果我发现了这一点,我就不允许她对我无礼。”
“你认为她喜欢你吗?”厄秀拉问。
“哦,不,我不这么以为。”
“那她为什么请你去布莱德比作客?”
戈珍微微耸耸肩膀。
“反正她明白我们不是普通人。”戈珍说,“不管她怎样,她并不傻。我宁可同一个我痛恨的人在一起,也不同那些墨守成规的普通女人在一起。赫麦妮·罗迪斯在某些方面是敢于冒险的。”
厄秀拉回味了一会儿这句话。
“我怀疑这一点,”她回答,“她什么险也没冒。她竟能请我们这些教员去作客,这点倒值得我们敬佩,不过她这样做并不冒什么险。”
“太对了!”戈珍说,“想想吧,好多女人都不敢这样做呢。她最大限度地利用了她的特权,这就不错。我想,真的,如果我们处在她的位置上,我们也会这样做的。”
“才不呢,”厄秀拉说,“不,那会烦死我。我才不花时间做她这种游戏呢。那太失身份了。”
这姐妹两人象一把剪刀,谁从她们中间穿过都会被她们剪断;或者又象一把刀和一块磨刀石相互磨擦。
“当然,”厄秀拉突然叫道,“我们去看她那是她的福份。你十全十美得漂亮,比她漂亮一千倍,她过去和现在都无法跟你比。我还觉得你的衣着比她美一千倍。她从来没有象一朵花似地鲜艳、自然,总是那么老气横秋、老谋深算。而我们比大多数人都聪明。”
“一点不错!”戈珍说。
“这一点应该得到承认才是。”厄秀拉说。
“当然应该,”戈珍说,“不过,真正的美应该是绝对得平凡,就象街上的行人那么平凡。那样你才是人类的杰作,当然不是实际上的行人,应该是艺术创造出来的行人——”
“太好了!”厄秀拉叫道。
“当然啦,厄秀拉,是太好了。你无法超脱尘世,十足的朴实才是艺术创造出来的平凡。”
“打扮自己打扮不好可太没意思了。”厄秀拉笑道。
“太没意思了呗!”戈珍说。“真的,厄秀拉,这太没意思了,就这么回事。一个人希望自己能口若悬河,便学着高乃依①那样夸夸其谈。”
①高乃依(1606—84),法国诗人与戏剧家,著有悲剧《熙德》等。
戈珍妙语连珠地说着,脸红了,心儿激动起来。
“而且高视阔步,”厄秀拉说,“人们总想象鹅群中的白天鹅一样高视阔步。”
“没错,”戈珍叫道,“鹅群中的白天鹅。”
“他们都忙着装扮成丑小鸭,”厄秀拉嘲讽地笑着说,“可我就不觉得自己是一只丑陋、可怜的小鸭子。我情不自禁地以为自己是鹅群中的白天鹅。人们让我这样看自己。我才不管他们怎么看我呢,爱怎么看怎么看。”
戈珍抬头看看厄秀拉,心里有点奇怪,说不出的妒忌与厌恶。
“当然,唯一可以做的就是不理睬他们,就这样。”她说。
姐妹二人又回家了,回去读书、谈天、做点活儿,一直到星期一又开始上课。厄秀拉常常弄不清除了学校一周中的始与终及假期的始与终以外,她还等待别的什么。这就是全部的生活啊!有时,当她似乎感到如果她的生活不是这样度过时,她就觉得可怕极了。但她并没有真地认命。她的精神生活很活跃,她的生活就象一棵幼芽,缓缓发育着但还未钻出地面。
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

゛臉紅紅....

ZxID:704295


等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
举报 只看该作者 5楼  发表于: 2013-10-26 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 5 In the Train


ONE DAY at this time Birkin was called to London. He was not very fixed in his abode. He had rooms in Nottingham, because his work lay chiefly in that town. But often he was in London, or in Oxford. He moved about a great deal, his life seemed uncertain, without any definite rhythm, any organic meaning.
On the platform of the railway station he saw Gerald Crich, reading a newspaper, and evidently waiting for the train. Birkin stood some distance off, among the people. It was against his instinct to approach anybody.
From time to time, in a manner characteristic of him, Gerald lifted his head and looked round. Even though he was reading the newspaper closely, he must keep a watchful eye on his external surroundings. There seemed to be a dual consciousness running in him. He was thinking vigorously of something he read in the newspaper, and at the same time his eye ran over the surfaces of the life round him, and he missed nothing. Birkin, who was watching him, was irritated by his duality. He noticed too, that Gerald seemed always to be at bay against everybody, in spite of his queer, genial, social manner when roused.
Now Birkin started violently at seeing this genial look flash on to Gerald's face, at seeing Gerald approaching with hand outstretched.
`Hallo, Rupert, where are you going?'
`London. So are you, I suppose.'
`Yes --'
Gerald's eyes went over Birkin's face in curiosity.
`We'll travel together if you like,' he said.
`Don't you usually go first?' asked Birkin.
`I can't stand the crowd,' replied Gerald. `But third'll be all right. There's a restaurant car, we can have some tea.'
The two men looked at the station clock, having nothing further to say.
`What were you reading in the paper?' Birkin asked.
Gerald looked at him quickly.
`Isn't it funny, what they do put in the newspapers,' he said. `Here are two leaders --' he held out his Daily Telegraph, `full of the ordinary newspaper cant --' he scanned the columns down -- `and then there's this little -- I dunno what you'd call it, essay, almost -- appearing with the leaders, and saying there must arise a man who will give new values to things, give us new truths, a new attitude to life, or else we shall be a crumbling nothingness in a few years, a country in ruin --'
`I suppose that's a bit of newspaper cant, as well,' said Birkin.
`It sounds as if the man meant it, and quite genuinely,' said Gerald.
`Give it to me,' said Birkin, holding out his hand for the paper.
The train came, and they went on board, sitting on either side a little table, by the window, in the restaurant car. Birkin glanced over his paper, then looked up at Gerald, who was waiting for him.
`I believe the man means it,' he said, `as far as he means anything.'
`And do you think it's true? Do you think we really want a new gospel?' asked Gerald.
Birkin shrugged his shoulders.
`I think the people who say they want a new religion are the last to accept anything new. They want novelty right enough. But to stare straight at this life that we've brought upon ourselves, and reject it, absolutely smash up the old idols of ourselves, that we sh'll never do. You've got very badly to want to get rid of the old, before anything new will appear -- even in the self.'
Gerald watched him closely.
`You think we ought to break up this life, just start and let fly?' he asked.
`This life. Yes I do. We've got to bust it completely, or shrivel inside it, as in a tight skin. For it won't expand any more.'
There was a queer little smile in Gerald's eyes, a look of amusement, calm and curious.
`And how do you propose to begin? I suppose you mean, reform the whole order of society?' he asked.
Birkin had a slight, tense frown between the brows. He too was impatient of the conversation.
`I don't propose at all,' he replied. `When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self-important people.'
The little smile began to die out of Gerald's eyes, and he said, looking with a cool stare at Birkin:
`So you really think things are very bad?'
`Completely bad.'
The smile appeared again.
`In what way?'
`Every way,' said Birkin. `We are such dreary liars. Our one idea is to lie to ourselves. We have an ideal of a perfect world, clean and straight and sufficient. So we cover the earth with foulness; life is a blotch of labour, like insects scurrying in filth, so that your collier can have a pianoforte in his parlour, and you can have a butler and a motor-car in your up-to-date house, and as a nation we can sport the Ritz, or the Empire, Gaby Deslys and the Sunday newspapers. It is very dreary.'
Gerald took a little time to re-adjust himself after this tirade.
`Would you have us live without houses -- return to nature?' he asked.
`I would have nothing at all. People only do what they want to do -- and what they are capable of doing. If they were capable of anything else, there would be something else.'
Again Gerald pondered. He was not going to take offence at Birkin.
`Don't you think the collier's pianoforte, as you call it, is a symbol for something very real, a real desire for something higher, in the collier's life?'
`Higher!' cried Birkin. `Yes. Amazing heights of upright grandeur. It makes him so much higher in his neighbouring collier's eyes. He sees himself reflected in the neighbouring opinion, like in a Brocken mist, several feet taller on the strength of the pianoforte, and he is satisfied. He lives for the sake of that Brocken spectre, the reflection of himself in the human opinion. You do the same. If you are of high importance to humanity you are of high importance to yourself. That is why you work so hard at the mines. If you can produce coal to cook five thousand dinners a day, you are five thousand times more important than if you cooked only your own dinner.'
`I suppose I am,' laughed Gerald.
`Can't you see,' said Birkin, `that to help my neighbour to eat is no more than eating myself. "I eat, thou eatest, he eats, we eat, you eat, they eat" -- and what then? Why should every man decline the whole verb. First person singular is enough for me.'
`You've got to start with material things,' said Gerald. Which statement Birkin ignored.
`And we've got to live for something, we're not just cattle that can graze and have done with it,' said Gerald.
`Tell me,' said Birkin. `What do you live for?'
Gerald's face went baffled.
`What do I live for?' he repeated. `I suppose I live to work, to produce something, in so far as I am a purposive being. Apart from that, I live because I am living.'
`And what's your work? Getting so many more thousands of tons of coal out of the earth every day. And when we've got all the coal we want, and all the plush furniture, and pianofortes, and the rabbits are all stewed and eaten, and we're all warm and our bellies are filled and we're listening to the young lady performing on the pianoforte -- what then? What then, when you've made a real fair start with your material things?'
Gerald sat laughing at the words and the mocking humour of the other man. But he was cogitating too.
`We haven't got there yet,' he replied. `A good many people are still waiting for the rabbit and the fire to cook it.'
`So while you get the coal I must chase the rabbit?' said Birkin, mocking at Gerald.
`Something like that,' said Gerald.
Birkin watched him narrowly. He saw the perfect good-humoured callousness, even strange, glistening malice, in Gerald, glistening through the plausible ethics of productivity.
`Gerald,' he said, `I rather hate you.'
`I know you do,' said Gerald. `Why do you?'
Birkin mused inscrutably for some minutes.
`I should like to know if you are conscious of hating me,' he said at last. `Do you ever consciously detest me -- hate me with mystic hate? There are odd moments when I hate you starrily.'
Gerald was rather taken aback, even a little disconcerted. He did not quite know what to say.
`I may, of course, hate you sometimes,' he said. `But I'm not aware of it -- never acutely aware of it, that is.'
`So much the worse,' said Birkin.
Gerald watched him with curious eyes. He could not quite make him out.
`So much the worse, is it?' he repeated.
There was a silence between the two men for some time, as the train ran on. In Birkin's face was a little irritable tension, a sharp knitting of the brows, keen and difficult. Gerald watched him warily, carefully, rather calculatingly, for he could not decide what he was after.
Suddenly Birkin's eyes looked straight and overpowering into those of the other man.
`What do you think is the aim and object of your life, Gerald?' he asked.
Again Gerald was taken aback. He could not think what his friend was getting at. Was he poking fun, or not?
`At this moment, I couldn't say off-hand,' he replied, with faintly ironic humour.
`Do you think love is the be-all and the end-all of life?' Birkin asked, with direct, attentive seriousness.
`Of my own life?' said Gerald.
`Yes.'
There was a really puzzled pause.
`I can't say,' said Gerald. `It hasn't been, so far.'
`What has your life been, so far?'
`Oh -- finding out things for myself -- and getting experiences -- and making things go.'
Birkin knitted his brows like sharply moulded steel.
`I find,' he said, `that one needs some one really pure single activity -- I should call love a single pure activity. But I don't really love anybody -- not now.'
`Have you ever really loved anybody?' asked Gerald.
`Yes and no,' replied Birkin.
`Not finally?' said Gerald.
`Finally -- finally -- no,' said Birkin.
`Nor I,' said Gerald.
`And do you want to?' said Birkin.
Gerald looked with a long, twinkling, almost sardonic look into the eyes of the other man.
`I don't know,' he said.
`I do -- I want to love,' said Birkin.
`You do?'
`Yes. I want the finality of love.'
`The finality of love,' repeated Gerald. And he waited for a moment.
`Just one woman?' he added. The evening light, flooding yellow along the fields, lit up Birkin's face with a tense, abstract steadfastness. Gerald still could not make it out.
`Yes, one woman,' said Birkin.
But to Gerald it sounded as if he were insistent rather than confident.
`I don't believe a woman, and nothing but a woman, will ever make my life,' said Gerald.
`Not the centre and core of it -- the love between you and a woman?' asked Birkin.
Gerald's eyes narrowed with a queer dangerous smile as he watched the other man.
`I never quite feel it that way,' he said.
`You don't? Then wherein does life centre, for you?'
`I don't know -- that's what I want somebody to tell me. As far as I can make out, it doesn't centre at all. It is artificially held together by the social mechanism.'
Birkin pondered as if he would crack something.
`I know,' he said, `it just doesn't centre. The old ideals are dead as nails -- nothing there. It seems to me there remains only this perfect union with a woman -- sort of ultimate marriage -- and there isn't anything else.'
`And you mean if there isn't the woman, there's nothing?' said Gerald.
`Pretty well that -- seeing there's no God.'
`Then we're hard put to it,' said Gerald. And he turned to look out of the window at the flying, golden landscape.
Birkin could not help seeing how beautiful and soldierly his face was, with a certain courage to be indifferent.
`You think its heavy odds against us?' said Birkin.
`If we've got to make our life up out of a woman, one woman, woman only, yes, I do,' said Gerald. `I don't believe I shall ever make up my life, at that rate.'
Birkin watched him almost angrily.
`You are a born unbeliever,' he said.
`I only feel what I feel,' said Gerald. And he looked again at Birkin almost sardonically, with his blue, manly, sharp-lighted eyes. Birkin's eyes were at the moment full of anger. But swiftly they became troubled, doubtful, then full of a warm, rich affectionateness and laughter.
`It troubles me very much, Gerald,' he said, wrinkling his brows.
`I can see it does,' said Gerald, uncovering his mouth in a manly, quick, soldierly laugh.
Gerald was held unconsciously by the other man. He wanted to be near him, he wanted to be within his sphere of influence. There was something very congenial to him in Birkin. But yet, beyond this, he did not take much notice. He felt that he, himself, Gerald, had harder and more durable truths than any the other man knew. He felt himself older, more knowing. It was the quick-changing warmth and venality and brilliant warm utterance he loved in his friend. It was the rich play of words and quick interchange of feelings he enjoyed. The real content of the words he never really considered: he himself knew better.
Birkin knew this. He knew that Gerald wanted to be fond of him without taking him seriously. And this made him go hard and cold. As the train ran on, he sat looking at the land, and Gerald fell away, became as nothing to him.
Birkin looked at the land, at the evening, and was thinking: `Well, if mankind is destroyed, if our race is destroyed like Sodom, and there is this beautiful evening with the luminous land and trees, I am satisfied. That which informs it all is there, and can never be lost. After all, what is mankind but just one expression of the incomprehensible. And if mankind passes away, it will only mean that this particular expression is completed and done. That which is expressed, and that which is to be expressed, cannot be diminished. There it is, in the shining evening. Let mankind pass away -- time it did. The creative utterances will not cease, they will only be there. Humanity doesn't embody the utterance of the incomprehensible any more. Humanity is a dead letter. There will be a new embodiment, in a new way. Let humanity disappear as quick as possible.'
Gerald interrupted him by asking,
`Where are you staying in London?'
Birkin looked up.
`With a man in Soho. I pay part of the rent of a flat, and stop there when I like.'
`Good idea -- have a place more or less your own,' said Gerald.
`Yes. But I don't care for it much. I'm tired of the people I am bound to find there.'
`What kind of people?'
`Art -- music -- London Bohemia -- the most pettifogging calculating Bohemia that ever reckoned its pennies. But there are a few decent people, decent in some respects. They are really very thorough rejecters of the world -- perhaps they live only in the gesture of rejection and negation -- but negatively something, at any rate.'
`What are they? -- painters, musicians?'
`Painters, musicians, writers -- hangers-on, models, advanced young people, anybody who is openly at outs with the conventions, and belongs to nowhere particularly. They are often young fellows down from the University, and girls who are living their own lives, as they say.'
`All loose?' said Gerald.
Birkin could see his curiosity roused.
`In one way. Most bound, in another. For all their shockingness, all on one note.'
He looked at Gerald, and saw how his blue eyes were lit up with a little flame of curious desire. He saw too how good-looking he was. Gerald was attractive, his blood seemed fluid and electric. His blue eyes burned with a keen, yet cold light, there was a certain beauty, a beautiful passivity in all his body, his moulding.
`We might see something of each other -- I am in London for two or three days,' said Gerald.
`Yes,' said Birkin, `I don't want to go to the theatre, or the music hall -- you'd better come round to the flat, and see what you can make of Halliday and his crowd.'
`Thanks -- I should like to,' laughed Gerald. `What are you doing tonight?'
`I promised to meet Halliday at the Pompadour. It's a bad place, but there is nowhere else.'
`Where is it?' asked Gerald.
`Piccadilly Circus.'
`Oh yes -- well, shall I come round there?'
`By all means, it might amuse you.'
The evening was falling. They had passed Bedford. Birkin watched the country, and was filled with a sort of hopelessness. He always felt this, on approaching London.
His dislike of mankind, of the mass of mankind, amounted almost to an illness.
`"Where the quiet coloured end of evening smiles Miles and miles --"' he was murmuring to himself, like a man condemned to death. Gerald, who was very subtly alert, wary in all his senses, leaned forward and asked smilingly:
`What were you saying?' Birkin glanced at him, laughed, and repeated:
`"Where the quiet coloured end of evening smiles, Miles and miles,
Over pastures where the something something sheep Half asleep --"'
Gerald also looked now at the country. And Birkin, who, for some reason was now tired and dispirited, said to him:
`I always feel doomed when the train is running into London. I feel such a despair, so hopeless, as if it were the end of the world.'
`Really!' said Gerald. `And does the end of the world frighten you?'
Birkin lifted his shoulders in a slow shrug.
`I don't know,' he said. `It does while it hangs imminent and doesn't fall. But people give me a bad feeling -- very bad.'
There was a roused glad smile in Gerald's eyes.
`Do they?' he said. And he watched the other man critically.
In a few minutes the train was running through the disgrace of outspread London. Everybody in the carriage was on the alert, waiting to escape. At last they were under the huge arch of the station, in the tremendous shadow of the town. Birkin shut himself together -- he was in now.
The two men went together in a taxi-cab.
`Don't you feel like one of the damned?' asked Birkin, as they sat in a little, swiftly-running enclosure, and watched the hideous great street.
`No,' laughed Gerald.
`It is real death,' said Birkin.
 
一天,伯金奉诏去伦敦。他并不怎么常在家。他在诺丁汉有住所,因为他的工作主要是在诺丁汉开展。但他常去伦敦或牛津。他的流动性很大,他的生活似乎不稳定,没有任何固定的节奏,没有任何有机意义。
在火车站月台上,他看到杰拉德·克里奇正在读报纸,很明显他是在等火车。伯金站在远处的人群中,他的本性决定了他不会率先接近别人。
杰拉德时不时地抬起头四下张望,这是他的习惯。尽管他在认真地看报,但他必须监视四周。似乎他头脑中流动着两股意识。他一边思考着从报上看到的东西,冥思苦想着,一边盯着周围的生活,什么也逃不出他的眼睛。伯金远远地看着他,对他这种双重功能很生气。伯金还注意到,尽管杰拉德的社交举止异常温和,他似乎总在防着别人。
杰拉德看到了他,脸上露出悦色,走过来向他伸出手,这让伯金为之一振。
“你好,卢伯特,去哪儿呀?”
“伦敦。我猜你也去伦敦吧?”
“是的——”
杰拉德好奇地扫视一下伯金的脸。
“如果你愿意,咱们一起旅行吧。”他说。
“你不是常常要坐头等车厢吗?”伯金问。
“那是因为我无法挤在人群中,”杰拉德说,“不过三等也行。车上有一节餐车,我们可以到那儿去喝茶。”
再没什么可说的了,两个人只好都把目光投向车站上的挂钟。
“报纸上说什么?”伯金问。
杰拉德迅速扫了伯金一眼,说:
“瞧报上登的多么有趣儿吧,有两位领袖人物——”他扬扬手中的《每日电讯报》说,“全是报纸上日常的行话——”他往下看着那个专栏说:“瞧这个标题,我不知道你怎么给它起名字,几乎算杂文吧,和这两个领袖人物一齐登了出来,说非得有一个人崛起,他会给予事物以新的价值,告诉我们新的真理,让我们对生活有新的态度,否则不出几年,我们就会消亡,国家就会毁灭——”
“我觉得那也有点报纸腔。”伯金说。
“听起来这人说得挺诚恳的。”杰拉德说。
“给我看看,”伯金说着伸手要报纸。
火车来了,他们两人上了餐车,找了一个靠窗口的桌子,相对坐下来。伯金浏览了一下报纸,然后抬头看看杰拉德,杰拉德正等他说话。
“我相信这人说的是这意思。”他说。
“你认为他的话可靠吗?你认为我们真需要一部新的福音书吗?”杰拉德问。
伯金耸了耸肩膀,说:
“我认为那些标榜新宗教的人最难接受新事物。他们需要的是新奇。可是话又说回来了,谛视我们的生活,我们或自做自受、或自暴自弃,可要让我们绝对地打碎自身的旧偶像我们是不会干的。你在新的没有出现之前无论如何先要摆脱旧的,甚至旧的自我。”
杰拉德凝视着伯金。
“你认为我们应该毁掉这种生活,立即开始飞腾吗?”他问。
“这种生活。对,我要这样。我们必须彻底摧毁它,或者令它从内部枯萎,就象让一张紧绷绷的皮萎缩一样。它已经无法膨胀了。”
杰拉德的目光中透着一丝奇怪的笑意,他很开心,人显得平静而古怪。
“那你打算怎么开始?我想你的意思是改良整个社会制度?”他说。
伯金微微皱起了眉头。他对这种谈话也感到不耐烦了。
“我压根儿没什么打算,”他回答,“当我们真地要奔向更好的东西时,我们就要打碎旧的。不打碎旧的,任何建议对于妄自尊大的人来说都不过是令人作呕的把戏。”
杰拉德眼中的微笑开始消失了,他冷冷地看着伯金说:
“你真把事情看得那么糟吗?”
“一团糟。”
杰拉德眼中又浮上了笑意。
“在哪方面?”
“各个方面,”伯金说,“我们是一些意气消沉的骗子。我们的观念之一就是自欺欺人。我们理想中的世界是完美的,廉洁、正直、充实。于是我们不惜把地球搞得很肮脏;生活成了一种劳动污染,就象昆虫在污泥浊水中穿行一样。这样,你的矿工家的客厅里才能有钢琴,你现代化的住宅里才会有男仆和摩托车,作为一个国家,我们才会有里兹饭店或帝国饭店,才会有《加比·戴斯里斯》或《星期日》这样的大报社。
这让人多么丧气。”
这通激烈的言词让杰拉德好久才明白过来。
“你认为我们生活没有房屋行吗?要重返自然吗?”他问。
“我什么都不想要,只想让人们想做什么就做什么——能做什么就做什么。如果他们能有一番别的什么作为,世界就是另一种样子了。”
杰拉德思忖着。他并不想得罪伯金。
“难道你不认为矿工家的钢琴象征着某种非常真实的东西吗?它象征着矿工高层次的生活?”
“高层次!”伯金叫道,“是的,高层次。令人吃惊的高级奢侈品。有了这个,他就可在周围的矿工眼里变得高人一等了。他是通过自己反射在邻人中的影子才认识自己,如同布罗肯峰上的幽灵①一样。他有钢琴支撑着自己,高人一头,因此得到了满足。你也是这样。一旦你对人类变得举足轻重了,你对你自己也变得举足轻重。为此你在矿上工作很卖力。如果你一天生产的煤可以做五千份饭菜,你的身价就比你做自己的一份饭菜提高了五千倍。”
①布罗肯峰上的幽灵:布罗肯峰是德国萨克森地区哈兹山脉的最高峰,上面可以产生幻景,观众的身影被放大并反射到对面山顶的雾幕上。
“我想是这样的。”杰拉德笑道。
“你不明白吗,”伯金说,“帮助我的邻居吃喝倒不如我自己吃喝。‘我吃,你吃,他吃,我们吃,你们吃,他们吃’,还有什么?人们为什么要将吃这个动词变格呢?第一人称单数对我来说就够了。”
“你应该把物质的东西摆在第一位,”杰拉德说,但伯金对他的话没有在意。
“我必须为什么活着,我们不是牛,吃草就可以满足。”杰拉德说。
“告诉我,”伯金说,“你为什么活着?”
杰拉德露出一脸的困惑表情。
“我为什么活着?”他重复道,“我想我活着是为了工作,为了生产些什么,因为我是个有目的的人。除此之外,我活着是因为我是个活人。”
“那什么是你的工作呢?你的工作就是每天从地下挖出几千吨煤来。等我们有了足够的煤,有了豪华的家具和钢琴,吃饱了炖兔肉,解决了温饱问题后又听年轻女人弹钢琴,然后怎么样?当你在物质上有了真正良好的开端后,你还准备做什么?”
杰拉德对伯金的话和讽刺性的幽默持嘲笑态度。不过他也在思索。
“我们还没到那一步呢,”他回答,“还有很多人仍然没有兔肉吃,没有东西烧火来炖兔肉。”
“你的意思是说,你挖煤时,我就该去捉兔子?”伯金嘲笑着说。
“有那么点意思。”杰拉德说。
伯金眯起眼来看着杰拉德。他看得出,杰拉德虽然脾气好,但人很阴冷,他甚至从他那夸夸其谈的道德论中看出了某种奇怪、恶毒的东西在闪动。
“杰拉德,”他说,“我真恨你。”
“我知道,”杰拉德说,“为什么呢?”
伯金不可思议地思忖了一会儿说:
“我倒想知道,你是否也恨我。你是否有意与我作对——
莫名其妙地恨我?有时我恨透你了。”
杰拉德吃了一惊,甚至有点不知所措。他简直瞠目结舌了。
“我或许有时恨过你,”他说,“但我没意识到——从来没什么敏感的意识,就这么回事。”
“那更不好。”伯金说。
杰拉德奇怪地看着他,他弄不明白。
“那不是更坏吗?”他重复道。
火车在继续前行,两个人都沉默了。伯金的脸上挂着一副恼怒的紧张表情,眉头皱得紧紧的。杰拉德小心翼翼地看着他,猜度着,弄不清伯金要说什么。
突然伯金直直地、有力地看着杰拉德的眼睛,问:
“你认为什么是你生活的目标和目的呢?”
杰拉德又一次感到惊诧,他弄不明白这位朋友的意思。他是否在开玩笑?
“我一时可说不清。”他有点讽刺地说。
“你认为活着就是生活的全部吗?”伯金直接了当、极其严肃地问。
“你说的是我自己的生活吗?”杰拉德问。
“是的。”
杰拉德果然真地困惑了。
“我说不清,”杰拉德说,“现在我的生活还没定型。”
“那么,至今你的生活是什么样的呢?”
“哦,发现事物,取得经验,干成一些事。”
伯金皱起眉头,脸皱得象一块棱角分明的钢模。
“我发现,”他说,“一个人需要某种真正、单纯的个人行动——爱就是如此。可我并不真爱哪个人——至少现在没有。”
“难道你就没有真正爱过什么人?”杰拉德问。
“有,也没有。”伯金说。
“还没最后定下来?”杰拉德说。
“最后,最后?没有。”伯金说。
“我也一样。”杰拉德说。
“那么你想这样吗?”伯金问。
杰拉德目光闪烁,嘲弄的目光久久地与伯金的目光对视着,说:
“我不知道。”
“可我知道,我要去爱。”伯金说。
“真的?”
“是的。我需要决定性的爱。”
“决定性的爱。”杰拉德重复道。
“只一个女人吗?”杰拉德补充问。晚上的灯光在田野上洒下一路桔黄色,照着伯金紧张、茫然、坚定的面庞。杰拉德仍然摸不透伯金。
“是的,一个女人。”伯金说。
可杰拉德却以为伯金这不是自信,不过是固执罢了。
“我不相信,一个女人,只一个女人就能构成我的生活内容。”杰拉德说。
“难道连你和一个女人之间的爱也不行吗?这可是构成生活的核心问题。”伯金说。
杰拉德眯起眼睛看着伯金,有点怪模怪样、阴险地笑道:
“我从来没那种感觉。”
“没有吗?那么你生活的中心点是什么?”
“我不知道,我正想有个人告诉我呢。就我目前来说,我的生活还根本没有中心点,只是被社会的结构人为地撮合着不破裂就行了。”
伯金思索着,觉得自己似乎要打碎点什么。
“我知道,”他说,“它恰恰没有中心点。旧的意识象指甲一样死了——丝毫不留。对我来说,似乎只有与一个女人完美的结合是永恒的,这是一种崇高的婚姻,除此之外别的什么都没价值。”
“你是否说,如果没有这个女人就没有一切了呢?”杰拉德问。
“太对了,连上帝都没有。”
“那我们就没出路了。”杰拉德说。他扭过脸去看着车窗外,金色的田野飞驰而过。
伯金不得不承认杰拉德的脸既漂亮又英俊,但他强作漠然不去看。
“你认为这对我们没什么好处吗?”伯金问。
“是的,如果我们非要从一个女人那里讨生活,仅仅从一个女人那里,这对我们没什么好处。”杰拉德说,“我不相信我会那样生活。”
伯金几乎愤愤地看着杰拉德说:
“你天生来就什么都不信。”
“我只相信我所感受到的,”杰拉德说。说着他又用那双闪着蓝光、颇有男子气的眼睛嘲弄地看了看伯金。伯金的眼睛此时燃着怒火,但不一会儿,这目光又变得烦恼、疑虑,然后漾起了温和、热情的笑意。
“这太让我苦恼了,杰拉德。”伯金皱皱眉头说。
“我看得出,”杰拉德说着嘴角上闪过男子气十足的漂亮的微笑。
杰拉德身不由己地被伯金吸引着。他想接近他,想受到他的影响。在伯金身上有什么地方跟他很相似。但是,除此之外他没注意到太多别的。他感到他杰拉德怀有别人不知道的、更经得起考验的真理,他感到自己比伯金年长识广。但他喜爱朋友伯金身上那一触即发的热情、生命力和闪光、热烈的言辞。他欣赏伯金的口才和迅速表达交流感情的能力,但伯金所谈的真正含义他并没有真正思索过,他知道他弄不懂,思索也没用。
对这一点,伯金心里明白。他知道杰拉德喜欢自己但并不看重自己。这让他对杰拉德很冷酷。火车在前进,伯金看着外面的田野,杰拉德被忘却了,对他来说杰拉德不存在了。
伯金看着田野和夜空,思忖着:“如果人类遭到了毁灭,如果我们这个种族象索德姆城①一样遭到毁灭,但夜晚仍然这么美丽,田野和森林依然这么美好,我也会感到满足的,因为那通风报信者还在,永远不会失去。总之,人类不过是那未知世界的一种表现形式。如果人类消失了,这只能说明这种特殊的表现形式完成了,完结了。得到表现的和将被表现的是不会消逝了,它就在这明丽的夜晚中。让人类消失吧,由时间来决定。创造的声音是不会终止的,它们只会存在于时间之中。人类并不能体现那未知世界的意义。人类是一个僵死的字母。会有一种新的体现方式,以一种新的形式。让人类尽快消失吧。”
杰拉德打断他的话问:
“你在伦敦住哪儿?”
伯金抬起头答道:
“住在索赫区②一个人家中。我租了一间房,什么时候都可以去住。”
①《创世纪》中记载的上帝毁灭的城市。
②伦敦一闹市区,餐馆很多。
“这主意不错,好歹算你自己的地方。”杰拉德说。
“是的。不过我并不那么注重这个,我对那些不得不去打交道的人感到厌倦了。”
“哪些人?”
“艺术家——音乐家——伦敦那帮放荡不羁的文人们,那帮小里小气,精打细算、斤斤计较的艺术家们。不过也有那么几个人挺体面,在某些方面算得上体面人。这些人是彻底的厌世者,或许他们活着的目的就是与这个世界作对,否定一切,他们的态度可算够消极的。”
“他们都是干什么的?画家,音乐家?”
“画家、音乐家、作家——一批食客,还有模特儿,好样的,他们与传统公开决裂,但又没有特定的归属。他们大多都是些大学生,也有独立谋生的女人。”
“都很放荡吗?”
伯金看得出杰拉德的好奇心上来了。
“可以这么说,但大多数还是严肃的。别看挺骇人听闻,其实都一回事。”
他看看杰拉德,发现他的蓝眼睛中闪烁着一小团好奇的欲望之火。他还发现,他长得太漂亮了。杰拉德很迷人,他似乎血运很旺盛,令人动心。他那蓝色的目光尖锐而冷漠,他身上有一种特定的美,那是一种忍从的美。
“我们是否可以看看他们各自的千秋?我要在伦敦逗留二、三天呢。”杰拉德说。
“行,”伯金说,“我可不想去剧院或音乐厅,你最好来看看海里戴和他的那帮人吧。”
“谢谢,我会去的,”杰拉德笑道,“今晚你做什么?”
“我约海里戴去庞巴多,那地方不怎么样,可又没有别的地方可聚。”
“在哪儿?”杰拉德问。
“在皮卡迪利广场。”
“哦,那儿呀,呣,我可以去吗?”
“当然,你会很开心的。”
夜幕降临了,火车已过了贝德福德。伯金望着窗外的原野,心中感到十分失望。每到临近伦敦时,他都会产生这种感觉。他对人类的厌恶,对云云众生的厌恶,几乎变成了一块心病。
“‘宁静绚丽的黄昏
在幽远幽远的地方微笑——’”①
他象一个被判了死刑的人一样自言自语着。杰拉德细微的感觉被触醒了,他倾着身子笑问:
“你说什么呢?”伯金瞟了他一眼,笑着又重复道:
“‘宁静绚丽的黄昏
在幽远幽远的地方微笑,
田野上羊儿
在打盹——②’”
①、② 勃朗宁夫人诗《废墟上的爱》。
杰拉德现在也看着田野。伯金不知为什么现在感到疲劳和沮丧,对杰拉德说:
“每当火车驶近伦敦时,我就感到厄运将临。我感到那么绝望:那么失望,似乎这是世界的末日。”
“真的!”杰拉德说,“世界的末日让你感到恐惧吗?”
伯金微微耸了一下肩。
“我不知道。”他说,“当世界即将塌陷而又没有塌陷时才让人感到恐惧。可是人们给我的感觉太坏了,太坏了。”
杰拉德的眼睛中闪过兴奋的微笑。
“是吗?”他审视地看着伯金说。
几分钟后,火车穿行在丑恶的大伦敦市区里了。车厢中的人们都振作起精神准备下车了。最终火车驶进了巨大拱顶笼罩下的火车站,来到伦敦城巨大的阴影中。伯金下了车,到了。
两个人一齐进了一辆出租汽车。
“你是否感到象要进地狱了?”伯金问道。他们坐在这小小的迅速疾行着的空间里,看着外面丑陋的大街。
“不,”杰拉德笑道。
“这是真正的死亡。”伯金说。
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

゛臉紅紅....

ZxID:704295


等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
举报 只看该作者 6楼  发表于: 2013-10-26 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 6 Creme de Menthe


THEY MET again in the cafe several hours later. Gerald went through the push doors into the large, lofty room where the faces and heads of the drinkers showed dimly through the haze of smoke, reflected more dimly, and repeated ad infinitum in the great mirrors on the walls, so that one seemed to enter a vague, dim world of shadowy drinkers humming within an atmosphere of blue tobacco smoke. There was, however, the red plush of the seats to give substance within the bubble of pleasure.
Gerald moved in his slow, observant, glistening-attentive motion down between the tables and the people whose shadowy faces looked up as he passed. He seemed to be entering in some strange element, passing into an illuminated new region, among a host of licentious souls. He was pleased, and entertained. He looked over all the dim, evanescent, strangely illuminated faces that bent across the tables. Then he saw Birkin rise and signal to him.
At Birkin's table was a girl with dark, soft, fluffy hair cut short in the artist fashion, hanging level and full almost like the Egyptian princess's. She was small and delicately made, with warm colouring and large, dark hostile eyes. There was a delicacy, almost a beauty in all her form, and at the same time a certain attractive grossness of spirit, that made a little spark leap instantly alight in Gerald's eyes.
Birkin, who looked muted, unreal, his presence left out, introduced her as Miss Darrington. She gave her hand with a sudden, unwilling movement, looking all the while at Gerald with a dark, exposed stare. A glow came over him as he sat down.
The waiter appeared. Gerald glanced at the glasses of the other two. Birkin was drinking something green, Miss Darrington had a small liqueur glass that was empty save for a tiny drop.
`Won't you have some more -- ?'
`Brandy,' she said, sipping her last drop and putting down the glass. The waiter disappeared.
`No,' she said to Birkin. `He doesn't know I'm back. He'll be terrified when he sees me here.'
She spoke her r's like w's, lisping with a slightly babyish pronunciation which was at once affected and true to her character. Her voice was dull and toneless.
`Where is he then?' asked Birkin.
`He's doing a private show at Lady Snellgrove's,' said the girl. `Warens is there too.'
There was a pause.
`Well, then,' said Birkin, in a dispassionate protective manner, `what do you intend to do?'
The girl paused sullenly. She hated the question.
`I don't intend to do anything,' she replied. `I shall look for some sittings tomorrow.'
`Who shall you go to?' asked Birkin.
`I shall go to Bentley's first. But I believe he's angwy with me for running away.'
`That is from the Madonna?'
`Yes. And then if he doesn't want me, I know I can get work with Carmarthen.'
`Carmarthen?'
`Lord Carmarthen -- he does photographs.'
`Chiffon and shoulders -- '
`Yes. But he's awfully decent.' There was a pause.
`And what are you going to do about Julius?' he asked.
`Nothing,' she said. `I shall just ignore him.'
`You've done with him altogether?' But she turned aside her face sullenly, and did not answer the question.
Another young man came hurrying up to the table.
`Hallo Birkin! Hallo Pussum, when did you come back?' he said eagerly.
`Today.'
`Does Halliday know?'
`I don't know. I don't care either.'
`Ha-ha! The wind still sits in that quarter, does it? Do you mind if I come over to this table?'
`I'm talking to Wupert, do you mind?' she replied, coolly and yet appealingly, like a child.
`Open confession -- good for the soul, eh?' said the young man. `Well, so long.'
And giving a sharp look at Birkin and at Gerald, the young man moved off, with a swing of his coat skirts.
All this time Gerald had been completely ignored. And yet he felt that the girl was physically aware of his proximity. He waited, listened, and tried to piece together the conversation.
`Are you staying at the flat?' the girl asked, of Birkin.
`For three days,' replied Birkin. `And you?'
`I don't know yet. I can always go to Bertha's.' There was a silence.
Suddenly the girl turned to Gerald, and said, in a rather formal, polite voice, with the distant manner of a woman who accepts her position as a social inferior, yet assumes intimate camaraderie with the male she addresses:
`Do you know London well?'
`I can hardly say,' he laughed. `I've been up a good many times, but I was never in this place before.'
`You're not an artist, then?' she said, in a tone that placed him an outsider.
`No,' he replied.
`He's a soldier, and an explorer, and a Napoleon of industry,' said Birkin, giving Gerald his credentials for Bohemia.
`Are you a soldier?' asked the girl, with a cold yet lively curiosity.
`No, I resigned my commission,' said Gerald, `some years ago.'
`He was in the last war,' said Birkin.
`Were you really?' said the girl.
`And then he explored the Amazon,' said Birkin, `and now he is ruling over coalmines.'
The girl looked at Gerald with steady, calm curiosity. He laughed, hearing himself described. He felt proud too, full of male strength. His blue, keen eyes were lit up with laughter, his ruddy face, with its sharp fair hair, was full of satisfaction, and glowing with life. He piqued her.
`How long are you staying?' she asked him.
`A day or two,' he replied. `But there is no particular hurry.'
Still she stared into his face with that slow, full gaze which was so curious and so exciting to him. He was acutely and delightfully conscious of himself, of his own attractiveness. He felt full of strength, able to give off a sort of electric power. And he was aware of her dark, hot-looking eyes upon him. She had beautiful eyes, dark, fully-opened, hot, naked in their looking at him. And on them there seemed to float a film of disintegration, a sort of misery and sullenness, like oil on water. She wore no hat in the heated cafe, her loose, simple jumper was strung on a string round her neck. But it was made of rich peach-coloured crepe-de-chine, that hung heavily and softly from her young throat and her slender wrists. Her appearance was simple and complete, really beautiful, because of her regularity and form, her soft dark hair falling full and level on either side of her head, her straight, small, softened features, Egyptian in the slight fulness of their curves, her slender neck and the simple, rich-coloured smock hanging on her slender shoulders. She was very still, almost null, in her manner, apart and watchful.
She appealed to Gerald strongly. He felt an awful, enjoyable power over her, an instinctive cherishing very near to cruelty. For she was a victim. He felt that she was in his power, and he was generous. The electricity was turgid and voluptuously rich, in his limbs. He would be able to destroy her utterly in the strength of his discharge. But she was waiting in her separation, given.
They talked banalities for some time. Suddenly Birkin said:
`There's Julius!' and he half rose to his feet, motioning to the newcomer. The girl, with a curious, almost evil motion, looked round over her shoulder without moving her body. Gerald watched her dark, soft hair swing over her ears. He felt her watching intensely the man who was approaching, so he looked too. He saw a pale, full-built young man with rather long, solid fair hair hanging from under his black hat, moving cumbrously down the room, his face lit up with a smile at once naive and warm, and vapid. He approached towards Birkin, with a haste of welcome.
It was not till he was quite close that he perceived the girl. He recoiled, went pale, and said, in a high squealing voice:
`Pussum, what are you doing here?'
The cafe looked up like animals when they hear a cry. Halliday hung motionless, an almost imbecile smile flickering palely on his face. The girl only stared at him with a black look in which flared an unfathomable hell of knowledge, and a certain impotence. She was limited by him.
`Why have you come back?' repeated Halliday, in the same high, hysterical voice. `I told you not to come back.'
The girl did not answer, only stared in the same viscous, heavy fashion, straight at him, as he stood recoiled, as if for safety, against the next table.
`You know you wanted her to come back -- come and sit down,' said Birkin to him.
`No I didn't want her to come back, and I told her not to come back. What have you come for, Pussum?'
`For nothing from you,' she said in a heavy voice of resentment.
`Then why have you come back at all?' cried Halliday, his voice rising to a kind of squeal.
`She comes as she likes,' said Birkin. `Are you going to sit down, or are you not?'
`No, I won't sit down with Pussum,' cried Halliday.
`I won't hurt you, you needn't be afraid,' she said to him, very curtly, and yet with a sort of protectiveness towards him, in her voice.
Halliday came and sat at the table, putting his hand on his heart, and crying:
`Oh, it's given me such a turn! Pussum, I wish you wouldn't do these things. Why did you come back?'
`Not for anything from you,' she repeated.
`You've said that before,' he cried in a high voice.
She turned completely away from him, to Gerald Crich, whose eyes were shining with a subtle amusement.
`Were you ever vewy much afwaid of the savages?' she asked in her calm, dull childish voice.
`No -- never very much afraid. On the whole they're harmless -- they're not born yet, you can't feel really afraid of them. You know you can manage them.'
`Do you weally? Aren't they very fierce?'
`Not very. There aren't many fierce things, as a matter of fact. There aren't many things, neither people nor animals, that have it in them to be really dangerous.'
`Except in herds,' interrupted Birkin.
`Aren't there really?' she said. `Oh, I thought savages were all so dangerous, they'd have your life before you could look round.'
`Did you?' he laughed. `They are over-rated, savages. They're too much like other people, not exciting, after the first acquaintance.'
`Oh, it's not so very wonderfully brave then, to be an explorer?'
`No. It's more a question of hardships than of terrors.'
`Oh! And weren't you ever afraid?'
`In my life? I don't know. Yes, I'm afraid of some things -- of being shut up, locked up anywhere -- or being fastened. I'm afraid of being bound hand and foot.'
She looked at him steadily with her dark eyes, that rested on him and roused him so deeply, that it left his upper self quite calm. It was rather delicious, to feel her drawing his self-revelations from him, as from the very innermost dark marrow of his body. She wanted to know. And her dark eyes seemed to be looking through into his naked organism. He felt, she was compelled to him, she was fated to come into contact with him, must have the seeing him and knowing him. And this roused a curious exultance. Also he felt, she must relinquish herself into his hands, and be subject to him. She was so profane, slave-like, watching him, absorbed by him. It was not that she was interested in what he said; she was absorbed by his self-revelation, by him, she wanted the secret of him, the experience of his male being.
Gerald's face was lit up with an uncanny smile, full of light and rousedness, yet unconscious. He sat with his arms on the table, his sunbrowned, rather sinister hands, that were animal and yet very shapely and attractive, pushed forward towards her. And they fascinated her. And she knew, she watched her own fascination.
Other men had come to the table, to talk with Birkin and Halliday. Gerald said in a low voice, apart, to Pussum:
`Where have you come back from?'
`From the country,' replied Pussum, in a very low, yet fully resonant voice. Her face closed hard. Continually she glanced at Halliday, and then a black flare came over her eyes. The heavy, fair young man ignored her completely; he was really afraid of her. For some moments she would be unaware of Gerald. He had not conquered her yet.
`And what has Halliday to do with it?' he asked, his voice still muted.
She would not answer for some seconds. Then she said, unwillingly:
`He made me go and live with him, and now he wants to throw me over. And yet he won't let me go to anybody else. He wants me to live hidden in the country. And then he says I persecute him, that he can't get rid of me.'
`Doesn't know his own mind,' said Gerald.
`He hasn't any mind, so he can't know it,' she said. `He waits for what somebody tells him to do. He never does anything he wants to do himself -- because he doesn't know what he wants. He's a perfect baby.'
Gerald looked at Halliday for some moments, watching the soft, rather degenerate face of the young man. Its very softness was an attraction; it was a soft, warm, corrupt nature, into which one might plunge with gratification.
`But he has no hold over you, has he?' Gerald asked.
`You see he made me go and live with him, when I didn't want to,' she replied. `He came and cried to me, tears, you never saw so many, saying he couldn't bear it unless I went back to him. And he wouldn't go away, he would have stayed for ever. He made me go back. Then every time he behaves in this fashion. And now I'm going to have a baby, he wants to give me a hundred pounds and send me into the country, so that he would never see me nor hear of me again. But I'm not going to do it, after -- '
A queer look came over Gerald's face.
`Are you going to have a child?' he asked incredulous. It seemed, to look at her, impossible, she was so young and so far in spirit from any child-bearing.
She looked full into his face, and her dark, inchoate eyes had now a furtive look, and a look of a knowledge of evil, dark and indomitable. A flame ran secretly to his heart.
`Yes,' she said. `Isn't it beastly?'
`Don't you want it?' he asked.
`I don't,' she replied emphatically.
`But -- ' he said, `how long have you known?'
`Ten weeks,' she said.
All the time she kept her dark, inchoate eyes full upon him. He remained silent, thinking. Then, switching off and becoming cold, he asked, in a voice full of considerate kindness:
`Is there anything we can eat here? Is there anything you would like?'
`Yes,' she said, `I should adore some oysters.'
`All right,' he said. `We'll have oysters.' And he beckoned to the waiter.
Halliday took no notice, until the little plate was set before her. Then suddenly he cried:
`Pussum, you can't eat oysters when you're drinking brandy.'
`What has it go to do with you?' she asked.
`Nothing, nothing,' he cried. `But you can't eat oysters when you're drinking brandy.'
`I'm not drinking brandy,' she replied, and she sprinkled the last drops of her liqueur over his face. He gave an odd squeal. She sat looking at him, as if indifferent.
`Pussum, why do you do that?' he cried in panic. He gave Gerald the impression that he was terrified of her, and that he loved his terror. He seemed to relish his own horror and hatred of her, turn it over and extract every flavour from it, in real panic. Gerald thought him a strange fool, and yet piquant.
`But Pussum,' said another man, in a very small, quick Eton voice, `you promised not to hurt him.'
`I haven't hurt him,' she answered.
`What will you drink?' the young man asked. He was dark, and smooth-skinned, and full of a stealthy vigour.
`I don't like porter, Maxim,' she replied.
`You must ask for champagne,' came the whispering, gentlemanly voice of the other.
Gerald suddenly realised that this was a hint to him.
`Shall we have champagne?' he asked, laughing.
`Yes please, dwy,' she lisped childishly.
Gerald watched her eating the oysters. She was delicate and finicking in her eating, her fingers were fine and seemed very sensitive in the tips, so she put her food apart with fine, small motions, she ate carefully, delicately. It pleased him very much to see her, and it irritated Birkin. They were all drinking champagne. Maxim, the prim young Russian with the smooth, warm-coloured face and black, oiled hair was the only one who seemed to be perfectly calm and sober. Birkin was white and abstract, unnatural, Gerald was smiling with a constant bright, amused, cold light in his eyes, leaning a little protectively towards the Pussum, who was very handsome, and soft, unfolded like some red lotus in dreadful flowering nakedness, vainglorious now, flushed with wine and with the excitement of men. Halliday looked foolish. One glass of wine was enough to make him drunk and giggling. Yet there was always a pleasant, warm naivete about him, that made him attractive.
`I'm not afwaid of anything except black-beetles,' said the Pussum, looking up suddenly and staring with her black eyes, on which there seemed an unseeing film of flame, fully upon Gerald. He laughed dangerously, from the blood. Her childish speech caressed his nerves, and her burning, filmed eyes, turned now full upon him, oblivious of all her antecedents, gave him a sort of licence.
`I'm not,' she protested. `I'm not afraid of other things. But black-beetles -- ugh!' she shuddered convulsively, as if the very thought were too much to bear.
`Do you mean,' said Gerald, with the punctiliousness of a man who has been drinking, `that you are afraid of the sight of a black-beetle, or you are afraid of a black-beetle biting you, or doing you some harm?'
`Do they bite?' cried the girl.
`How perfectly loathsome!' exclaimed Halliday.
`I don't know,' replied Gerald, looking round the table. `Do black-beetles bite? But that isn't the point. Are you afraid of their biting, or is it a metaphysical antipathy?'
The girl was looking full upon him all the time with inchoate eyes.
`Oh, I think they're beastly, they're horrid,' she cried. `If I see one, it gives me the creeps all over. If one were to crawl on me, I'm sure I should die -- I'm sure I should.'
`I hope not,' whispered the young Russian.
`I'm sure I should, Maxim,' she asseverated.
`Then one won't crawl on you,' said Gerald, smiling and knowing. In some strange way he understood her.
`It's metaphysical, as Gerald says,' Birkin stated.
There was a little pause of uneasiness.
`And are you afraid of nothing else, Pussum?' asked the young Russian, in his quick, hushed, elegant manner.
`Not weally,' she said. `I am afwaid of some things, but not weally the same. I'm not afwaid of blood.'
`Not afwaid of blood!' exclaimed a young man with a thick, pale, jeering face, who had just come to the table and was drinking whisky.
The Pussum turned on him a sulky look of dislike, low and ugly.
`Aren't you really afraid of blud?' the other persisted, a sneer all over his face.
`No, I'm not,' she retorted.
`Why, have you ever seen blood, except in a dentist's spittoon?' jeered the young man.
`I wasn't speaking to you,' she replied rather superbly.
`You can answer me, can't you?' he said.
For reply, she suddenly jabbed a knife across his thick, pale hand. He started up with a vulgar curse.
`Show's what you are,' said the Pussum in contempt.
`Curse you,' said the young man, standing by the table and looking down at her with acrid malevolence.
`Stop that,' said Gerald, in quick, instinctive command.
The young man stood looking down at her with sardonic contempt, a cowed, selfconscious look on his thick, pale face. The blood began to flow from his hand.
`Oh, how horrible, take it away!' squealed Halliday, turning green and averting his face.
`D'you feel ill?' asked the sardonic young man, in some concern. `Do you feel ill, Julius? Garn, it's nothing, man, don't give her the pleasure of letting her think she's performed a feat -- don't give her the satisfaction, man -- it's just what she wants.'
`Oh!' squealed Halliday.
`He's going to cat, Maxim,' said the Pussum warningly. The suave young Russian rose and took Halliday by the arm, leading him away. Birkin, white and diminished, looked on as if he were displeased. The wounded, sardonic young man moved away, ignoring his bleeding hand in the most conspicuous fashion.
`He's an awful coward, really,' said the Pussum to Gerald. `He's got such an influence over Julius.'
`Who is he?' asked Gerald.
`He's a Jew, really. I can't bear him.'
`Well, he's quite unimportant. But what's wrong with Halliday?'
`Julius's the most awful coward you've ever seen,' she cried. `He always faints if I lift a knife -- he's tewwified of me.'
`H'm!' said Gerald.
`They're all afwaid of me,' she said. `Only the Jew thinks he's going to show his courage. But he's the biggest coward of them all, really, because he's afwaid what people will think about him -- and Julius doesn't care about that.'
`They've a lot of valour between them,' said Gerald good-humouredly.
The Pussum looked at him with a slow, slow smile. She was very handsome, flushed, and confident in dreadful knowledge. Two little points of light glinted on Gerald's eyes.
`Why do they call you Pussum, because you're like a cat?' he asked her.
`I expect so,' she said.
The smile grew more intense on his face.
`You are, rather; or a young, female panther.'
`Oh God, Gerald!' said Birkin, in some disgust.
They both looked uneasily at Birkin.
`You're silent tonight, Wupert,' she said to him, with a slight insolence, being safe with the other man.
Halliday was coming back, looking forlorn and sick.
`Pussum,' he said, `I wish you wouldn't do these things -- Oh!' He sank in his chair with a groan.
`You'd better go home,' she said to him.
`I will go home,' he said. `But won't you all come along. Won't you come round to the flat?' he said to Gerald. `I should be so glad if you would. Do -- that'll be splendid. I say?' He looked round for a waiter. `Get me a taxi.' Then he groaned again. `Oh I do feel -- perfectly ghastly! Pussum, you see what you do to me.'
`Then why are you such an idiot?' she said with sullen calm.
`But I'm not an idiot! Oh, how awful! Do come, everybody, it will be so splendid. Pussum, you are coming. What? Oh but you must come, yes, you must. What? Oh, my dear girl, don't make a fuss now, I feel perfectly -- Oh, it's so ghastly -- Ho! -er! Oh!'
`You know you can't drink,' she said to him, coldly.
`I tell you it isn't drink -- it's your disgusting behaviour, Pussum, it's nothing else. Oh, how awful! Libidnikov, do let us go.'
`He's only drunk one glass -- only one glass,' came the rapid, hushed voice of the young Russian.
They all moved off to the door. The girl kept near to Gerald, and seemed to be at one in her motion with him. He was aware of this, and filled with demonsatisfaction that his motion held good for two. He held her in the hollow of his will, and she was soft, secret, invisible in her stirring there.
They crowded five of them into the taxi-cab. Halliday lurched in first, and dropped into his seat against the other window. Then the Pussum took her place, and Gerald sat next to her. They heard the young Russian giving orders to the driver, then they were all seated in the dark, crowded close together, Halliday groaning and leaning out of the window. They felt the swift, muffled motion of the car.
The Pussum sat near to Gerald, and she seemed to become soft, subtly to infuse herself into his bones, as if she were passing into him in a black, electric flow. Her being suffused into his veins like a magnetic darkness, and concentrated at the base of his spine like a fearful source of power. Meanwhile her voice sounded out reedy and nonchalant, as she talked indifferently with Birkin and with Maxim. Between her and Gerald was this silence and this black, electric comprehension in the darkness. Then she found his hand, and grasped it in her own firm, small clasp. It was so utterly dark, and yet such a naked statement, that rapid vibrations ran through his blood and over his brain, he was no longer responsible. Still her voice rang on like a bell, tinged with a tone of mockery. And as she swung her head, her fine mane of hair just swept his face, and all his nerves were on fire, as with a subtle friction of electricity. But the great centre of his force held steady, a magnificent pride to him, at the base of his spine.
They arrived at a large block of buildings, went up in a lift, and presently a door was being opened for them by a Hindu. Gerald looked in surprise, wondering if he were a gentleman, one of the Hindus down from Oxford, perhaps. But no, he was the man-servant.
`Make tea, Hasan,' said Halliday.
`There is a room for me?' said Birkin.
To both of which questions the man grinned, and murmured.
He made Gerald uncertain, because, being tall and slender and reticent, he looked like a gentleman.
`Who is your servant?' he asked of Halliday. `He looks a swell.'
`Oh yes -- that's because he's dressed in another man's clothes. He's anything but a swell, really. We found him in the road, starving. So I took him here, and another man gave him clothes. He's anything but what he seems to be -- his only advantage is that he can't speak English and can't understand it, so he's perfectly safe.'
`He's very dirty,' said the young Russian swiftly and silently.
Directly, the man appeared in the doorway.
`What is it?' said Halliday.
The Hindu grinned, and murmured shyly:
`Want to speak to master.'
Gerald watched curiously. The fellow in the doorway was goodlooking and cleanlimbed, his bearing was calm, he looked elegant, aristocratic. Yet he was half a savage, grinning foolishly. Halliday went out into the corridor to speak with him.
`What?' they heard his voice. `What? What do you say? Tell me again. What? Want money? Want more money? But what do you want money for?' There was the confused sound of the Hindu's talking, then Halliday appeared in the room, smiling also foolishly, and saying:
`He says he wants money to buy underclothing. Can anybody lend me a shilling? Oh thanks, a shilling will do to buy all the underclothes he wants.' He took the money from Gerald and went out into the passage again, where they heard him saying, `You can't want more money, you had three and six yesterday. You mustn't ask for any more. Bring the tea in quickly.'
Gerald looked round the room. It was an ordinary London sitting-room in a flat, evidently taken furnished, rather common and ugly. But there were several negro statues, wood-carvings from West Africa, strange and disturbing, the carved negroes looked almost like the foetus of a human being. One was a woman sitting naked in a strange posture, and looking tortured, her abdomen stuck out. The young Russian explained that she was sitting in child-birth, clutching the ends of the band that hung from her neck, one in each hand, so that she could bear down, and help labour. The strange, transfixed, rudimentary face of the woman again reminded Gerald of a foetus, it was also rather wonderful, conveying the suggestion of the extreme of physical sensation, beyond the limits of mental consciousness.
`Aren't they rather obscene?' he asked, disapproving.
`I don't know,' murmured the other rapidly. `I have never defined the obscene. I think they are very good.'
Gerald turned away. There were one or two new pictures in the room, in the Futurist manner; there was a large piano. And these, with some ordinary London lodging-house furniture of the better sort, completed the whole.
The Pussum had taken off her hat and coat, and was seated on the sofa. She was evidently quite at home in the house, but uncertain, suspended. She did not quite know her position. Her alliance for the time being was with Gerald, and she did not know how far this was admitted by any of the men. She was considering how she should carry off the situation. She was determined to have her experience. Now, at this eleventh hour, she was not to be baulked. Her face was flushed as with battle, her eye was brooding but inevitable.
The man came in with tea and a bottle of Kummel. He set the tray on a little table before the couch.
`Pussum,' said Halliday, `pour out the tea.'
She did not move.
`Won't you do it?' Halliday repeated, in a state of nervous apprehension.
`I've not come back here as it was before,' she said. `I only came because the others wanted me to, not for your sake.'
`My dear Pussum, you know you are your own mistress. I don't want you to do anything but use the flat for your own convenience -- you know it, I've told you so many times.'
She did not reply, but silently, reservedly reached for the tea-pot. They all sat round and drank tea. Gerald could feel the electric connection between him and her so strongly, as she sat there quiet and withheld, that another set of conditions altogether had come to pass. Her silence and her immutability perplexed him. How was he going to come to her? And yet he felt it quite inevitable. He trusted completely to the current that held them. His perplexity was only superficial, new conditions reigned, the old were surpassed; here one did as one was possessed to do, no matter what it was.
Birkin rose. It was nearly one o'clock.
`I'm going to bed,' he said. `Gerald, I'll ring you up in the morning at your place or you ring me up here.'
`Right,' said Gerald, and Birkin went out.
When he was well gone, Halliday said in a stimulated voice, to Gerald:
`I say, won't you stay here -- oh do!'
`You can't put everybody up,' said Gerald.
`Oh but I can, perfectly -- there are three more beds besides mine -- do stay, won't you. Everything is quite ready -- there is always somebody here -- I always put people up -- I love having the house crowded.'
`But there are only two rooms,' said the Pussum, in a cold, hostile voice, `now Rupert's here.'
`I know there are only two rooms,' said Halliday, in his odd, high way of speaking. `But what does that matter?'
He was smiling rather foolishly, and he spoke eagerly, with an insinuating determination.
`Julius and I will share one room,' said the Russian in his discreet, precise voice. Halliday and he were friends since Eton.
`It's very simple,' said Gerald, rising and pressing back his arms, stretching himself. Then he went again to look at one of the pictures. Every one of his limbs was turgid with electric force, and his back was tense like a tiger's, with slumbering fire. He was very proud.
The Pussum rose. She gave a black look at Halliday, black and deadly, which brought the rather foolishly pleased smile to that young man's face. Then she went out of the room, with a cold good-night to them all generally.
There was a brief interval, they heard a door close, then Maxim said, in his refined voice:
`That's all right.'
He looked significantly at Gerald, and said again, with a silent nod:
`That's all right -- you're all right.'
Gerald looked at the smooth, ruddy, comely face, and at the strange, significant eyes, and it seemed as if the voice of the young Russian, so small and perfect, sounded in the blood rather than in the air.
`I'm all right then,' said Gerald.
`Yes! Yes! You're all right,' said the Russian.
Halliday continued to smile, and to say nothing.
Suddenly the Pussum appeared again in the door, her small, childish face looking sullen and vindictive.
`I know you want to catch me out,' came her cold, rather resonant voice. `But I don't care, I don't care how much you catch me out.'
She turned and was gone again. She had been wearing a loose dressing-gown of purple silk, tied round her waist. She looked so small and childish and vulnerable, almost pitiful. And yet the black looks of her eyes made Gerald feel drowned in some potent darkness that almost frightened him.
The men lit another cigarette and talked casually.
 
几小时以后他们又在酒馆里见面了。杰拉德推开门走进宽大高雅的正屋,透过弥漫的烟雾可依稀辩认出顾客们的脸和头,这些人影反射在墙上的大镜子里,景象更加幽暗、庞杂,一走进去就象进入了一个朦胧、黯淡、烟雾缭绕、人影绰绰的世界。不过,在噪杂的欢声中红色的绒椅倒显得实在。
杰拉德缓慢地巡视着四周,穿过一张张桌子和人群,每过一处人们都抬起头来看他。他似乎进入了一个奇妙的地方,穿入一处闪光的新的去处,来到了一群放荡的人们之间。他感到心情喜悦,快活。他俯视着那些露出桌面的一张张脸,发现人们的脸上闪着奇特的光采。然后他看到伯金起身向他打招呼。
伯金的桌旁坐着一位金发女子,头发剪得很短,样式很考究,直披下来,发梢微微向上卷到耳际。她娇小玲珑,肤色白皙,有一双透着稚气的蓝色大眼睛。她娇嫩,几乎是如花似玉,神态也极迷人。看到她,杰拉德的眼睛立时一亮。
伯金看上去木然,神不守舍,介绍说这女子是塔林顿小姐。塔林顿小姐勉强地向杰拉德伸出手来,眼睛却阴郁、大胆地盯着他。杰拉德精神焕发地落了座。
侍者上来了。杰拉德瞟了一眼另外两人的杯子。伯金喝着一种绿色饮料,塔林顿小姐的小酒杯中只有几滴酒了。
“再要一点吗?”
“白兰地,”她咂尽最后一滴放下了杯子说。侍者离去了。
“不,”她对伯金说,“他还不知道我回来了。他要是看到我在这儿他会大大七(吃)一惊。”
她说起话来有点咬舌,象小孩子一样,对于她的性格来说,这既是装腔作势又象是真的。她的语调平缓,不怎么动人。
“他在哪儿呢?”伯金问。
“他在纳尔格鲁夫人那儿开私人画展。”姑娘说,“沃伦斯也在那儿。”
“那么,”伯金毫不动情但以保护人的口吻问她,“你打算怎么办?”
姑娘阴郁地沉默不语。她厌恶这个问题。
“我并不打算做什么,”她回答,“我明天将去找主顾,给他们当模特儿。”
“去谁那儿呢?”伯金问。
“先到班特利那儿,不过我相信我上次出走肯定让他生气了。”
“你是指从马多那那里逃走吗?”
“是的。要是他不需要我,我可以在卡马松那儿找到工作。”
“卡马松?”
“弗德里克·卡马松,他搞摄影。”
“拍穿薄纱衣露肩的照片——”
“是的。不过他可是个很正经的人。”
“那你拿裘里斯怎么办?”他问。
“不怎么,”她说,“我不理他就是了。”
“你跟他彻底断了?”她不高兴地转过脸去,对此不予回答。
这时另一位年轻人快步走了过来。
“哈啰,伯金!哈啰,米纳蒂,你什么时候回来的?”他急切地问。
“今天。”
“海里戴知道吗?”
“我不知道,再说我也不在乎他。”
“哈!还是那儿走运,不是吗?我挪到这张桌子上来,你不介意吧?”
“我在同努(卢)伯特谈话,你不介意吧?”她冷漠但恳求地说。象个孩子。
“公开的忏悔,对灵魂有益,啊?”小伙子说,“那,再见了。”
小伙子锐利的目光扫了一下伯金和杰拉德,转身走了,上衣的下摆随之一旋。
在这过程中,杰拉德几乎全然被人冷落了。但他感到这姑娘注意到了他的存在。他等待着,倾听着,试图凑上去说几句。
“你住在旅社里吗?”姑娘问伯金。
“住三天,”伯金说,“你呢?”
“我不知道。不过我可以到伯萨家住,什么时候都可以。”
一阵沉默。
突然这姑娘转向杰拉德问:
“你熟悉伦敦吗?”
她的口吻很正式、客气,象自认社会地位低下的女人一样态度疏远但又显示出对男人的亲昵。
“我说不上,”杰拉德笑道,“伦敦我来过好多次了,但这个地方还是头一次来。”
“你不是艺术家了?”她一语就把他推出了自己的圈外。
“不是。”他回答。
“人家是一位战士,探险家,工业拿破仑。”伯金说,流露出他对放浪艺术家的信任。
“你是战士吗?”姑娘漠然但好奇地问。
“不,”杰拉德说,“我多年以前就退伍了。”
“他参加了上次的大战①,”伯金说。
①指布尔战争(1899—1902)
“真的吗?”姑娘问。
“他那时考察了亚马逊河,”伯金说,“现在他管着一座煤矿。”
姑娘目不转睛、好奇地看着杰拉德。听别人讲自己,杰拉德笑了。他感到骄傲,充满了男子汉的力量。他蓝色的眼睛炯炯发光,洋溢着笑漪,容光焕发的脸上露着满意的神情,他的脸和金黄色的头发充满了活力。他激起了姑娘的好奇心。
“你要在这儿住多久?”她问。
“一两天吧,”他回答,“不过我并不急着回去。”
她仍然用一双凝眸盯着他的脸,这眼神那么好奇,令他激动。他自我意识极强,为自己的迷人之处深感喜悦。他感到浑身是劲,有能力释放出惊人的能量。同时他也意识到姑娘那蓝色的眼睛大胆地盯着自己。她的眼睛很美,鲜花般的媚眼睁得圆溜溜的,赤裸裸地看着他。她的眼屏上似乎漂浮着一层彩虹,某种分裂的东西,就象油漂浮在水上,那是忧郁的眼神。在闷热的咖啡馆里,她没戴帽子,宽松简朴的外套穿在身上,领口扎着一根细带。这细带是用贵重的双绉做的,柔软的带子从娇嫩的脖颈处垂下来,细纤的手腕处也垂着同样的带子。她容颜纯洁娇好,实在太美了。她长得端庄,金黄色的鬈发披挂下来,她挺拔、玲珑、柔软的体态显示出了每一处细小的曲线,脖颈显得纤细,烟雾缭绕在她瘦削的肩膀上。她很沉稳,几乎不露表情,一幅若即若离的神态。
她太让杰拉德动情了。他感到自己对她有一种巨大的控制力,一种本能上令人心儿发痛的爱。这是因为她是个牺牲品。他感到她是处在他的控制之下,他则是在施恩惠于她。这令他感到自己的四肢过电般地兴奋,奔涌着情欲的浪潮。如果他释放电能,他就会彻底摧毁她。可她却若有所思地等待着。
他们聊着些闲话,聊了一会儿,伯金突然说:
“裘里斯来了!”说着他站起身,向新来的人移动过去。姑娘奇怪地动了动,那样子不无恶意,身子没转动,只扭头朝后看去。这时杰拉德在看着她浓密的金发在耳朵上甩动着。他感到姑娘在密切地注视着来者,于是他也朝来人看去。他看到一位皮肤黝黑、身材颀长,黑帽子下露出长长黑发的小伙子行动迟缓地走了进来,脸上挂着天真、热情但又缺乏生气的笑容。他走近了急忙上前来迎接他的伯金。
直到他走近了,他才注意到这姑娘。他退缩着,脸色发青,尖叫道:
“米纳蒂,你在这儿干什么?”
咖啡馆里的人一听到这声尖叫都象动物一样抬起了头。海里戴无动于衷,脸上露出几乎有点蠢笨的微笑。姑娘冷冷地看着他,那表情显得深不可测,但也有些无能为力。她受制于海里戴。
“你为什么回来了?”海里戴仍然歇斯底里地叫着,“我对你说过不要回来。”
姑娘没有回答,只是仍然冷漠、沉重地直视着他,他向后面的桌子退缩着,似乎要保护自己。
“你知道你想要她回来,来,坐下。”伯金对他说。
“不,我不想要她回来,我告诉过她,叫她别回来了。你回来干什么,米纳蒂?”
“跟你没关系。”她极反感地说。
“那你回来干什么?”海里戴提高嗓门尖叫着。
“她愿意回来就回来吧,”伯金说,“你坐下还是不坐下?”
“我不,我不跟米纳蒂坐一块儿。”海里戴叫道。
“我不会伤害你的,你用不着害怕。”她对海里戴尖刻地说,但语调中有点自卫的意思。
海里戴走过来坐在桌旁,手捂住胸口叫道:
“啊,这把我吓了一跳!米纳蒂,我希望你别干这些事。
你干吗要回来?”
“跟你没关系。”她重复道。
“你又说这个。”他大叫。
她转过身,对着杰拉德·克里奇,他的目光闪烁着,很开心。
“你西(是)不西(是)很怕野蛮人?”她用平缓无味、孩子般的语调问杰拉德。
“不,从来没怕过。总的来说,野蛮人并无害——他们还没出生呢,你不会觉得可怕的。你知道你可以对付他们。”
“你金(真)不怕吗?他们不是很凶恶吗?”
“不很凶。其实没多少凶恶的东西。不管是人还是动物,都没有多少是危险的。”
“除非是兽群。”伯金插话道。
“真的吗?”她说,“我觉得野蛮的东西都太危险了,你还来不及四下里看看,他们就要了你的命。”
“你遇上过?”他笑道,“野蛮的东西是无法划分等类的。
他们就象有些人一样,只有见过一面后才会兴奋起来。”
“那,做一名探险者不是太勇敢了吗?”
“不。与其说是恐怖倒不如说是艰险。”
“啊!那你害怕过吗?”
“在我一生中?我不知道。怕过,我对有些东西就感到怕——我怕被关起来幽禁在什么地方,或着被束缚起来。我怕被人捆住手脚。”
她凝视着他,天真的目光令他心动,头脑倒平静了。他感到她从他这里得到了他的自我暴露,似乎是从他躯体内黑暗的最深处得到的,这太有趣了。她想了解他,她的眼睛似乎看透了他的裸体。他感到,她被他吸引着,她命中注定要与他接触,因此她必须观察他、了解他。这让他感到很得意。同时他还感到她必须投入他的手心里,听他的才行。她是那么世俗,象个奴隶似地看着他,被他迷住了。倒不是说她对他说的话感兴趣,而是她被他的自我暴露迷住了,被他这个人迷住了,她需要他的秘密,需要男性的经验。
杰拉德脸上挂着莫名其妙的笑,精神焕发但并不很清醒。他双臂搭在桌上,一双晒得黝黑可怕的动物般的手朝她伸展着,不过他的手型很好看,很漂亮。这双手迷住了她,她知道自己被迷住了。
别的男人来到桌前同伯金和海里戴交谈。杰拉德压低嗓门冲米纳蒂说:
“你从哪儿回来的?”
“从乡下,”米纳蒂声音很低,但很圆润。她紧绷着脸,她时不时地瞟一眼海里戴,眼中燃起了怒火。神色沉郁的小伙子看都不看她,不过他是真怕她。有时她就是不理杰拉德,看来杰拉德并没有征服她。
“那么海里戴跟你回来有什么关系?”他依旧声音低沉地问她。
她沉默了好一会儿才不情愿地说:
“是他让我走的,让我跟他同居,可现在他想甩了我,但又不让我跟任何别的人在一起生活。他想让我隐居在乡下。然后他说我害了他,他无法摆脱我。”
“他简直失去理智了。”杰拉德说。
“他就没有理智,所以他不知道自己干了些什么。”她说,“他总等别人告诉他做什么他才做什么。他从来没按自己的想法做过什么事,因为他不知道他想什么。他整个儿是个孩子。”
杰拉德看着海里戴那柔和、颓废的脸。那张脸很有魅力;
那柔和、热情的性格很可掬、宜人。
“但他并不能控制你,对吗?”杰拉德问她。
“你知道是他强迫我跟他同居的,我并不愿意,”她说,“他来冲我大叫,哭着说我要是不跟他回去他就没法儿活,你从来没见过他流那么多的眼泪。每次他都这样。可现在我怀孕了,他想给我一百镑打发我到乡下去,从此再也不见我,再也听不到我的音讯。我就不这样,不——”
杰拉德脸上露出奇怪的笑。
“你要生孩子了?”他不相信地问。看她那样子,这似乎不可能,她那么年轻,那神态也不象怀孕的。
她凝视着他的脸,现在她那纯真的蓝眼睛窥视着,看到了不祥的东西,显出一副不可驾驭的神色。杰拉德心里烧起了一股火。
“是的,”她说,“是不是可怕?”
“你想要吗?”他问。
“我才不呢。”她加重语气说。
“可是,”他说,“你知道多久了?”
“十个星期了。”她说。
她一直看着他。他则默默地沉思着。然后他转过身去,变冷漠了,却不无关切地问:
“我们吃点什么好吗?你喜欢来点什么?”
“好的,”她说,“我喜欢来点牡蛎。”
“那好,”他说,“我们就要牡蛎。”说完他招唤侍者。
海里戴一直对这边的事视而不见,直到盛有牡蛎的小盘子放到她面前,他才大叫:
“米纳蒂,喝白兰地时不能吃牡蛎。”
“这跟你有什么关系?”她问。
“没关系,没关系,”他叫道,“可喝白兰地时就是不能吃牡蛎。”
“我没喝白兰地,”她说着将杯子里的最后一滴酒洒在海里戴脸上。海里戴不禁怪叫一声。可她却若无其事地看着他。
“米纳蒂,你干嘛这样?”他恐慌地叫道。在杰拉德看来,海里戴让米纳蒂吓怕了,他喜欢自己的这副恐慌样子。他似乎因为自己怕她、恨她而沾沾自喜,在恐慌中有所回味;欣赏这种恐慌的滋味。杰拉德认为他是个奇怪的傻瓜,但挺有味儿。
“可是米纳蒂,”另一个男人小声地操着伊顿腔说,“你保证过,说你不伤害他。”
“可我没伤害他呀。”她回答。
“你喝点什么?”那年轻人问。他肤色黑,但皮肤还算光洁,浑身有那么点令人难以发现的活力。
“我不喜欢人伺候,马克西姆。”她回答。
“你应该要点香槟。”马克西姆很有绅士风度地嘟哝道。
杰拉德突然意识到这是对他的启发。
“我们来点香槟好吗?”他笑问。
“好的,请,要干香槟,”她咬着舌孩子气地说。
杰拉德看着她吃牡蛎。她吃得很细,很讲究。她的手指尖漂亮又敏感,优雅、小心地剥开牡蛎,仔细地吃着。她这样子很让杰拉德心悦,可却把伯金气坏了。大家都在喝香槟酒,只有马克西姆看上去十分平静、清醒,他是个俄国小伙子,穿着整洁,皮肤光洁,一脸的暖色,黑头发擦得油亮。伯金脸色苍白、茫然、很不自在。杰拉德微笑着,眼睛里放射出开心但冷漠的目光,很有保护气度地向米纳蒂倾着身子。米纳蒂娇嫩、漂亮,象一朵恐惧中绽开的冰花。现在她虚荣地绯红了脸,由于喝了酒,周围又有男人在场,她很激动。海里戴看上去傻乎乎的。只肖一杯酒就可以让他醉倒并咯咯地笑。可他总有那么点可爱的热情天真相,这一点使得他颇有吸引力。
“除了黑甲壳虫以外,我什么都不怕。”米纳蒂突然抬起头睁大眼睛凝视着杰拉德,那眼睛里燃着一团看不见的火。杰拉德从骨子里发出一声吓人的笑。她孩子气的话语触动了他的神经,火辣辣的目光全部投在他身上,她忘记了她以前的一切,那样子颇为放肆。
“我不怕,”她抗议道,“我别的什么都不怕。就怕黑甲壳虫,嚯!”她耸耸肩,似乎一想这些就难以忍受。
“你是不是说,”杰拉德喝了点酒,说话有些谨慎,“你看到黑甲壳虫就怕呢,还是害怕咬你、危害你的黑甲壳虫?”
“黑甲壳虫咬人吗?”姑娘问道。
“这简直太让人厌恶了!”海里戴惊叹着。
“我不知道,”杰拉德环顾着四周说,“黑甲壳虫是否咬人这并不是关键。问题的关键是,你是否怕它咬,或者说,它是不是一种玄学意义上的恶物。”
姑娘一直用迷惘的眼光凝视着杰拉德。
“哦,我觉得黑甲壳虫可恶、可怕。”她叫道,“要是我看见它,我就会浑身起鸡皮疙瘩。要是有那么一只虫子爬到我身上来,我敢说我会死的,我肯定会死的。”
“我希望你别这样。”年轻的俄国人低语道。
“我敢说我会的,马克西姆。”她强调说。
“那就不会有虫子爬到你身上。”杰拉德很理解地笑道。说不清为什么,他反正能理解她。
“这是个玄学问题,杰拉德说得对。”伯金发话了。
桌面上出现了不安的停顿。
“那么,米纳蒂,你还怕别的吗?”年轻的俄国人问。他说话速度很快,声音低,举止很文雅。
“难说,”米纳蒂说,“我害怕的并不见得都是这种东西。
我就不怕血。”
“不怕血!”又一个年轻人问。这人脸色苍白但多肉,一脸的嘲弄表情,他刚刚落座,喝着威士忌。
米纳蒂留给他一个阴郁、厌恶的一瞥。
“你真地不怕血?”那人追问着露出一脸的嘲笑。
“不怕,就是不怕。”她反唇相讥。
“为什么,你恐怕除了在牙医的痰盂里见过血以外,还没见过血吧?”小伙子讽刺道。
“我没跟你说话。”她很巧妙地回击。
“难道你不能回答我的话吗?”
她突然抓起一把刀照着他苍白肥胖的手戳了过去,作为回答。他骂着大街跳了起来。
“瞧你那德行。”米纳蒂不屑地说。
“他妈的,你,”小伙子站在桌边凶恶地俯视着她。
“行了,”杰拉德本能地立刻站出来控制局面。
那年轻人蔑视地看着她,苍白多肉的脸上露出胆怯的表情。血开始从手上淌出。
“哦,太可怕了,把它拿走!”海里戴青着变形的脸尖叫着。
“你觉得不舒服吗?”那位嘲弄人的小伙子有点关切地问,“不舒服吗,裘里斯?伙计,这不算什么,爷们儿,别让她以为自己演了一出好戏就高兴,别让她满意,爷们儿,她希望的就是这个。”
“哦!”海里戴尖叫着。
“他要吐,马克西姆,”米纳蒂警告说。文雅的俄国小伙子站起来挽住海里戴的胳膊把他带了出去。苍白、沉默的伯金袖手旁观,他似乎不大高兴。那位嘴头子很损的受伤者不顾自己流血的手,也走了。
“他真是个十足的胆小鬼,”米纳蒂对杰拉德说,“他对裘里斯很有影响。”
“他是什么人?”杰拉德问。
“他是个犹太人,真的。我无法忍受他。”
“哼,他没什么了不起。可是,海里戴怎么回事?”
“裘里斯是你见过的最胆小的胆小鬼。”她叫道,“只要我一举起刀,他就会晕过去,他让我吓坏了。”
“嚯!”
“他们都怕我,”她说,“只有那犹太人想表现一下他的胆量。可他是世界上最胆小的懦夫,真的,因为他怕别人对他有看法,而裘里斯就不在乎别人怎么看他自己。”
“他们还挺勇敢的嘛。”杰拉德和善地说。
米纳蒂看着他,脸上渐渐浮起笑容。她太漂亮了,绯红着脸,遇上可怕事仍旧泰然自若。杰拉德的眼睛里闪烁起两个亮点。
“他们为什么管你叫米纳蒂?是因为你长得象猫吗?”他问她。
“我想是吧。”她说。
他的脸绷得更紧了。
“你呀,倒不如说象一只年轻的母豹。”
“天哪,杰拉德!”伯金有点厌恶地说。
两个人都不安地看着伯金。
“你今晚很沉默,努(卢)伯特。”她有了另一个男人的保护,对伯金说话也大胆起来。
海里戴回来了,一脸病态,看上去很忧伤。
“米纳蒂,”他说,“我希望你以后别再这样了——天啊!”
他呻吟着坐在椅子里。
“你最好回家。”她对他说。
“我会回家的,”他说,“可是,你们都来好吗?到我的住所来。”他对杰拉德说,“你要是来我太高兴了。来吧,那太好了,是吗?”他四下里环视着找侍者。“来辆出租车。”然后他又呻吟起来。“哦,我真不好受,难受极了!米纳蒂,瞧你干的这事,把我弄成什么样子。”
“那你为什么这么傻呢?”她沉着脸平静地说。
“我不傻!哦,太可怕了!来吧,都来吧,来了太好了。米纳蒂,你来吧。什么?不,你一定要来,对,你一定要来。什么;哦,我亲爱的姑娘,别大惊小怪的了,我感觉,难受极了,哦!哦!”
“你知道你不能喝酒。”她冷冷地对他说。
“我告诉你说,米纳蒂,不是喝了酒的原因,是因为你令人作呕的表现,决不是因为别的。哦,太可怕了!里比德尼科夫,咱们走吧。”
“他一杯酒就醉,只肖一杯。”俄国小伙子声音很低沉地说。
大家都向门口走去。姑娘紧挨着杰拉德,似乎同他步调一致。杰拉德意识到这一点,心里产生了一阵恶魔般的满足:他的动作竟适用于两个人。他用自己的意志控制着她,她在他的控制下很激动,显得温顺、神秘、隐秘。
他们五个人挤进一辆出租车中。海里戴头一个歪歪扭扭地钻进去,坐在靠窗的位子上。然后米纳蒂坐了进去,杰拉德紧挨着她坐下。年轻的俄国人向司机说明了方向,然后大家就挤坐在黑暗的车中了,海里戴呻吟着把头伸出窗外。大家感到车子疾行着,滑动的声音很郁闷。
米纳蒂挨着杰拉德坐着,似乎变得稣软,点点滴滴将自己化入他的骨骼中去,似乎她是一道电流融入了他的体内。她的生命溶入了他的血管,如同一个黑暗的磁场,凝聚在他的脊髓中,形成一股可怕的力量源泉。与此同时,她同伯金和马克西姆谈话的声音变得细弱、冷漠起来。在她与杰拉德之间,存在着这种沉默与黑暗中闪电般的理解。然后她摸到他的手,把它紧紧握在自己那只小手中。这纯粹黑暗但赤裸裸的表示令他全身的血管颤动,令他头眩,他失去了感知。她的话音仍象铃儿在响,不乏调侃。她晃动着头,浓密的黑发扫动着脸颊,这样子令他的全部神经起火,似乎他的神经受到了微细的磨擦。但是,他力量的中心是稳固的,他心中感到无比自豪。
他们来到一条宁静的街道,踏上一条园中小径,走了一程,一个黑皮肤的仆人打开了门,杰拉德奇怪地望着开门人,猜测他也许是来自牛津的东方绅士,可他不是绅士,是男仆。
“沏茶,哈桑。”海里戴说。
“有我的房间吗?”伯金说。
男仆对两人的话都微笑着支吾作答。
这男仆让杰拉德顿生疑问,这人身材修长,衣着体面,看上去是个绅士样子。
“哪个是你的仆人?”他问海里戴,“他看上去很象样子嘛。”
“噢,因为他穿了另一个人的衣服。他的确是个挺漂亮的人。我看到他在街上挨饿,就把他领来了,另一个人送了他一套衣服。他就这样儿,唯一的优点是他不会英语,不会说,也听不懂,所以他很可靠。”
“他太脏了,”俄国小伙子以极快的速度说。
男仆出现在门道里。
“什么事?”海里戴问。
男仆咧咧嘴笑笑,然后腼腆地嘟哝说:
“想跟主人讲话。”
杰拉德好奇地看着他们。那门道中的男仆长得挺好,挺清爽,举止也文静,看上去很高雅,有贵族味儿。可他又有点象野蛮人一样傻乎乎地笑着。海里戴到走廊里去跟他说话。
“什么?”大家听他说,“什么?你说什么?再说一遍。什么?要钱?多要几个钱?可你要钱干什么?”那阿拉伯人含糊不清地说了些什么,然后海里戴回到屋里,傻乎乎地笑着说:
“他说他要钱买内衣。谁肯借给他一先令?好,谢谢,一先令足够他买全部的内衣了。”他从杰拉德手中接过钱又向走廊里走去,大家听他说道:“你别想要更多的钱了,昨天刚给了你三镑六先令。你不能再要钱了。快把茶端上来。”
杰拉德环视屋里。这是一间普遍伦敦人家的起居室,很明显一租来就配好了家具,零乱但很舒服。但有几尊雕像和几幅木刻显得古怪、让人不舒服。这些艺术品来自西太平洋国家,那上面刻的土著人几乎象人类胎儿。一尊雕像是一个奇形怪状的裸女坐像,受着折磨,肚子凸起。俄国小伙子解释说她坐着是在生孩子,两只手抓着套在脖子上的箍带,这样有利于分娩。这奇形怪状的普通女人呆若木鸡的脸又令杰拉德想起了胎儿。但这尊雕像也很奇妙,它表明人体极端的感觉是人的理性意识所不能控制的。
“这是不是太淫秽了?”他不赞同地问。
“我不知道,”俄国人喃言着,“我从来不认为它淫秽。我想这很好。”
杰拉德转过身去看另几幅未来主义风格的画和屋里的那架大钢琴。这些东西加上伦敦出租房间的一般家具算是这间屋子的全部装饰物。
米纳蒂摘下帽子,脱掉大衣,在沙发上坐了下来。她在这屋里显然很有点宾至如归的样子,但还是显得局促不安。她还不知道自己的地位。她现在的同盟是杰拉德,可她不知道其余的男人是否承认这种同盟,承认到什么程度。她正考虑如何对付眼前的局势,她下决心体验一下。在这关键时刻,她决不再受挫。她涨红了脸,似乎要打一仗,眼睛审度着,但这一仗是不可避免的了。
男仆端着茶点和一瓶科麦尔酒进屋来了。他把托盘放在了长沙发椅前的桌子上。
“米纳蒂,”海里戴说,“倒茶。”
她没有动。
“你倒茶,听见了吗?”海里戴重复着,但心里很是紧张害怕。
“我今天回这儿来,可跟以前不一样了。”她说,“我来这儿只是大伙儿想让我来,并不是为你来的。”
“我亲爱的米纳蒂,你知道你是自己的主人。我只是想让你在这公寓里受用,没别的意思,这你知道,我以前对你讲过多次了。”
她没有回答,却默默、有节制地伸手去拿茶壶。大家都围桌而坐品着茗香。杰拉德可以感觉到他同她之间那电磁般的联系是多么强壮,以至于他觉得这是另一种场合。她沉默着,克制着自己,她的沉寂令他困惑。他怎么才能亲近她呢?他感到这是不可避免的。他太相信那将他们两人连结在一起的电流了,他的困惑不过是表面现象,新的条件产生了,旧的已成为过去。此时一个人必定要尊从自己的命运,该做什么就做什么,不管是什么事都要去做。
伯金站起身来。已经快一点了。
“我要去睡了,”他说,“杰拉德,我明早往你的住处打电话,要不然你就给我这儿打电话。”
“好吧,”杰拉德说,他说完伯金就出去了。
当伯金的影子全消失了以后,海里戴很激动地对杰拉德说:
“我说,你留在这儿吧,啊,留下吧!”
“你并不能为每个人都安排住宿。”杰拉德说。
“能,我可以,没问题,除了我的床以外,还富裕三张床,留下吧。都是现成的,我这里总有什么人住,我总留人住下,我喜欢这屋里人多热闹。”
“可只有两个房间呀,”米纳蒂冷漠、敌视地说,“现在卢伯特在这儿呢。”
“我知道只有两间房,”海里戴声音高得有点怪。“那有什么?还有一间画室呢。”
他很憨厚地笑着,诚恳地、执着地说。
“裘里斯和我住一间,”俄国人谨慎、吐字准确地说。海里戴同他在伊顿公学上学时就是朋友了。
“这很简单嘛,”杰拉德说着舒展一下双臂阔一阔胸,然后又去看一幅图画。他的四肢被电流催胀,后背象老虎一样紧张地耸着,燃着一团火。他感到很自豪。
米纳蒂站起身,狠狠地瞪了一眼海里戴,这一瞪反倒招来海里戴一个很憨厚、得意的笑。然后米纳蒂向所有的人冷冷地道晚安,走了出去。
屋里沉默了一会儿,随后响起了关门声,然后马克西姆用优雅的语调说:
“好了,就这样吧。”
他又意味深长地看看杰拉德,点点头说:
“就这样,你没事 
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

゛臉紅紅....

ZxID:704295


等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
举报 只看该作者 7楼  发表于: 2013-10-26 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 7 Fetish


IN THE MORNING Gerald woke late. He had slept heavily. Pussum was still asleep, sleeping childishly and pathetically. There was something small and curled up and defenceless about her, that roused an unsatisfied flame of passion in the young man's blood, a devouring avid pity. He looked at her again. But it would be too cruel to wake her. He subdued himself, and went away.
Hearing voices coming from the sitting-room, Halliday talking to Libidnikov, he went to the door and glanced in. He had on a silk wrap of a beautiful bluish colour, with an amethyst hem.
To his surprise he saw the two young men by the fire, stark naked. Halliday looked up, rather pleased.
`Good-morning,' he said. `Oh -- did you want towels?' And stark naked he went out into the hall, striding a strange, white figure between the unliving furniture. He came back with the towels, and took his former position, crouching seated before the fire on the fender.
`Don't you love to feel the fire on your skin?' he said.
`It is rather pleasant,' said Gerald.
`How perfectly splendid it must be to be in a climate where one could do without clothing altogether,' said Halliday.
`Yes,' said Gerald, `if there weren't so many things that sting and bite.'
`That's a disadvantage,' murmured Maxim.
Gerald looked at him, and with a slight revulsion saw the human animal, golden skinned and bare, somehow humiliating. Halliday was different. He had a rather heavy, slack, broken beauty, white and firm. He was like a Christ in a Pieta. The animal was not there at all, only the heavy, broken beauty. And Gerald realised how Halliday's eyes were beautiful too, so blue and warm and confused, broken also in their expression. The fireglow fell on his heavy, rather bowed shoulders, he sat slackly crouched on the fender, his face was uplifted, weak, perhaps slightly disintegrate, and yet with a moving beauty of its own.
`Of course,' said Maxim, `you've been in hot countries where the people go about naked.'
`Oh really!' exclaimed Halliday. `Where?'
`South America -- Amazon,' said Gerald.
`Oh but how perfectly splendid! It's one of the things I want most to do -- to live from day to day without ever putting on any sort of clothing whatever. If I could do that, I should feel I had lived.'
`But why?' said Gerald. `I can't see that it makes so much difference.'
`Oh, I think it would be perfectly splendid. I'm sure life would be entirely another thing -- entirely different, and perfectly wonderful.'
`But why?' asked Gerald. `Why should it?'
`Oh -- one would feel things instead of merely looking at them. I should feel the air move against me, and feel the things I touched, instead of having only to look at them. I'm sure life is all wrong because it has become much too visual -- we can neither hear nor feel nor understand, we can only see. I'm sure that is entirely wrong.'
`Yes, that is true, that is true,' said the Russian.
Gerald glanced at him, and saw him, his suave, golden coloured body with the black hair growing fine and freely, like tendrils, and his limbs like smooth plantstems. He was so healthy and well-made, why did he make one ashamed, why did one feel repelled? Why should Gerald even dislike it, why did it seem to him to detract from his own dignity. Was that all a human being amounted to? So uninspired! thought Gerald.
Birkin suddenly appeared in the doorway, in white pyjamas and wet hair, and a towel over his arm. He was aloof and white, and somehow evanescent.
`There's the bath-room now, if you want it,' he said generally, and was going away again, when Gerald called:
`I say, Rupert!'
`What?' The single white figure appeared again, a presence in the room.
`What do you think of that figure there? I want to know,' Gerald asked.
Birkin, white and strangely ghostly, went over to the carved figure of the negro woman in labour. Her nude, protuberant body crouched in a strange, clutching posture, her hands gripping the ends of the band, above her breast.
`It is art,' said Birkin.
`Very beautiful, it's very beautiful,' said the Russian.
They all drew near to look. Gerald looked at the group of men, the Russian golden and like a water-plant, Halliday tall and heavily, brokenly beautiful, Birkin very white and indefinite, not to be assigned, as he looked closely at the carven woman. Strangely elated, Gerald also lifted his eyes to the face of the wooden figure. And his heart contracted.
He saw vividly with his spirit the grey, forward-stretching face of the negro woman, African and tense, abstracted in utter physical stress. It was a terrible face, void, peaked, abstracted almost into meaninglessness by the weight of sensation beneath. He saw the Pussum in it. As in a dream, he knew her.
`Why is it art?' Gerald asked, shocked, resentful.
`It conveys a complete truth,' said Birkin. `It contains the whole truth of that state, whatever you feel about it.'
`But you can't call it high art,' said Gerald.
`High! There are centuries and hundreds of centuries of development in a straight line, behind that carving; it is an awful pitch of culture, of a definite sort.'
`What culture?' Gerald asked, in opposition. He hated the sheer African thing.
`Pure culture in sensation, culture in the physical consciousness, really ultimate physical consciousness, mindless, utterly sensual. It is so sensual as to be final, supreme.'
But Gerald resented it. He wanted to keep certain illusions, certain ideas like clothing.
`You like the wrong things, Rupert,' he said, `things against yourself.'
`Oh, I know, this isn't everything,' Birkin replied, moving away.
When Gerald went back to his room from the bath, he also carried his clothes. He was so conventional at home, that when he was really away, and on the loose, as now, he enjoyed nothing so much as full outrageousness. So he strode with his blue silk wrap over his arm and felt defiant.
The Pussum lay in her bed, motionless, her round, dark eyes like black, unhappy pools. He could only see the black, bottomless pools of her eyes. Perhaps she suffered. The sensation of her inchoate suffering roused the old sharp flame in him, a mordant pity, a passion almost of cruelty.
`You are awake now,' he said to her.
`What time is it?' came her muted voice.
She seemed to flow back, almost like liquid, from his approach, to sink helplessly away from him. Her inchoate look of a violated slave, whose fulfilment lies in her further and further violation, made his nerves quiver with acutely desirable sensation. After all, his was the only will, she was the passive substance of his will. He tingled with the subtle, biting sensation. And then he knew, he must go away from her, there must be pure separation between them.
It was a quiet and ordinary breakfast, the four men all looking very clean and bathed. Gerald and the Russian were both correct and comme il faut in appearance and manner, Birkin was gaunt and sick, and looked a failure in his attempt to be a properly dressed man, like Gerald and Maxim. Halliday wore tweeds and a green flannel shirt, and a rag of a tie, which was just right for him. The Hindu brought in a great deal of soft toast, and looked exactly the same as he had looked the night before, statically the same.
At the end of the breakfast the Pussum appeared, in a purple silk wrap with a shimmering sash. She had recovered herself somewhat, but was mute and lifeless still. It was a torment to her when anybody spoke to her. Her face was like a small, fine mask, sinister too, masked with unwilling suffering. It was almost midday. Gerald rose and went away to his business, glad to get out. But he had not finished. He was coming back again at evening, they were all dining together, and he had booked seats for the party, excepting Birkin, at a music-hall.
At night they came back to the flat very late again, again flushed with drink. Again the man-servant -- who invariably disappeared between the hours of ten and twelve at night -- came in silently and inscrutably with tea, bending in a slow, strange, leopard-like fashion to put the tray softly on the table. His face was immutable, aristocratic-looking, tinged slightly with grey under the skin; he was young and good-looking. But Birkin felt a slight sickness, looking at him, and feeling the slight greyness as an ash or a corruption, in the aristocratic inscrutability of expression a nauseating, bestial stupidity.
Again they talked cordially and rousedly together. But already a certain friability was coming over the party, Birkin was mad with irritation, Halliday was turning in an insane hatred against Gerald, the Pussum was becoming hard and cold, like a flint knife, and Halliday was laying himself out to her. And her intention, ultimately, was to capture Halliday, to have complete power over him.
In the morning they all stalked and lounged about again. But Gerald could feel a strange hostility to himself, in the air. It roused his obstinacy, and he stood up against it. He hung on for two more days. The result was a nasty and insane scene with Halliday on the fourth evening. Halliday turned with absurd animosity upon Gerald, in the cafe. There was a row. Gerald was on the point of knocking-in Halliday's face; when he was filled with sudden disgust and indifference, and he went away, leaving Halliday in a foolish state of gloating triumph, the Pussum hard and established, and Maxim standing clear. Birkin was absent, he had gone out of town again.
Gerald was piqued because he had left without giving the Pussum money. It was true, she did not care whether he gave her money or not, and he knew it. But she would have been glad of ten pounds, and he would have been very glad to give them to her. Now he felt in a false position. He went away chewing his lips to get at the ends of his short clipped moustache. He knew the Pussum was merely glad to be rid of him. She had got her Halliday whom she wanted. She wanted him completely in her power. Then she would marry him. She wanted to marry him. She had set her will on marrying Halliday. She never wanted to hear of Gerald again; unless, perhaps, she were in difficulty; because after all, Gerald was what she called a man, and these others, Halliday, Libidnikov, Birkin, the whole Bohemian set, they were only half men. But it was half men she could deal with. She felt sure of herself with them. The real men, like Gerald, put her in her place too much.
Still, she respected Gerald, she really respected him. She had managed to get his address, so that she could appeal to him in time of distress. She knew he wanted to give her money. She would perhaps write to him on that inevitable rainy day.
 
早晨,杰拉德醒得很晚,这一夜睡得很实。米纳蒂仍然在熟睡,象孩子一样可怜。她娇小,蜷缩着,毫无戒备,这一点让血性十足的小伙子很不满足,他感到自己贪心不足,很遗憾。他又看看她,如果叫醒她可是太残酷了。他克制住自己,走了出去。
杰拉德听到起居室里传来海里戴同里比德尼科夫的说话声,就走到门口朝里扫了一眼。他身穿一件漂亮的蓝绸衣,衣服镶着紫水晶边。
令他吃惊的是,他看到这两个年轻小伙子浑身一丝不挂地躺在壁炉边上。海里戴抬起眼皮朝上看看,很得意。
“早上好,”他说,“哦,你要毛巾吗?”说着他赤着身子走到前厅去,那奇特的白色身躯在静态的家具中间穿行着。他取回毛巾,又回到原来的位置上,挨着火蜷坐下。
“你不喜欢让火舌舐一舐你的皮肤吗?”他问。
“那挺舒服吧?”杰拉德说。
“在不用穿衣服的气候下生活该是多么美妙呀。”海里戴说。
“是啊。”杰拉德说,“还要没有那么多东西叮你、咬你才行。”
“这点可是不利因素。”马克西姆喃言道。
杰拉德看着这个金黄皮肤裸体的人间动物,心里有点厌恶,感到耻辱。海里戴则不同。他身上有那么一种庄重、懒洋洋、很散淡的美,皮肤黝黑,骨架很结实,很象躺在圣母玛丽亚怀抱中的基督。杰拉德还注意到海里戴的眼睛很漂亮,那眼睛是棕黄色的,透着温暖、迷茫的光,眼神中显出些病态。火光照在他沉重、圆滚滚的肩膀上,他蜷坐着靠在壁炉前的栅栏上,一副倦怠的神态。他的脸抬起来,脸色有些苍白,神情潦倒,但仍然很漂亮动人。
“可是,”马克西姆说,“你去过人们赤身裸体的热带国家呀。”
“真的吗!”海里戴感叹道。“哪儿?”
“南非和亚马逊河流域。”杰拉德说。
“啊,太妙了!我最想做的事情之一就是这件事——整天不穿任何衣服逛来逛去。如果我能做到这一点,我才会感到我是在活着。”
“那是为什么呢?”杰拉德问,“我不认为这有什么两样。”
“哦,我觉得那太美了。我敢肯定,那样生活就会是另一种样子,全然不同于我们的生活,百分之百地美妙。”
“可这是为什么呢?”杰拉德问,“为什么?”
“啊,那样,人就是在感知事物,而不仅仅是观察。我更愿意感触我周围的空气流动,感触我周围的事物,而不是仅仅观看。我敢说,生活之所以全走了样儿,那是因为我们把它太视觉化了——我们既不能听、也不能感受、不能理解,我们就会看。我敢说,这么做整个儿地错了。”
“对,说的是,说的是。”俄国人说。
杰拉德瞟了一眼他柔和、金黄的肉体,他的四肢象光洁的树干,黑头发长得很好看,自由地舒展着象植物的卷须一样。他很健康,身材也很不错,可他为什么让人感到耻辱、令人生厌呢?为什么杰拉德会厌恶这裸体,为什么这裸体似乎是有损于他的尊严呢?难道人就是这样的吗?太没有灵气了!
杰拉德想。
伯金身穿白色睡衣突然出现在门道里,他湿着头发,胳膊上搭着一条毛巾。他淡漠、苍白,有点纤弱。
“浴室空了,要洗就来吧。”他对大家说,说完刚要走就被杰拉德叫住了:
“听我说,卢伯特!”
“什么?”那白色的人影又出现了,象一个幽灵。
“你看那雕塑怎么样?我想知道你的看法。”杰拉德说。
伯金面色苍白,幽灵般地走到那尊野女人生育的雕像前。
她大腹便便的裸体蜷缩着,双手抓着乳房上方的带子。
“这是件艺术品。”伯金说。
“太漂亮了,太漂亮了。”俄国人说。
大家都凑过来看。杰拉德看着这几个男儿:俄国人躯体金黄,象一株水生植物;海里戴颀长、庄重、散淡、很漂亮;伯金非常苍白、朦胧,细细地看着那女人的塑像,那形象难以形容。杰拉德感到一阵异样的激动,也去看那木雕了,看着看着他的心都缩紧了。
他用自己的心看着这野蛮女人那向前伸出的铁青色的脸,脸上肌肉紧绷着,全身都在用力。这是一张可怕的脸,紧皱着,由于下身的痛感太强烈,这张脸已经缩得看不出原样。他在这张脸上看出了米纳蒂的影子,似乎他是在梦中认识了她。
“为什么说这是艺术品?”杰拉德感到惊诧,反感地问。
“它表达了一条十足的真理,”伯金说,“它包容了那种条件下的全部真实,不管你作何感想。”
“可你无论如何不能称它是高级艺术。”杰拉德说。
“高级!在这座雕刻之前,艺术已直线发展了几百个世纪了,这雕刻标志着某一特定文化的惊人高度。”
“什么文化?”杰拉德反问,他厌恶纯粹野性的东西。
“纯感觉的文化,肉体意识的文化,真正最高的肉体意识,毫无精神作用,十足的肉感。太肉感了,因此是艺术的终极,最高的艺术。”
可是杰拉德对此表示反感。他试图保留某种幻象,即诸如衣服之类的观念。
“你喜欢反常的东西,卢伯特,”他说,“那是些与你作对的东西。”
“哦,我知道,这并不是一切。”伯金说着走开了。
当杰拉德洗完澡回他的房间时,他也没穿衣服,而是搭在手臂上。他在家时很守规矩,可真离开家,过现在这种放荡的生活,他就享受这种令人难以容忍的生活方式了,彻底放荡。于是,他手臂上搭着绿绸衣,挑战般地走回屋去。
米纳蒂一动也不动地躺在床上,圆睁的蓝眼睛就象一泓宁静、不幸的清水。他只能看到她眼睛里那一潭无底的死水。可能她很痛苦。她那莫名其妙的苦楚燃起了他心中原有的情火,一种撕心裂肺的怜悯和近乎于残酷的激情。
“醒了?”他说。
“几点了?”她平静地问。
她似乎象液体一样从他这里向四面流动,孤立无援地离开他,下沉着。她纯静的表情看上去象一个受到伤害的奴隶,她只有一而再再而三地受到伤害才会得到满足,这副样子令他的神经发抖,激起他强烈的欲望。归根结底,他的意志对她来说是唯一的意志,而她则是他意志的附庸。他被这种微妙的感觉撕咬着。然后他知道他必须离开她,他们两人必须分开。
这顿早餐吃得很简单,气氛很安宁。四个男人洗过澡,看上去都很清爽。杰拉德和俄国人的外表与风度都很合时宜。伯金则憔悴、一脸病容,他想象杰拉德和马克西姆一样穿得合时宜些,可他那身打扮证明他做不到这一点。海里戴穿着粗毛花呢外衣和法兰绒内衣,扎一条旧领带,这条领带配他倒合适。那阿拉伯人端来许多烤面包,他看上去跟昨天晚上一模一样。
吃完早餐以后,米纳蒂出现了,她穿着一件绸外衣,系着一条闪闪发光的腰带。她有点恢复过来了,但仍然郁郁寡欢。这时谁跟她讲话对她都是一种折磨。她的脸象一只小巧的面罩,有点可怕,脸上笼罩着不堪忍受的痛苦。快中午了。杰拉德站起身出去办他的事了,走的时候心里很惬意。但他并不就此罢休,他还会再回来,晚上他们要共进晚餐,他为这些人在音乐厅订了座位,不过伯金不参加。
晚上大家又很晚才回来,喝得满脸通红。那阿拉伯人晚上十点到十二点时不在,现在默默、不可思议地端着茶点进来了,低弯着腰,象豹子那样,进来后把茶点托盘轻轻地摆在桌子上。他的面容没有变,仍然象贵族,皮肤有点发灰,他还年轻,很漂亮。但是伯金一看到他就感到有点厌恶,感到他脸上的灰色象灰粉或腐败后的颜色,在他那贵族气的表情中透着某种令人作呕的兽性愚蠢。
大家又热情地聊起来,谈得很热闹。但已经出现了要散伙的气氛。伯金有些气得发疯;海里戴已经对杰拉德恨之入骨;米纳蒂变得又冷漠又残酷,象一把锋利的刀;海里戴对她可算是竭力逢迎。而她的目的就是最终俘获海里戴,彻底控制他。
早晨大家又优哉游哉起来,但杰拉德可以感觉出大家对他怀有某种奇怪的敌意。这让他变得倔犟起来,他要与之对抗。他又多呆了两天,结果是在第四个晚上同海里戴发生了一场疯狂的恶战。在咖啡馆里,海里戴很荒谬地对杰拉德表示敌意,于是他们争吵起来。有一阵,杰拉德差一点就要打海里戴的嘴巴,不过他突然感到一阵厌恶和无聊,拂袖而去,让海里戴白拣了个胜利去大吹大擂。米纳蒂无动于衷,她的立场很坚定,马克西姆毫不介入。那天伯金不在,他又到城外去了。
杰拉德有点不自在,因为他走时没给米纳蒂留下点钱,不过他真地不知道她是否缺钱。但如果给她十镑她或许会高兴的,况且他会很高兴给她钱的。现在他感到自己做错了事。他一边走一边伸出舌尖舐着唇上剪得短短的胡茬。他知道米纳蒂正巴不得甩掉他呢,她又俘获了她的海里戴。她想海里戴,要彻底控制他,然后会同他结婚。她早就想跟他结婚了,她打定主意要跟海里戴结婚。她不想再听到杰拉德的音讯,但有困难时会求救于他,因为不管怎么说杰拉德是她称之为男子汉的人,另外那一帮人,诸如海里戴,里比德尼科夫还有伯金这些放荡的文人和艺术家不过是半条汉子。可她能对付的就恰恰是这些半条汉子们。跟他们到了一起她就有信心。象杰拉德这样真正的男子汉太让她不敢越雷池了。
她仍然尊重杰拉德,这是真的。她想办法得到了他的地址,这样她在失意时就可求助于他。她知道他想送钱给她,或许在哪个淫雨天她会写信给他的。
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

゛臉紅紅....

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。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 8 Breadalby


BREADALBY was a Georgian house with Corinthian pillars, standing among the softer, greener hills of Derbyshire, not far from Cromford. In front, it looked over a lawn, over a few trees, down to a string of fish-ponds in the hollow of the silent park. At the back were trees, among which were to be found the stables, and the big kitchen garden, behind which was a wood.
It was a very quiet place, some miles from the high-road, back from the Derwent Valley, outside the show scenery. Silent and forsaken, the golden stucco showed between the trees, the house-front looked down the park, unchanged and unchanging.
Of late, however, Hermione had lived a good deal at the house. She had turned away from London, away from Oxford, towards the silence of the country. Her father was mostly absent, abroad, she was either alone in the house, with her visitors, of whom there were always several, or she had with her her brother, a bachelor, and a Liberal member of Parliament. He always came down when the House was not sitting, seemed always to be present in Breadalby, although he was most conscientious in his attendance to duty.
The summer was just coming in when Ursula and Gudrun went to stay the second time with Hermione. Coming along in the car, after they had entered the park, they looked across the dip, where the fish-ponds lay in silence, at the pillared front of the house, sunny and small like an English drawing of the old school, on the brow of the green hill, against the trees. There were small figures on the green lawn, women in lavender and yellow moving to the shade of the enormous, beautifully balanced cedar tree.
`Isn't it complete!' said Gudrun. `It is as final as an old aquatint.' She spoke with some resentment in her voice, as if she were captivated unwillingly, as if she must admire against her will.
`Do you love it?' asked Ursula.
`I don't love it, but in its way, I think it is quite complete.'
The motor-car ran down the hill and up again in one breath, and they were curving to the side door. A parlour-maid appeared, and then Hermione, coming forward with her pale face lifted, and her hands outstretched, advancing straight to the new-comers, her voice singing:
`Here you are -- I'm so glad to see you --' she kissed Gudrun -- `so glad to see you --' she kissed Ursula and remained with her arm round her. `Are you very tired?'
`Not at all tired,' said Ursula.
`Are you tired, Gudrun?'
`Not at all, thanks,' said Gudrun.
`No --' drawled Hermione. And she stood and looked at them. The two girls were embarrassed because she would not move into the house, but must have her little scene of welcome there on the path. The servants waited.
`Come in,' said Hermione at last, having fully taken in the pair of them. Gudrun was the more beautiful and attractive, she had decided again, Ursula was more physical, more womanly. She admired Gudrun's dress more. It was of green poplin, with a loose coat above it, of broad, dark-green and dark-brown stripes. The hat was of a pale, greenish straw, the colour of new hay, and it had a plaited ribbon of black and orange, the stockings were dark green, the shoes black. It was a good get-up, at once fashionable and individual. Ursula, in dark blue, was more ordinary, though she also looked well.
Hermione herself wore a dress of prune-coloured silk, with coral beads and coral coloured stockings. But her dress was both shabby and soiled, even rather dirty.
`You would like to see your rooms now, wouldn't you! Yes. We will go up now, shall we?'
Ursula was glad when she could be left alone in her room. Hermione lingered so long, made such a stress on one. She stood so near to one, pressing herself near upon one, in a way that was most embarrassing and oppressive. She seemed to hinder one's workings.
Lunch was served on the lawn, under the great tree, whose thick, blackish boughs came down close to the grass. There were present a young Italian woman, slight and fashionable, a young, athletic-looking Miss Bradley, a learned, dry Baronet of fifty, who was always making witticisms and laughing at them heartily in a harsh, horse-laugh, there was Rupert Birkin, and then a woman secretary, a Fraulein Marz, young and slim and pretty.
The food was very good, that was one thing. Gudrun, critical of everything, gave it her full approval. Ursula loved the situation, the white table by the cedar tree, the scent of new sunshine, the little vision of the leafy park, with far-off deer feeding peacefully. There seemed a magic circle drawn about the place, shutting out the present, enclosing the delightful, precious past, trees and deer and silence, like a dream.
But in spirit she was unhappy. The talk went on like a rattle of small artillery, always slightly sententious, with a sententiousness that was only emphasised by the continual crackling of a witticism, the continual spatter of verbal jest, designed to give a tone of flippancy to a stream of conversation that was all critical and general, a canal of conversation rather than a stream.
The attitude was mental and very wearying. Only the elderly sociologist, whose mental fibre was so tough as to be insentient, seemed to be thoroughly happy. Birkin was down in the mouth. Hermione appeared, with amazing persistence, to wish to ridicule him and make him look ignominious in the eyes of everybody. And it was surprising how she seemed to succeed, how helpless he seemed against her. He looked completely insignificant. Ursula and Gudrun, both very unused, were mostly silent, listening to the slow, rhapsodic sing-song of Hermione, or the verbal sallies of Sir Joshua, or the prattle of Fraulein, or the responses of the other two women.
Luncheon was over, coffee was brought out on the grass, the party left the table and sat about in lounge chairs, in the shade or in the sunshine as they wished. Fraulein departed into the house, Hermione took up her embroidery, the little Contessa took a book, Miss Bradley was weaving a basket out of fine grass, and there they all were on the lawn in the early summer afternoon, working leisurely and spattering with half-intellectual, deliberate talk.
Suddenly there was the sound of the brakes and the shutting off of a motor-car.
`There's Salsie!' sang Hermione, in her slow, amusing sing-song. And laying down her work, she rose slowly, and slowly passed over the lawn, round the bushes, out of sight.
`Who is it?' asked Gudrun.
`Mr Roddice -- Miss Roddice's brother -- at least, I suppose it's he,' said Sir Joshua.
`Salsie, yes, it is her brother,' said the little Contessa, lifting her head for a moment from her book, and speaking as if to give information, in her slightly deepened, guttural English.
They all waited. And then round the bushes came the tall form of Alexander Roddice, striding romantically like a Meredith hero who remembers Disraeli. He was cordial with everybody, he was at once a host, with an easy, offhand hospitality that he had learned for Hermione's friends. He had just come down from London, from the House. At once the atmosphere of the House of Commons made itself felt over the lawn: the Home Secretary had said such and such a thing, and he, Roddice, on the other hand, thought such and such a thing, and had said so-and-so to the PM.
Now Hermione came round the bushes with Gerald Crich. He had come along with Alexander. Gerald was presented to everybody, was kept by Hermione for a few moments in full view, then he was led away, still by Hermione. He was evidently her guest of the moment.
There had been a split in the Cabinet; the minister for Education had resigned owing to adverse criticism. This started a conversation on education.
`Of course,' said Hermione, lifting her face like a rhapsodist, `there can be no reason, no excuse for education, except the joy and beauty of knowledge in itself.' She seemed to rumble and ruminate with subterranean thoughts for a minute, then she proceeded: `Vocational education isn't education, it is the close of education.'
Gerald, on the brink of discussion, sniffed the air with delight and prepared for action.
`Not necessarily,' he said. `But isn't education really like gymnastics, isn't the end of education the production of a well-trained, vigorous, energetic mind?'
`Just as athletics produce a healthy body, ready for anything,' cried Miss Bradley, in hearty accord.
Gudrun looked at her in silent loathing.
`Well --' rumbled Hermione, `I don't know. To me the pleasure of knowing is so great, so wonderful -- nothing has meant so much to me in all life, as certain knowledge -- no, I am sure -- nothing.'
`What knowledge, for example, Hermione?' asked Alexander.
Hermione lifted her face and rumbled -
`M -- m -- m -- I don't know . . . But one thing was the stars, when I really understood something about the stars. One feels so uplifted, so unbounded . . .'
Birkin looked at her in a white fury.
`What do you want to feel unbounded for?' he said sarcastically. `You don't want to be unbounded.'
Hermione recoiled in offence.
`Yes, but one does have that limitless feeling,' said Gerald. `It's like getting on top of the mountain and seeing the Pacific.'
`Silent upon a peak in Dariayn,' murmured the Italian, lifting her face for a moment from her book.
`Not necessarily in Dariayn,' said Gerald, while Ursula began to laugh.
Hermione waited for the dust to settle, and then she said, untouched:
`Yes, it is the greatest thing in life -- to know. It is really to be happy, to be free.'
`Knowledge is, of course, liberty,' said Mattheson.
`In compressed tabloids,' said Birkin, looking at the dry, stiff little body of the Baronet. Immediately Gudrun saw the famous sociologist as a flat bottle, containing tabloids of compressed liberty. That pleased her. Sir Joshua was labelled and placed forever in her mind.
`What does that mean, Rupert?' sang Hermione, in a calm snub.
`You can only have knowledge, strictly,' he replied, `of things concluded, in the past. It's like bottling the liberty of last summer in the bottled gooseberries.'
`Can one have knowledge only of the past?' asked the Baronet, pointedly. `Could we call our knowledge of the laws of gravitation for instance, knowledge of the past?'
`Yes,' said Birkin.
`There is a most beautiful thing in my book,' suddenly piped the little Italian woman. `It says the man came to the door and threw his eyes down the street.'
There was a general laugh in the company. Miss Bradley went and looked over the shoulder of the Contessa.
`See!' said the Contessa.
`Bazarov came to the door and threw his eyes hurriedly down the street,' she read.
Again there was a loud laugh, the most startling of which was the Baronet's, which rattled out like a clatter of falling stones.
`What is the book?' asked Alexander, promptly.
`Fathers and Sons, by Turgenev,' said the little foreigner, pronouncing every syllable distinctly. She looked at the cover, to verify herself.
`An old American edition,' said Birkin.
`Ha! -- of course -- translated from the French,' said Alexander, with a fine declamatory voice. `Bazarov ouvra la porte et jeta les yeux dans la rue.'
He looked brightly round the company.
`I wonder what the "hurriedly" was,' said Ursula.
They all began to guess.
And then, to the amazement of everybody, the maid came hurrying with a large tea-tray. The afternoon had passed so swiftly.
After tea, they were all gathered for a walk.
`Would you like to come for a walk?' said Hermione to each of them, one by one. And they all said yes, feeling somehow like prisoners marshalled for exercise. Birkin only refused.
`Will you come for a walk, Rupert?'
`No, Hermione.'
`But are you sure?'
`Quite sure.' There was a second's hesitation.
`And why not?' sang Hermione's question. It made her blood run sharp, to be thwarted in even so trifling a matter. She intended them all to walk with her in the park.
`Because I don't like trooping off in a gang,' he said.
Her voice rumbled in her throat for a moment. Then she said, with a curious stray calm:
`Then we'll leave a little boy behind, if he's sulky.'
And she looked really gay, while she insulted him. But it merely made him stiff.
She trailed off to the rest of the company, only turning to wave her handkerchief to him, and to chuckle with laughter, singing out:
`Good-bye, good-bye, little boy.'
`Good-bye, impudent hag,' he said to himself.
They all went through the park. Hermione wanted to show them the wild daffodils on a little slope. `This way, this way,' sang her leisurely voice at intervals. And they had all to come this way. The daffodils were pretty, but who could see them? Ursula was stiff all over with resentment by this time, resentment of the whole atmosphere. Gudrun, mocking and objective, watched and registered everything.
They looked at the shy deer, and Hermione talked to the stag, as if he too were a boy she wanted to wheedle and fondle. He was male, so she must exert some kind of power over him. They trailed home by the fish-ponds, and Hermione told them about the quarrel of two male swans, who had striven for the love of the one lady. She chuckled and laughed as she told how the ousted lover had sat with his head buried under his wing, on the gravel.
When they arrived back at the house, Hermione stood on the lawn and sang out, in a strange, small, high voice that carried very far:
`Rupert! Rupert!' The first syllable was high and slow, the second dropped down. `Roo-o-opert.'
But there was no answer. A maid appeared.
`Where is Mr Birkin, Alice?' asked the mild straying voice of Hermione. But under the straying voice, what a persistent, almost insane will!
`I think he's in his room, madam.'
`Is he?'
Hermione went slowly up the stairs, along the corridor, singing out in her high, small call:
`Ru-oo-pert! Ru-oo pert!'
She came to his door, and tapped, still crying: `Roo-pert.'
`Yes,' sounded his voice at last.
`What are you doing?'
The question was mild and curious.
There was no answer. Then he opened the door.
`We've come back,' said Hermione. `The daffodils are so beautiful.'
`Yes,' he said, `I've seen them.'
She looked at him with her long, slow, impassive look, along her cheeks.
`Have you?' she echoed. And she remained looking at him. She was stimulated above all things by this conflict with him, when he was like a sulky boy, helpless, and she had him safe at Breadalby. But underneath she knew the split was coming, and her hatred of him was subconscious and intense.
`What were you doing?' she reiterated, in her mild, indifferent tone. He did not answer, and she made her way, almost unconsciously into his room. He had taken a Chinese drawing of geese from the boudoir, and was copying it, with much skill and vividness.
`You are copying the drawing,' she said, standing near the table, and looking down at his work. `Yes. How beautifully you do it! You like it very much, don't you?'
`It's a marvellous drawing,' he said.
`Is it? I'm so glad you like it, because I've always been fond of it. The Chinese Ambassador gave it me.'
`I know,' he said.
`But why do you copy it?' she asked, casual and sing-song. `Why not do something original?'
`I want to know it,' he replied. `One gets more of China, copying this picture, than reading all the books.'
`And what do you get?'
She was at once roused, she laid as it were violent hands on him, to extract his secrets from him. She must know. It was a dreadful tyranny, an obsession in her, to know all he knew. For some time he was silent, hating to answer her. Then, compelled, he began:
`I know what centres they live from -- what they perceive and feel -- the hot, stinging centrality of a goose in the flux of cold water and mud -- the curious bitter stinging heat of a goose's blood, entering their own blood like an inoculation of corruptive fire -fire of the cold-burning mud -- the lotus mystery.'
Hermione looked at him along her narrow, pallid cheeks. Her eyes were strange and drugged, heavy under their heavy, drooping lids. Her thin bosom shrugged convulsively. He stared back at her, devilish and unchanging. With another strange, sick convulsion, she turned away, as if she were sick, could feel dissolution setting-in in her body. For with her mind she was unable to attend to his words, he caught her, as it were, beneath all her defences, and destroyed her with some insidious occult potency.
`Yes,' she said, as if she did not know what she were saying. `Yes,' and she swallowed, and tried to regain her mind. But she could not, she was witless, decentralised. Use all her will as she might, she could not recover. She suffered the ghastliness of dissolution, broken and gone in a horrible corruption. And he stood and looked at her unmoved. She strayed out, pallid and preyed-upon like a ghost, like one attacked by the tomb-influences which dog us. And she was gone like a corpse, that has no presence, no connection. He remained hard and vindictive.
Hermione came down to dinner strange and sepulchral, her eyes heavy and full of sepulchral darkness, strength. She had put on a dress of stiff old greenish brocade, that fitted tight and made her look tall and rather terrible, ghastly. In the gay light of the drawing-room she was uncanny and oppressive. But seated in the half-light of the diningroom, sitting stiffly before the shaded candles on the table, she seemed a power, a presence. She listened and attended with a drugged attention.
The party was gay and extravagant in appearance, everybody had put on evening dress except Birkin and Joshua Mattheson. The little Italian Contessa wore a dress of tissue, of orange and gold and black velvet in soft wide stripes, Gudrun was emerald green with strange net-work, Ursula was in yellow with dull silver veiling, Miss Bradley was of grey, crimson and jet, Fraulein Marz wore pale blue. It gave Hermione a sudden convulsive sensation of pleasure, to see these rich colours under the candle-light. She was aware of the talk going on, ceaselessly, Joshua's voice dominating; of the ceaseless pitter-patter of women's light laughter and responses; of the brilliant colours and the white table and the shadow above and below; and she seemed in a swoon of gratification, convulsed with pleasure and yet sick, like a revenant. She took very little part in the conversation, yet she heard it all, it was all hers.
They all went together into the drawing-room, as if they were one family, easily, without any attention to ceremony. Fraulein handed the coffee, everybody smoked cigarettes, or else long warden pipes of white clay, of which a sheaf was provided.
`Will you smoke? -- cigarettes or pipe?' asked Fraulein prettily. There was a circle of people, Sir Joshua with his eighteenth-century appearance, Gerald the amused, handsome young Englishman, Alexander tall and the handsome politician, democratic and lucid, Hermione strange like a long Cassandra, and the women lurid with colour, all dutifully smoking their long white pipes, and sitting in a half-moon in the comfortable, soft-lighted drawing-room, round the logs that flickered on the marble hearth.
The talk was very often political or sociological, and interesting, curiously anarchistic. There was an accumulation of powerful force in the room, powerful and destructive. Everything seemed to be thrown into the melting pot, and it seemed to Ursula they were all witches, helping the pot to bubble. There was an elation and a satisfaction in it all, but it was cruelly exhausting for the new-comers, this ruthless mental pressure, this powerful, consuming, destructive mentality that emanated from Joshua and Hermione and Birkin and dominated the rest.
But a sickness, a fearful nausea gathered possession of Hermione. There was a lull in the talk, as it was arrested by her unconscious but all-powerful will.
`Salsie, won't you play something?' said Hermione, breaking off completely. `Won't somebody dance? Gudrun, you will dance, won't you? I wish you would. Anche tu, Palestra, ballerai? -- si, per piacere. You too, Ursula.'
Hermione rose and slowly pulled the gold-embroidered band that hung by the mantel, clinging to it for a moment, then releasing it suddenly. Like a priestess she looked, unconscious, sunk in a heavy half-trance.
A servant came, and soon reappeared with armfuls of silk robes and shawls and scarves, mostly oriental, things that Hermione, with her love for beautiful extravagant dress, had collected gradually.
`The three women will dance together,' she said.
`What shall it be?' asked Alexander, rising briskly.
`Vergini Delle Rocchette,' said the Contessa at once.
`They are so languid,' said Ursula.
`The three witches from Macbeth,' suggested Fraulein usefully. It was finally decided to do Naomi and Ruth and Orpah. Ursula was Naomi, Gudrun was Ruth, the Contessa was Orpah. The idea was to make a little ballet, in the style of the Russian Ballet of Pavlova and Nijinsky.
The Contessa was ready first, Alexander went to the piano, a space was cleared. Orpah, in beautiful oriental clothes, began slowly to dance the death of her husband. Then Ruth came, and they wept together, and lamented, then Naomi came to comfort them. It was all done in dumb show, the women danced their emotion in gesture and motion. The little drama went on for a quarter of an hour.
Ursula was beautiful as Naomi. All her men were dead, it remained to her only to stand alone in indomitable assertion, demanding nothing. Ruth, woman-loving, loved her. Orpah, a vivid, sensational, subtle widow, would go back to the former life, a repetition. The interplay between the women was real and rather frightening. It was strange to see how Gudrun clung with heavy, desperate passion to Ursula, yet smiled with subtle malevolence against her, how Ursula accepted silently, unable to provide any more either for herself or for the other, but dangerous and indomitable, refuting her grief.
Hermione loved to watch. She could see the Contessa's rapid, stoat-like sensationalism, Gudrun's ultimate but treacherous cleaving to the woman in her sister, Ursula's dangerous helplessness, as if she were helplessly weighted, and unreleased.
`That was very beautiful,' everybody cried with one accord. But Hermione writhed in her soul, knowing what she could not know. She cried out for more dancing, and it was her will that set the Contessa and Birkin moving mockingly in Malbrouk.
Gerald was excited by the desperate cleaving of Gudrun to Naomi. The essence of that female, subterranean recklessness and mockery penetrated his blood. He could not forget Gudrun's lifted, offered, cleaving, reckless, yet withal mocking weight. And Birkin, watching like a hermit crab from its hole, had seen the brilliant frustration and helplessness of Ursula. She was rich, full of dangerous power. She was like a strange unconscious bud of powerful womanhood. He was unconsciously drawn to her. She was his future.
Alexander played some Hungarian music, and they all danced, seized by the spirit. Gerald was marvellously exhilarated at finding himself in motion, moving towards Gudrun, dancing with feet that could not yet escape from the waltz and the two-step, but feeling his force stir along his limbs and his body, out of captivity. He did not know yet how to dance their convulsive, rag-time sort of dancing, but he knew how to begin. Birkin, when he could get free from the weight of the people present, whom he disliked, danced rapidly and with a real gaiety. And how Hermione hated him for this irresponsible gaiety.
`Now I see,' cried the Contessa excitedly, watching his purely gay motion, which he had all to himself. `Mr Birkin, he is a changer.'
Hermione looked at her slowly, and shuddered, knowing that only a foreigner could have seen and have said this.
`Cosa vuol'dire, Palestra?' she asked, sing-song.
`Look,' said the Contessa, in Italian. `He is not a man, he is a chameleon, a creature of change.'
`He is not a man, he is treacherous, not one of us,' said itself over in Hermione's consciousness. And her soul writhed in the black subjugation to him, because of his power to escape, to exist, other than she did, because he was not consistent, not a man, less than a man. She hated him in a despair that shattered her and broke her down, so that she suffered sheer dissolution like a corpse, and was unconscious of everything save the horrible sickness of dissolution that was taking place within her, body and soul.
The house being full, Gerald was given the smaller room, really the dressing-room, communicating with Birkin's bedroom. When they all took their candles and mounted the stairs, where the lamps were burning subduedly, Hermione captured Ursula and brought her into her own bedroom, to talk to her. A sort of constraint came over Ursula in the big, strange bedroom. Hermione seemed to be bearing down on her, awful and inchoate, making some appeal. They were looking at some Indian silk shirts, gorgeous and sensual in themselves, their shape, their almost corrupt gorgeousness. And Hermione came near, and her bosom writhed, and Ursula was for a moment blank with panic. And for a moment Hermione's haggard eyes saw the fear on the face of the other, there was again a sort of crash, a crashing down. And Ursula picked up a shirt of rich red and blue silk, made for a young princess of fourteen, and was crying mechanically:
`Isn't it wonderful -- who would dare to put those two strong colours together --'
Then Hermione's maid entered silently and Ursula, overcome with dread, escaped, carried away by powerful impulse.
Birkin went straight to bed. He was feeling happy, and sleepy. Since he had danced he was happy. But Gerald would talk to him. Gerald, in evening dress, sat on Birkin's bed when the other lay down, and must talk.
`Who are those two Brangwens?' Gerald asked.
`They live in Beldover.'
`In Beldover! Who are they then?'
`Teachers in the Grammar School.'
There was a pause.
`They are!' exclaimed Gerald at length. `I thought I had seen them before.'
`It disappoints you?' said Birkin.
`Disappoints me! No -- but how is it Hermione has them here?'
`She knew Gudrun in London -- that's the younger one, the one with the darker hair -- she's an artist -- does sculpture and modelling.'
`She's not a teacher in the Grammar School, then -- only the other?'
`Both -- Gudrun art mistress, Ursula a class mistress.'
`And what's the father?'
`Handicraft instructor in the schools.'
`Really!'
`Class-barriers are 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 Breadalby really was, what an intolerable confinement, the peace! Yet it was better than the sordid scrambling conflict of the present. If only one might create the future after one's own heart -- for a little pure truth, a little unflinching application of simple truth to life, the heart cried out ceaselessly.
`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 Hermione.
The first to run across the lawn was the little Italian, small and like a cat, her white legs twinkling as she went, ducking slightly her head, that was tied in a gold silk kerchief. She tripped through the gate and down the grass, and stood, like a tiny figure of ivory and bronze, at the water's edge, having dropped off her towelling, watching the swans, which came up in surprise. Then out ran Miss Bradley, like a large, soft plum in her dark-blue suit. Then Gerald came, a scarlet silk kerchief round his loins, his towels over his arms. He seemed to flaunt himself a little in the sun, lingering and laughing, strolling easily, looking white but natural in his nakedness. Then came Sir Joshua, in an overcoat, and lastly Hermione, striding with stiff grace from out of a great mantle of purple silk, her head tied up in purple and gold. Handsome was her stiff, long body, her straight-stepping white legs, there was a static magnificence about her as she let the cloak float loosely away from her striding. She crossed the lawn like some strange memory, and passed slowly and statelily towards the water.
There were three ponds, in terraces descending the valley, large and smooth and beautiful, lying in the sun. The water ran over a little stone wall, over small rocks, splashing down from one pond to the level below. The swans had gone out on to the opposite bank, the reeds smelled sweet, a faint breeze touched the skin.
Gerald had dived in, after Sir Joshua, and had swum to the end of the pond. There he climbed out and sat on the wall. There was a dive, and the little Countess was swimming like a rat, to join him. They both sat in the sun, laughing and crossing their arms on their breasts. Sir Joshua swam up to them, and stood near them, up to his arm-pits in the water. Then Hermione and Miss Bradley swam over, and they sat in a row on the embankment.
`Aren't they terrifying? Aren't they really terrifying?' said Gudrun. `Don't they look saurian? They are just like great lizards. Did you ever see anything like Sir Joshua? But really, Ursula, he belongs to the primeval world, when great lizards crawled about.'
Gudrun looked in dismay on Sir Joshua, who stood up to the breast in the water, his long, greyish hair washed down into his eyes, his neck set into thick, crude shoulders. He was talking to Miss Bradley, who, seated on the bank above, plump and big and wet, looked as if she might roll and slither in the water almost like one of the slithering sealions in the Zoo.
Ursula watched in silence. Gerald was laughing happily, between Hermione and the Italian. He reminded her of Dionysos, because his hair was really yellow, his figure so full and laughing. Hermione, in her large, stiff, sinister grace, leaned near him, frightening, as if she were not responsible for what she might do. He knew a certain danger in her, a convulsive madness. But he only laughed the more, turning often to the little Countess, who was flashing up her face at him.
They all dropped into the water, and were swimming together like a shoal of seals. Hermione was powerful and unconscious in the water, large and slow and powerful. Palestra was quick and silent as a water rat, Gerald wavered and flickered, a white natural shadow. Then, one after the other, they waded out, and went up to the house.
But Gerald lingered a moment to speak to Gudrun.
`You don't like the water?' he said.
She looked at him with a long, slow inscrutable look, as he stood before her negligently, the water standing in beads all over his skin.
`I like it very much,' she replied.
He paused, expecting some sort of explanation.
`And you swim?'
`Yes, I swim.'
Still he would not ask her why she would not go in then. He could feel something ironic in her. He walked away, piqued for the first time.
`Why wouldn't you bathe?' he asked her again, later, when he was once more the properly-dressed young Englishman.
She hesitated a moment before answering, opposing his persistence.
`Because I didn't like the crowd,' she replied.
He laughed, her phrase seemed to re-echo in his consciousness. The flavour of her slang was piquant to him. Whether he would or not, she signified the real world to him. He wanted to come up to her standards, fulfil her expectations. He knew that her criterion was the only one that mattered. The others were all outsiders, instinctively, whatever they might be socially. And Gerald could not help it, he was bound to strive to come up to her criterion, fulfil her idea of a man and a human-being.
After lunch, when all the others had withdrawn, Hermione and Gerald and Birkin lingered, finishing their talk. There had been some discussion, on the whole quite intellectual and artificial, about a new state, a new world of man. Supposing this old social state were broken and destroyed, then, out of the chaos, what then?
The great social idea, said Sir Joshua, was the social equality of man. No, said Gerald, the idea was, that every man was fit for his own little bit of a task -- let him do that, and then please himself. The unifying principle was the work in hand. Only work, the business of production, held men together. It was mechanical, but then society was a mechanism. Apart from work they were isolated, free to do as they liked.
`Oh!' cried Gudrun. `Then we shan't have names any more -- we shall be like the Germans, nothing but Herr Obermeister and Herr Untermeister. I can imagine it -- "I am Mrs Colliery-Manager Crich -- I am Mrs Member-of-Parliament Roddice. I am Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen." Very pretty that.'
`Things would work very much better, Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen,' said Gerald.
`What things, Mr Colliery-Manager Crich? The relation between you and me, par exemple?'
`Yes, for example,' cried the Italian. `That which is between men and women --!'
`That is non-social,' said Birkin, sarcastically.
`Exactly,' said Gerald. `Between me and a woman, the social question does not enter. It is my own affair.'
`A ten-pound note on it,' said Birkin.
`You don't admit that a woman is a social being?' asked Ursula of Gerald.
`She is both,' said Gerald. `She is a social being, as far as society is concerned. But for her own private self, she is a free agent, it is her own affair, what she does.'
`But won't it be rather difficult to arrange the two halves?' asked Ursula.
`Oh no,' replied Gerald. `They arrange themselves naturally -- we see it now, everywhere.'
`Don't you laugh so pleasantly till you're out of the wood,' said Birkin.
Gerald knitted his brows in momentary irritation.
`Was I laughing?' he said.
`If,' said Hermione at last, `we could only realise, that in the spirit we are all one, all equal in the spirit, all brothers there -- the rest wouldn't matter, there would be no more of this carping and envy and this struggle for power, which destroys, only destroys.'
This speech was received in silence, and almost immediately the party rose from the table. But when the others had gone, Birkin turned round in bitter declamation, saying:
`It is just the opposite, just the contrary, Hermione. We are all different and unequal in spirit -- it is only the social differences that are based on accidental material conditions. We are all abstractly or mathematically equal, if you like. Every man has hunger and thirst, two eyes, one nose and two legs. We're all the same in point of number. But spiritually, there is pure difference and neither equality nor inequality counts. It is upon these two bits of knowledge that you must found a state. Your democracy is an absolute lie -- your brotherhood of man is a pure falsity, if you apply it further than the mathematical abstraction. We all drank milk first, we all eat bread and meat, we all want to ride in motor-cars -- therein lies the beginning and the end of the brotherhood of man. But no equality.
`But I, myself, who am myself, what have I to do with equality with any other man or woman? In the spirit, I am as separate as one star is from another, as different in quality and quantity. Establish a state on that. One man isn't any better than another, not because they are equal, but because they are intrinsically other, that there is no term of comparison. The minute you begin to compare, one man is seen to be far better than another, all the inequality you can imagine is there by nature. I want every man to have his share in the world's goods, so that I am rid of his importunity, so that I can tell him: "Now you've got what you want -- you've got your fair share of the world's gear. Now, you one-mouthed fool, mind yourself and don't obstruct me.'
Hermione was looking at him with leering eyes, along her cheeks. He could feel violent waves of hatred and loathing of all he said, coming out of her. It was dynamic hatred and loathing, coming strong and black out of the unconsciousness. She heard his words in her unconscious self, consciously she was as if deafened, she paid no heed to them.
`It sounds like megalomania, Rupert,' said Gerald, genially.
Hermione gave a queer, grunting sound. Birkin stood back.
`Yes, let it,' he said suddenly, the whole tone gone out of his voice, that had been so insistent, bearing everybody down. And he went away.
But he felt, later, a little compunction. He had been violent, cruel with poor Hermione. He wanted to recompense her, to make it up. He had hurt her, he had been vindictive. He wanted to be on good terms with her again.
He went into her boudoir, a remote and very cushiony place. She was sitting at her table writing letters. She lifted her face abstractedly when he entered, watched him go to the sofa, and sit down. Then she looked down at her paper again.
He took up a large volume which he had been reading before, and became minutely attentive to his author. His back was towards Hermione. She could not go on with her writing. Her whole mind was a chaos, darkness breaking in upon it, and herself struggling to gain control with her will, as a swimmer struggles with the swirling water. But in spite of her efforts she was borne down, darkness seemed to break over her, she felt as if her heart was bursting. The terrible tension grew stronger and stronger, it was most fearful agony, like being walled up.
And then she realised that his presence was the wall, his presence was destroying her. Unless she could break out, she must die most fearfully, walled up in horror. And he was the wall. She must break down the wall -- she must break him down before her, the awful obstruction of him who obstructed her life to the last. It must be done, or she must perish most horribly.
Terribly shocks ran over her body, like shocks of electricity, as if many volts of electricity suddenly struck her down. She was aware of him sitting silently there, an unthinkable evil obstruction. Only this blotted out her mind, pressed out her very breathing, his silent, stooping back, the back of his head.
A terrible voluptuous thrill ran down her arms -- she was going to know her voluptuous consummation. Her arms quivered and were strong, immeasurably and irresistibly strong. What delight, what delight in strength, what delirium of pleasure! She was going to have her consummation of voluptuous ecstasy at last. It was coming! In utmost terror and agony, she knew it was upon her now, in extremity of bliss. Her hand closed on a blue, beautiful ball of lapis lazuli that stood on her desk for a paper-weight. She rolled it round in her hand as she rose silently. Her heart was a pure flame in her breast, she was purely unconscious in ecstasy. She moved towards him and stood behind him for a moment in ecstasy. He, closed within the spell, remained motionless and unconscious.
Then swiftly, in a flame that drenched down her body like fluid lightning and gave her a perfect, unutterable consummation, unutterable satisfaction, she brought down the ball of jewel stone with all her force, crash on his head. But her fingers were in the way and deadened the blow. Nevertheless, down went his head on the table on which his book lay, the stone slid aside and over his ear, it was one convulsion of pure bliss for her, lit up by the crushed pain of her fingers. But it was not somehow complete. She lifted her arm high to aim once more, straight down on the head that lay dazed on the table. She must smash it, it must be smashed before her ecstasy was consummated, fulfilled for ever. A thousand lives, a thousand deaths mattered nothing now, only the fulfilment of this perfect ecstasy.
She was not swift, she could only move slowly. A strong spirit in him woke him and made him lift his face and twist to look at her. Her arm was raised, the hand clasping the ball of lapis lazuli. It was her left hand, he realised again with horror that she was left-handed. Hurriedly, with a burrowing motion, he covered his head under the thick volume of Thucydides, and the blow came down, almost breaking his neck, and shattering his heart.
He was shattered, but he was not afraid. Twisting round to face her he pushed the table over and got away from her. He was like a flask that is smashed to atoms, he seemed to himself that he was all fragments, smashed to bits. Yet his movements were perfectly coherent and clear, his soul was entire and unsurprised.
`No you don't, Hermione,' he said in a low voice. `I don't let you.'
He saw her standing tall and livid and attentive, the stone clenched tense in her hand.
`Stand away and let me go,' he said, drawing near to her.
As if pressed back by some hand, she stood away, watching him all the time without changing, like a neutralised angel confronting him.
`It is not good,' he said, when he had gone past her. `It isn't I who will die. You hear?'
He kept his face to her as he went out, lest she should strike again. While he was on his guard, she dared not move. And he was on his guard, she was powerless. So he had gone, and left her standing.
She remained perfectly rigid, standing as she was for a long time. Then she staggered to the couch and lay down, and went heavily to sleep. When she awoke, she remembered what she had done, but it seemed to her, she had only hit him, as any woman might do, because he tortured her. She was perfectly right. She knew that, spiritually, she was right. In her own infallible purity, she had done what must be done. She was right, she was pure. A drugged, almost sinister religious expression became permanent on her face.
Birkin, barely conscious, and yet perfectly direct in his motion, went out of the house and straight across the park, to the open country, to the hills. The brilliant day had become overcast, spots of rain were falling. He wandered on to a wild valley-side, where were thickets of hazel, many flowers, tufts of heather, and little clumps of young firtrees, budding with soft paws. It was rather wet everywhere, there was a stream running down at the bottom of the valley, which was gloomy, or seemed gloomy. He was aware that he could not regain his consciousness, that he was moving in a sort of darkness.
Yet he wanted something. He was happy in the wet hillside, that was overgrown and obscure with bushes and flowers. He wanted to touch them all, to saturate himself with the touch of them all. He took off his clothes, and sat down naked among the primroses, moving his feet softly among the primroses, his legs, his knees, his arms right up to the arm-pits, lying down and letting them touch his belly, his breasts. It was such a fine, cool, subtle touch all over him, he seemed to saturate himself with their contact.
But they were too soft. He went through the long grass to a clump of young fir-trees, that were no higher than a man. The soft sharp boughs beat upon him, as he moved in keen pangs against them, threw little cold showers of drops on his belly, and beat his loins with their clusters of soft-sharp needles. There was a thistle which pricked him vividly, but not too much, because all his movements were too discriminate and soft. To lie down and roll in the sticky, cool young hyacinths, to lie on one's belly and cover one's back with handfuls of fine wet grass, soft as a breath, soft and more delicate and more beautiful than the touch of any woman; and then to sting one's thigh against the living dark bristles of the fir-boughs; and then to feel the light whip of the hazel on one's shoulders, stinging, and then to clasp the silvery birch-trunk against one's breast, its smoothness, its hardness, its vital knots and ridges -- this was good, this was all very good, very satisfying. Nothing else would do, nothing else would satisfy, except this coolness and subtlety of vegetation travelling into one's blood. How fortunate he was, that there was this lovely, subtle, responsive vegetation, waiting for him, as he waited for it; how fulfilled he was, how happy!
As he dried himself a little with his handkerchief, he thought about Hermione and the blow. He could feel a pain on the side of his head. But after all, what did it matter? What did Hermione matter, what did people matter altogether? There was this perfect cool loneliness, so lovely and fresh and unexplored. Really, what a mistake he had made, thinking he wanted people, thinking he wanted a woman. He did not want a woman -- not in the least. The leaves and the primroses and the trees, they were really lovely and cool and desirable, they really came into the blood and were added on to him. He was enrichened now immeasurably, and so glad.
It was quite right of Hermione to want to kill him. What had he to do with her? Why should he pretend to have anything to do with human beings at all? Here was his world, he wanted nobody and nothing but the lovely, subtle, responsive vegetation, and himself, his own living self.
It was necessary to go back into the world. That was true. But that did not matter, so one knew where one belonged. He knew now where he belonged. This was his place, his marriage place. The world was extraneous.
He climbed out of the valley, wondering if he were mad. But if so, he preferred his own madness, to the regular sanity. He rejoiced in his own madness, he was free. He did not want that old sanity of the world, which was become so repulsive. He rejoiced in the new-found world of his madness. It was so fresh and delicate and so satisfying.
As for the certain grief he felt at the same time, in his soul, that was only the remains of an old ethic, that bade a human being adhere to humanity. But he was weary of the old ethic, of the human being, and of humanity. He loved now the soft, delicate vegetation, that was so cool and perfect. He would overlook the old grief, he would put away the old ethic, he would be free in his new state.
He was aware of the pain in his head becoming more and more difficult every minute. He was walking now along the road to the nearest station. It was raining and he had no hat. But then plenty of cranks went out nowadays without hats, in the rain.
He wondered again how much of his heaviness of heart, a certain depression, was due to fear, fear lest anybody should have seen him naked lying against the vegetation. What a dread he had of mankind, of other people! It amounted almost to horror, to a sort of dream terror -- his horror of being observed by some other people. If he were on an island, like Alexander Selkirk, with only the creatures and the trees, he would be free and glad, there would be none of this heaviness, this misgiving. He could love the vegetation and be quite happy and unquestioned, by himself.
He had better send a note to Hermione: she might trouble about him, and he did not want the onus of this. So at the station, he wrote saying:
I will go on to town -- I don't want to come back to Breadalby for the present. But it is quite all right -- I don't want you to mind having biffed me, in the least. Tell the others it is just one of my moods. You were quite right, to biff me -- because I know you wanted to. So there's the end of it.
In the train, however, he felt ill. Every motion was insufferable pain, and he was sick. He dragged himself from the station into a cab, feeling his way step by step, like a blind man, and held up only by a dim will.
For a week or two he was ill, but he did not let Hermione know, and she thought he was sulking; there was a complete estrangement between them. She became rapt, abstracted in her conviction of exclusive righteousness. She lived in and by her own self-esteem, conviction of her own rightness of spirit.

布莱德比是一座乔治时期的建筑,柱子是格林斯式的。它坐落在德比郡那更为柔和、翠绿的山谷中,离克罗姆福德不远。它正面俯视着一块草坪、一些树木和幽静猎园中的几座鱼池。屋后林木丛中有马厩、厨房和菜园,再往后是一片森林。
这个静谧的地方离公路有好几英里远,离德汶特峡谷和风景区也有一程路。宁静、远离尘嚣,林木掩映着房屋,只露出金色的屋顶,房子的正面俯视着下方的猎园。
最近一些日子里,赫麦妮一直住在这座房子里。她避开了伦敦、牛津,遁入了宁馨的乡村。她父亲常在国外,她要么同一些来访者一起在家中度日,要么就同哥哥在一起,他是个单身汉,是议会中自由党的议员,议会休会时,他就到乡下来,所以他几乎总住在布莱德比,其实他最忠于职守了。
厄秀拉和戈珍第一次造访赫麦妮时正是初夏时节。她们的汽车进入猎园后,她们在车里凭窗遥望静静的渔塘和房屋,但见阳光照耀下掩映在山顶丛林中的布莱德比娇小得很,好一幅旧式英国学校的风景画。绿色草坪上闪动看一些小小的身影,那是女人们身着淡紫色和黄色的衣服朝庞大优美的雪松树影下走去。
“真完美!”戈珍说,“这是一幅完整的凹版画!”她的话音中透着反感,似乎她是被抓来的,似乎她必须违心地说赞美的话。
“喜欢这儿吗?”厄秀拉问。
“我并不喜欢它,但是我认为它是一幅完整的凹版画。”
汽车一鼓作气驶下一面坡又上了另一个坡,然后盘旋驶向侧门。伺候前厅的女佣先出来,然后赫麦妮高扬着苍白的脸走了出来,她向来访者伸出双手慢条斯理地说:
“啊,来啦,见到你们我真是太高兴了,”她吻了戈珍——“很高兴见到你”——然后又吻了厄秀拉,接着她说:“累
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

゛臉紅紅....

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等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
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。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 9 Coal-dust


GOING HOME from school in the afternoon, the Brangwen girls descended the hill between the picturesque cottages of Willey Green till they came to the railway crossing. There they found the gate shut, because the colliery train was rumbling nearer. They could hear the small locomotive panting hoarsely as it advanced with caution between the embankments. The one-legged man in the little signal-hut by the road stared out from his security, like a crab from a snail-shell.
Whilst the two girls waited, Gerald Crich trotted up on a red Arab mare. He rode well and softly, pleased with the delicate quivering of the creature between his knees. And he was very picturesque, at least in Gudrun's eyes, sitting soft and close on the slender red mare, whose long tail flowed on the air. He saluted the two girls, and drew up at the crossing to wait for the gate, looking down the railway for the approaching train. In spite of her ironic smile at his picturesqueness, Gudrun liked to look at him. He was well-set and easy, his face with its warm tan showed up his whitish, coarse moustache, and his blue eyes were full of sharp light as he watched the distance.
The locomotive chuffed slowly between the banks, hidden. The mare did not like it. She began to wince away, as if hurt by the unknown noise. But Gerald pulled her back and held her head to the gate. The sharp blasts of the chuffing engine broke with more and more force on her. The repeated sharp blows of unknown, terrifying noise struck through her till she was rocking with terror. She recoiled like a spring let go. But a glistening, half-smiling look came into Gerald's face. He brought her back again, inevitably.
The noise was released, the little locomotive with her clanking steel connectingrod emerged on the highroad, clanking sharply. The mare rebounded like a drop of water from hot iron. Ursula and Gudrun pressed back into the hedge, in fear. But Gerald was heavy on the mare, and forced her back. It seemed as if he sank into her magnetically, and could thrust her back against herself.
`The fool!' cried Ursula loudly. `Why doesn't he ride away till it's gone by?'
Gudrun was looking at him with black-dilated, spellbound eyes. But he sat glistening and obstinate, forcing the wheeling mare, which spun and swerved like a wind, and yet could not get out of the grasp of his will, nor escape from the mad clamour of terror that resounded through her, as the trucks thumped slowly, heavily, horrifying, one after the other, one pursuing the other, over the rails of the crossing.
The locomotive, as if wanting to see what could be done, put on the brakes, and back came the trucks rebounding on the iron buffers, striking like horrible cymbals, clashing nearer and nearer in frightful strident concussions. The mare opened her mouth and rose slowly, as if lifted up on a wind of terror. Then suddenly her fore feet struck out, as she convulsed herself utterly away from the horror. Back she went, and the two girls clung to each other, feeling she must fall backwards on top of him. But he leaned forward, his face shining with fixed amusement, and at last he brought her down, sank her down, and was bearing her back to the mark. But as strong as the pressure of his compulsion was the repulsion of her utter terror, throwing her back away from the railway, so that she spun round and round, on two legs, as if she were in the centre of some whirlwind. It made Gudrun faint with poignant dizziness, which seemed to penetrate to her heart.
`No -- ! No -- ! Let her go! Let her go, you fool, you fool -- !' cried Ursula at the top of her voice, completely outside herself. And Gudrun hated her bitterly for being outside herself. It was unendurable that Ursula's voice was so powerful and naked.
A sharpened look came on Gerald's face. He bit himself down on the mare like a keen edge biting home, and forced her round. She roared as she breathed, her nostrils were two wide, hot holes, her mouth was apart, her eyes frenzied. It was a repulsive sight. But he held on her unrelaxed, with an almost mechanical relentlessness, keen as a sword pressing in to her. Both man and horse were sweating with violence. Yet he seemed calm as a ray of cold sunshine.
Meanwhile the eternal trucks were rumbling on, very slowly, treading one after the other, one after the other, like a disgusting dream that has no end. The connecting chains were grinding and squeaking as the tension varied, the mare pawed and struck away mechanically now, her terror fulfilled in her, for now the man encompassed her; her paws were blind and pathetic as she beat the air, the man closed round her, and brought her down, almost as if she were part of his own physique.
`And she's bleeding! She's bleeding!' cried Ursula, frantic with opposition and hatred of Gerald. She alone understood him perfectly, in pure opposition.
Gudrun looked and saw the trickles of blood on the sides of the mare, and she turned white. And then on the very wound the bright spurs came down, pressing relentlessly. The world reeled and passed into nothingness for Gudrun, she could not know any more.
When she recovered, her soul was calm and cold, without feeling. The trucks were still rumbling by, and the man and the mare were still fighting. But she herself was cold and separate, she had no more feeling for them. She was quite hard and cold and indifferent.
They could see the top of the hooded guard's-van approaching, the sound of the trucks was diminishing, there was hope of relief from the intolerable noise. The heavy panting of the half-stunned mare sounded automatically, the man seemed to be relaxing confidently, his will bright and unstained. The guard's-van came up, and passed slowly, the guard staring out in his transition on the spectacle in the road. And, through the man in the closed wagon, Gudrun could see the whole scene spectacularly, isolated and momentary, like a vision isolated in eternity.
Lovely, grateful silence seemed to trail behind the receding train. How sweet the silence is! Ursula looked with hatred on the buffers of the diminishing wagon. The gatekeeper stood ready at the door of his hut, to proceed to open the gate. But Gudrun sprang suddenly forward, in front of the struggling horse, threw off the latch and flung the gates asunder, throwing one-half to the keeper, and running with the other half, forwards. Gerald suddenly let go the horse and leaped forwards, almost on to Gudrun. She was not afraid. As he jerked aside the mare's head, Gudrun cried, in a strange, high voice, like a gull, or like a witch screaming out from the side of the road:
`I should think you're proud.'
The words were distinct and formed. The man, twisting aside on his dancing horse, looked at her in some surprise, some wondering interest. Then the mare's hoofs had danced three times on the drum-like sleepers of the crossing, and man and horse were bounding springily, unequally up the road.
The two girls watched them go. The gate-keeper hobbled thudding over the logs of the crossing, with his wooden leg. He had fastened the gate. Then he also turned, and called to the girls:
`A masterful young jockey, that; 'll have his own road, if ever anybody would.'
`Yes,' cried Ursula, in her hot, overbearing voice. `Why couldn't he take the horse away, till the trucks had gone by? He's a fool, and a bully. Does he think it's manly, to torture a horse? It's a living thing, why should he bully it and torture it?'
There was a pause, then the gate-keeper shook his head, and replied:
`Yes, it's as nice a little mare as you could set eyes on -- beautiful little thing, beautiful. Now you couldn't see his father treat any animal like that -- not you. They're as different as they welly can be, Gerald Crich and his father -- two different men, different made.'
Then there was a pause.
`But why does he do it?' cried Ursula, `why does he? Does he think he's grand, when he's bullied a sensitive creature, ten times as sensitive as himself?'
Again there was a cautious pause. Then again the man shook his head, as if he would say nothing, but would think the more.
`I expect he's got to train the mare to stand to anything,' he replied. `A pure-bred Harab -- not the sort of breed as is used to round here -- different sort from our sort altogether. They say as he got her from Constantinople.'
`He would!' said Ursula. `He'd better have left her to the Turks, I'm sure they would have had more decency towards her.'
The man went in to drink his can of tea, the girls went on down the lane, that was deep in soft black dust. Gudrun was as if numbed in her mind by the sense of indomitable soft weight of the man, bearing down into the living body of the horse: the strong, indomitable thighs of the blond man clenching the palpitating body of the mare into pure control; a sort of soft white magnetic domination from the loins and thighs and calves, enclosing and encompassing the mare heavily into unutterable subordination, soft blood-subordination, terrible.
On the left, as the girls walked silently, the coal-mine lifted its great mounds and its patterned head-stocks, the black railway with the trucks at rest looked like a harbour just below, a large bay of railroad with anchored wagons.
Near the second level-crossing, that went over many bright rails, was a farm belonging to the collieries, and a great round globe of iron, a disused boiler, huge and rusty and perfectly round, stood silently in a paddock by the road. The hens were pecking round it, some chickens were balanced on the drinking trough, wagtails flew away in among trucks, from the water.
On the other side of the wide crossing, by the road-side, was a heap of pale-grey stones for mending the roads, and a cart standing, and a middle-aged man with whiskers round his face was leaning on his shovel, talking to a young man in gaiters, who stood by the horse's head. Both men were facing the crossing.
They saw the two girls appear, small, brilliant figures in the near distance, in the strong light of the late afternoon. Both wore light, gay summer dresses, Ursula had an orange-coloured knitted coat, Gudrun a pale yellow, Ursula wore canary yellow stockings, Gudrun bright rose, the figures of the two women seemed to glitter in progress over the wide bay of the railway crossing, white and orange and yellow and rose glittering in motion across a hot world silted with coal-dust.
The two men stood quite still in the heat, watching. The elder was a short, hardfaced energetic man of middle age, the younger a labourer of twenty-three or so. They stood in silence watching the advance of the sisters. They watched whilst the girls drew near, and whilst they passed, and whilst they receded down the dusty road, that had dwellings on one side, and dusty young corn on the other.
Then the elder man, with the whiskers round his face, said in a prurient manner to the young man:
`What price that, eh? She'll do, won't she?'
`Which?' asked the young man, eagerly, with laugh.
`Her with the red stockings. What d'you say? I'd give my week's wages for five minutes; what! -- just for five minutes.'
Again the young man laughed.
`Your missis 'ud have summat to say to you,' he replied.
Gudrun had turned round and looked at the two men. They were to her sinister creatures, standing watching after her, by the heap of pale grey slag. She loathed the man with whiskers round his face.
`You're first class, you are,' the man said to her, and to the distance.
`Do you think it would be worth a week's wages?' said the younger man, musing.
`Do I? I'd put 'em bloody-well down this second --'
The younger man looked after Gudrun and Ursula objectively, as if he wished to calculate what there might be, that was worth his week's wages. He shook his head with fatal misgiving.
`No,' he said. `It's not worth that to me.'
`Isn't?' said the old man. `By God, if it isn't to me!'
And he went on shovelling his stones.
The girls descended between the houses with slate roofs and blackish brick walls. The heavy gold glamour of approaching sunset lay over all the colliery district, and the ugliness overlaid with beauty was like a narcotic to the senses. On the roads silted with black dust, the rich light fell more warmly, more heavily, over all the amorphous squalor a kind of magic was cast, from the glowing close of day.
`It has a foul kind of beauty, this place,' said Gudrun, evidently suffering from fascination. `Can't you feel in some way, a thick, hot attraction in it? I can. And it quite stupifies me.'
They were passing between blocks of miners' dwellings. In the back yards of several dwellings, a miner could be seen washing himself in the open on this hot evening, naked down to the loins, his great trousers of moleskin slipping almost away. Miners already cleaned were sitting on their heels, with their backs near the walls, talking and silent in pure physical well-being, tired, and taking physical rest. Their voices sounded out with strong intonation, and the broad dialect was curiously caressing to the blood. It seemed to envelop Gudrun in a labourer's caress, there was in the whole atmosphere a resonance of physical men, a glamorous thickness of labour and maleness, surcharged in the air. But it was universal in the district, and therefore unnoticed by the inhabitants.
To Gudrun, however, it was potent and half-repulsive. She could never tell why Beldover was so utterly different from London and the south, why one's whole feelings were different, why one seemed to live in another sphere. Now she realised that this was the world of powerful, underworld men who spent most of their time in the darkness. In their voices she could hear the voluptuous resonance of darkness, the strong, dangerous underworld, mindless, inhuman. They sounded also like strange machines, heavy, oiled. The voluptuousness was like that of machinery, cold and iron.
It was the same every evening when she came home, she seemed to move through a wave of disruptive force, that was given off from the presence of thousands of vigorous, underworld, half-automatised colliers, and which went to the brain and the heart, awaking a fatal desire, and a fatal callousness.
There came over her a nostalgia for the place. She hated it, she knew how utterly cut off it was, how hideous and how sickeningly mindless. Sometimes she beat her wings like a new Daphne, turning not into a tree but a machine. And yet, she was overcome by the nostalgia. She struggled to get more and more into accord with the atmosphere of the place, she craved to get her satisfaction of it.
She felt herself drawn out at evening into the main street of the town, that was uncreated and ugly, and yet surcharged with this same potent atmosphere of intense, dark callousness. There were always miners about. They moved with their strange, distorted dignity, a certain beauty, and unnatural stillness in their bearing, a look of abstraction and half resignation in their pale, often gaunt faces. They belonged to another world, they had a strange glamour, their voices were full of an intolerable deep resonance, like a machine's burring, a music more maddening than the siren's long ago.
She found herself, with the rest of the common women, drawn out on Friday evenings to the little market. Friday was pay-day for the colliers, and Friday night was market night. Every woman was abroad, every man was out, shopping with his wife, or gathering with his pals. The pavements were dark for miles around with people coming in, the little market-place on the crown of the hill, and the main street of Beldover were black with thickly-crowded men and women.
It was dark, the market-place was hot with kerosene flares, which threw a ruddy light on the grave faces of the purchasing wives, and on the pale abstract faces of the men. The air was full of the sound of criers and of people talking, thick streams of people moved on the pavements towards the solid crowd of the market. The shops were blazing and packed with women, in the streets were men, mostly men, miners of all ages. Money was spent with almost lavish freedom.
The carts that came could not pass through. They had to wait, the driver calling and shouting, till the dense crowd would make way. Everywhere, young fellows from the outlying districts were making conversation with the girls, standing in the road and at the corners. The doors of the public-houses were open and full of light, men passed in and out in a continual stream, everywhere men were calling out to one another, or crossing to meet one another, or standing in little gangs and circles, discussing, endlessly discussing. The sense of talk, buzzing, jarring, half-secret, the endless mining and political wrangling, vibrated in the air like discordant machinery. And it was their voices which affected Gudrun almost to swooning. They aroused a strange, nostalgic ache of desire, something almost demoniacal, never to be fulfilled.
Like any other common girl of the district, Gudrun strolled up and down, up and down the length of the brilliant two-hundred paces of the pavement nearest the market-place. She knew it was a vulgar thing to do; her father and mother could not bear it; but the nostalgia came over her, she must be among the people. Sometimes she sat among the louts in the cinema: rakish-looking, unattractive louts they were. Yet she must be among them.
And, like any other common lass, she found her `boy.' It was an electrician, one of the electricians introduced according to Gerald's new scheme. He was an earnest, clever man, a scientist with a passion for sociology. He lived alone in a cottage, in lodgings, in Willey Green. He was a gentleman, and sufficiently well-to-do. His landlady spread the reports about him; he would have a large wooden tub in his bedroom, and every time he came in from work, he would have pails and pails of water brought up, to bathe in, then he put on clean shirt and under-clothing every day, and clean silk socks; fastidious and exacting he was in these respects, but in every other way, most ordinary and unassuming.
Gudrun knew all these things. The Brangwen's house was one to which the gossip came naturally and inevitably. Palmer was in the first place a friend of Ursula's. But in his pale, elegant, serious face there showed the same nostalgia that Gudrun felt. He too must walk up and down the street on Friday evening. So he walked with Gudrun, and a friendship was struck up between them. But he was not in love with Gudrun; he really wanted Ursula, but for some strange reason, nothing could happen between her and him. He liked to have Gudrun about, as a fellow-mind -but that was all. And she had no real feeling for him. He was a scientist, he had to have a woman to back him. But he was really impersonal, he had the fineness of an elegant piece of machinery. He was too cold, too destructive to care really for women, too great an egoist. He was polarised by the men. Individually he detested and despised them. In the mass they fascinated him, as machinery fascinated him. They were a new sort of machinery to him -- but incalculable, incalculable.
So Gudrun strolled the streets with Palmer, or went to the cinema with him. And his long, pale, rather elegant face flickered as he made his sarcastic remarks. There they were, the two of them: two elegants in one sense: in the other sense, two units, absolutely adhering to the people, teeming with the distorted colliers. The same secret seemed to be working in the souls of all alike, Gudrun, Palmer, the rakish young bloods, the gaunt, middle-aged men. All had a secret sense of power, and of inexpressible destructiveness, and of fatal half-heartedness, a sort of rottenness in the will.
Sometimes Gudrun would start aside, see it all, see how she was sinking in. And then she was filled with a fury of contempt and anger. She felt she was sinking into one mass with the rest -- all so close and intermingled and breathless. It was horrible. She stifled. She prepared for flight, feverishly she flew to her work. But soon she let go. She started off into the country -- the darkish, glamorous country. The spell was beginning to work again.
 
下午放学以后,布朗温家两姐妹从威利·格林那风景如画的山村走下来,来到铁道叉路口。栅门关上了,矿车轰轰作响地驶近了。机车喘着粗气在路基上缓缓前行。路边讯号室里那位一条腿的工人象一只螃蟹从壳中伸出头来向外探视着。
她们等在路口时,杰拉德·克里奇骑着一匹阿拉伯种的母马奔来了。他骑术很好,轻巧地驾驶着马,马在他的双腿间微微震颤着,令他感到心满意足。在戈珍眼中,杰拉德那副姿态着实有点诗情画意:他驾轻就熟地骑在马上,那匹苗条的红马,尾巴在空中甩着。他跟两个姑娘打了个招呼,就驱马来到栅门口,俯首看着铁路。戈珍刚才调侃地看着他那副英姿,现在转而看他本人了。他身材很好,举止潇洒,他的脸晒成了棕褐色,但唇上的粗胡髭却泛着点灰色,他凝视着远方的时候,那双蓝眼睛闪着锐利的光芒。
火车喷着汽“哧哧”地驶了过来,马不喜欢它,开始向后退却,似乎被那陌生的声音伤害了似的。杰拉德把它拉回来,让它头冲着栅门站着。机车“哧哧”的声音愈来愈重、令它难耐,那没完没了的重复声既陌生又可怕,母马吓得浑身抖了起来,象松了的弹簧一样向后退着。杰拉德脸上掠过一丝微笑,眼睛闪闪发亮。他终于又把马赶了回来。
喷汽声减弱了,小机车咣咣当当地出现在路基上,撞击声很刺耳。母马象碰到热烙铁一样跳开去。厄秀拉和戈珍恐慌地躲进路边的篱笆后。可杰拉德仍沉稳地骑在马上,又把马牵了回来。似乎他被母马磁铁般地吸住了,要把马背坐塌。
“傻瓜!”戈珍叫道,“他为什么不躲火车呢?”
戈珍瞪大了黑眼睛着迷地看看杰拉德。他目光炯炯地骑在马上,固执地驱赶着马团团转,那马风一般地打着转,可就是无法摆脱他的控制,也无法躲避那可怕的机车轰鸣声。矿车一辆接一辆地从铁道口处驶了过去,缓慢、沉重、可怕。
机车似乎要等待什么,一个急刹闸,各节车厢撞着缓冲器,象铙钹一样发出刺耳吓人的声音,母马张开大嘴,缓缓地前蹄腾起来,似乎是被一阵可怕的风催起来的。突然,它浑身抽动着要逃避可怕的火车,前腿伸开向后退着。两个姑娘紧紧抱在一起,感到这母马非把杰拉德压在身下不可。可是,他向前倾着身子,开心地笑着,最终还是令母马驻足,安静下来,再一次把它驱到栅门前的警戒线上。可是,他那巨大的压力引起了母马巨大的反感和恐怖,只见它后退着离开铁路,两条后腿在原地打着转,似乎它是一股旋风的中心。这幅景象令戈珍几乎昏厥过去,她的心都要被刺痛了。
“不要这样,别这样,松开它!放它走,你这个傻瓜!”厄秀拉扯着嗓门,忘我地大叫着。戈珍对厄秀拉这样忘我很不以为然。厄秀拉的声音那么有力,那么赤裸裸的,真让人难以忍受。
杰拉德神色严峻起来。他用力夹着马腹,就象一把尖刀刺中了马的要害,马又顺从地转了回来。母马喘着粗气咆哮着,鼻孔大张着喷出热气来,咧着大嘴,双目充满恐怖的神情。这幅情景真让人不舒服。可杰拉德就是不放松它,一点都不手软,就象一把剑刺入了它的胸膛。人与马都耗费了巨大的力量,汗流浃背。但他看上去很平静,就象一束冷漠的阳光一样。
可矿车仍然一辆接一辆、一辆接一辆地“隆隆”驶来,慢悠悠的,就象一条无尽的细流一样,令人厌烦。火车车厢的连接处吱吱哑哑地响着,声音忽高忽低,母马惊恐万状,蹄子机械地踢腾着,它受着人的制约,蹄子毫无目标地踢腾。马背上的人将它的身子转过来,把它腾空的蹄子又压回地面,似乎它是他身体的一部分。
“它流血了!它流血了!”厄秀拉冲杰拉德恶狠狠地叫着。
她知道自己是多么恨他。
戈珍看到母马的腹部流着一股血水,吓得她脸都白了。她看到,就在伤口处,亮闪闪的马刺残酷地扎了进去。一时间戈珍感到眼前天旋地转,然后就不省人事了。
她醒来时,心变得又冷又木。矿车仍然“隆隆”前行,人与马仍在搏斗着。但她的心变冷了,人也超脱了,没感觉了。
此时她的心既硬又冷又木。
她们看到带篷子的末尾值班车驶近了,矿车的撞击声减弱了,大家就要从那难以忍受的噪音中解脱出来了。母马重重地喘息着,马背上的人很自信地松了一口气,他的意志毫不动摇。值班在缓缓驶过去了,信号员朝外观看着,看着叉路口上这幅奇景。从那信号员的眼中,戈珍可以感觉出这幅奇景是多么孤单、短暂,就象永恒世界中的一个幻觉一样。
矿车开过去后,四下里变得寂静起来,这是多么可爱、令人感激的寂静啊。多么甜美!厄秀拉仇视地望着远去的矿车。叉路口上的守门人走到他小屋的门前,前来开栅门。可不等门打开,戈珍就突然一步上前拨开插销,打开了两扇门,一扇朝看门人推去,她推开另一扇跑了过去。杰拉德突然信马由缰,策马飞跃向前,几乎直冲戈珍而来,但戈珍并不害怕。当他把马头推向旁边时,戈珍象个女巫一样扯着嗓门在路边冲他奇怪地大叫一声:
“你也太傲慢了。”
她的话很清晰,杰拉德听得真真的。他在跳跃着的马背上侧过身来,有点惊奇、意味深长地看着她。母马的蹄子在枕木上踢打了三遍,然后,骑马人和马一起颠簸着上路了。
两个姑娘看着他骑马走远了。守门人拖着一条木头做的腿在叉路口的枕木上掷地有声地蹒跚着。他把门栓紧,然后转回身对姑娘们说:
“一个骑马能手就要有自己的骑法儿,谁都会这样。”
“是的,”厄秀拉火辣辣,专横地说,“可他为什么不把马牵开等火车过去了再上来呢?他是个蛮横的傻瓜。难道他以为折磨一头动物就算够男子汉味儿了?马也是有灵性的,他凭什么要欺负、折磨一匹马?”
守门人沉默了一会儿,摇摇头说:
“一看就知道那是一匹好马,一头漂亮的马,很漂亮。可你不会发现他父亲也这么对待牲口。杰拉德·克里奇跟他爸爸一点都不一样,简直是两个人,两种人。
大家都不说话了。
“可他为什么要这样呢?”厄秀拉叫道,“他为什么要这么做?当他欺负一头比他敏感十倍的牲口时他难道会觉得自己了不起吗?”
大家又沉默了,守门人摇摇头,似乎他不想说什么而是要多思考。
“我希望他把马训练得能经受住任何打击,”他说,“一匹纯种的阿拉伯马,跟我们这里的马不是一类,全不一个样儿。
据说他是从君士坦丁堡①搞来的这匹马。”
①今名伊斯坦布尔,1923年前的土耳其首都。
“他会这样的!”厄秀拉说,“他最好把马留给土耳其人,他们会待它更高尚些。”
守门人进屋去喝茶了,两位姑娘走上了布满厚厚的黑煤灰的胡同。戈珍被杰拉德横暴地骑在马上的景象惊呆了,头脑变麻了:那位碧眼金发的男子粗壮、强横的大腿紧紧地夹住狂躁的马身,直到完全控制了它为止,他的力量来自腰、大腿和小腿,富有魔力,紧紧夹住马身,左右着它,令它屈服,那是骨子里的柔顺。
两位姑娘默默地走着路,左边是矿井高大的土台和车头,下面的铁路上停放着矿车,看上去就象一座巨大的港湾。
在围着许多明晃晃栅栏的第二个交叉路口附近,是一片属于矿工们的农田,田野的矿石堆中,放着一只废弃的大锅,锅已经生锈了,又大又圆,默默地驻在路边。一群母鸡在围着铁锅啄食,小鸡扒在池边饮水,鹡鸰飞离水池,在矿车中飞窜。
在叉路口另一边,堆着一堆用来修路的灰石头,旁边停着一辆车,一位长着连鬓胡的中年人手拄着铁锹,斜着身子与一位脚蹬高统靴子的年轻人聊着,年轻人身边站着一匹马,马头靠近他,他们两人都面对叉路口看着。
在午后强烈的阳光下,他们看到远处走来两位姑娘,那是两个闪闪发光的身影。两个姑娘都身着轻爽鲜艳的夏装。厄秀拉穿着桔黄色的针织上衣,戈珍的上衣则是浅黄色的。厄秀拉的长袜是鲜黄色的,戈珍的则是玫瑰色儿。两个女子的身影在穿过铁道转弯处时似乎在闪动着光芒,白、桔黄、浅黄和玫瑰红色在布满煤灰的世界里闪闪发光。
这两个男人在阳光下伫立着凝视这边。年长的是一位矮个子中年人,面孔严峻,浑身充满活力,年轻的工人大概二十三岁左右。他们两人静静地站着,望着两个姑娘向前走来。她们走近了、过去了、又在满是煤灰的路上消失了,那条路一边是房屋,一边是麦地。
长着连鬓胡的长者淫荡地对年轻人说:
“那个值多少钱?她行吗?”
“哪个?”年轻人笑着渴望地问。
“那个穿红袜子的。你说呢?我宁可花一个星期的工资跟她过五分钟,天啊,就五分钟。”
年轻人又笑了。
“那你老婆可要跟你好一通理论理论了。”
戈珍转过身看看这两个男人,他们站在灰堆旁目光跟踪着她,真象两个凶恶的怪物。她讨厌那个长连鬓胡的人。
“你是第一流的,真的,”那人冲着远处她的身影说。
“你觉得她值一星期的工资吗?”年轻人打趣说。
“我觉得?我敢打第二遍赌。”
年轻人不偏不倚地看着戈珍和厄秀拉,似乎在算计着什么才值他两个星期的工资。终于他担忧地摇摇头说:
“不值,她可不值我那么多钱。”
“不吗?”他说,“她要不值多么多我就不是人!”
说完他又继续用铁锹挖起石头来。
姑娘们下到矿区街上,街两边的房屋铺着石板瓦顶,墙是用黑砖砌的。浓重的金色夕阳晖映着矿区,丑恶的矿区上涂抹着一层美丽的夕阳,很令人陶醉。洒满黑煤灰的路上阳光显得越发温暖、凝重,给这乌七八糟、肮脏不堪的矿区笼罩上一层神秘色彩。
“这里有一种丑恶的美,”戈珍很显然被这幅景色迷住了,又这为肮脏感到痛苦。“你是否觉得这景色很迷人?它雄浑,火热。我可以感觉出来这一点。这真令我吃惊。”
穿过矿工的住宅区时,她们不时会看到一些矿工在后院的露天地里洗身子。这个晚上很热,矿工们洗澡时都光着上身,肥大的厚毛头工装裤几乎快滑下去了。已经洗好的矿工们背朝着墙蹲着聊天,他们身体都很健壮,劳累了一天,正好歇口气。他们说话声音很粗,浓重的方言着实令人感到说不出的舒服。戈珍似乎受到了劳动者的抚爱,空气中回荡着男人洪亮的声音,飘送来浓郁的男人气息。但这些在这一带是司空见惯的,因此没人去注意它。
可对戈珍来说这气味则太强烈,甚至让她有点反感。她怎么也说不清为何贝多弗同伦敦和南方这样全然不同,为什么人一到这儿感觉就变了样,似乎生活在另一个球体上。现在她明白了,这个世界的男人们很强盛,他们大多时间里都生活在地下黑暗的世界里。她可以听出他们的声音中回荡着黑暗的淫秽、强壮、危险,无所顾及的非人的声音。那声音又极象加了油的机器在奇怪地轰鸣。那淫荡的音调也象机器声,冰冷,残酷。
每天晚上她回家时都遇到同样的景象,让她觉得自己似乎在撕肝裂胆般的浪头中行进,这浪头来自成千名强壮,生活在地下、身不由己的矿工们,这浪头打入了她的心,激起某种毁灭性的欲望和冷漠心情。
她很眷恋此地。她恨它,她知道这里是与世隔绝之地,它丑恶、蠢笨得让人恶心。有时她扑打着双翅,俨然一个新达芙妮①,不过不是飞向月桂树而是扑向一台机器。可她还是被对这里的眷恋之情所攫取。于是她奋力要与这里的气氛保持一致,渴望从中获得满足。
①为躲避阿波罗的追逐而变作月桂树的女神。
一到晚上,她就感到自己被城里的大街吸引着,那大街蒙昧又丑恶,但空气中溶满了这强壮、紧张、黑暗的冷酷。街上总有一些矿工在逛来逛去。他们有着奇怪、变态的自尊,举止挺美观,文静得有点不自然,苍白、常常是憔悴的脸上表情茫然、倦怠。他们属于另一个世界,他们有着奇特的迷人之处,声音浑厚洪亮,象机器轰鸣,象音乐,但比远古时莎琳①的声音更迷人。
①传说中半人半鸟的海妖,常用歌声诱惑过路的航海者,使航船触礁而毁。
她发现自己跟那些市井妇人们一样,到星期五晚上就被小夜市所吸引去了。星期五是矿工们发工钱的日子,晚上就成了逛市场的时候了。女人们东串西逛,男人们带着老婆出来买东西或着跟朋友们聚聚。几英里长的人流涌向城里,路上黑鸦鸦全是人;山顶上的小市场和贝多弗的主干道上熙熙攘攘,人流如织,挤满各色男女。
天黑了,可市场上的煤油灯却燃得热乎乎的,暗红的灯光照耀着购货的主妇们阴郁的脸,映红了男人们茫然的脸。四下里满是人们叫喊、聊天的聒骂声、人流仍然向着市场上厚实的人群源源冲撞而来。商店里明晃晃的,挤满了女人,而街上则几乎全是男人,都是些老老少少的矿工。此时此地,人们出手大方,钱花得也潇洒。
往里驶的马车被阻住了。车夫们喊着叫着直到密不透风的人群让开一条缝来。随时随地,你都可以看见远处来的年轻小伙子站在路上或角落里跟姑娘们聊着天。小酒店里灯火通明,大门四开,男人们川流不息地接踵进出。他们大呼小唤地相且打招呼,奔走相认,仨一群五个一伙地站一圈没完没了地东扯西拉。人们嘁嘁喳喳,遮遮掩掩地谈着矿上的事或政治上的纠纷,搅得四下里一片聒噪,就象不和谐的机器声在响。可就是这些人的声音令戈珍神魂颠倒。这声音令她眷恋,令她渴望的心儿发痛、发疯、令她感到难以自己,这感觉真是莫明其妙。
象其他女孩子一样,戈珍在夜市附近那灯火通明的二百米长的坡路上上上下下地来回踱着步。她知道这样做很庸俗,她父母无法忍受她的这种行为,可她眷恋这里,她一定要和人们在一起。有时她会在电影院里同那些蠢笨的人们坐在一起,那些人很放荡,一点都不好看,可她一定要坐在他们中间。
也象其它普通女子一样,她也找到了她的“小伙子”。他是一个电学家,据说是来从事杰拉德的新计划的电学家。他这人很诚恳,很聪明,尽管是科学家,但对社会学很热心。他在威利·格林租了一间农舍独自住着。作为一位绅士,他经济上是比较宽裕的,他的女房东到处议论他,说他竟然在卧室中备了一只木桶,每天下班回来,他非要她一桶一桶地把水提上去供他洗澡用,他天天要换干净衬衣和内衣,还换干净的绸袜呢。在这些方面他似乎过分挑剔、苛求,但在别的方面他则再普通不过了,一点都不装腔作势。
戈珍对这些事都了解,这些闲言碎语很自然而且不可避免地会传到布朗温家中来。帕尔莫跟厄秀拉更要好些,但是他那苍白、神态高傲、严峻的脸上也现出与戈珍一样的那种眷恋情态。一到星期五晚上他也要在那条路上来回踱步。就这样他同戈珍走到了一起,他俩之间突然萌发了友情。但他并不爱戈珍,他真正爱的是厄秀拉,可不知为什么,他跟厄秀拉就是没缘分。他喜欢戈珍在他身边,但只是作为一个聪明的伴儿,没别的。同样,戈珍对他也没真动情。他是一位科学家,是得有个女人作他的后盾。但他是真真地毫无感情色彩,就象一架高雅漂亮的机器。他太冷,太具有破坏性,太自私,无法真正地爱女人。但他却受男人的吸引。作为个人,他厌恶、蔑视他们,可在人群中,他们却象机器一样吸引着他。对他来说,他们是新式机器,只不过他们是无法计算出来的。
戈珍就这样同帕尔莫一起在街上漫步,或者同地一起去看电影。他嘴里不停地冷嘲热讽,狭长、苍白、颇有几分高雅的脸上闪着光。他们两个,两个高雅的人有着同样的感觉。换句话说,他们是两个个体,但都追随着人群,与这些丑陋的矿工们溶为一体。同样的秘密似乎每个人心中都有:戈珍,帕尔莫,放浪的绔袴子弟,憔悴的中年人。大家都有一种力量的神秘感,无法言表的破坏力和三心二意,似乎意志中腐朽了一般。
有时戈珍真想变成旁观者,观察这一切,看看自己是如何沉沦的。她随之又气又蔑视自己。她感到自己跟别人一样沉沦到芸芸众生中挤得水泄不通、盘根错节地纠缠在一起难以将息。这太可怕了。她感到窒息。她准备好要斗争,疯狂地埋头干自己的工作。但她很快就不行了。她动身到农村去——黑色、富有魅力的农村。这种魅力又开始诱惑她了。
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

゛臉紅紅....

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等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
举报 只看该作者 10楼  发表于: 2013-10-26 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 10 Sketch-book


ONE MORNING the sisters were sketching by the side of Willey Water, at the remote end of the lake. Gudrun had waded out to a gravelly shoal, and was seated like a Buddhist, staring fixedly at the water-plants that rose succulent from the mud of the low shores. What she could see was mud, soft, oozy, watery mud, and from its festering chill, water-plants rose up, thick and cool and fleshy, very straight and turgid, thrusting out their leaves at right angles, and having dark lurid colours, dark green and blotches of black-purple and bronze. But she could feel their turgid fleshy structure as in a sensuous vision, she knew how they rose out of the mud, she knew how they thrust out from themselves, how they stood stiff and succulent against the air.
Ursula was watching the butterflies, of which there were dozens near the water, little blue ones suddenly snapping out of nothingness into a jewellife, a large black-and-red one standing upon a flower and breathing with his soft wings, intoxicatingly, breathing pure, ethereal sunshine; two white ones wrestling in the low air; there was a halo round them; ah, when they came tumbling nearer they were orangetips, and it was the orange that had made the halo. Ursula rose and drifted away, unconscious like the butterflies.
Gudrun, absorbed in a stupor of apprehension of surging water-plants, sat crouched on the shoal, drawing, not looking up for a long time, and then staring unconsciously, absorbedly at the rigid, naked, succulent stems. Her feet were bare, her hat lay on the bank opposite.
She started out of her trance, hearing the knocking of oars. She looked round. There was a boat with a gaudy Japanese parasol, and a man in white, rowing. The woman was Hermione, and the man was Gerald. She knew it instantly. And instantly she perished in the keen frisson of anticipation, an electric vibration in her veins, intense, much more intense than that which was always humming low in the atmosphere of Beldover.
Gerald was her escape from the heavy slough of the pale, underworld, automatic colliers. He started out of the mud. He was master. She saw his back, the movement of his white loins. But not that -- it was the whiteness he seemed to enclose as he bent forwards, rowing. He seemed to stoop to something. His glistening, whitish hair seemed like the electricity of the sky.
`There's Gudrun,' came Hermione's voice floating distinct over the water. `We will go and speak to her. Do you mind?'
Gerald looked round and saw the girl standing by the water's edge, looking at him. He pulled the boat towards her, magnetically, without thinking of her. In his world, his conscious world, she was still nobody. He knew that Hermione had a curious pleasure in treading down all the social differences, at least apparently, and he left it to her.
`How do you do, Gudrun?' sang Hermione, using the Christian name in the fashionable manner. `What are you doing?'
`How do you do, Hermione? I was sketching.'
`Were you?' The boat drifted nearer, till the keel ground on the bank. `May we see? I should like to so much.'
It was no use resisting Hermione's deliberate intention.
`Well --' said Gudrun reluctantly, for she always hated to have her unfinished work exposed -- `there's nothing in the least interesting.'
`Isn't there? But let me see, will you?'
Gudrun reached out the sketch-book, Gerald stretched from the boat to take it. And as he did so, he remembered Gudrun's last words to him, and her face lifted up to him as he sat on the swerving horse. An intensification of pride went over his nerves, because he felt, in some way she was compelled by him. The exchange of feeling between them was strong and apart from their consciousness.
And as if in a spell, Gudrun was aware of his body, stretching and surging like the marsh-fire, stretching towards her, his hand coming straight forward like a stem. Her voluptuous, acute apprehension of him made the blood faint in her veins, her mind went dim and unconscious. And he rocked on the water perfectly, like the rocking of phosphorescence. He looked round at the boat. It was drifting off a little. He lifted the oar to bring it back. And the exquisite pleasure of slowly arresting the boat, in the heavy-soft water, was complete as a swoon.
`That's what you have done,' said Hermione, looking searchingly at the plants on the shore, and comparing with Gudrun's drawing. Gudrun looked round in the direction of Hermione's long, pointing finger. `That is it, isn't it?' repeated Hermione, needing confirmation.
`Yes,' said Gudrun automatically, taking no real heed.
`Let me look,' said Gerald, reaching forward for the book. But Hermione ignored him, he must not presume, before she had finished. But he, his will as unthwarted and as unflinching as hers, stretched forward till he touched the book. A little shock, a storm of revulsion against him, shook Hermione unconsciously. She released the book when he had not properly got it, and it tumbled against the side of the boat and bounced into the water.
`There!' sang Hermione, with a strange ring of malevolent victory. `I'm so sorry, so awfully sorry. Can't you get it, Gerald?'
This last was said in a note of anxious sneering that made Gerald's veins tingle with fine hate for her. He leaned far out of the boat, reaching down into the water. He could feel his position was ridiculous, his loins exposed behind him.
`It is of no importance,' came the strong, clanging voice of Gudrun. She seemed to touch him. But he reached further, the boat swayed violently. Hermione, however, remained unperturbed. He grasped the book, under the water, and brought it up, dripping.
`I'm so dreadfully sorry -- dreadfully sorry,' repeated Hermione. `I'm afraid it was all my fault.'
`It's of no importance -- really, I assure you -- it doesn't matter in the least,' said Gudrun loudly, with emphasis, her face flushed scarlet. And she held out her hand impatiently for the wet book, to have done with the scene. Gerald gave it to her. He was not quite himself.
`I'm so dreadfully sorry,' repeated Hermione, till both Gerald and Gudrun were exasperated. `Is there nothing that can be done?'
`In what way?' asked Gudrun, with cool irony.
`Can't we save the drawings?'
There was a moment's pause, wherein Gudrun made evident all her refutation of Hermione's persistence.
`I assure you,' said Gudrun, with cutting distinctness, `the drawings are quite as good as ever they were, for my purpose. I want them only for reference.'
`But can't I give you a new book? I wish you'd let me do that. I feel so truly sorry. I feel it was all my fault.'
`As far as I saw,' said Gudrun, `it wasn't your fault at all. If there was any fault, it was Mr Crich's. But the whole thing is entirely trivial, and it really is ridiculous to take any notice of it.'
Gerald watched Gudrun closely, whilst she repulsed Hermione. There was a body of cold power in her. He watched her with an insight that amounted to clairvoyance. He saw her a dangerous, hostile spirit, that could stand undiminished and unabated. It was so finished, and of such perfect gesture, moreover.
`I'm awfully glad if it doesn't matter,' he said; `if there's no real harm done.'
She looked back at him, with her fine blue eyes, and signalled full into his spirit, as she said, her voice ringing with intimacy almost caressive now it was addressed to him:
`Of course, it doesn't matter in the least.'
The bond was established between them, in that look, in her tone. In her tone, she made the understanding clear -- they were of the same kind, he and she, a sort of diabolic freemasonry subsisted between them. Henceforward, she knew, she had her power over him. Wherever they met, they would be secretly associated. And he would be helpless in the association with her. Her soul exulted.
`Good-bye! I'm so glad you forgive me. Gooood-bye!'
Hermione sang her farewell, and waved her hand. Gerald automatically took the oar and pushed off. But he was looking all the time, with a glimmering, subtly-smiling admiration in his eyes, at Gudrun, who stood on the shoal shaking the wet book in her hand. She turned away and ignored the receding boat. But Gerald looked back as he rowed, beholding her, forgetting what he was doing.
`Aren't we going too much to the left?' sang Hermione, as she sat ignored under her coloured parasol.
Gerald looked round without replying, the oars balanced and glancing in the sun.
`I think it's all right,' he said good-humouredly, beginning to row again without thinking of what he was doing. And Hermione disliked him extremely for his good-humoured obliviousness, she was nullified, she could not regain ascendancy.
 
一天早晨,姐妹二人来到威利湖畔的边远地带写生。戈蹚水来到一处布满砾石的浅滩,象一位佛教徒那样坐下来,凝视着低矮的岸边泥土里鲜嫩的水生植物。她看到的尽是软软的稀泥,泥浆中生出青翠的水生植物来,肥厚而有肉质,主干挺拔饱满,两侧平平地伸展出叶子,色彩缤纷,有深红,有墨绿,一片深紫,一片黄棕色。但是她却能用审美的眼光去看它们饱满多肉的肌体,她知道它们是如何从泥水中长出来的,她知道那叶子是如何自己伸展出来的,她知道它们多汁的身躯何以在空中挺立着。
水面上有一群蝴蝶在飞舞。厄秀拉看到蓝色的蝴蝶瞬息间不知从何处扑拉拉飞出,飞进凤仙花丛中,一只黑红两色的蝶扑到花朵上,微颤着双翅,沉迷地呼吸着纯静阳光。两只白蝶在空中扭打在一起,它们周身笼罩着一层光环。厄秀拉看了一会儿,就站起身飘飘然离开了,象蝴蝶一样毫无意识。
戈珍蹲在浅滩上沉醉地看着亭亭玉立的水生植物,边看边画着。可看不上一会儿,她就会不由自主地凝视起来,对挺拔、裸露着的肥厚枝干着起迷来。她光脚蹲在水中,帽子放在眼前的岸上。
欸乃的橹声,把她从沉醉中惊醒。她四下里张望一下,看到那边驶来一条船,船上撑着一把华丽的日本女伞,一位身着白衣的男士在划着船。那女的是赫麦妮,男的是杰拉德,她立刻就认出来了。一时间她被渴望的战栗感所攫取,那是从血管中震荡而过的一股强烈电波,比在贝多弗见到杰拉德时强烈多了,那时不过是一种低弱的电流罢了。
杰拉德是她的避难所,让她得以逃脱那苍白、缺少意识的地下世界的矿工们。他们是一潭泥坑、而杰拉德则是泥中的出水芙蓉,他是他们的主人。她看到了他的后背,看到他白白的腰肢随着他划船的动作在运动着。他似乎弯腰在做什么。他有点发白的头发在闪光,就象天上的电光一样。
“戈珍在那儿呢,”水面上飘过来赫麦妮的声音,很清晰。
“咱们过去跟她打个招呼吧,你介意吗?”
杰拉德看到戈珍姑娘站在湖岸边正在看他,于是他象受到什么吸引似地把船向她划去,脑子里却并没想她。在他意识的世界里,她仍然是个不起眼儿的人。他知道赫麦妮要打破一切社会地位的不平等,对此她报以一种奇特的快慰,至少表面上她是这样的人,于是他顺从了她。
“你好,戈珍,”赫麦妮慢悠悠地唤着戈珍的教名,摆出一副很时髦的姿态。“做什么呢?”
“你好,赫麦妮。我正写生呢。”
“是吗?”船摇近了,龙头触到岸上时,赫麦妮说:“可以让我看看吗?我很喜欢看。”
戈珍知道反抗赫麦妮的意图是无用的,于是她回答:
“那——”她很不愿意让别人看自己没完成的作品,因此语气很勉强。“一点都没意思。”
“不会吧?还是让我看看吧。”
戈珍把素描簿递了过去,杰拉德从船上伸手去接了过来。此时此刻,他记起了戈珍对他说的最后一句话,那时她冲着坐在震颤的马背上的他说了那句话。他的神经立时感到一阵骄傲,他似乎感到她向他屈服了。他们两人交流了感情,那是一种不为意识所控制的强有力的交流。
似乎着了魔一样,戈珍意识到他的身体倾过来,象一股野火窜过来,他的手象一根树干直朝她伸过来。她感到一种肉体上强烈的恐惧,几乎昏厥过去,头脑一片昏暗,意识一片空白。可他却在水上荡着,似一点漂荡的磷火。他观察一下小船,发现它有些离岸了,于是挥起橹将船驶回来。在深沉柔和的水面上慢悠悠驾着轻舟,那种美妙感觉真是令人心醉。
“你画的就是这些,”赫麦妮说着,眼睛搜寻着岸边的水生植物,将它们与戈珍的画作着比较。戈珍顺着赫麦妮长长的手指所指的方向看着。“是那个吗,嗯?”赫麦妮反复问着想得到证实。
“是的,”戈珍不经意地回答,对赫麦妮的话并没往心里去。
“让我瞧瞧,”杰拉德说着伸出手来要本子。赫麦妮理都不理他,她没看完之前他别想看。可他有着跟她一样不屈不懈的意志,他仍旧伸出手去摸素描簿。赫麦妮吃了一惊,对他反感极了,还没等他拿稳。她就松了手,素描簿在船帮上碰了一下就掉到水里去了。
“天啊!”赫麦妮叫着,可那语调却掩饰不住某种恶意的胜利感。“对不起,太对不起了。杰拉德,能把它捞上来吗?”
她的话语中既透着焦虑又显出对杰拉德的嘲弄,简直令杰拉德恨死她了。杰拉德把大半个身子探出船外,手伸到水中去。他感到自己这个姿式很可笑,他腰部的肉都露出来了。
“没什么,”戈珍铿锵地说。她似乎要去触摸他。可他却更远远地探出身子去,把船搞得剧烈晃动起来。但赫麦妮无动于衷。他的手在水下抓住了素描簿拎了上来,本子水淋淋的。
“我太过意不去了,太对不起了。”赫麦妮反复说,“恐怕这都是我的错。”
“这没什么,真的,别往心里去,一点没关系,”戈珍大声强调道,脸都绯红了。说着她不耐烦地伸手去接那湿漉漉的素描簿,以此了结这桩闹剧。杰拉德把本子还给她,样子颇有些激动。
“我太抱歉了,”赫麦妮重复着,都把杰拉德和戈珍说恼了。“没什么补救办法了吗?”
“怎么办?”戈珍冷冷地调侃道。
“我们还能挽救这些画儿吗?”
戈珍沉默了,很显然她对赫麦妮的穷追不舍表示不屑一顾。
“你放心吧,”戈珍干脆地说,“这些画儿依然很好,还能用。我不过是用来当个参考罢了。”
“我可以给你一个新簿子吗?我希望你别拒绝我。我太抱歉了,我觉得这都是我的错。”
“其实呀,”戈珍说,“根本不是你的错。如果说错,那也是杰拉德的错。可这桩事儿太微不足道了,要是太往心里去岂不荒谬?”
戈珍驳斥赫麦妮时,杰拉德一直凝视着她。戈珍身上有一种冷酷的力量。他以某种深邃的洞察力审视着她。他发现她是一个危险,敌意的精灵,什么也无法战胜她。另外,她的举止也算得上绝顶得完美。
“这太让我高兴了,”杰拉德说,“没损害什么就好。”
戈珍回首看着他,漂亮的蓝眼睛盯着他,那目光直刺入他的灵魂。她的话音银铃般地响着,对他表示亲昵:
“当然,一点也没关系。”
一个眼神,一声话语,两人之间就产生了默契。她说话的语调清楚地表明:他和她是同病相怜的一类人。她还知道她能左右他。不管他们到了哪里,他们都能秘密地结成同盟,而他在这种同盟中处于被动的位置上。她的心里高兴极了。
“再见!你原谅了我,让我太高兴了。再见!”
赫麦妮悠长地拖着告别的话,边说边挥着手臂。杰拉德身不由己地操起橹来把船划开了,可他闪烁着笑意的眼睛却艳羡地看着戈珍,戈珍站在浅滩上挥着水淋淋的书本向他们告别。然后她转开身,不再去理会倒划回去的船只。可杰拉德却边划船边回头看她,早忘了自己手中的桨。
“船是否太偏左了?”赫麦妮慢声慢气地问道,她坐在花伞下,感到被冷落了。
杰拉德不作声地四下观望一下,矫正了航向。
“我觉得现在挺好了。”他和蔼地说,然后又没头没脑地划起船来。对他这种和和气气但视而不见的样子,赫麦妮着实不喜欢,她感到自己被冷落了,她无法再恢复自己的倨傲地位。
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

゛臉紅紅....

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等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
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。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 11 An Island


MEANWHILE Ursula had wandered on from Willey Water along the course of the bright little stream. The afternoon was full of larks' singing. On the bright hill-sides was a subdued smoulder of gorse. A few forgetme-nots flowered by the water. There was a rousedness and a glancing everywhere.
She strayed absorbedly on, over the brooks. She wanted to go to the millpond above. The big mill-house was deserted, save for a labourer and his wife who lived in the kitchen. So she passed through the empty farm-yard and through the wilderness of a garden, and mounted the bank by the sluice. When she got to the top, to see the old, velvety surface of the pond before her, she noticed a man on the bank, tinkering with a punt. It was Birkin sawing and hammering away.
She stood at the head of the sluice, looking at him. He was unaware of anybody's presence. He looked very busy, like a wild animal, active and intent. She felt she ought to go away, he would not want her. He seemed to be so much occupied. But she did not want to go away. Therefore she moved along the bank till he would look up.
Which he soon did. The moment he saw her, he dropped his tools and came forward, saying:
`How do you do? I'm making the punt water-tight. Tell me if you think it is right.'
She went along with him.
`You are your father's daughter, so you can tell me if it will do,' he said.
She bent to look at the patched punt.
`I am sure I am my father's daughter,' she said, fearful of having to judge. `But I don't know anything about carpentry. It looks right, don't you think?'
`Yes, I think. I hope it won't let me to the bottom, that's all. Though even so, it isn't a great matter, I should come up again. Help me to get it into the water, will you?'
With combined efforts they turned over the heavy punt and set it afloat.
`Now,' he said, `I'll try it and you can watch what happens. Then if it carries, I'll take you over to the island.'
`Do,' she cried, watching anxiously.
The pond was large, and had that perfect stillness and the dark lustre of very deep water. There were two small islands overgrown with bushes and a few trees, towards the middle. Birkin pushed himself off, and veered clumsily in the pond. Luckily the punt drifted so that he could catch hold of a willow bough, and pull it to the island.
`Rather overgrown,' he said, looking into the interior, `but very nice. I'll come and fetch you. The boat leaks a little.'
In a moment he was with her again, and she stepped into the wet punt.
`It'll float us all right,' he said, and manoeuvred again to the island.
They landed under a willow tree. She shrank from the little jungle of rank plants before her, evil-smelling figwort and hemlock. But he explored into it.
`I shall mow this down,' he said, `and then it will be romantic -- like Paul et Virginie.'
`Yes, one could have lovely Watteau picnics here,' cried Ursula with enthusiasm.
His face darkened.
`I don't want Watteau picnics here,' he said.
`Only your Virginie,' she laughed.
`Virginie enough,' he smiled wryly. `No, I don't want her either.'
Ursula looked at him closely. She had not seen him since Breadalby. He was very thin and hollow, with a ghastly look in his face.
`You have been ill; haven't you?' she asked, rather repulsed.
`Yes,' he replied coldly.
They had sat down under the willow tree, and were looking at the pond, from their retreat on the island.
`Has it made you frightened?' she asked.
`What of?' he asked, turning his eyes to look at her. Something in him, inhuman and unmitigated, disturbed her, and shook her out of her ordinary self.
`It is frightening to be very ill, isn't it?' she said.
`It isn't pleasant,' he said. `Whether one is really afraid of death, or not, I have never decided. In one mood, not a bit, in another, very much.'
`But doesn't it make you feel ashamed? I think it makes one so ashamed, to be ill -- illness is so terribly humiliating, don't you think?'
He considered for some minutes.
`May-be,' he said. `Though one knows all the time one's life isn't really right, at the source. That's the humiliation. I don't see that the illness counts so much, after that. One is ill because one doesn't live properly -can't. It's the failure to live that makes one ill, and humiliates one.'
`But do you fail to live?' she asked, almost jeering.
`Why yes -- I don't make much of a success of my days. One seems always to be bumping one's nose against the blank wall ahead.'
Ursula laughed. She was frightened, and when she was frightened she always laughed and pretended to be jaunty.
`Your poor nose!' she said, looking at that feature of his face.
`No wonder it's ugly,' he replied.
She was silent for some minutes, struggling with her own self-deception. It was an instinct in her, to deceive herself.
`But I'm happy -- I think life is awfully jolly,' she said.
`Good,' he answered, with a certain cold indifference.
She reached for a bit of paper which had wrapped a small piece of chocolate she had found in her pocket, and began making a boat. He watched her without heeding her. There was something strangely pathetic and tender in her moving, unconscious finger-tips, that were agitated and hurt, really.
`I do enjoy things -- don't you?' she asked.
`Oh yes! But it infuriates me that I can't get right, at the really growing part of me. I feel all tangled and messed up, and I can't get straight anyhow. I don't know what really to do. One must do something somewhere.'
`Why should you always be doing?' she retorted. `It is so plebeian. I think it is much better to be really patrician, and to do nothing but just be oneself, like a walking flower.'
`I quite agree,' he said, `if one has burst into blossom. But I can't get my flower to blossom anyhow. Either it is blighted in the bud, or has got the smother-fly, or it isn't nourished. Curse it, it isn't even a bud. It is a contravened knot.'
Again she laughed. He was so very fretful and exasperated. But she was anxious and puzzled. How was one to get out, anyhow. There must be a way out somewhere.
There was a silence, wherein she wanted to cry. She reached for another bit of chocolate paper, and began to fold another boat.
`And why is it,' she asked at length, `that there is no flowering, no dignity of human life now?'
`The whole idea is dead. Humanity itself is dry-rotten, really. There are myriads of human beings hanging on the bush -- and they look very nice and rosy, your healthy young men and women. But they are apples of Sodom, as a matter of fact, Dead Sea Fruit, gall-apples. It isn't true that they have any significance -- their insides are full of bitter, corrupt ash.'
`But there are good people,' protested Ursula.
`Good enough for the life of today. But mankind is a dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people.'
Ursula could not help stiffening herself against this, it was too picturesque and final. But neither could she help making him go on.
`And if it is so, why is it?' she asked, hostile. They were rousing each other to a fine passion of opposition.
`Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because they won't fall off the tree when they're ripe. They hang on to their old positions when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little worms and dryrot.'
There was a long pause. His voice had become hot and very sarcastic. Ursula was troubled and bewildered, they were both oblivious of everything but their own immersion.
`But even if everybody is wrong -- where are you right?' she cried, `where are you any better?'
`I? -- I'm not right,' he cried back. `At least my only rightness lies in the fact that I know it. I detest what I am, outwardly. I loathe myself as a human being. Humanity is a huge aggregate lie, and a huge lie is less than a small truth. Humanity is less, far less than the individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies. And they say that love is the greatest thing; they persist in saying this, the foul liars, and just look at what they do! Look at all the millions of people who repeat every minute that love is the greatest, and charity is the greatest -- and see what they are doing all the time. By their works ye shall know them, for dirty liars and cowards, who daren't stand by their own actions, much less by their own words.'
`But,' said Ursula sadly, `that doesn't alter the fact that love is the greatest, does it? What they do doesn't alter the truth of what they say, does it?'
`Completely, because if what they say were true, then they couldn't help fulfilling it. But they maintain a lie, and so they run amok at last. It's a lie to say that love is the greatest. You might as well say that hate is the greatest, since the opposite of everything balances. What people want is hate -- hate and nothing but hate. And in the name of righteousness and love, they get it. They distil themselves with nitroglycerine, all the lot of them, out of very love. It's the lie that kills. If we want hate, let us have it -- death, murder, torture, violent destruction -- let us have it: but not in the name of love. But I abhor humanity, I wish it was swept away. It could go, and there would be no absolute loss, if every human being perished tomorrow. The reality would be untouched. Nay, it would be better. The real tree of life would then be rid of the most ghastly, heavy crop of Dead Sea Fruit, the intolerable burden of myriad simulacra of people, an infinite weight of mortal lies.'
`So you'd like everybody in the world destroyed?' said Ursula.
`I should indeed.'
`And the world empty of people?'
`Yes truly. You yourself, don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?'
The pleasant sincerity of his voice made Ursula pause to consider her own proposition. And really it was attractive: a clean, lovely, humanless world. It was the really desirable. Her heart hesitated, and exulted. But still, she was dissatisfied with him.
`But,' she objected, `you'd be dead yourself, so what good would it do you?'
`I would die like a shot, to know that the earth would really be cleaned of all the people. It is the most beautiful and freeing thought. Then there would never be another foul humanity created, for a universal defilement.'
`No,' said Ursula, `there would be nothing.'
`What! Nothing? Just because humanity was wiped out? You flatter yourself. There'd be everything.'
`But how, if there were no people?'
`Do you think that creation depends on man! It merely doesn't. There are the trees and the grass and birds. I much prefer to think of the lark rising up in the morning upon a human-less world. Man is a mistake, he must go. There is the grass, and hares and adders, and the unseen hosts, actual angels that go about freely when a dirty humanity doesn't interrupt them -and good pure-tissued demons: very nice.'
It pleased Ursula, what he said, pleased her very much, as a phantasy. Of course it was only a pleasant fancy. She herself knew too well the actuality of humanity, its hideous actuality. She knew it could not disappear so cleanly and conveniently. It had a long way to go yet, a long and hideous way. Her subtle, feminine, demoniacal soul knew it well.
`If only man was swept off the face of the earth, creation would go on so marvellously, with a new start, non-human. Man is one of the mistakes of creation -- like the ichthyosauri. If only he were gone again, think what lovely things would come out of the liberated days; -- things straight out of the fire.'
`But man will never be gone,' she said, with insidious, diabolical knowledge of the horrors of persistence. `The world will go with him.'
`Ah no,' he answered, `not so. I believe in the proud angels and the demons that are our fore-runners. They will destroy us, because we are not proud enough. The ichthyosauri were not proud: they crawled and floundered as we do. And besides, look at elder-flowers and bluebells -they are a sign that pure creation takes place -- even the butterfly. But humanity never gets beyond the caterpillar stage -- it rots in the chrysalis, it never will have wings. It is anti-creation, like monkeys and baboons.'
Ursula watched him as he talked. There seemed a certain impatient fury in him, all the while, and at the same time a great amusement in everything, and a final tolerance. And it was this tolerance she mistrusted, not the fury. She saw that, all the while, in spite of himself, he would have to be trying to save the world. And this knowledge, whilst it comforted her heart somewhere with a little self-satisfaction, stability, yet filled her with a certain sharp contempt and hate of him. She wanted him to herself, she hated the Salvator Mundi touch. It was something diffuse and generalised about him, which she could not stand. He would behave in the same way, say the same things, give himself as completely to anybody who came along, anybody and everybody who liked to appeal to him. It was despicable, a very insidious form of prostitution.
`But,' she said, `you believe in individual love, even if you don't believe in loving humanity --?'
`I don't believe in love at all -- that is, any more than I believe in hate, or in grief. Love is one of the emotions like all the others -- and so it is all right whilst you feel it But I can't see how it becomes an absolute. It is just part of human relationships, no more. And it is only part of any human relationship. And why one should be required always to feel it, any more than one always feels sorrow or distant joy, I cannot conceive. Love isn't a desideratum -- it is an emotion you feel or you don't feel, according to circumstance.'
`Then why do you care about people at all?' she asked, `if you don't believe in love? Why do you bother about humanity?'
`Why do I? Because I can't get away from it.'
`Because you love it,' she persisted.
It irritated him.
`If I do love it,' he said, `it is my disease.'
`But it is a disease you don't want to be cured of,' she said, with some cold sneering.
He was silent now, feeling she wanted to insult him.
`And if you don't believe in love, what do you believe in?' she asked mocking. `Simply in the end of the world, and grass?'
He was beginning to feel a fool.
`I believe in the unseen hosts,' he said.
`And nothing else? You believe in nothing visible, except grass and birds? Your world is a poor show.'
`Perhaps it is,' he said, cool and superior now he was offended, assuming a certain insufferable aloof superiority, and withdrawing into his distance.
Ursula disliked him. But also she felt she had lost something. She looked at him as he sat crouched on the bank. There was a certain priggish Sunday-school stiffness over him, priggish and detestable. And yet, at the same time, the moulding of him was so quick and attractive, it gave such a great sense of freedom: the moulding of his brows, his chin, his whole physique, something so alive, somewhere, in spite of the look of sickness.
And it was this duality in feeling which he created in her, that made a fine hate of him quicken in her bowels. There was his wonderful, desirable life-rapidity, the rare quality of an utterly desirable man: and there was at the same time this ridiculous, mean effacement into a Salvator Mundi and a Sunday-school teacher, a prig of the stiffest type.
He looked up at her. He saw her face strangely enkindled, as if suffused from within by a powerful sweet fire. His soul was arrested in wonder. She was enkindled in her own living fire. Arrested in wonder and in pure, perfect attraction, he moved towards her. She sat like a strange queen, almost supernatural in her glowing smiling richness.
`The point about love,' he said, his consciousness quickly adjusting itself, `is that we hate the word because we have vulgarised it. It ought to be prescribed, tabooed from utterance, for many years, till we get a new, better idea.'
There was a beam of understanding between them.
`But it always means the same thing,' she said.
`Ah God, no, let it not mean that any more,' he cried. `Let the old meanings go.'
`But still it is love,' she persisted. A strange, wicked yellow light shone at him in her eyes.
He hesitated, baffled, withdrawing.
`No,' he said, `it isn't. Spoken like that, never in the world. You've no business to utter the word.'
`I must leave it to you, to take it out of the Ark of the Covenant at the right moment,' she mocked.
Again they looked at each other. She suddenly sprang up, turned her back to him, and walked away. He too rose slowly and went to the water's edge, where, crouching, he began to amuse himself unconsciously. Picking a daisy he dropped it on the pond, so that the stem was a keel, the flower floated like a little water lily, staring with its open face up to the sky. It turned slowly round, in a slow, slow Dervish dance, as it veered away.
He watched it, then dropped another daisy into the water, and after that another, and sat watching them with bright, absolved eyes, crouching near on the bank. Ursula turned to look. A strange feeling possessed her, as if something were taking place. But it was all intangible. And some sort of control was being put on her. She could not know. She could only watch the brilliant little discs of the daisies veering slowly in travel on the dark, lustrous water. The little flotilla was drifting into the light, a company of white specks in the distance.
`Do let us go to the shore, to follow them,' she said, afraid of being any longer imprisoned on the island. And they pushed off in the punt.
She was glad to be on the free land again. She went along the bank towards the sluice. The daisies were scattered broadcast on the pond, tiny radiant things, like an exaltation, points of exaltation here and there. Why did they move her so strongly and mystically?
`Look,' he said, `your boat of purple paper is escorting them, and they are a convoy of rafts.'
Some of the daisies came slowly towards her, hesitating, making a shy bright little cotillion on the dark clear water. Their gay bright candour moved her so much as they came near, that she was almost in tears.
`Why are they so lovely,' she cried. `Why do I think them so lovely?'
`They are nice flowers,' he said, her emotional tones putting a constraint on him.
`You know that a daisy is a company of florets, a concourse, become individual. Don't the botanists put it highest in the line of development? I believe they do.'
`The compositae, yes, I think so,' said Ursula, who was never very sure of anything. Things she knew perfectly well, at one moment, seemed to become doubtful the next.
`Explain it so, then,' he said. `The daisy is a perfect little democracy, so it's the highest of flowers, hence its charm.'
`No,' she cried, `no -- never. It isn't democratic.'
`No,' he admitted. `It's the golden mob of the proletariat, surrounded by a showy white fence of the idle rich.'
`How hateful -- your hateful social orders!' she cried.
`Quite! It's a daisy -- we'll leave it alone.'
`Do. Let it be a dark horse for once,' she said: `if anything can be a dark horse to you,' she added satirically.
They stood aside, forgetful. As if a little stunned, they both were motionless, barely conscious. The little conflict into which they had fallen had torn their consciousness and left them like two impersonal forces, there in contact.
He became aware of the lapse. He wanted to say something, to get on to a new more ordinary footing.
`You know,' he said, `that I am having rooms here at the mill? Don't you think we can have some good times?'
`Oh are you?' she said, ignoring all his implication of admitted intimacy.
He adjusted himself at once, became normally distant.
`If I find I can live sufficiently by myself,' he continued, `I shall give up my work altogether. It has become dead to me. I don't believe in the humanity I pretend to be part of, I don't care a straw for the social ideals I live by, I hate the dying organic form of social mankind -- so it can't be anything but trumpery, to work at education. I shall drop it as soon as I am clear enough -- tomorrow perhaps -- and be by myself.'
`Have you enough to live on?' asked Ursula.
`Yes -- I've about four hundred a year. That makes it easy for me.'
There was a pause.
`And what about Hermione?' asked Ursula.
`That's over, finally -- a pure failure, and never could have been anything else.'
`But you still know each other?'
`We could hardly pretend to be strangers, could we?'
There was a stubborn pause.
`But isn't that a half-measure?' asked Ursula at length.
`I don't think so,' he said. `You'll be able to tell me if it is.'
Again there was a pause of some minutes' duration. He was thinking.
`One must throw everything away, everything -- let everything go, to get the one last thing one wants,' he said.
`What thing?' she asked in challenge.
`I don't know -- freedom together,' he said.
She had wanted him to say `love.'
There was heard a loud barking of the dogs below. He seemed disturbed by it. She did not notice. Only she thought he seemed uneasy.
`As a matter of fact,' he said, in rather a small voice, `I believe that is Hermione come now, with Gerald Crich. She wanted to see the rooms before they are furnished.'
`I know,' said Ursula. `She will superintend the furnishing for you.'
`Probably. Does it matter?'
`Oh no, I should think not,' said Ursula. `Though personally, I can't bear her. I think she is a lie, if you like, you who are always talking about lies.' Then she ruminated for a moment, when she broke out: `Yes, and I do mind if she furnishes your rooms -- I do mind. I mind that you keep her hanging on at all.'
He was silent now, frowning.
`Perhaps,' he said. `I don't want her to furnish the rooms here -- and I don't keep her hanging on. Only, I needn't be churlish to her, need I? At any rate, I shall have to go down and see them now. You'll come, won't you?'
`I don't think so,' she said coldly and irresolutely.
`Won't you? Yes do. Come and see the rooms as well. Do come.'
 
此时厄秀拉已离开威利湖,沿着一条明丽的小溪前行。四下里回荡着云雀的鸣啭。阳光洒在山坡上,荆豆丛若隐若现。
水边开着几丛勿忘我。到处都隐藏着一股躁动情绪。
她在一条条溪流上留连忘返。后来她想到上面的磨房池去。那儿有一座大磨房,磨房早已荒废,只有一对雇工夫妇住在厨房里。她穿过空荡荡的场院和荒芜的园子,顺着水闸上了岸。她爬上来,来到了那一泓丝绒般光滑的水波旁,看到岸上有个男人正在修理一只平底船。那是伯金,只见他一个人又是拉锯又是钉钉地干着。
厄秀拉站在水闸旁看着他。他一点都意识不到有人来了。他看上去十分忙碌,象一头活跃而聚精会神的野兽一样。她感到自己应该离开此地,他是不需要她的,他看上去太忙了。
可她并不想走,于是她就在岸上踱着步,想等他能抬头看到她。
不一会儿他果然抬起了头。一看到她他就扔下手中的工具走上前来招呼道:
“你好啊?我紧一紧船上的接缝。告诉我,你觉得这样做对吗?”
她同他一起并肩前行。
“你父亲干这个在行,你是他的女儿,因此你能告诉我这样行不行。”
厄秀拉弯下腰去看修补过的船。
“没错儿,我是我父亲的女儿,”她说,但她不敢对他做的活儿有所评价。”可我对木工一窍不通啊。看上去做得还行,难道不是吗?”
“是的。我希望这船不沉就够了,就算沉了也没什么,我还能够上来的,帮我把船推下水好吗?”
说着两人合力把船推下了水。
“现在我来划划试试,你看有什么毛病。要是行,我就载你到岛上去。”
这水塘很大、水面如镜,水很深。塘中间凸起两座覆盖着灌木与树木的小岛。伯金在池中划着船,笨拙地保持着方向。很幸运,小船漂了过去,他抓住了一条柳枝,借着劲儿上了小岛。
“草木很茂盛,”他看看岛上说,“挺好的,我就去接你来。
这船有点漏水。”
不一会儿他又回到她身边。她进了湿漉漉的船舱。
“这船载咱们俩没问题。”他说完驾船向小岛划去。
船停泊在一棵柳树下。她躲闪着,不让那些茂盛、散发着怪味的玄参和毒芹碰到自己。可伯金却披荆斩棘地朝前走着。
“我要砍掉这些,”他说,“那样可就象《保罗与维吉妮》
一样浪漫了。”
“我们可以在这儿举行一次华多式①的午餐会了。”厄秀拉热切地叫道。
①让·安东尼·华多(1684—1727),以描绘牧歌式作品而著名。
“我可不喜欢在这儿进华多式午餐。”他说。
“你只想着你的维吉妮。”她笑道。
“维吉妮就够了,”他苍然地笑笑,“不过我也不需要她。”
厄秀拉凝视着他。自从离开布莱德比以后这还是头一次见到他呢。他很瘦削,两腮下凹一脸的可怕表情。
“你病了吗?”她有点冷漠地问。
“是的。”他冷冷地回答。
他们坐在岛上的僻静处,在柳荫下看着水面。
“你怕吗?”她问。
“怕什么?”他看着她问。他有一种非人的倔犟,令她不安,令她也失去了自己的主心骨。
“害一场大病很可怕,不是吗?”她说。
“当然不愉快,”他说,“至于人是否真怕死,我还说不准。
从一种意义上说无所谓,从另一种意义上说很可怕。”
“可你不感到难堪吗?一得病总是很难堪的,病魔太侮辱人了,你不认为是这样吗?”
他思忖了一会儿说:
“可能吧,不过人们知道人的生活从一开始就不那么正确,这才是羞辱。跟这个相比,生病就不算什么了。人生病是因为活得不合适。人活不好就要生病,生病就要受辱。”
“你活得不好吗?”她几乎嘲讽地问。
“是的,我一天天地过,并没什么所为。人似乎总在碰南墙。”
厄秀拉笑了。她感到害怕,每当她感到害怕时,她就笑并装作得意洋洋的样子。
“那你的鼻子可就倒霉了!”她望着他的脸说。
“怪不得挺丑的。”他回答说。
她沉默了片刻,与自己的自欺欺人作着斗争。她有一种自欺欺人的本能。
“可我挺幸福——我觉得生活太愉快了。”她说。
“那好哇。”他挺冷漠地回答。
她伸手在口袋里摸到一小张包巧克力的纸,开始叠一只小船。他漫不经心地看着她。她的举动中透着某种楚楚动人处,很温柔,手指毫无意识地动着。
“我真地生活得不错,你呢?”她问。
“那当然!可我就是不能活得顺心,真恼火。我觉得一切都盘根错节乱了套,让你理不清个头绪。我不知道该做点什么。人总要在什么地方做点什么。”
“可你为什么总要做什么呢?”她反问,“这太庸俗了。我觉得最好作一个高雅的人,不要做什么;只顾完善自我,就象一朵自由开放的花朵。”
“我很同意你的说法,”他说,“要是人能开花就好了。可我就是无法让我的蓓蕾开放。可它也不枯萎或窒息,它并不缺营养。该死的,它压根儿不是什么花蕾,而是一个背时的疙瘩罢了。”
她又笑了,这令他十分恼火。可她既焦虑又迷惑。一个人怎么才能有出路呢?总该有个出路吧。
沉默,这沉默简直让她想哭一场。她又摸出一张包巧克力的纸,叠起另外一只纸船来。
“可是为什么,”她终于说,“为什么现在人的生命不会开花,为什么人的生命没了尊严?”
“整个观念已经死了。人类本身已经枯萎腐烂,真的。有许许多多的人依赖在灌木丛上,他们看上去很象样儿,很漂亮,是一群健康的男女。可他们都是索德姆城①的苹果,是死海边的苦果。他们没有一丁点意义——他们的内心满是苦灰。”
①死海边一城市,上帝以其居民罪恶重大降大火烧之。
“可还是有好人的。”厄秀拉为自己辩解道。
“对今日的生活来说是够好的。可是人类是一株爬满苦果的死树。”
厄秀拉忍不住要反对这种说法,它太图解化,也太绝对了。可她又无法阻挡他说下去。
“如果是这样的话,能说上是为什么吗?”她怀有敌意地问。他们俩开始发火了。
“为什么,为什么人们都是些苦灰团?那是因为他们成熟了还不离开这棵树。他们仍旧呆在旧的位置上,直到长了蛆虫、干枯、腐烂为止。”
他们沉默了好一阵子。他的声音变得火辣辣的,语言甚是尖刻。厄秀拉心烦意乱又深感震惊。他们都沉思着,忘记了一切。
“就算别人都错了吧,你哪儿对呢?”她叫道,“你哪儿比别人强?”
“我?我并不正确啊,”他回击她,“我正确之处是我懂得我不正确。我讨厌我的外形。我厌恶自己是个人。人类是一个聚合在一起的大谎言,一个大谎言还不如一个小小的真理。人类比个人要渺小,渺小得多,因为个人有时还会正确,而人类则是一株谎言之树。他们说爱是最伟大的事,他们坚持这样说,真是可恶的骗子,可你看看他们的所做所为吧!看看吧,成千上万的人在重复说爱是最伟大的,博爱是最伟大的,可看看他们做的都是些什么事吧。看他们做的事我们就知道他们是一帮龌龊的骗子和胆小鬼,他们的话是经不住行动检验的。”
“可是,”厄秀拉沮丧地说,“可这并不能改变爱是最伟大的这一事实,你说呢?他们的所为并不能改变他们所说的话含有真理。你说呢?”
“会的,如果他们说的是真理,他们就会情不自禁地实践它。可他们一直在说谎,所以他们最终会胡作非为。说什么爱是最伟大的,这是在骗人。你还不如说恨是最伟大的呢,因为相反的东西能相互平衡。人们需要的是仇恨,仇恨,只有仇恨。他们打着正义与爱的旗号得到的是仇恨。他们从爱中提炼出来的是炸药。谎言可以杀人。如果我们需要仇恨,那就得到它吧——死亡,谋杀,酷刑和惨烈的毁灭,我们尽可以得到这些,但是不要打着爱的旗号。我惧怕人类,我希望它被一扫而光。人类将逝去,如果每个人明天就消失,也不会有什么决定性的损失,现实并不受影响,不,只能会更好。真正的生活之树会摆脱掉最可怕、最沉重的死海之果①,摆脱掉这些幻影般的人们,摆脱掉沉重的谎言负担。”
①见前面注释“索德姆城的苹果”。
“所以你希望世界上的人都被毁灭?”厄秀拉说。
“的确是这样。”
“那世界上就没人了呀?”
“太对了。你这不是有了一个纯洁美好的思想吗?一个没有人的世界,只有不受任何干扰的青草,青草丛中蹲着一只兔子。”
他诚挚的话语令厄秀拉思忖起来。这实在太迷人了:一个纯净、美好、没有人迹的世界。这太令人神往了。她的心滞住了,异常激动。可她仍然对他不满。
“可是,”她反驳说,“可是连你都死了,你还能从中得到什么好处?”
“如果我知道世上的人都要被清除,我宁可马上就死。这是最美好、最开明的思想。那样就不会再有一个肮脏的人类了。”
“是的,”厄秀拉说,“那就什么都没有了。”
“什么?什么都没有了?因为人类消亡了就什么都没有了吗?你这是自我吹嘘。一切都会有的。”
“怎么会呢?不是连人都没有了吗?”
“你以为万物的创造取决于人吗?压根儿不是。世界上有树木、青草和鸟儿。我宁愿认为,云雀是在一个没有人的世界里醒来的。人是一个错误,他必须消逝。青草、野兔、蝰蛇还有隐藏着的万物,它们是真正的天使,当肮脏的人类不去打扰时,它们这些纯洁的天使就可以自由自在地生活,那多妙啊”。
他的幻想让厄秀拉感到很满意。当然,这不过是个幻想而已,但它令人愉快。至于她自己。她是知道人类的现状的,人类是很可恶的。她知道人类是不会那么容易地消失殆尽的。它还有一段漫长而可怕的路可走。她那细微、魔鬼般的女人的心对这一点太了解了。
“如果人类从地球上被扫除干净,万物创造仍旧会顺利进行,它将会有一个新的起点。人是造物主犯下的一个错误,就象鱼龙一样。如果人类消失了,想想吧,将会有什么样美好的事物产生出来——直接从火中诞生。”
“可人类永远不会消失,”她知道她再坚持下去会说出什么样恶毒的话来。“世界将与人类一起完蛋。”
“啊,不,”他说,“不会是这样的。我相信那些骄傲的天使和魔鬼是我们的先驱。他们要毁灭我们,因为我们不够骄傲。比如鱼龙吧,它们就是因为不够骄傲才被毁掉的,鱼龙曾象我们一样爬行、蹒跚。再看看接骨木上的花朵和风铃草吧,甚至蝴蝶,它们说明纯粹的创造是存在的。人类从来没有超越毛虫阶段,发展到蝶蛹就溃烂了,永远也不会长出翅膀来。人就象猴子和狒狒一样是与造物主反目的动物。”
厄秀拉看着他,似乎他很不耐烦,愤愤然,同时他对什么又都感兴趣且很耐心。她不相信他的耐心,反倒相信他的愤然。她发现,他一直在情不自禁地试图拯救世界。意识到这一点,她既感到点儿欣慰,同时又蔑视他、恨他。她需要他成为她的人,讨厌他那副救世主的样子。她不能忍受他噜里噜嗦的概念。可他对谁都这样,谁要求助于他,他就没完没了地讲这么一通。这是一种可鄙的、恶毒的卖淫。
“但是,”她说,“你相信个体间的爱,尽管你不爱人类,是吗?”
“我压很儿就不相信什么爱不爱的,倒不如说我相信恨、相信哀。爱跟别的东西一样,是一种情绪,你能对此有所感,这样很好,但是我不明白它何以能够变得绝对起来。它不过是人类关系中的一部分罢了,而且是每个人与他人关系的一部分。我简直不明白,为什么要要求人们总去感受到爱,比对悲伤与欢乐的感受还要多。爱并不是人们迫切需要的东西——它是根据场合的不同所感受到的一种情绪。”
“既然如此,你为什么在乎别人的事?”她问,“如果你不相信爱,你干什么要替人类担忧?”
“为什么?因为我无法摆脱人类。”
“因为你爱人类。”她坚持说。
这话令他恼火。
“如果说我爱,”他说,“那是我的病。”
“可这是不想治好的病。”她冷漠地嘲弄道。
他不说话了,感到她是要污辱他。
“如果你不相信爱的话,那你信什么?”她调侃地问。“只是简单地相信世界的末日,相信只有青草的世界吗?”
他开始感到自己是个傻瓜。
“我相信隐藏着的万物。”他说。
“就不信别的了?除了青草与鸟雀你就不相信任何看得见的东西吗?你那个世界也太可怜了。”
“也许是吧,”他说着变得既冷漠又倨傲。他受到了冒犯,摆出一副傲慢的架式,对她敬而远之。
厄秀拉不喜欢他了,但同时她感到一种失落。她看着蹲在岸上的伯金,发现他象在主日学校里一样呆板、自命不凡,这样子让人反感。但他的身影既敏捷又迷人,让人感极其舒畅:尽管一脸病态,可他的眉毛,下颏以及整个身架似乎又是那样生机勃勃。
他给她造成的这种双重印象令她恨得五内俱焚。他有一种难得的生命活力,这种特质令他成为一个别人渴望得到的人;另一方面,他是那么可笑,竟想做救世主,象主日学校的教师一样学究气十足、呆板僵化。
他抬起头来看看她,发现她的脸上闪烁着一层奇谲的光芒,似乎这光芒发自她体内强烈的美好火焰。于是他的灵魂为奇妙的感觉所攫取。她是被自身的生命之火点燃的。他感到惊奇,完全被她所吸引,情不自禁向她靠拢。她象一个神奇的女王那样端坐着,浑身散发着异彩,几乎是个超自然的人。
“关于爱,”他边说边迅速矫正着自己的思路。“我是说,我们仇恨尘世是因为我们把它庸俗化了。它应该有所规定,有所禁忌,直到我们获得了新的,更好一点的观念。”
他的话增进了他们两人之间的理解。
“可它指的总是一回事。”她说。
“哦,天啊,不,不是那回事了。”他叫道,“让旧的意思成为过去吧。”
“可爱还是爱,”她坚持说。她的眼睛里放射出一道奇特、锐利的黄光,直射向他。
他在这目光下犹豫着、困惑着退缩了。
“不,”他说,“不是。再别这样说了。你不应该说这个字。”
“我把它留给你去说,让你在适当的时候把这个字从约柜①中取出来。”她嘲弄地说。
①一个藏有摩西十诫的神圣柜子,以色列人携之出埃及。
他们又对望了一眼,厄秀拉突然背过身去,然后走开了。他慢慢地站起身来到水边,蹲下,自我陶醉起来。他掐下一朵雏菊仍到水面上,那花儿象一朵荷花一样漂在水面上,绽开花瓣儿,仰天开放。花儿缓缓地旋着,慢慢地舞着漂走了。
伯金看着这朵花漂走,又掐了一朵扔进水里,然后又扔进去一朵,扔完了,他就蹲在岸边上饶有兴趣地看着它们。厄秀拉转过来看到此情此景,一股奇特的感情油然而升,似乎发生了什么事,可这一切都一目了然。似乎她被什么控制住了,可她又说不上来是什么。她只能看着花儿在水上打着旋,缓缓漂然而去。这一队白色的伙伴漂远了。
“咱们到岸边上去赶它们吧,”她说,她怕再在这儿困下去。于是他们上了船。
上了岸,她又高兴了,又自由了。她沿着岸边来到水闸前。雏菊已碎成几瓣,这儿那儿散落在水面上,闪着白色的光芒。为什么这些小花瓣令她如此动情,以某种神秘的力量打动了她?
“看,”他说,“你叠的紫色纸船正护送它们,俨然一支护船队呢。”
几瓣雏菊迟迟凝凝地向她漂来,就象在清澈的深水中羞赧地跳着交谊舞。它们那欢快的白色身影愈近愈令她动情,几乎落下泪来。
“它们何以这样可爱?”她叫道,“我为什么觉得它们这样可爱啊?”
“真是些漂亮花儿。”他说,厄秀拉那动情的语调令他难耐。
“你知道,一朵雏菊是由许多管状花冠组成的,可以变成一个个个体。植物学家不是把雏菊列为最发达的植物吗?我相信他们会的。”
“菊科植物吗?是的。我想是的。”厄秀拉说,无论对什么她总是不那么自信。一时间她很了解的事物会在另一个场合里变得可疑起来。
“这么说,”伯金说,“雏菊是最民主的了,所以它是最高级的花,因此它迷人。”
“不,”她叫道,“决不是。它才不民主呢。”
“是啊,”他承认道,“它是一群金色的无产者,被一群无所事事的富人象一圈白边儿一样圈着。”
“可恶,你这种社会等级的划分太可恶了!”她叫道。
“很可恶!这是一朵雏菊,只谈这个吧。”
“行。就算爆了个冷门吧,”她说,“如果一切对你来说都是冷门就好了,”她又嘲弄地补上一句。
他们无意识中拉开了距离。似乎他们都感到吃惊,站在那儿一动也不动,人显得懵懂起来。他们的小小冲突令两人无所适从,变成了两股非人的力量在交锋。
他开始感到自己错了。他想说点什么家常话来扭转这种局面。
“你知道,”他说,“我在磨房这儿有住所吗?你不认为我们可以在这儿好好消磨一下时光吗?”
“哦,是吗?”她说,对他那自作多情的亲昵她才不去理会呢。
他发现了这一点,口气变得冷漠多了。
“如果我发现我一个人可以过得很充裕,”他接着说,“我就会放弃我的工作。这工作对我来说早就名存实亡了。我不相信人类,尽管我装作是它的一员。我压根儿不理会我所依靠的社会信仰。我厌恶这行将就没的人类社会有机群体,因此干教育这一行纯粹是没用。我能脱身就脱身,也许明天吧,变得洁身自好。”
“你有足够的生活条件吗?”厄秀拉问。
“有的,我一年有四百镑收入,靠这个生活很容易。”
“赫麦妮怎么办?”厄秀拉问。
“了了,彻底了结了——吹了,永远不会破镜重圆。”
“可你们仍然相互理解?”
“我们很难装作是路人,对吗?”
他们不说话了,但都很固执。
“这岂不是折衷的办法?”厄秀拉终于说。
“我不认为这是折衷,”他说,“你说怎么个折衷法儿?”
又沉默了。他在思索。
“非得把一切都甩掉不可,一切——把一切都抛弃,才能得到最后想得到的东西。”他说。
“什么东西?”她挑衅地说。
“我不知道,也许是自由吧。”他说。
可她希望他说的那个字是“爱”。
水闸下传来刺耳的犬吠声。他似乎被这声音搅乱了思绪。
可她却不去理会。她只是感觉到他心绪不宁。
“我知道了,”他压低嗓门说,“是赫麦妮和克里奇来了。
她要在房子装上家具之前来看看。”
“我知道,”她说,“她要监视着你装饰房间。”
“也许是吧。这有什么?”
“哦,没什么,没什么,”厄秀拉说,“但是我个人无法容忍她。我觉得她是个骗子,你们这些人总在说谎。”她思忖了一下突然冒出一句:“我就是在乎,她帮你装饰房子我就是不乐意。你总让她围着你,我就是不乐意。”
他皱起眉头沉默不语。
“也许,”他说,“我并不愿意让她装饰这儿的房间——我并不愿意她缠着我。可我总不能对她太粗暴呀,何必呢?不管怎么着,我得下去看看他们了。你来吗?”
“我不想去。”她冷漠但犹豫地说。
“来吧,对,来吧,也来看看房子。”
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。
゛臉紅紅....

ZxID:704295


等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
举报 只看该作者 12楼  发表于: 2013-10-27 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 12 Carpeting


HE SET OFF down the bank, and she went unwillingly with him. Yet she would not have stayed away, either.
`We know each other well, you and I, already,' he said. She did not answer.
In the large darkish kitchen of the mill, the labourer's wife was talking shrilly to Hermione and Gerald, who stood, he in white and she in a glistening bluish foulard, strangely luminous in the dusk of the room; whilst from the cages on the walls, a dozen or more canaries sang at the top of their voices. The cages were all placed round a small square window at the back, where the sunshine came in, a beautiful beam, filtering through green leaves of a tree. The voice of Mrs Salmon shrilled against the noise of the birds, which rose ever more wild and triumphant, and the woman's voice went up and up against them, and the birds replied with wild animation.
`Here's Rupert!' shouted Gerald in the midst of the din. He was suffering badly, being very sensitive in the ear.
`O-o-h them birds, they won't let you speak -- !' shrilled the labourer's wife in disgust. `I'll cover them up.'
And she darted here and there, throwing a duster, an apron, a towel, a table-cloth over the cages of the birds.
`Now will you stop it, and let a body speak for your row,' she said, still in a voice that was too high.
The party watched her. Soon the cages were covered, they had a strange funereal look. But from under the towels odd defiant trills and bubblings still shook out.
`Oh, they won't go on,' said Mrs Salmon reassuringly. `They'll go to sleep now.'
`Really,' said Hermione, politely.
`They will,' said Gerald. `They will go to sleep automatically, now the impression of evening is produced.'
`Are they so easily deceived?' cried Ursula.
`Oh, yes,' replied Gerald. `Don't you know the story of Fabre, who, when he was a boy, put a hen's head under her wing, and she straight away went to sleep? It's quite true.'
`And did that make him a naturalist?' asked Birkin.
`Probably,' said Gerald.
Meanwhile Ursula was peeping under one of the cloths. There sat the canary in a corner, bunched and fluffed up for sleep.
`How ridiculous!' she cried. `It really thinks the night has come! How absurd! Really, how can one have any respect for a creature that is so easily taken in!'
`Yes,' sang Hermione, coming also to look. She put her hand on Ursula's arm and chuckled a low laugh. `Yes, doesn't he look comical?' she chuckled. `Like a stupid husband.'
Then, with her hand still on Ursula's arm, she drew her away, saying, in her mild sing-song:
`How did you come here? We saw Gudrun too.'
`I came to look at the pond,' said Ursula, `and I found Mr Birkin there.'
`Did you? This is quite a Brangwen land, isn't it!'
`I'm afraid I hoped so,' said Ursula. `I ran here for refuge, when I saw you down the lake, just putting off.'
`Did you! And now we've run you to earth.'
Hermione's eyelids lifted with an uncanny movement, amused but overwrought. She had always her strange, rapt look, unnatural and irresponsible.
`I was going on,' said Ursula. `Mr Birkin wanted me to see the rooms. Isn't it delightful to live here? It is perfect.'
`Yes,' said Hermione, abstractedly. Then she turned right away from Ursula, ceased to know her existence.
`How do you feel, Rupert?' she sang in a new, affectionate tone, to Birkin.
`Very well,' he replied.
`Were you quite comfortable?' The curious, sinister, rapt look was on Hermione's face, she shrugged her bosom in a convulsed movement, and seemed like one half in a trance.
`Quite comfortable,' he replied.
There was a long pause, whilst Hermione looked at him for a long time, from under her heavy, drugged eyelids.
`And you think you'll be happy here?' she said at last.
`I'm sure I shall.'
`I'm sure I shall do anything for him as I can,' said the labourer's wife. `And I'm sure our master will; so I hope he'll find himself comfortable.'
Hermione turned and looked at her slowly.
`Thank you so much,' she said, and then she turned completely away again. She recovered her position, and lifting her face towards him, and addressing him exclusively, she said:
`Have you measured the rooms?'
`No,' he said, `I've been mending the punt.'
`Shall we do it now?' she said slowly, balanced and dispassionate.
`Have you got a tape measure, Mrs Salmon?' he said, turning to the woman.
`Yes sir, I think I can find one,' replied the woman, bustling immediately to a basket. `This is the only one I've got, if it will do.'
Hermione took it, though it was offered to him.
`Thank you so much,' she said. `It will do very nicely. Thank you so much.' Then she turned to Birkin, saying with a little gay movement: `Shall we do it now, Rupert?'
`What about the others, they'll be bored,' he said reluctantly.
`Do you mind?' said Hermione, turning to Ursula and Gerald vaguely.
`Not in the least,' they replied.
`Which room shall we do first?' she said, turning again to Birkin, with the same gaiety, now she was going to do something with him.
`We'll take them as they come,' he said.
`Should I be getting your teas ready, while you do that?' said the labourer's wife, also gay because she had something to do.
`Would you?' said Hermione, turning to her with the curious motion of intimacy that seemed to envelop the woman, draw her almost to Hermione's breast, and which left the others standing apart. `I should be so glad. Where shall we have it?'
`Where would you like it? Shall it be in here, or out on the grass?'
`Where shall we have tea?' sang Hermione to the company at large.
`On the bank by the pond. And we'll carry the things up, if you'll just get them ready, Mrs Salmon,' said Birkin.
`All right,' said the pleased woman.
The party moved down the passage into the front room. It was empty, but clean and sunny. There was a window looking on to the tangled front garden.
`This is the dining room,' said Hermione. `We'll measure it this way, Rupert -- you go down there --'
`Can't I do it for you,' said Gerald, coming to take the end of the tape.
`No, thank you,' cried Hermione, stooping to the ground in her bluish, brilliant foulard. It was a great joy to her to do things, and to have the ordering of the job, with Birkin. He obeyed her subduedly. Ursula and Gerald looked on. It was a peculiarity of Hermione's, that at every moment, she had one intimate, and turned all the rest of those present into onlookers. This raised her into a state of triumph.
They measured and discussed in the dining-room, and Hermione decided what the floor coverings must be. It sent her into a strange, convulsed anger, to be thwarted. Birkin always let her have her way, for the moment.
Then they moved across, through the hall, to the other front room, that was a little smaller than the first.
`This is the study,' said Hermione. `Rupert, I have a rug that I want you to have for here. Will you let me give it to you? Do -- I want to give it you.'
`What is it like?' he asked ungraciously.
`You haven't seen it. It is chiefly rose red, then blue, a metallic, midblue, and a very soft dark blue. I think you would like it. Do you think you would?'
`It sounds very nice,' he replied. `What is it? Oriental? With a pile?'
`Yes. Persian! It is made of camel's hair, silky. I think it is called Bergamos -- twelve feet by seven --. Do you think it will do?'
`It would do,' he said. `But why should you give me an expensive rug? I can manage perfectly well with my old Oxford Turkish.'
`But may I give it to you? Do let me.'
`How much did it cost?'
She looked at him, and said:
`I don't remember. It was quite cheap.'
He looked at her, his face set.
`I don't want to take it, Hermione,' he said.
`Do let me give it to the rooms,' she said, going up to him and putting her hand on his arm lightly, pleadingly. `I shall be so disappointed.'
`You know I don't want you to give me things,' he repeated helplessly.
`I don't want to give you things,' she said teasingly. `But will you have this?'
`All right,' he said, defeated, and she triumphed.
They went upstairs. There were two bedrooms to correspond with the rooms downstairs. One of them was half furnished, and Birkin had evidently slept there. Hermione went round the room carefully, taking in every detail, as if absorbing the evidence of his presence, in all the inanimate things. She felt the bed and examined the coverings.
`Are you sure you were quite comfortable?' she said, pressing the pillow.
`Perfectly,' he replied coldly.
`And were you warm? There is no down quilt. I am sure you need one. You mustn't have a great pressure of clothes.'
`I've got one,' he said. `It is coming down.'
They measured the rooms, and lingered over every consideration. Ursula stood at the window and watched the woman carrying the tea up the bank to the pond. She hated the palaver Hermione made, she wanted to drink tea, she wanted anything but this fuss and business.
At last they all mounted the grassy bank, to the picnic. Hermione poured out tea. She ignored now Ursula's presence. And Ursula, recovering from her ill-humour, turned to Gerald saying:
`Oh, I hated you so much the other day, Mr Crich,'
`What for?' said Gerald, wincing slightly away.
`For treating your horse so badly. Oh, I hated you so much!'
`What did he do?' sang Hermione.
`He made his lovely sensitive Arab horse stand with him at the railwaycrossing whilst a horrible lot of trucks went by; and the poor thing, she was in a perfect frenzy, a perfect agony. It was the most horrible sight you can imagine.'
`Why did you do it, Gerald?' asked Hermione, calm and interrogative.
`She must learn to stand -- what use is she to me in this country, if she shies and goes off every time an engine whistles.'
`But why inflict unnecessary torture?' said Ursula. `Why make her stand all that time at the crossing? You might just as well have ridden back up the road, and saved all that horror. Her sides were bleeding where you had spurred her. It was too horrible --!'
Gerald stiffened.
`I have to use her,' he replied. `And if I'm going to be sure of her at all, she'll have to learn to stand noises.'
`Why should she?' cried Ursula in a passion. `She is a living creature, why should she stand anything, just because you choose to make her? She has as much right to her own being, as you have to yours.'
`There I disagree,' said Gerald. `I consider that mare is there for my use. Not because I bought her, but because that is the natural order. It is more natural for a man to take a horse and use it as he likes, than for him to go down on his knees to it, begging it to do as it wishes, and to fulfil its own marvellous nature.'
Ursula was just breaking out, when Hermione lifted her face and began, in her musing sing-song:
`I do think -- I do really think we must have the courage to use the lower animal life for our needs. I do think there is something wrong, when we look on every living creature as if it were ourselves. I do feel, that it is false to project our own feelings on every animate creature. It is a lack of discrimination, a lack of criticism.'
`Quite,' said Birkin sharply. `Nothing is so detestable as the maudlin attributing of human feelings and consciousness to animals.'
`Yes,' said Hermione, wearily, `we must really take a position. Either we are going to use the animals, or they will use us.'
`That's a fact,' said Gerald. `A horse has got a will like a man, though it has no mind strictly. And if your will isn't master, then the horse is master of you. And this is a thing I can't help. I can't help being master of the horse.'
`If only we could learn how to use our will,' said Hermione, `we could do anything. The will can cure anything, and put anything right. That I am convinced of -- if only we use the will properly, intelligibly.'
`What do you mean by using the will properly?' said Birkin.
`A very great doctor taught me,' she said, addressing Ursula and Gerald vaguely. `He told me for instance, that to cure oneself of a bad habit, one should force oneself to do it, when one would not do it -- make oneself do it -- and then the habit would disappear.'
`How do you mean?' said Gerald.
`If you bite your nails, for example. Then, when you don't want to bite your nails, bite them, make yourself bite them. And you would find the habit was broken.'
`Is that so?' said Gerald.
`Yes. And in so many things, I have made myself well. I was a very queer and nervous girl. And by learning to use my will, simply by using my will, I made myself right.'
Ursula looked all the white at Hermione, as she spoke in her slow, dispassionate, and yet strangely tense voice. A curious thrill went over the younger woman. Some strange, dark, convulsive power was in Hermione, fascinating and repelling.
`It is fatal to use the will like that,' cried Birkin harshly, `disgusting. Such a will is an obscenity.'
Hermione looked at him for a long time, with her shadowed, heavy eyes. Her face was soft and pale and thin, almost phosphorescent, her jaw was lean.
`I'm sure it isn't,' she said at length. There always seemed an interval, a strange split between what she seemed to feel and experience, and what she actually said and thought. She seemed to catch her thoughts at length from off the surface of a maelstrom of chaotic black emotions and reactions, and Birkin was always filled with repulsion, she caught so infallibly, her will never failed her. Her voice was always dispassionate and tense, and perfectly confident. Yet she shuddered with a sense of nausea, a sort of seasickness that always threatened to overwhelm her mind. But her mind remained unbroken, her will was still perfect. It almost sent Birkin mad. But he would never, never dare to break her will, and let loose the maelstrom of her subconsciousness, and see her in her ultimate madness. Yet he was always striking at her.
`And of course,' he said to Gerald, `horses haven't got a complete will, like human beings. A horse has no one will. Every horse, strictly, has two wills. With one will, it wants to put itself in the human power completely -- and with the other, it wants to be free, wild. The two wills sometimes lock -- you know that, if ever you've felt a horse bolt, while you've been driving it.'
`I have felt a horse bolt while I was driving it,' said Gerald, `but it didn't make me know it had two wills. I only knew it was frightened.'
Hermione had ceased to listen. She simply became oblivious when these subjects were started.
`Why should a horse want to put itself in the human power?' asked Ursula. `That is quite incomprehensible to me. I don't believe it ever wanted it.'
`Yes it did. It's the last, perhaps highest, love-impulse: resign your will to the higher being,' said Birkin.
`What curious notions you have of love,' jeered Ursula.
`And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will, she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.'
`Then I'm a bolter,' said Ursula, with a burst of laughter.
`It's a dangerous thing to domesticate even horses, let alone women,' said Birkin. `The dominant principle has some rare antagonists.'
`Good thing too,' said Ursula.
`Quite,' said Gerald, with a faint smile. `There's more fun.'
Hermione could bear no more. She rose, saying in her easy sing-song:
`Isn't the evening beautiful! I get filled sometimes with such a great sense of beauty, that I feel I can hardly bear it.'
Ursula, to whom she had appealed, rose with her, moved to the last impersonal depths. And Birkin seemed to her almost a monster of hateful arrogance. She went with Hermione along the bank of the pond, talking of beautiful, soothing things, picking the gentle cowslips.
`Wouldn't you like a dress,' said Ursula to Hermione, `of this yellow spotted with orange -- a cotton dress?'
`Yes,' said Hermione, stopping and looking at the flower, letting the thought come home to her and soothe her. `Wouldn't it be pretty? I should love it.'
And she turned smiling to Ursula, in a feeling of real affection.
But Gerald remained with Birkin, wanting to probe him to the bottom, to know what he meant by the dual will in horses. A flicker of excitement danced on Gerald's face.
Hermione and Ursula strayed on together, united in a sudden bond of deep affection and closeness.
`I really do not want to be forced into all this criticism and analysis of life. I really do want to see things in their entirety, with their beauty left to them, and their wholeness, their natural holiness. Don't you feel it, don't you feel you can't be tortured into any more knowledge?' said Hermione, stopping in front of Ursula, and turning to her with clenched fists thrust downwards.
`Yes,' said Ursula. `I do. I am sick of all this poking and prying.'
`I'm so glad you are. Sometimes,' said Hermione, again stopping arrested in her progress and turning to Ursula, `sometimes I wonder if I ought to submit to all this realisation, if I am not being weak in rejecting it. But I feel I can't -- I can't. It seems to destroy everything. All the beauty and the -- and the true holiness is destroyed -- and I feel I can't live without them.'
`And it would be simply wrong to live without them,' cried Ursula. `No, it is so irreverent to think that everything must be realised in the head. Really, something must be left to the Lord, there always is and always will be.'
`Yes,' said Hermione, reassured like a child, `it should, shouldn't it? And Rupert --' she lifted her face to the sky, in a muse -- `he can only tear things to pieces. He really is like a boy who must pull everything to pieces to see how it is made. And I can't think it is right -- it does seem so irreverent, as you say.'
`Like tearing open a bud to see what the flower will be like,' said Ursula.
`Yes. And that kills everything, doesn't it? It doesn't allow any possibility of flowering.'
`Of course not,' said Ursula. `It is purely destructive.'
`It is, isn't it!'
Hermione looked long and slow at Ursula, seeming to accept confirmation from her. Then the two women were silent. As soon as they were in accord, they began mutually to mistrust each other. In spite of herself, Ursula felt herself recoiling from Hermione. It was all she could do to restrain her revulsion.
They returned to the men, like two conspirators who have withdrawn to come to an agreement. Birkin looked up at them. Ursula hated him for his cold watchfulness. But he said nothing.
`Shall we be going?' said Hermione. `Rupert, you are coming to Shortlands to dinner? Will you come at once, will you come now, with us?'
`I'm not dressed,' replied Birkin. `And you know Gerald stickles for convention.'
`I don't stickle for it,' said Gerald. `But if you'd got as sick as I have of rowdy go-as-you-please in the house, you'd prefer it if people were peaceful and conventional, at least at meals.'
`All right,' said Birkin.
`But can't we wait for you while you dress?' persisted Hermione.
`If you like.'
He rose to go indoors. Ursula said she would take her leave.
`Only,' she said, turning to Gerald, `I must say that, however man is lord of the beast and the fowl, I still don't think he has any right to violate the feelings of the inferior creation. I still think it would have been much more sensible and nice of you if you'd trotted back up the road while the train went by, and been considerate.'
`I see,' said Gerald, smiling, but somewhat annoyed. `I must remember another time.'
`They all think I'm an interfering female,' thought Ursula to herself, as she went away. But she was in arms against them.
She ran home plunged in thought. She had been very much moved by Hermione, she had really come into contact with her, so that there was a sort of league between the two women. And yet she could not bear her. But she put the thought away. `She's really good,' she said to herself. `She really wants what is right.' And she tried to feel at one with Hermione, and to shut off from Birkin. She was strictly hostile to him. But she was held to him by some bond, some deep principle. This at once irritated her and saved her.
Only now and again, violent little shudders would come over her, out of her subconsciousness, and she knew it was the fact that she had stated her challenge to Birkin, and he had, consciously or unconsciously, accepted. It was a fight to the death between them -- or to new life: though in what the conflict lay, no one could say.
 
他走下堤岸,她不大情愿地跟着他。她既不愿跟随他也不愿离开他。
“我们相互早就了解了,太了解了。”他说。她并不作答。
幽黯的大厨房里,那个雇工的老婆正尖声尖气地同赫麦妮和杰拉德站着聊天。杰拉德穿着白衣服,赫麦妮则着浅绿的薄花软绸,他们的穿着在午后幽黯的屋中格外耀眼。墙上笼子里十几只金丝雀在引吭鸣啭。这些鸟笼子围着后窗挂着,阳光透过外面的绿叶从这孔小方窗里洒进屋来,景致很美。塞尔蒙太太提高嗓门说话,想压过鸟儿愈来愈响亮的叫声,这女人不得不一次次提高嗓门,鸟儿们似乎在跟她对着干,叫得更起劲儿了。
“卢伯特来了!”杰拉德的喊声盖过了屋里噪杂的人声和鸟鸣声。他让这喧闹声吵得烦极了。
“这群鸟儿,简直不让人说话!”雇工的老婆叫道,她厌恶地说,“我得把笼子都盖上。”
说完她就东一下西一下,用抹布、围裙、毛巾和桌布把鸟笼子都蒙上。
“好了,你们别吵了,让别人说说话儿。”可她自己的声音仍然那么大。
大伙儿看着她很快就把笼子都盖上了,盖上布的鸟笼子很象葬礼中的样子。可鸟儿们挑战般的叫声仍旧从盖布下钻出来。
“好了,它们不会再叫了。”塞尔蒙太太让大家放心。“它们就要睡了。”
“是啊。”赫麦妮礼貌地说。
“会的,”杰拉德说。“它们会自动睡过去的,一盖上布,笼子里就跟夜晚一样了。”
“它们会那么容易上当吗?”厄秀拉说。
“会的,”杰拉德回答道,“你不知道法布尔①的故事吗?他小时候把一只母鸡的头藏在鸡翅膀下,那母鸡竟呼呼睡了,这很有道理。”
“从此他就成为一位博物学家②了?”伯金问。
“可能吧。”杰拉德说。
①让·亨利·法布尔(1823—1915),法国昆虫学家与著作家。
这时厄秀拉正从盖布下窥视鸟笼子里面的鸟儿。一群金丝雀立在角落里,相互依偎着准备睡了。
“真可笑!”她叫道,“它们真以为是晚上了!真荒谬!真的,对这种轻易就上当的东西人们怎么会尊敬呢?”
“对呀,”赫麦妮优哉游哉地说着也走过来观看。她一只手搭在厄秀拉胳膊上嘻笑道:“是呀,这鸟儿多逗人,象个傻老公一样。”
她的手拉着厄秀拉的胳膊离开鸟笼子,缓慢地问:
“你怎么来了?我们还碰到戈珍了。”
“我来水塘看看,”厄秀拉说,“结果发现伯金在这儿。”
“是吗?这儿真象是布朗温家的地盘儿了,是吗?”
“我巴不得是呢,”厄秀拉说,“我看到你们在湖上划船,就来这儿躲清闲。”
“是吗?这么说是我们把你从湖边赶到这儿来的。”
赫麦妮的眼皮不可思议地朝上翻着,那样子很有趣但不自然。她脸上总有那么一种神奇的表情,既不自然又对别人视而不见。
“我刚要走,”厄秀拉说,“伯金先生却要我看看这儿的房子。在这儿住该多美呀,真没说的。”
“是啊,”赫麦妮心不在焉地说,说完就转过身不再理会厄秀拉了。
“你感觉如何,卢伯特?”她充满感情地问伯金道。
“很好,”他回答。
“你感到很舒服吗?”赫麦妮脸上露出不可思议、阴险的神色,她似乎很有点沉醉的样子,胸部都抽动了一下。
“很舒服,”他回答。
他们好久没说话,赫麦妮低着眼皮,看了他半天。
“你是说你在这儿会很幸福吗?”她终于开口问。
“我相信会的。”
“我一定会尽力为他做事的,”雇工的老婆说,“我保证我家先生也会这样做。他在这儿会住得很舒服的。”
赫麦妮转过身缓缓地打量她。
“太谢谢了,”她说完又不再理她了。她回转身扬起头,只冲他一人问道:
“你丈量过这间房吗?”
“没有,”他说,“我刚才在修船。”
“咱们现在量量好吗?”她不动声色,慢声细语地说。
“您有卷尺吗,塞尔蒙太太?”
“有,我会找到的。”那女人应声去篮子里找。“我就这么一卷,能用吗?”
尽管卷尺是递给伯金的,可赫麦妮却接了过来。
“很感谢你,”她说,“这尺子很好用。谢谢你。”说完她转向伯金,快活地比划着对他说:“我们现在就量,好吗,卢伯特?”
“那别人干什么?大家会感到厌倦的。”他很勉强地说。
“你们介意吗?”赫麦妮转身不经意地问厄秀拉和杰拉德。
“一点都不介意。”他们回答。
“那先量哪一间呢?”赫麦妮再次转向伯金快活地问,她要同他一起做点事了。
“一间一间量下去吧。”他说。
“你们量着,我去准备茶点好吗?”雇工的老婆说,她也很高兴,因为她也有事做了。
“是吗?”赫麦妮举止出奇得亲昵,似乎能淹没这女人。她把那女人拉到自己身边,把别人都撇开,说:“我太高兴了。
我们在哪儿吃茶点呢?”
“您喜欢在哪儿?在这儿还是在外面的草坪上?”
“在哪吃茶?”赫麦妮问大家。
“在水塘边吧。塞尔蒙太太,如果您准备好了茶点,我们这就带上去好了。”伯金说。
“那好吧。”这女人感到很满意。
这几个人走下小径来到第一间屋。房间里空荡荡的,但很干净,洒满了阳光。一扇窗户向枝繁叶茂的花园儿敞开着。
“这是餐厅,”赫麦妮说,“咱们这么量,卢伯特,你到那边去——”
“我不是可以替你做吗?”杰拉德说着上前来握住卷尺的一端。
“不必了,谢谢。”赫麦妮叫了起来。她就这样穿着漂亮的绿色印花薄软绸衣服蹲下身去。跟伯金在一起做事对她来说是一大快乐,他对她唯命是从。厄秀拉和杰拉德在一旁看着他们。赫麦妮的一大特色就是一时间与一个人亲密相处而置别人不顾,把别人晒在一旁。因此她总立于不败之地。
他们量完了房子就在餐厅里商量起来。赫麦妮决定了用什么来铺地面。要是她的建议受到挫折她就会大为光火。伯金在这种时刻总是让她独断专行。
然后他们穿过正厅,来到另一间较小的前屋。
“这间是书房,”赫麦妮说,“卢伯特,我有一块地毯,你拿上吧。你要吗?要吧。我想送给你。”
“什么样的?”他很不礼貌地问。
“你没见过的。底色是玫瑰红,夹杂着些儿蓝色、金属色、浅蓝和柔和的深蓝色。我觉得你会喜欢它的。你会喜欢它吗?”
“听起来挺不错的,”他说,“哪儿的?东方的吗?绒的吗?”
“是的。是波斯地毯呢!是骆驼毛做的,很光滑。我以为它的名字叫波戈摩斯地毯,长十二英尺,宽七英尺,你看可以用吗?”
“可以的,”他说,“可是您为什么要送我这么昂贵的地毯呢?我自己那块旧牛津土耳其地毯挺不错的,有它就够了。”
“可是我送给你不好吗?请允许我这样。”
“它值多少钱?”
她看看他说:
“我记不得了。挺便宜的。”
他看看她,沉下脸说:
“我不想要,赫麦妮。”他说。
“让我把地毯送给你铺在这所房子里吧,”她说着走上前来求援般地把手轻轻地搭在他胳膊上。“你若不要,我会失望的。”
“你知道我不愿意你送我东西。”他无可奈何地重复道。
“我不想给你什么东西,”她调侃地说,“可这块地毯你要不要?”
“好吧。”他说,他败了,她胜了。
他们来到楼上。楼上同楼下一样也有两间卧室,其中一间已稍加装饰,很明显,伯金就睡在这屋里。赫麦妮认真地在屋里巡视一番,眼睛不放过任何一个细节,似乎要从这些没有生命的东西里汲取出伯金的身影。她摸摸床,检查一下床上的铺盖。
“你真感到舒适吗?”她捏捏枕头问。
“很舒服。”他冷漠地回答。
“暖和吗?下面没铺褥子,你需要有条褥子,你不应该盖太多的衣服。”
“我有一条,”他说,“撤下来了。”
他们丈量着房子,时时停下来思忖。厄秀拉站在窗边,看到雇工的老婆端着茶点走上水坝到水池边去了。她对赫麦妮的那番空谈大论表示厌恶,她想喝茶了,做什么都行,就是看不下这大惊小怪的场面。
最后,大家都来到绿草茵茵的堤岸上进野餐。赫麦妮在为大家倒茶,她现在理都不理厄秀拉。厄秀拉刚才心情不太好,现在恢复过来了,她对杰拉德说:
“那天我可是恨透你了,克里奇先生。”
“为什么?”杰拉德躲躲闪闪地问。
“因为你对你的马太坏了。哦,我真恨透你了!”
“他干什么坏事了?”赫麦妮拖着长声问。
“那天在铁道口上,一连串可怕的列车驶过时,他却让他那可爱的阿拉伯马跟他一起站在铁道边上。那可怜的马很敏感,简直吓坏了。你可以想象出那是一种多么可怕的场景。”
“你为什么要这样,杰拉德?”赫麦妮不动声色地问。
“这马必须学会站立不可,对我来说,一有机车轰响就躲的马有什么用?”
“可你干吗要折磨它,没必要这样,”厄秀拉说,“为什么让它在铁道口站那么久?你本来可以骑回到大路上去,避免那场虚惊。你用马刺把它的肚子都扎出血来了。太可怕了!”
杰拉德态度生硬地说:
“我必须使用它,要让它变得让人放心,它就得学会适应噪音。”
“为什么?”厄秀拉颇为激动地叫道。“它是一个活生生的生物,你为什么要选择它去承受这承受那?你要对你的生命负责,它同你一样也是自己生命的主人。”
“我不同意这种说法,”杰拉德说,“这马是为我所用的,并不是因为我买下它了,而是因为它天生如此。对一个人来说,随心所欲地使用他的马比跪在马前求它实现它的天性更合乎情理。”
厄秀拉刚要开口说话,赫麦妮就抬起头来思忖着说:
我确实认为,我真地认为我们必须有勇气使用低级生命来为我们服务。我确实觉得,如果我们把任何一种活生生的动物当作自己对待的话那就错了。我确实感到把我们自己的感情投射到任何牲灵上都是虚伪的,这说明我们缺少辨别力,缺乏批评能力。”
“很对,”伯金尖刻地说。“把人的感情移情于动物、赋于动物以人的意识,没比这更令人厌恶的了。”
“对,”赫麦妮有气无力地说,“我们必须真正选好一个位置,要么我们使用动物,要么动物使用我们。”
“是这么回事,”杰拉德说,“一匹马同人一样,严格讲,尽管它没有头脑,却有意志。如果你的意志不去支使它,它就要支使你。对此我毫无办法,我无法不支使它。”
“如果我们知道怎样使用我们的意志,”赫麦妮说,“我们就可以做任何事情。意志可以拯救一切,让一切都走上正轨,只要恰当,明智地使用我们的意志,我相信这些都能办得到。”
“你说恰当地使用意志是什么意思?”伯金问。
“一位了不起的大夫教过我,”她对厄秀拉和杰拉德说,“他对我说,要纠正一个人的坏习惯,你就得在不想做什么的时候强迫自己去做什么。这样,你的坏习惯就没了。”
“你这怎么讲?”杰拉德问。
“比方说你爱吃手指头。当你不想吃手指头时,你应该强迫自己去吃,然后你就会发现吃手指头的习惯改了。”
“是这样吗?”杰拉德问。
“是的。在很多事情上我都实践过,效果很好。我原本是个好奇心很强又很神经质的女孩子,就是因为我学会使用我的意志,仅仅使用我的意志,我才没出错儿。”
厄秀拉一直看着赫麦妮,听她用一种缓慢、毫无激情但又紧张得出奇的声调说话,她不由得感到一阵难言的激动。赫麦妮身上有一股奇特、黑暗、抽搐着的力量,既迷人又令人厌恶。
“这样使用意志是致命的,”伯金严厉地叫道,“令人恶心,这种意志很低下。”
赫麦妮盯了他好长时间,她目光阴郁、凝重,面庞柔和、苍白、瘦削、下巴尖尖的,脸上泛着一层光芒。
“我敢说它并不低下,”她终于开口说。似乎在她的感觉与经验、言行与思想之间总有一种奇怪的距离和分歧。她似乎在远离混乱的情绪与反应的漩涡处找到了自己的思路,她的意志从未失灵过,对此伯金极为反感。她的声音总是毫无激情,但很紧张,显得她很有信心。但是她又不时地感到眩晕,打冷战,这种晕船般的感觉总要战胜她的理智。尽管如此,她头脑仍然保持着清醒,意志丝毫不衰。这几乎让伯金发疯。但他从不敢击溃她的意志,不敢让她潜意识的漩涡放松,不敢看到她发疯。可他又总要攻击她。
“当然了,”伯金对杰拉德说,“马并没有完整的意志,它跟人不一样。一匹马并不只有一个意志,严格说它有两重意志。一种意志让它屈从于人的力量,另一种意志让它要求自由,变得野蛮。这两种意志有时紧密相联——当你骑马跑的时候,它挣脱缰绳,这时你就明白这一点了。”
“当我骑马时我感觉到它要挣脱缰绳,”杰拉德说,“可我并没有因此而知道它有两个意志。我只知道它害怕了。”
赫麦妮不听他的话了。当这些话题出现时,她压根儿不去听。
“为什么一匹马愿意屈从于人的力量呢?”厄秀拉问,“对我来说这真是不可思议。我不相信它会这样。”
“可这是事实。这是最高级的爱的冲动:屈服于更高级的生命。”伯金说。
“你这种爱的理论是多么出奇啊。”厄秀拉调笑说。
“女人就如同马:两种意志在她身上起作用。一种意志驱使她彻底地去屈从,另一种意志让她挣脱羁绊,将骑马人投入地狱。”
“我就是一匹脱缰的马。”厄秀拉大笑着说。
“要驯服马是件危险的事,更何况驯服女人呢?”伯金说,“征服的本能会遇到强硬的对手的。”
“这也是件好事。”厄秀拉说。
“很好,”杰拉德脸上露出苍白的笑容说,“很有意思。”
赫麦妮对此无法忍受了,站起身悠哉悠哉地说:
“这晚景儿太美了!我觉得美好的东西溶满了我的感觉,令我不能自己。”
厄秀拉见她对自己说话,就也站起身来,同她一起走入沉沉的夜色中。伯金在她眼里变成了一个可恶的自高自大的魔王。她同赫麦妮沿着岸边走着,一边采撷着优雅的郁金香一边聊着,谈论美好、舒心的事儿。
“你喜欢一件带黄点点的布衣服吗?”厄秀拉问赫麦妮。
“喜欢,”赫麦妮说着停下来观赏花儿,借此来理清自己的思绪并从中找到慰藉。“那不是很漂亮吗?我会喜欢的。”
说话间她冲厄秀拉笑笑,显得挺真切。
但杰拉德仍然同伯金在一起,他想要刨根问底,问清楚他所说的马的双重意志到底是什么意思。杰拉德显得很激动。
赫麦妮仍旧同厄秀拉在一起,两个人被一种突发的深情连在一起,变得亲密无间。
“我真不想被迫卷入这种对于生活的批评和分析中去。我其实是真想全面地看待事物,看到它们的美,它们的整体和它们天然的神圣性。你是否感到,你是否感到你无法忍受知识的折磨?”赫麦妮说着在厄秀拉面前停下,双拳紧握着。
“是的,”厄秀拉说,“我实在对说东道西厌恶透了。”
“你这样真让我高兴。有时,”赫麦妮再次停住脚步对厄秀拉说,“有时我想,如果我还不软弱,还能抵制,我为什么要屈服呢?我感到我才不会屈服呢。那似乎会毁灭一切,一切的美,还有,还有真正的神圣性都被毁灭了,可是,没有美,没有神圣,我就无法活。”
“没有它们的生活简直就不是生活,”厄秀拉叫道。“不,让人的头脑去实现一切简直是一种亵渎。真的,有些事是要留给上帝去做的,现在是这样,将来也还是这样。”
“是的,”赫麦妮象一位消除了疑虑的孩子似地说道,“应该是这样,难道不是吗?那么,卢伯特——”她思忖着仰头望天道,“他就知道把什么都捣毁。他就象个孩子,要把什么都拆毁以便看看那些东西的构造。我无法认为这种做法是对的,象你说的那样,这是一种亵渎。
“就象撕开花瓣要看个究竟一样。”厄秀拉说。
“是的,这样一来就把什么都毁了,不是吗?就没有开花的可能性了。”
“当然不会有,”厄秀拉说,“这纯粹是毁灭。”
“就是,就是这么回事!”
赫麦妮久久地盯着厄秀拉,似乎要从她这儿得到肯定的答复。然后两个女人沉默了。每当她们意见相符时,她们就开始互不信任起来。厄秀拉感到自己情不自禁地躲避着赫麦妮,只有这样她才会抑制自己的反感情绪。
她们俩又回到两个男人身边,似乎刚刚象同谋一样达成了什么协议。伯金抬头看了看她们,厄秀拉真恨他这种冷漠的凝眸。但他没说什么。
“咱们走吧,”赫麦妮说,“卢伯特,你去肖特兰兹吃晚饭吗?来吧,跟我们一起来吧,好吗?”
“可我没穿礼服,”伯金说,“你知道,杰拉德是讲礼节的人。”
“我并不墨守成规,”杰拉德说,“不过,你如果不喜欢随随便便的吵闹,在大家平心静气地用餐时最好不要这样。”
“好吧。”伯金说。
“可是我们等你打扮好再走不行吗?”赫麦妮坚持说。
“行啊。”
他进屋去了。厄秀拉说她要告别了。
“不过,”她转身对杰拉德说,“我必须说,尽管人是兽类的主子,但他没有权力侵犯低级动物的感情。我仍然认为,如果那次你骑马躲开隆隆驶过的火车就好了,那说明你更明智,更想得周到。”
“我明白了,”杰拉德笑道,但他有点感到不快。“我下次注意就是了。”
“他们都认为我是个爱管闲事的女人。”厄秀拉边走边想。
但是她有与他们斗争的武器。
她满腹心事地回到家中。她今天被赫麦妮感动了,她同她有了真正的交往,从而这两个女人之间建立起了某种同盟。可她又无法容忍赫麦妮。“她还是挺不错的人嘛,”她自言自语道,以此打消了那种想法。“她真心要得到正确的东西。”厄秀拉想同赫麦妮一条心,摈弃伯金。她现在很敌视他。这感觉既令她苦恼又保全了她。
有时,她会激烈地抽搐起来,这抽搐发自她的潜意识。她知道这是因为她向伯金提出了挑战,而伯金有意无意地应战了。这是一场殊死的斗争,或许斗争的结果是获得新生。但谁也说不清他们之间的分歧是什么。
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。
゛臉紅紅....

ZxID:704295


等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
举报 只看该作者 13楼  发表于: 2013-10-27 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 13


Mino THE DAYS went by, and she received no sign. Was he going to ignore her, was he going to take no further notice of her secret? A dreary weight of anxiety and acrid bitterness settled on her. And yet Ursula knew she was only deceiving herself, and that he would proceed. She said no word to anybody.
Then, sure enough, there came a note from him, asking if she would come to tea with Gudrun, to his rooms in town.
`Why does he ask Gudrun as well?' she asked herself at once. `Does he want to protect himself, or does he think I would not go alone?' She was tormented by the thought that he wanted to protect himself. But at the end of all, she only said to herself:
`I don't want Gudrun to be there, because I want him to say something more to me. So I shan't tell Gudrun anything about it, and I shall go alone. Then I shall know.'
She found herself sitting on the tram-car, mounting up the hill going out of the town, to the place where he had his lodging. She seemed to have passed into a kind of dream world, absolved from the conditions of actuality. She watched the sordid streets of the town go by beneath her, as if she were a spirit disconnected from the material universe. What had it all to do with her? She was palpitating and formless within the flux of the ghost life. She could not consider any more, what anybody would say of her or think about her. People had passed out of her range, she was absolved. She had fallen strange and dim, out of the sheath of the material life, as a berry falls from the only world it has ever known, down out of the sheath on to the real unknown.
Birkin was standing in the middle of the room, when she was shown in by the landlady. He too was moved outside himself. She saw him agitated and shaken, a frail, unsubstantial body silent like the node of some violent force, that came out from him and shook her almost into a swoon.
`You are alone?' he said.
`Yes - Gudrun could not come.'
He instantly guessed why.
And they were both seated in silence, in the terrible tension of the room. She was aware that it was a pleasant room, full of light and very restful in its form -- aware also of a fuchsia tree, with dangling scarlet and purple flowers.
`How nice the fuchsias are!' she said, to break the silence.
`Aren't they! Did you think I had forgotten what I said?'
A swoon went over Ursula's mind.
`I don't want you to remember it -- if you don't want to,' she struggled to say, through the dark mist that covered her.
There was silence for some moments.
`No,' he said. `It isn't that. Only -- if we are going to know each other, we must pledge ourselves for ever. If we are going to make a relationship, even of friendship, there must be something final and infallible about it.'
There was a clang of mistrust and almost anger in his voice. She did not answer. Her heart was too much contracted. She could not have spoken.
Seeing she was not going to reply, he continued, almost bitterly, giving himself away:
`I can't say it is love I have to offer -- and it isn't love I want. It is something much more impersonal and harder -- and rarer.'
There was a silence, out of which she said:
`You mean you don't love me?'
She suffered furiously, saying that.
`Yes, if you like to put it like that. Though perhaps that isn't true. I don't know. At any rate, I don't feel the emotion of love for you -- no, and I don't want to. Because it gives out in the last issues.'
`Love gives out in the last issues?' she asked, feeling numb to the lips.
`Yes, it does. At the very last, one is alone, beyond the influence of love. There is a real impersonal me, that is beyond love, beyond any emotional relationship. So it is with you. But we want to delude ourselves that love is the root. It isn't. It is only the branches. The root is beyond love, a naked kind of isolation, an isolated me, that does not meet and mingle, and never can.'
She watched him with wide, troubled eyes. His face was incandescent in its abstract earnestness.
`And you mean you can't love?' she asked, in trepidation.
`Yes, if you like. I have loved. But there is a beyond, where there is not love.'
She could not submit to this. She felt it swooning over her. But she could not submit.
`But how do you know -- if you have never really loved?' she asked.
`It is true, what I say; there is a beyond, in you, in me, which is further than love, beyond the scope, as stars are beyond the scope of vision, some of them.'
`Then there is no love,' cried Ursula.
`Ultimately, no, there is something else. But, ultimately, there is no love.'
Ursula was given over to this statement for some moments. Then she half rose from her chair, saying, in a final, repellent voice:
`Then let me go home -- what am I doing here?'
`There is the door,' he said. `You are a free agent.'
He was suspended finely and perfectly in this extremity. She hung motionless for some seconds, then she sat down again.
`If there is no love, what is there?' she cried, almost jeering.
`Something,' he said, looking at her, battling with his soul, with all his might.
`What?'
He was silent for a long time, unable to be in communication with her while she was in this state of opposition.
`There is,' he said, in a voice of pure abstraction; `a final me which is stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a final you. And it is there I would want to meet you -- not in the emotional, loving plane -- but there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms of agreement. There we are two stark, unknown beings, two utterly strange creatures, I would want to approach you, and you me. And there could be no obligation, because there is no standard for action there, because no understanding has been reaped from that plane. It is quite inhuman, -- so there can be no calling to book, in any form whatsoever -- because one is outside the pale of all that is accepted, and nothing known applies. One can only follow the impulse, taking that which lies in front, and responsible for nothing, asked for nothing, giving nothing, only each taking according to the primal desire.'
Ursula listened to this speech, her mind dumb and almost senseless, what he said was so unexpected and so untoward.
`It is just purely selfish,' she said.
`If it is pure, yes. But it isn't selfish at all. Because I don't know what I want of you. I deliver myself over to the unknown, in coming to you, I am without reserves or defences, stripped entirely, into the unknown. Only there needs the pledge between us, that we will both cast off everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us.'
She pondered along her own line of thought.
`But it is because you love me, that you want me?' she persisted.
`No it isn't. It is because I believe in you -- if I do believe in you.'
`Aren't you sure?' she laughed, suddenly hurt.
He was looking at her steadfastly, scarcely heeding what she said.
`Yes, I must believe in you, or else I shouldn't be here saying this,' he replied. `But that is all the proof I have. I don't feel any very strong belief at this particular moment.'
She disliked him for this sudden relapse into weariness and faithlessness.
`But don't you think me good-looking?' she persisted, in a mocking voice.
He looked at her, to see if he felt that she was good-looking.
`I don't feel that you're good-looking,' he said.
`Not even attractive?' she mocked, bitingly.
He knitted his brows in sudden exasperation.
`Don't you see that it's not a question of visual appreciation in the least,' he cried. `I don't want to see you. I've seen plenty of women, I'm sick and weary of seeing them. I want a woman I don't see.'
`I'm sorry I can't oblige you by being invisible,' she laughed.
`Yes,' he said, `you are invisible to me, if you don't force me to be visually aware of you. But I don't want to see you or hear you.'
`What did you ask me to tea for, then?' she mocked.
But he would take no notice of her. He was talking to himself.
`I want to find you, where you don't know your own existence, the you that your common self denies utterly. But I don't want your good looks, and I don't want your womanly feelings, and I don't want your thoughts nor opinions nor your ideas -- they are all bagatelles to me.'
`You are very conceited, Monsieur,' she mocked. `How do you know what my womanly feelings are, or my thoughts or my ideas? You don't even know what I think of you now.'
`Nor do I care in the slightest.'
`I think you are very silly. I think you want to tell me you love me, and you go all this way round to do it.'
`All right,' he said, looking up with sudden exasperation. `Now go away then, and leave me alone. I don't want any more of your meretricious persiflage.'
`Is it really persiflage?' she mocked, her face really relaxing into laughter. She interpreted it, that he had made a deep confession of love to her. But he was so absurd in his words, also.
They were silent for many minutes, she was pleased and elated like a child. His concentration broke, he began to look at her simply and naturally.
`What I want is a strange conjunction with you --' he said quietly; `not meeting and mingling -- you are quite right -- but an equilibrium, a pure balance of two single beings -- as the stars balance each other.'
She looked at him. He was very earnest, and earnestness was always rather ridiculous, commonplace, to her. It made her feel unfree and uncomfortable. Yet she liked him so much. But why drag in the stars.
`Isn't this rather sudden?' she mocked.
He began to laugh.
`Best to read the terms of the contract, before we sign,' he said.
A young grey cat that had been sleeping on the sofa jumped down and stretched, rising on its long legs, and arching its slim back. Then it sat considering for a moment, erect and kingly. And then, like a dart, it had shot out of the room, through the open window-doors, and into the garden.
`What's he after?' said Birkin, rising.
The young cat trotted lordly down the path, waving his tail. He was an ordinary tabby with white paws, a slender young gentleman. A crouching, fluffy, brownish-grey cat was stealing up the side of the fence. The Mino walked statelily up to her, with manly nonchalance. She crouched before him and pressed herself on the ground in humility, a fluffy soft outcast, looking up at him with wild eyes that were green and lovely as great jewels. He looked casually down on her. So she crept a few inches further, proceeding on her way to the back door, crouching in a wonderful, soft, self-obliterating manner, and moving like a shadow.
He, going statelily on his slim legs, walked after her, then suddenly, for pure excess, he gave her a light cuff with his paw on the side of her face. She ran off a few steps, like a blown leaf along the ground, then crouched unobtrusively, in submissive, wild patience. The Mino pretended to take no notice of her. He blinked his eyes superbly at the landscape. In a minute she drew herself together and moved softly, a fleecy brown-grey shadow, a few paces forward. She began to quicken her pace, in a moment she would be gone like a dream, when the young grey lord sprang before her, and gave her a light handsome cuff. She subsided at once, submissively.
`She is a wild cat,' said Birkin. `She has come in from the woods.'
The eyes of the stray cat flared round for a moment, like great green fires staring at Birkin. Then she had rushed in a soft swift rush, half way down the garden. There she paused to look round. The Mino turned his face in pure superiority to his master, and slowly closed his eyes, standing in statuesque young perfection. The wild cat's round, green, wondering eyes were staring all the while like uncanny fires. Then again, like a shadow, she slid towards the kitchen.
In a lovely springing leap, like a wind, the Mino was upon her, and had boxed her twice, very definitely, with a white, delicate fist. She sank and slid back, unquestioning. He walked after her, and cuffed her once or twice, leisurely, with sudden little blows of his magic white paws.
`Now why does he do that?' cried Ursula in indignation.
`They are on intimate terms,' said Birkin.
`And is that why he hits her?'
`Yes,' laughed Birkin, `I think he wants to make it quite obvious to her.'
`Isn't it horrid of him!' she cried; and going out into the garden she called to the Mino:
`Stop it, don't bully. Stop hitting her.'
The stray cat vanished like a swift, invisible shadow. The Mino glanced at Ursula, then looked from her disdainfully to his master.
`Are you a bully, Mino?' Birkin asked.
The young slim cat looked at him, and slowly narrowed its eyes. Then it glanced away at the landscape, looking into the distance as if completely oblivious of the two human beings.
`Mino,' said Ursula, `I don't like you. You are a bully like all males.'
`No,' said Birkin, `he is justified. He is not a bully. He is only insisting to the poor stray that she shall acknowledge him as a sort of fate, her own fate: because you can see she is fluffy and promiscuous as the wind. I am with him entirely. He wants superfine stability.'
`Yes, I know!' cried Ursula. `He wants his own way -- I know what your fine words work down to -- bossiness, I call it, bossiness.'
The young cat again glanced at Birkin in disdain of the noisy woman.
`I quite agree with you, Miciotto,' said Birkin to the cat. `Keep your male dignity, and your higher understanding.'
Again the Mino narrowed his eyes as if he were looking at the sun. Then, suddenly affecting to have no connection at all with the two people, he went trotting off, with assumed spontaneity and gaiety, his tail erect, his white feet blithe.
`Now he will find the belle sauvage once more, and entertain her with his superior wisdom,' laughed Birkin.
Ursula looked at the man who stood in the garden with his hair blowing and his eyes smiling ironically, and she cried:
`Oh it makes me so cross, this assumption of male superiority! And it is such a lie! One wouldn't mind if there were any justification for it.'
`The wild cat,' said Birkin, `doesn't mind. She perceives that it is justified.'
`Does she!' cried Ursula. `And tell it to the Horse Marines.'
`To them also.'
`It is just like Gerald Crich with his horse -- a lust for bullying -- a real Wille zur Macht -- so base, so petty.'
`I agree that the Wille zur Macht is a base and petty thing. But with the Mino, it is the desire to bring this female cat into a pure stable equilibrium, a transcendent and abiding rapport with the single male. Whereas without him, as you see, she is a mere stray, a fluffy sporadic bit of chaos. It is a volonte de pouvoir, if you like, a will to ability, taking pouvoir as a verb.'
`Ah --! Sophistries! It's the old Adam.'
`Oh yes. Adam kept Eve in the indestructible paradise, when he kept her single with himself, like a star in its orbit.'
`Yes -- yes --' cried Ursula, pointing her finger at him. `There you are -- a star in its orbit! A satellite -- a satellite of Mars -- that's what she is to be! There -- there -- you've given yourself away! You want a satellite, Mars and his satellite! You've said it -- you've said it -- you've dished yourself!'
He stood smiling in frustration and amusement and irritation and admiration and love. She was so quick, and so lambent, like discernible fire, and so vindictive, and so rich in her dangerous flamy sensitiveness.
`I've not said it at all,' he replied, `if you will give me a chance to speak.'
`No, no!' she cried. `I won't let you speak. You've said it, a satellite, you're not going to wriggle out of it. You've said it.'
`You'll never believe now that I haven't said it,' he answered. `I neither implied nor indicated nor mentioned a satellite, nor intended a satellite, never.'
`You prevaricator!' she cried, in real indignation.
`Tea is ready, sir,' said the landlady from the doorway.
They both looked at her, very much as the cats had looked at them, a little while before.
`Thank you, Mrs Daykin.'
An interrupted silence fell over the two of them, a moment of breach.
`Come and have tea,' he said.
`Yes, I should love it,' she replied, gathering herself together.
They sat facing each other across the tea table.
`I did not say, nor imply, a satellite. I meant two single equal stars balanced in conjunction --'
`You gave yourself away, you gave away your little game completely,' she cried, beginning at once to eat. He saw that she would take no further heed of his expostulation, so he began to pour the tea.
`What good things to eat!' she cried.
`Take your own sugar,' he said.
He handed her her cup. He had everything so nice, such pretty cups and plates, painted with mauve-lustre and green, also shapely bowls and glass plates, and old spoons, on a woven cloth of pale grey and black and purple. It was very rich and fine. But Ursula could see Hermione's influence.
`Your things are so lovely!' she said, almost angrily.
`I like them. It gives me real pleasure to use things that are attractive in themselves -- pleasant things. And Mrs Daykin is good. She thinks everything is wonderful, for my sake.'
`Really,' said Ursula, `landladies are better than wives, nowadays. They certainly care a great deal more. It is much more beautiful and complete here now, than if you were married.'
`But think of the emptiness within,' he laughed.
`No,' she said. `I am jealous that men have such perfect landladies and such beautiful lodgings. There is nothing left them to desire.'
`In the house-keeping way, we'll hope not. It is disgusting, people marrying for a home.'
`Still,' said Ursula, `a man has very little need for a woman now, has he?'
`In outer things, maybe -- except to share his bed and bear his children. But essentially, there is just the same need as there ever was. Only nobody takes the trouble to be essential.'
`How essential?' she said.
`I do think,' he said, `that the world is only held together by the mystic conjunction, the ultimate unison between people -- a bond. And the immediate bond is between man and woman.'
`But it's such old hat,' said Ursula. `Why should love be a bond? No, I'm not having any.'
`If you are walking westward,' he said, `you forfeit the northern and eastward and southern direction. If you admit a unison, you forfeit all the possibilities of chaos.'
`But love is freedom,' she declared.
`Don't cant to me,' he replied. `Love is a direction which excludes all other directions. It's a freedom together, if you like.'
`No,' she said, `love includes everything.'
`Sentimental cant,' he replied. `You want the state of chaos, that's all. It is ultimate nihilism, this freedom-in-love business, this freedom which is love and love which is freedom. As a matter of fact, if you enter into a pure unison, it is irrevocable, and it is never pure till it is irrevocable. And when it is irrevocable, it is one way, like the path of a star.'
`Ha!' she cried bitterly. `It is the old dead morality.'
`No,' he said, `it is the law of creation. One is committed. One must commit oneself to a conjunction with the other -- for ever. But it is not selfless -- it is a maintaining of the self in mystic balance and integrity -like a star balanced with another star.'
`I don't trust you when you drag in the stars,' she said. `If you were quite true, it wouldn't be necessary to be so far-fetched.'
`Don't trust me then,' he said, angry. `It is enough that I trust myself.'
`And that is where you make another mistake,' she replied. `You don't trust yourself. You don't fully believe yourself what you are saying. You don't really want this conjunction, otherwise you wouldn't talk so much about it, you'd get it.'
He was suspended for a moment, arrested.
`How?' he said.
`By just loving,' she retorted in defiance.
He was still a moment, in anger. Then he said:
`I tell you, I don't believe in love like that. I tell you, you want love to administer to your egoism, to subserve you. Love is a process of subservience with you -- and with everybody. I hate it.'
`No,' she cried, pressing back her head like a cobra, her eyes flashing. `It is a process of pride -- I want to be proud --'
`Proud and subservient, proud and subservient, I know you,' he retorted dryly. `Proud and subservient, then subservient to the proud -- I know you and your love. It is a tick-tack, tick-tack, a dance of opposites.'
`Are you sure?' she mocked wickedly, `what my love is?'
`Yes, I am,' he retorted.
`So cocksure!' she said. `How can anybody ever be right, who is so cocksure? It shows you are wrong.'
He was silent in chagrin.
They had talked and struggled till they were both wearied out.
`Tell me about yourself and your people,' he said.
And she told him about the Brangwens, and about her mother, and about Skrebensky, her first love, and about her later experiences. He sat very still, watching her as she talked. And he seemed to listen with reverence. Her face was beautiful and full of baffled light as she told him all the things that had hurt her or perplexed her so deeply. He seemed to warm and comfort his soul at the beautiful light of her nature.
`If she really could pledge herself,' he thought to himself, with passionate insistence but hardly any hope. Yet a curious little irresponsible laughter appeared in his heart.
`We have all suffered so much,' he mocked, ironically.
She looked up at him, and a flash of wild gaiety went over her face, a strange flash of yellow light coming from her eyes.
`Haven't we!' she cried, in a high, reckless cry. `It is almost absurd, isn't it?'
`Quite absurd,' he said. `Suffering bores me, any more.'
`So it does me.'
He was almost afraid of the mocking recklessness of her splendid face. Here was one who would go to the whole lengths of heaven or hell, whichever she had to go. And he mistrusted her, he was afraid of a woman capable of such abandon, such dangerous thoroughness of destructivity. Yet he chuckled within himself also.
She came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, looking down at him with strange golden-lighted eyes, very tender, but with a curious devilish look lurking underneath.
`Say you love me, say "my love" to me,' she pleaded
He looked back into her eyes, and saw. His face flickered with sardonic comprehension.
`I love you right enough,' he said, grimly. `But I want it to be something else.'
`But why? But why?' she insisted, bending her wonderful luminous face to him. `Why isn't it enough?'
`Because we can go one better,' he said, putting his arms round her.
`No, we can't,' she said, in a strong, voluptuous voice of yielding. `We can only love each other. Say "my love" to me, say it, say it.'
She put her arms round his neck. He enfolded her, and kissed her subtly, murmuring in a subtle voice of love, and irony, and submission:
`Yes, -- my love, yes, -- my love. Let love be enough then. I love you then -- I love you. I'm bored by the rest.'
`Yes,' she murmured, nestling very sweet and close to him.
 
光阴荏苒,可她没有发现什么迹象。他是否不理她了,是否对她的秘密不屑一顾?她感到焦虑、痛苦极了。可厄秀拉知道她这是自欺欺人,她明明知道他会来的。因此,她对别人没说起过一个字。
果然不出所料,他写信来了,问她是否愿意和戈珍一起到他在城里的住宅里去吃茶。
“他为什么要连戈珍一块儿请?”她立即提出这个问题。
“他是想保护自己还是认为我不能独自前去?”
一想到他要保护自己,她就感到难受。最终她自语道:
“不,我不想让戈珍也在场,因为我想让他对我多说点什么。我决不把这事儿告诉戈珍,我会独自去的,到那时我就明白是怎么回事了。”
她坐电上车出了城,到他山上住宅去。她觉得自己远离了现实,似乎进入了一个梦幻般的世界。她看着车下肮脏的街道,似乎觉得自己是一个与这个物质世界无关的人。这些跟她有什么关系呢?她感到自己在魔幻般生活的流动中喘息着,失去了自己的形状。她再也无法顾及别人如何议论她,如何看她了。别人对她来说是不存在的,她跟他们没关系。她脱离了物质生活的羁绊,就象一只浆果从它熟知的世界中落下来,落入未知世界中,变得陌生、阴郁。
当女房东把她引进屋时,伯金正站在屋中央。他走了出来。她看到他有些狂躁、震惊,似乎有一种巨大的力量默默地发自他柔弱的躯体,这力量震动了她,令她神魂颠倒。
“就你一个人?”他问。
“是的!戈珍不能来。”
他沉默了,要猜个究竟。
然后他们双双在沉寂的气氛中落了座,感到很紧张。她注意到这屋子很舒服,屋里采光充足环境很安宁。她还发现屋里有一盆倒挂金钟,有腥红和紫红色的花儿垂落下来。
“多么美的倒挂金钟啊!”她一句话打破了沉默。
“是吗?你是否以为我忘记了我说过的话?”
厄秀拉只感到一阵晕眩。
“如果你不想记住,我并不强求你记住,”厄秀拉昏昏沉沉地强打起精神说。
屋里一片寂静。
“不,”他说,“不是那个问题。只是,如果我们要相互了解,我们就得下定决心才行。如果我们要建立联系,甚至建立友谊,就必须有一种永恒,不可改变的东西作保证。”
他的语调中流露出一种对她的不信任,甚至气恼。她没有回答,她的心缩紧了,令她无法开口说话。
见她不回答,他仍旧刻薄地说他的话,完全忘却了自己。
“我无法说我要给予的是爱,我需要的也不是爱。我所说的是某种超人性的、更加艰难、更加罕见的东西。”
她沉默了一下说:
“你的意思是你不爱我?”
说完这句话她都快气疯了。
“是的,如果你这么说就是这么回事,尽管并不尽然。我不知道。不管怎样,我并没有爱你的感觉,我没有感受到这种情绪,没有,我并不需要这个。它最终会出现的。”
“你是说最终会有爱?”她问,感到嘴唇发木。
“是的,是这样的,当一个人最终只孤身一人,超越爱的影响时。到那时会有一个超越自我的我,它是超越爱、超越任何感情关系的。同你在一起也是如此。可是我们却自我欺骗,认为爱是根。其实不然。爱只是枝节。根是超越爱,纯粹孤独的我,它与什么也不相会、不相混,永远不会。”
她睁大一双忧虑的眼睛看着他,他的脸上带着很诚肯的表情,微微地闪光。
“你是说你无法爱,是吗?”她的声音颤抖了。
“也许就象你说的那样吧。我爱过。可是有那么一种超越爱的东西。”
她无法忍受。她感到晕眩。她就是无法忍受。
“可是,如果你从没爱过的话,你怎么知道这一点呢?”她问。
“我说的是实话。无论你还是我,心中都有一种超越爱,比爱更深远的东西,它超越了人们的视野,就象有些星星是超越人们视野的一样。”
“那就是说没有爱了。”厄秀拉叫道。
“归根结底,没有,但有什么别的东西。但归根结底是没有爱的。”
厄秀拉一时间对伯金的话瞠目结舌。然后,她微微站起身,终于有些不耐烦的说:
“那,让我回家吧,我在这儿算干什么的?”
“门在那儿,”他说,“你是自由的,随便吧。”
在这种过激行动中他表现得很出色。她犹豫了片刻又坐回椅子中去。
“如果没有爱,那有什么呢?”她几乎嘲弄地叫道。
“肯定有。”他看着她,竭尽全力与自己的灵魂作着斗争。
“什么?”
他沉默了好久。她在跟他作对,此时她跟他无法交流。
“有,”他心不在焉地说,“有一个最终的我,超越个人,超越责任的我。同样也有一个最终的你。我想见的正是这个你——不是在情感与爱的地方,而是在更遥远的地方,那儿即没有语言也没有君子协约。在那儿,我们是两个赤裸、未知的人,两个全然陌生的动物,我想接近你,你也想接近我。那儿也没有什么责任和义务,因为没有行为标准,没有理解。这是很超越人性的东西。用不着注册,因为你跟这一切都无关,一切既成事实、已知的东西在那儿都没有用。你只能追随你的冲动,占有眼前的东西,对什么都不负责,也不要求什么或给予什么,只按照你的原始欲望去占有。”
厄秀拉听着他这番演讲,感到头脑发木,失去了感知。他说的话出乎她的预料,令她不知所措。
“这纯粹是自私。”她说。
“纯粹,对的。可并不是自私,因为我不知道我需要你什么。我通过接近你,把我自己交付给那未知世界,毫无保留,毫无防备,完完全全赤条条交给未知世界。只是,我们要相互宣誓,我们要抛弃一切,连自己都抛弃,停止生存,只有这样我们全然的自我才能在我们的躯壳中实现。”
她按照自己的思路思考着。
“是因为你爱我才需要我吗?”她坚持问。
“不,那是因为我相信你,也许我的确相信你呢。”
“你真这样吗?”她突然受到了伤害,冷笑道。
他凝视着她,几乎没注意她说什么。
“是的,我肯定是相信你的,否则我就不会在这儿说这番话了。”他说,“唯一能证明的就是这番话。在眼下这个时刻,我并不太相信。”
他突然变得如此无聊、无信,她不喜欢他这一点。
“可是,你是否认为我长得不错?”她调侃地追问。
他看看她,想看看自己是否觉得她好看。
“我不觉得你好看。”他说。
“那就更谈不上迷人喽?”她尖刻地说。
他突然生气地皱紧了眉头。
“你没看出来吗,这不是一个视觉审美的问题,”他叫道,“我并不想看你。我见得女人太多了,我对于看她们感到厌倦了。我需要一个不用我看的女人。”
“对不起,我并不能在你面前作隐身人啊。”她笑道。
“是的,”他说,“你对我来说就是隐身人,如果你不强迫我在视觉上注意你。当然,我并不想看见你,也不想听你说话。”
“那,你干吗要请我来喝茶呢?”她嘲弄地问。
她说她的,他并不注意她,他只是在喃喃自语。
“我在你不知道自己存在的地方寻找你,我要寻找那个尘世的你,全然否定的你。我并不需要你的漂亮长相,我不需要你那番女人的情感,我不需要你的思想,意见,也不需要你的观念,这些对我来说都不重要。”
“你太傲慢了,先生,”她嘲笑道,“你何以知道我那番女人的感情,我的思想或我的观念?你甚至不知道我对你的看法。”
“对此我并不关心。”
“我觉得你也太傻了。我以为你原是想说你爱我,可你却要绕着弯子来表达这个意思。”
“行了吧,”他突然愤愤然抬起头看着她。“走吧,让我一个人呆在这儿。我不想听你这番似是而非的挖苦话。”
“这真是挖苦吗?”她讥讽地笑道。她向他解释说,他坦白了他对她的爱,可他表达爱的话却很荒谬。
他们沉默了许久,这沉默竟令她象孩子一样得意、兴奋。
他乱了方寸,开始正视她了。
“我需要的是与你奇妙的结合,”他轻声道,“既不是相会,也不是相混——正象你说的那样——而是一种平衡,两个人纯粹的平衡——就象星与星之间保持平衡那样。”
她看着他。他非常诚恳、当然诚恳往往让他显得愚笨、平凡。他这样子令她不自由,不舒服。可是她又太爱他了。可他干吗要扯什么星星呢?
“这么讲话太突兀了吧?”她调侃道。
他笑了,说:
“要签订条约最好先看看这些条款再说。”
睡在沙法上的一只小灰猫这时跳下来,伸直它的长腿,耸起瘦削的背。然后它挺直身子很有气度地思考了一会儿,就飞也似地窜出屋去,它从敞开的窗口一直跳到屋外的花园中。
伯金站起身问:“它追什么去了?”
小猫气派十足地摇着尾巴跑下了甬路。这是一只普通的花猫,爪子是白的,可算得上是位苗条的绅士呢,这时有一只毛绒绒的棕灰色母猫悄悄爬上篱笆墙过来了。公猫米诺傲慢地向她走过去,摆出一副很有男子气的冷漠相儿。母猫蹲在公猫面前,谦卑地卧在地上,这个毛绒绒的弃儿仰视着他,野性的眼睛里放射出如同珠宝一样好看的绿色光芒。他漫不经心地俯视着她,于是。她又朝前爬了几步爬到后门去,她软软地俯着身子,象一个影子在晃动。
公猫细细的腿迈着庄重的步伐跟在母猫身后,突然他嫌她挡他的路了,就给了她脸上一巴掌,于是她向边上跑了几步,象地上被风吹跑的树叶一样溜到一边去,然后又顺从地俯下身体。公猫米诺装作对她不屑一顾的样子,自顾眨着眼睛看着园子里的景致。过了一会儿,她振作起精神,象一个棕灰色的影子一样悄然向前挪动几步,就在她加快步伐,转眼间就要象梦一样消失时,那幼小的老爷一个箭步跳到她面前,伸手照她脸上就是一个漂亮的耳光,一巴掌打得她卑谦地缩了回去。
“她是只野猫,”伯金说,“从林子里跑来的。”
那只迷途的猫四下里打量着,眼睛里似乎燃着绿色的火焰盯着伯金。然后她悄然转身,跑到园子里去了,到了那儿又朝四下里观望起来。公猫米诺转过脸来傲慢地看着他的主人,然后闭上眼睛雕塑般地伫立着。那只野猫圆睁着惊奇的绿眼睛一直凝视着,象是两团不可思议的火苗。然后她又象影子一样溜进厨房去。
这时米诺又是一跳,一阵风似地跳到她身上,用一只细细的白爪子准确地打了她两个耳光,把她打了回去。然后他跟在她身后,用一只满是魔力的白爪子戏弄地打了她两下。
“他干吗这样儿?”厄秀拉气愤地问。
“他们相处得很好。”伯金说。
“就因为这个他才打她吗?”
“对,”伯金笑道,“我觉得他是想让她明白他的意思。”
“他这样做不是太可怕了吗!”她叫着走到园子里,冲米诺喊:
“别打了,别称王称霸。别打她了。”
那只迷途猫说话间就影儿般地消失了。公猫米诺瞟了一眼厄秀拉,然后又倨傲地把目光转向他的主人。
“你是个霸王吗,米诺?”伯金问。
苗条的小猫看看他,眯起了眼睛。然后它又把目光转开去,凝视远方,不再理睬这两个人了。
“米诺,”厄秀拉说,“我不喜欢你。你象所有的男人一样霸道。”
“不,”伯金说,“他有他的道理。他不是个霸王,他只不过是要让那可怜的迷途猫儿承认他,这是她命中注定的事。你可以看出来,那迷途猫长得毛绒绒的,象风一样没个定型儿。
我支持米诺,完全支持他,他是想平静。”
“是啊,我知道!”厄秀拉叫道,“他要走他自己的路——
我知道你这番花言巧语的意思,你想称王称霸。”
小猫又看看伯金,对这位吵吵嚷嚷的女人表示蔑视。
“我很支持你,米西奥托,”伯金对猫说。“保持住你男性的尊严和你高级的理解能力吧。”
米诺又眯起了眼睛,似乎是在看太阳。看了一会儿,他突然撇下这两个人,兴高采烈地竖起尾巴跑远了,白白的爪子欢快地舞动着。
“他会再一次寻到那漂亮的野猫,用他高级的智慧招待招待她。”伯金笑道。
厄秀拉看着园子里的他,他的头发被风吹舞着,眼睛里闪着挖苦的光芒,她大叫道:
“天啊,气死我了,什么男性的优越!这是什么鬼话!没人会理会这套鬼话的。”
“那野猫,”伯金说,“就不理会,可她感觉得到这是对的。”
“是吗?”厄秀拉叫道。“骗外行去吧!”
“我会这样的。”
“这就象杰拉德·克里奇对待他的马一样,是一种称霸的欲望,一种真正的权力意志,①太卑鄙,太下作了。”
①原文是德文,出自尼采(1844—1900)的著作《权力意志》。
“我同意,权力意志是卑鄙下作的。可它在米诺身上就变成了一种与母猫保持纯粹平衡的欲望,令她与一个男性保持超常永久的和睦关系。你看得出来,没有米诺,她仅仅是只迷途的猫,一个毛绒绒的偶然现象。你也可以说这是一种权力意志。”
“这是诡辩,跟亚当一样陈旧的滥调。”
“对。亚当在不可摧毁的天堂里供养着夏娃。他独自和她相处,就象星星驻足在自己的轨道里一样。”
“是啊,是啊,”厄秀拉用手指头指点着他说,“你是一颗有轨道的星星!她是一颗卫星,火星的卫星!瞧瞧,你露馅儿了!你想要得到卫星。火星和卫星!你说过,你说过,你自己把自己的想法全合盘托出来了!”
他站立着冲她笑了。他受了挫折,心里生气,可又感到有趣,不由得对厄秀拉羡慕甚至爱起来,她那么机智,象一团闪闪发光的火,报复心很强,心灵异常敏感。
“我还没说完呢,”他说,“你应该再给我机会让我说完。”
“不,就不!”她叫道。“我就不让你说。你已经说过了,一颗卫星,你要摆脱它,不就这个吗?”
“你永远也不会相信,我从来没说过这样的话,”他回答,“我既没有表示这个意思,也没有暗示过、也没有提到过什么卫星,更不会有意识地讲什么卫星,从来没有。”
“你,撒谎!”她真动了气,大叫起来。
“茶准备好了,先生。”女房东在门道里说。
他们双双朝女房东看过去,眼神就象猫刚才看他们一样。
“谢谢你,德金太太。”
女房东的介入,让他们沉默了。
“来喝茶吧。”他说。
“好吧,”她振作起精神道。
他们相对坐在茶桌旁。
“我没说过卫星,也没暗示这个意思。我的意思是指单独的星星之间既相关联又相互保持平衡、平等。
“你露馅了,你的花招全露馅了。”她说完就开始喝茶。
见她对自己的劝告不再注意,他只好倒茶了。
“真好喝!”她叫道。
“自己加糖吧。”他说。
他把杯子递给她。他的杯子等器皿都很好看。玲珑的杯子和盘子是紫红与绿色的,样式漂亮的碗和玻璃盘子以及旧式羹匙摆在浅灰与紫色的织布上,显得富丽高雅。可在这些东西中厄秀拉看出了赫麦妮的影响。
“你的东西够漂亮的!”她有点气愤地说。
“我喜欢这些玩意儿。有这些漂亮的东西用着,让人打心眼儿里舒服。德金太太人很好,因为我的缘故,她觉得什么都挺好。”
“是啊,”厄秀拉说,“这年头儿,女房东比老婆要好啊。她们当然比老婆想得更周全。在这儿,比你有了家室更自在,更完美。”
“可你怎么不想想内心的空虚呢?”他笑道。
“不,”她说,“我对男人们有如此完美的女房东和如此漂亮的住所感到嫉妒。男人们有了这些就没什么憾事了。”
“如果是为了养家糊口,我希望不至于如此吧。就为了有个家而结婚,这挺恶心的。”
“同样,”厄秀拉说,“现在男人不怎么需要女人,是吗?”
“除了同床共枕和生儿育女以外,就不怎么需要。从根本上说,现在男人对女人的需要是一样的,只不过谁也不愿意做根本的事情。”
“怎么个根本法?”
“我的确觉得,”他说,“世界是由人与人之间神秘的纽带——完美的和谐地连结在一起的。最直接的纽带就是男人与女人之间的纽带。”
“这是老调子了,”厄秀拉说,“为什么爱要是一条纽带呢?
不,我不要它。”
“如果你向西走,”他说,“你就会失去北、东和南三个方向。如果你承认和谐,就消除了一切混乱的可能性。”
“可爱的是自由啊。”她说。
“别说伪善的话,”他说,“爱是排除所有其它方向的一个方向。你可以说它是一种自由。”
“不,”她说,“爱包含了一切。”
“多愁善感的假话。”他说,“你需要混乱状态,就这么回事。所谓自由的爱,所谓爱是自由、自由是爱之说纯属虚无主义。其实,如果你进入了和谐状态,这种和谐直到无法改变时才能变得纯粹。一旦它无可改变,它就变成了一条路,如同星星的轨道一样。”
“哈!”她刻薄地叫道,“这是死朽的道德精神。”
“不,”他说,“这是造物的规律,每个人都有义务,一个人必须与另一个人终生结合,但这并不意味着失去自我——它意味着在神秘的平衡与完整中保存自我——如同星与星相互平衡一样。”
“你一扯什么星星我就不能相信你,”她说,“如果你说得对,你没必要扯那么远。”
“那就别相信我好了,”他气恼地说,“我相信我自己,这就够了。”
“你又错了,”她说,“你并不相信你自己。你并不完全相信你自己说的话。你并不真地需要这种结合,否则你就不会大谈特谈这种结合,而是应该去得到它。”
他一时间无言以对,愣住了。
“怎么得到?”他问。
“仅仅通过爱。”她挑衅般地回答。
他在愤怒中沉默了一会儿说:
“告诉你吧,我不相信那样的爱。你想让爱帮助你达到利己的目的,你认为爱是起辅助作用的,不仅对你,对谁都如此。我讨厌这个。”
“不,”她叫,着象一条眼镜蛇那样仰起头,目光闪烁着。
“爱是一种骄傲,我要的是骄傲。”
“骄傲与谦卑,骄傲与谦卑,我了解你,”他冷冰冰地反驳道。“前倨后恭,再由谦卑到倨傲——我了解你和你的爱。
骄傲与谦卑在一起跳舞。”
“你真确信你知道我的爱是什么吗?”她有点生气地讽刺道。
“是的,我相信我知道。”他说。
“你过分自信了!”她说,“你这么自信,怎么就一贯正确呢?这说明你是错的。”
他不语,深感懊恼。
他们交谈着,斗争着,到最后他们都对此厌倦了。
“跟我讲讲你自己的情况和你家人的情况吧。”他说。
于是她对他讲起布朗温家的人,她母亲,她的第一个恋人斯克里宾斯基以及她与斯克里宾斯基关系破裂后的经历,他默默坐着听她娓娓道来,似乎怀着敬意在听。她讲到伤心处,脸上显出难言的苦相,那表情使她的面庞更楚楚动人。他似乎被她美丽的天性所温暖,他的心感到欣慰。
“莫非她真可以信誓旦旦一番?”他怀着一腔激情这样思忖着,但不抱任何希望,因而心里竟漫不经意地自顾笑起来。
“看来咱们都很苦啊。”他嘲讽般地说。
她抬眼看看他,脸上禁不住闪过按捺不住的狂喜,眼中亮起一道奇异的光芒。
“谁说不是啊!”她不管不顾地高声叫着。“这有点荒谬,不是吗?”
“太荒谬了,”他说,“痛苦让我厌透了。”
“我也一样。”
看着她脸上那满不在乎的嘲讽神情,他几乎感到害怕了。这个女人上天可以上致穹顶,入地狱可以入到最底层,他原是错怪她了,这样一位放任恣肆的女子,有着无可阻挡的破坏力,太危险了,真让他害怕。可他心里又禁不住笑了。
她走过来把手放在他肩上,一双闪烁着奇异金光的眼睛盯着他,那目光很温柔,但掩饰不住温情后面的魔光。
“说一句你爱我,说‘我的爱’对我说一句吧。”她请求道。
他也盯着她,看着她。他的脸上露出嘲讽的表情。
“我是很爱你,”他阴郁地说,“可我希望这是另一种爱。”
“为什么?为什么?”她低下头,神采奕奕的脸对着他追问。“难道这还不够吗?”
“我们独往独来更好。”他说着搂住她的腰。
“不,我们不要独往独来。”她用充满情欲的声音屈从道,“我们只能相爱。对我说‘我的爱’,说呀,说呀。”
她说着搂住他的脖子。他拥抱着她,温柔地吻着她,似爱、似调侃、似顺从地喃言道:
“好——我的爱——我的爱。有爱就足够了。我爱你——
我爱你。我对别的东西腻透了。”
“是嘛,”她喃言着,柔顺地偎在他怀中。
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。
゛臉紅紅....

ZxID:704295


等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
举报 只看该作者 14楼  发表于: 2013-10-27 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 14 Water-party


EVERY YEAR Mr Crich gave a more or less public water-party on the lake. There was a little pleasure-launch on Willey Water and several rowing boats, and guests could take tea either in the marquee that was set up in the grounds of the house, or they could picnic in the shade of the great walnut tree at the boat-house by the lake. This year the staff of the Grammar-School was invited, along with the chief officials of the firm. Gerald and the younger Criches did not care for this party, but it had become customary now, and it pleased the father, as being the only occasion when he could gather some people of the district together in festivity with him. For he loved to give pleasures to his dependents and to those poorer than himself. But his children preferred the company of their own equals in wealth. They hated their inferiors' humility or gratitude or awkwardness.
Nevertheless they were willing to attend at this festival, as they had done almost since they were children, the more so, as they all felt a little guilty now, and unwilling to thwart their father any more, since he was so ill in health. Therefore, quite cheerfully Laura prepared to take her mother's place as hostess, and Gerald assumed responsibility for the amusements on the water.
Birkin had written to Ursula saying he expected to see her at the party, and Gudrun, although she scorned the patronage of the Criches, would nevertheless accompany her mother and father if the weather were fine.
The day came blue and full of sunshine, with little wafts of wind. The sisters both wore dresses of white crepe, and hats of soft grass. But Gudrun had a sash of brilliant black and pink and yellow colour wound broadly round her waist, and she had pink silk stockings, and black and pink and yellow decoration on the brim of her hat, weighing it down a little. She carried also a yellow silk coat over her arm, so that she looked remarkable, like a painting from the Salon. Her appearance was a sore trial to her father, who said angrily:
`Don't you think you might as well get yourself up for a Christmas cracker, an'ha' done with it?'
But Gudrun looked handsome and brilliant, and she wore her clothes in pure defiance. When people stared at her, and giggled after her, she made a point of saying loudly, to Ursula:
`Regarde, regarde ces gens-la! Ne sont-ils pas des hiboux incroyables?' And with the words of French in her mouth, she would look over her shoulder at the giggling party.
`No, really, it's impossible!' Ursula would reply distinctly. And so the two girls took it out of their universal enemy. But their father became more and more enraged.
Ursula was all snowy white, save that her hat was pink, and entirely without trimming, and her shoes were dark red, and she carried an orange-coloured coat. And in this guise they were walking all the way to Shortlands, their father and mother going in front.
They were laughing at their mother, who, dressed in a summer material of black and purple stripes, and wearing a hat of purple straw, was setting forth with much more of the shyness and trepidation of a young girl than her daughters ever felt, walking demurely beside her husband, who, as usual, looked rather crumpled in his best suit, as if he were the father of a young family and had been holding the baby whilst his wife got dressed.
`Look at the young couple in front,' said Gudrun calmly. Ursula looked at her mother and father, and was suddenly seized with uncontrollable laughter. The two girls stood in the road and laughed till the tears ran down their faces, as they caught sight again of the shy, unworldly couple of their parents going on ahead.
`We are roaring at you, mother,' called Ursula, helplessly following after her parents.
Mrs Brangwen turned round with a slightly puzzled, exasperated look. `Oh indeed!' she said. `What is there so very funny about me, I should like to know?'
She could not understand that there could be anything amiss with her appearance. She had a perfect calm sufficiency, an easy indifference to any criticism whatsoever, as if she were beyond it. Her clothes were always rather odd, and as a rule slip-shod, yet she wore them with a perfect ease and satisfaction. Whatever she had on, so long as she was barely tidy, she was right, beyond remark; such an aristocrat she was by instinct.
`You look so stately, like a country Baroness,' said Ursula, laughing with a little tenderness at her mother's naive puzzled air.
`Just like a country Baroness!' chimed in Gudrun. Now the mother's natural hauteur became self-conscious, and the girls shrieked again.
`Go home, you pair of idiots, great giggling idiots!' cried the father inflamed with irritation.
`Mm-m-er!' booed Ursula, pulling a face at his crossness.
The yellow lights danced in his eyes, he leaned forward in real rage.
`Don't be so silly as to take any notice of the great gabies,' said Mrs Brangwen, turning on her way.
`I'll see if I'm going to be followed by a pair of giggling yelling jackanapes --' he cried vengefully.
The girls stood still, laughing helplessly at his fury, upon the path beside the hedge.
`Why you're as silly as they are, to take any notice,' said Mrs Brangwen also becoming angry now he was really enraged.
`There are some people coming, father,' cried Ursula, with mocking warning. He glanced round quickly, and went on to join his wife, walking stiff with rage. And the girls followed, weak with laughter.
When the people had passed by, Brangwen cried in a loud, stupid voice:
`I'm going back home if there's any more of this. I'm damned if I'm going to be made a fool of in this fashion, in the public road.'
He was really out of temper. At the sound of his blind, vindictive voice, the laughter suddenly left the girls, and their hearts contracted with contempt. They hated his words `in the public road.' What did they care for the public road? But Gudrun was conciliatory.
`But we weren't laughing to hurt you,' she cried, with an uncouth gentleness which made her parents uncomfortable. `We were laughing because we're fond of you.'
`We'll walk on in front, if they are so touchy,' said Ursula, angry. And in this wise they arrived at Willey Water. The lake was blue and fair, the meadows sloped down in sunshine on one side, the thick dark woods dropped steeply on the other. The little pleasure-launch was fussing out from the shore, twanging its music, crowded with people, flapping its paddles. Near the boat-house was a throng of gaily-dressed persons, small in the distance. And on the high-road, some of the common people were standing along the hedge, looking at the festivity beyond, enviously, like souls not admitted to paradise.
`My eye!' said Gudrun, sotto voce, looking at the motley of guests, `there's a pretty crowd if you like! Imagine yourself in the midst of that, my dear.'
Gudrun's apprehensive horror of people in the mass unnerved Ursula. `It looks rather awful,' she said anxiously.
`And imagine what they'll be like -- imagine!' said Gudrun, still in that unnerving, subdued voice. Yet she advanced determinedly.
`I suppose we can get away from them,' said Ursula anxiously.
`We're in a pretty fix if we can't,' said Gudrun. Her extreme ironic loathing and apprehension was very trying to Ursula.
`We needn't stay,' she said.
`I certainly shan't stay five minutes among that little lot,' said Gudrun. They advanced nearer, till they saw policemen at the gates.
`Policemen to keep you in, too!' said Gudrun. `My word, this is a beautiful affair.'
`We'd better look after father and mother,' said Ursula anxiously.
`Mother's perfectly capable of getting through this little celebration,' said Gudrun with some contempt.
But Ursula knew that her father felt uncouth and angry and unhappy, so she was far from her ease. They waited outside the gate till their parents came up. The tall, thin man in his crumpled clothes was unnerved and irritable as a boy, finding himself on the brink of this social function. He did not feel a gentleman, he did not feel anything except pure exasperation.
Ursula took her place at his side, they gave their tickets to the policeman, and passed in on to the grass, four abreast; the tall, hot, ruddy-dark man with his narrow boyish brow drawn with irritation, the fresh-faced, easy woman, perfectly collected though her hair was slipping on one side, then Gudrun, her eyes round and dark and staring, her full soft face impassive, almost sulky, so that she seemed to be backing away in antagonism even whilst she was advancing; and then Ursula, with the odd, brilliant, dazzled look on her face, that always came when she was in some false situation.
Birkin was the good angel. He came smiling to them with his affected social grace, that somehow was never quite right. But he took off his hat and smiled at them with a real smile in his eyes, so that Brangwen cried out heartily in relief:
`How do you do? You're better, are you?'
`Yes, I'm better. How do you do, Mrs Brangwen? I know Gudrun and Ursula very well.'
His eyes smiled full of natural warmth. He had a soft, flattering manner with women, particularly with women who were not young.
`Yes,' said Mrs Brangwen, cool but yet gratified. `I have heard them speak of you often enough.'
He laughed. Gudrun looked aside, feeling she was being belittled. People were standing about in groups, some women were sitting in the shade of the walnut tree, with cups of tea in their hands, a waiter in evening dress was hurrying round, some girls were simpering with parasols, some young men, who had just come in from rowing, were sitting cross-legged on the grass, coatless, their shirt-sleeves rolled up in manly fashion, their hands resting on their white flannel trousers, their gaudy ties floating about, as they laughed and tried to be witty with the young damsels.
`Why,' thought Gudrun churlishly, `don't they have the manners to put their coats on, and not to assume such intimacy in their appearance.'
She abhorred the ordinary young man, with his hair plastered back, and his easy-going chumminess.
Hermione Roddice came up, in a handsome gown of white lace, trailing an enormous silk shawl blotched with great embroidered flowers, and balancing an enormous plain hat on her head. She looked striking, astonishing, almost macabre, so tall, with the fringe of her great creamcoloured vividly-blotched shawl trailing on the ground after her, her thick hair coming low over her eyes, her face strange and long and pale, and the blotches of brilliant colour drawn round her.
`Doesn't she look weird!' Gudrun heard some girls titter behind her. And she could have killed them.
`How do you do!' sang Hermione, coming up very kindly, and glancing slowly over Gudrun's father and mother. It was a trying moment, exasperating for Gudrun. Hermione was really so strongly entrenched in her class superiority, she could come up and know people out of simple curiosity, as if they were creatures on exhibition. Gudrun would do the same herself. But she resented being in the position when somebody might do it to her.
Hermione, very remarkable, and distinguishing the Brangwens very much, led them along to where Laura Crich stood receiving the guests.
`This is Mrs Brangwen,' sang Hermione, and Laura, who wore a stiff embroidered linen dress, shook hands and said she was glad to see her. Then Gerald came up, dressed in white, with a black and brown blazer, and looking handsome. He too was introduced to the Brangwen parents, and immediately he spoke to Mrs Brangwen as if she were a lady, and to Brangwen as if he were not a gentleman. Gerlad was so obvious in his demeanour. He had to shake hands with his left hand, because he had hurt his right, and carried it, bandaged up, in the pocket of his jacket. Gudrun was very thankful that none of her party asked him what was the matter with the hand.
The steam launch was fussing in, all its music jingling, people calling excitedly from on board. Gerald went to see to the debarkation, Birkin was getting tea for Mrs Brangwen, Brangwen had joined a Grammar-School group, Hermione was sitting down by their mother, the girls went to the landing-stage to watch the launch come in.
She hooted and tooted gaily, then her paddles were silent, the ropes were thrown ashore, she drifted in with a little bump. Immediately the passengers crowded excitedly to come ashore.
`Wait a minute, wait a minute,' shouted Gerald in sharp command.
They must wait till the boat was tight on the ropes, till the small gangway was put out. Then they streamed ashore, clamouring as if they had come from America.
`Oh it's so nice!' the young girls were crying. `It's quite lovely.'
The waiters from on board ran out to the boat-house with baskets, the captain lounged on the little bridge. Seeing all safe, Gerald came to Gudrun and Ursula.
`You wouldn't care to go on board for the next trip, and have tea there?' he asked.
`No thanks,' said Gudrun coldly.
`You don't care for the water?'
`For the water? Yes, I like it very much.'
He looked at her, his eyes searching.
`You don't care for going on a launch, then?'
She was slow in answering, and then she spoke slowly.
`No,' she said. `I can't say that I do.' Her colour was high, she seemed angry about something.
`Un peu trop de monde,' said Ursula, explaining.
`Eh? Trop de monde!' He laughed shortly. `Yes there's a fair number of 'em.'
Gudrun turned on him brilliantly.
`Have you ever been from Westminster Bridge to Richmond on one of the Thames steamers?' she cried.
`No,' he said, `I can't say I have.'
`Well, it's one of the most vile experiences I've ever had.' She spoke rapidly and excitedly, the colour high in her cheeks. `There was absolutely nowhere to sit down, nowhere, a man just above sang "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep" the whole way; he was blind and he had a small organ, one of those portable organs, and he expected money; so you can imagine what that was like; there came a constant smell of luncheon from below, and puffs of hot oily machinery; the journey took hours and hours and hours; and for miles, literally for miles, dreadful boys ran with us on the shore, in that awful Thames mud, going in up to the waist -- they had their trousers turned back, and they went up to their hips in that indescribable Thames mud, their faces always turned to us, and screaming, exactly like carrion creatures, screaming "'Ere y'are sir, 'ere y'are sir, 'ere y'are sir," exactly like some foul carrion objects, perfectly obscene; and paterfamilias on board, laughing when the boys went right down in that awful mud, occasionally throwing them a ha'penny. And if you'd seen the intent look on the faces of these boys, and the way they darted in the filth when a coin was flung -- really, no vulture or jackal could dream of approaching them, for foulness. I never would go on a pleasure boat again -- never.'
Gerald watched her all the time she spoke, his eyes glittering with faint rousedness. It was not so much what she said; it was she herself who roused him, roused him with a small, vivid pricking.
`Of course,' he said, `every civilised body is bound to have its vermin.'
`Why?' cried Ursula. `I don't have vermin.'
`And it's not that -- it's the quality of the whole thing -- paterfamilias laughing and thinking it sport, and throwing the ha'pennies, and materfamilias spreading her fat little knees and eating, continually eating --' replied Gudrun.
`Yes,' said Ursula. `It isn't the boys so much who are vermin; it's the people themselves, the whole body politic, as you call it.'
Gerald laughed.
`Never mind,' he said. `You shan't go on the launch.'
Gudrun flushed quickly at his rebuke.
There were a few moments of silence. Gerald, like a sentinel, was watching the people who were going on to the boat. He was very goodlooking and self-contained, but his air of soldierly alertness was rather irritating.
`Will you have tea here then, or go across to the house, where there's a tent on the lawn?' he asked.
`Can't we have a rowing boat, and get out?' asked Ursula, who was always rushing in too fast.
`To get out?' smiled Gerald.
`You see,' cried Gudrun, flushing at Ursula's outspoken rudeness, `we don't know the people, we are almost complete strangers here.'
`Oh, I can soon set you up with a few acquaintances,' he said easily.
Gudrun looked at him, to see if it were ill-meant. Then she smiled at him.
`Ah,' she said, `you know what we mean. Can't we go up there, and explore that coast?' She pointed to a grove on the hillock of the meadowside, near the shore half way down the lake. `That looks perfectly lovely. We might even bathe. Isn't it beautiful in this light. Really, it's like one of the reaches of the Nile -- as one imagines the Nile.'
Gerald smiled at her factitious enthusiasm for the distant spot.
`You're sure it's far enough off?' he asked ironically, adding at once: `Yes, you might go there, if we could get a boat. They seem to be all out.'
He looked round the lake and counted the rowing boats on its surface.
`How lovely it would be!' cried Ursula wistfully.
`And don't you want tea?' he said.
`Oh,' said Gudrun, `we could just drink a cup, and be off.'
He looked from one to the other, smiling. He was somewhat offended -yet sporting.
`Can you manage a boat pretty well?' he asked.
`Yes,' replied Gudrun, coldly, `pretty well.'
`Oh yes,' cried Ursula. `We can both of us row like water-spiders.'
`You can? There's light little canoe of mine, that I didn't take out for fear somebody should drown themselves. Do you think you'd be safe in that?'
`Oh perfectly,' said Gudrun.
`What an angel!' cried Ursula.
`Don't, for my sake, have an accident -- because I'm responsible for the water.'
`Sure,' pledged Gudrun.
`Besides, we can both swim quite well,' said Ursula.
`Well -- then I'll get them to put you up a tea-basket, and you can picnic all to yourselves, -- that's the idea, isn't it?'
`How fearfully good! How frightfully nice if you could!' cried Gudrun warmly, her colour flushing up again. It made the blood stir in his veins, the subtle way she turned to him and infused her gratitude into his body.
`Where's Birkin?' he said, his eyes twinkling. `He might help me to get it down.'
`But what about your hand? Isn't it hurt?' asked Gudrun, rather muted, as if avoiding the intimacy. This was the first time the hurt had been mentioned. The curious way she skirted round the subject sent a new, subtle caress through his veins. He took his hand out of his pocket. It was bandaged. He looked at it, then put it in his pocket again. Gudrun quivered at the sight of the wrapped up paw.
`Oh I can manage with one hand. The canoe is as light as a feather,' he said. `There's Rupert! -- Rupert!'
Birkin turned from his social duties and came towards them.
`What have you done to it?' asked Ursula, who had been aching to put the question for the last half hour.
`To my hand?' said Gerald. `I trapped it in some machinery.'
`Ugh!' said Ursula. `And did it hurt much?'
`Yes,' he said. `It did at the time. It's getting better now. It crushed the fingers.'
`Oh,' cried Ursula, as if in pain, `I hate people who hurt themselves. I can feel it.' And she shook her hand.
`What do you want?' said Birkin.
The two men carried down the slim brown boat, and set it on the water.
`You're quite sure you'll be safe in it?' Gerald asked.
`Quite sure,' said Gudrun. `I wouldn't be so mean as to take it, if there was the slightest doubt. But I've had a canoe at Arundel, and I assure you I'm perfectly safe.'
So saying, having given her word like a man, she and Ursula entered the frail craft, and pushed gently off. The two men stood watching them. Gudrun was paddling. She knew the men were watching her, and it made her slow and rather clumsy. The colour flew in her face like a flag.
`Thanks awfully,' she called back to him, from the water, as the boat slid away. `It's lovely -- like sitting in a leaf.'
He laughed at the fancy. Her voice was shrill and strange, calling from the distance. He watched her as she paddled away. There was something childlike about her, trustful and deferential, like a child. He watched her all the while, as she rowed. And to Gudrun it was a real delight, in makebelief, to be the childlike, clinging woman to the man who stood there on the quay, so good-looking and efficient in his white clothes, and moreover the most important man she knew at the moment. She did not take any notice of the wavering, indistinct, lambent Birkin, who stood at his side. One figure at a time occupied the field of her attention.
The boat rustled lightly along the water. They passed the bathers whose striped tents stood between the willows of the meadow's edge, and drew along the open shore, past the meadows that sloped golden in the light of the already late afternoon. Other boats were stealing under the wooded shore opposite, they could hear people's laughter and voices. But Gudrun rowed on towards the clump of trees that balanced perfect in the distance, in the golden light.
The sisters found a little place where a tiny stream flowed into the lake, with reeds and flowery marsh of pink willow herb, and a gravelly bank to the side. Here they ran delicately ashore, with their frail boat, the two girls took off their shoes and stockings and went through the water's edge to the grass. The tiny ripples of the lake were warm and clear, they lifted their boat on to the bank, and looked round with joy. They were quite alone in a forsaken little stream-mouth, and on the knoll just behind was the clump of trees.
`We will bathe just for a moment,' said Ursula, `and then we'll have tea.'
They looked round. Nobody could notice them, or could come up in time to see them. In less than a minute Ursula had thrown off her clothes and had slipped naked into the water, and was swimming out. Quickly, Gudrun joined her. They swam silently and blissfully for a few minutes, circling round their little stream-mouth. Then they slipped ashore and ran into the grove again, like nymphs.
`How lovely it is to be free,' said Ursula, running swiftly here and there between the tree trunks, quite naked, her hair blowing loose. The grove was of beech-trees, big and splendid, a steel-grey scaffolding of trunks and boughs, with level sprays of strong green here and there, whilst through the northern side the distance glimmered open as through a window.
When they had run and danced themselves dry, the girls quickly dressed and sat down to the fragrant tea. They sat on the northern side of the grove, in the yellow sunshine facing the slope of the grassy hill, alone in a little wild world of their own. The tea was hot and aromatic, there were delicious little sandwiches of cucumber and of caviare, and winy cakes.
`Are you happy, Prune?' cried Ursula in delight, looking at her sister.
`Ursula, I'm perfectly happy,' replied Gudrun gravely, looking at the westering sun.
`So am I.'
When they were together, doing the things they enjoyed, the two sisters were quite complete in a perfect world of their own. And this was one of the perfect moments of freedom and delight, such as children alone know, when all seems a perfect and blissful adventure.
When they had finished tea, the two girls sat on, silent and serene. Then Ursula, who had a beautiful strong voice, began to sing to herself, softly: `Annchen von Tharau.' Gudrun listened, as she sat beneath the trees, and the yearning came into her heart. Ursula seemed so peaceful and sufficient unto herself, sitting there unconsciously crooning her song, strong and unquestioned at the centre of her own universe. And Gudrun felt herself outside. Always this desolating, agonised feeling, that she was outside of life, an onlooker, whilst Ursula was a partaker, caused Gudrun to suffer from a sense of her own negation, and made her, that she must always demand the other to be aware of her, to be in connection with her.
`Do you mind if I do Dalcroze to that tune, Hurtler?' she asked in a curious muted tone, scarce moving her lips.
`What did you say?' asked Ursula, looking up in peaceful surprise.
`Will you sing while I do Dalcroze?' said Gudrun, suffering at having to repeat herself.
Ursula thought a moment, gathering her straying wits together.
`While you do --?' she asked vaguely.
`Dalcroze movements,' said Gudrun, suffering tortures of selfconsciousness, even because of her sister.
`Oh Dalcroze! I couldn't catch the name. Do -- I should love to see you,' cried Ursula, with childish surprised brightness. `What shall I sing?'
`Sing anything you like, and I'll take the rhythm from it.'
But Ursula could not for her life think of anything to sing. However, she suddenly began, in a laughing, teasing voice:
`My love -- is a high-born lady --'
Gudrun, looking as if some invisible chain weighed on her hands and feet, began slowly to dance in the eurythmic manner, pulsing and fluttering rhythmically with her feet, making slower, regular gestures with her hands and arms, now spreading her arms wide, now raising them above her head, now flinging them softly apart, and lifting her face, her feet all the time beating and running to the measure of the song, as if it were some strange incantation, her white, rapt form drifting here and there in a strange impulsive rhapsody, seeming to be lifted on a breeze of incantation, shuddering with strange little runs. Ursula sat on the grass, her mouth open in her singing, her eyes laughing as if she thought it was a great joke, but a yellow light flashing up in them, as she caught some of the unconscious ritualistic suggestion of the complex shuddering and waving and drifting of her sister's white form, that was clutched in pure, mindless, tossing rhythm, and a will set powerful in a kind of hypnotic influence.
`My love is a high-born lady -- She is-s-s -- rather dark than shady --' rang out Ursula's laughing, satiric song, and quicker, fiercer went Gudrun in the dance, stamping as if she were trying to throw off some bond, flinging her hands suddenly and stamping again, then rushing with face uplifted and throat full and beautiful, and eyes half closed, sightless. The sun was low and yellow, sinking down, and in the sky floated a thin, ineffectual moon.
Ursula was quite absorbed in her song, when suddenly Gudrun stopped and said mildly, ironically:
`Ursula!'
`Yes?' said Ursula, opening her eyes out of the trance.
Gudrun was standing still and pointing, a mocking smile on her face, towards the side.
`Ugh!' cried Ursula in sudden panic, starting to her feet.
`They're quite all right,' rang out Gudrun's sardonic voice.
On the left stood a little cluster of Highland cattle, vividly coloured and fleecy in the evening light, their horns branching into the sky, pushing forward their muzzles inquisitively, to know what it was all about. Their eyes glittered through their tangle of hair, their naked nostrils were full of shadow.
`Won't they do anything?' cried Ursula in fear.
Gudrun, who was usually frightened of cattle, now shook her head in a queer, half-doubtful, half-sardonic motion, a faint smile round her mouth.
`Don't they look charming, Ursula?' cried Gudrun, in a high, strident voice, something like the scream of a seagull.
`Charming,' cried Ursula in trepidation. `But won't they do anything to us?'
Again Gudrun looked back at her sister with an enigmatic smile, and shook her head.
`I'm sure they won't,' she said, as if she had to convince herself also, and yet, as if she were confident of some secret power in herself, and had to put it to the test. `Sit down and sing again,' she called in her high, strident voice.
`I'm frightened,' cried Ursula, in a pathetic voice, watching the group of sturdy short cattle, that stood with their knees planted, and watched with their dark, wicked eyes, through the matted fringe of their hair. Nevertheless, she sank down again, in her former posture.
`They are quite safe,' came Gudrun's high call. `Sing something, you've only to sing something.'
It was evident she had a strange passion to dance before the sturdy, handsome cattle.
Ursula began to sing, in a false quavering voice:
`Way down in Tennessee --'
She sounded purely anxious. Nevertheless, Gudrun, with her arms outspread and her face uplifted, went in a strange palpitating dance towards the cattle, lifting her body towards them as if in a spell, her feet pulsing as if in some little frenzy of unconscious sensation, her arms, her wrists, her hands stretching and heaving and falling and reaching and reaching and falling, her breasts lifted and shaken towards the cattle, her throat exposed as in some voluptuous ecstasy towards them, whilst she drifted imperceptibly nearer, an uncanny white figure, towards them, carried away in its own rapt trance, ebbing in strange fluctuations upon the cattle, that waited, and ducked their heads a little in sudden contraction from her, watching all the time as if hypnotised, their bare horns branching in the clear light, as the white figure of the woman ebbed upon them, in the slow, hypnotising convulsion of the dance. She could feel them just in front of her, it was as if she had the electric pulse from their breasts running into her hands. Soon she would touch them, actually touch them. A terrible shiver of fear and pleasure went through her. And all the while, Ursula, spell-bound, kept up her high-pitched thin, irrelevant song, which pierced the fading evening like an incantation.
Gudrun could hear the cattle breathing heavily with helpless fear and fascination. Oh, they were brave little beasts, these wild Scotch bullocks, wild and fleecy. Suddenly one of them snorted, ducked its head, and backed.
`Hue! Hi-eee!' came a sudden loud shout from the edge of the grove. The cattle broke and fell back quite spontaneously, went running up the hill, their fleece waving like fire to their motion. Gudrun stood suspended out on the grass, Ursula rose to her feet.
It was Gerald and Birkin come to find them, and Gerald had cried out to frighten off the cattle.
`What do you think you're doing?' he now called, in a high, wondering vexed tone.
`Why have you come?' came back Gudrun's strident cry of anger.
`What do you think you were doing?' Gerald repeated, auto-matically.
`We were doing eurythmics,' laughed Ursula, in a shaken voice.
Gudrun stood aloof looking at them with large dark eyes of resentment, suspended for a few moments. Then she walked away up the hill, after the cattle, which had gathered in a little, spell-bound cluster higher up.
`Where are you going?' Gerald called after her. And he followed her up the hill-side. The sun had gone behind the hill, and shadows were clinging to the earth, the sky above was full of travelling light.
`A poor song for a dance,' said Birkin to Ursula, standing before her with a sardonic, flickering laugh on his face. And in another second, he was singing softly to himself, and dancing a grotesque step-dance in front of her, his limbs and body shaking loose, his face flickering palely, a constant thing, whilst his feet beat a rapid mocking tattoo, and his body seemed to hang all loose and quaking in between, like a shadow.
`I think we've all gone mad,' she said, laughing rather frightened.
`Pity we aren't madder,' he answered, as he kept up the incessant shaking dance. Then suddenly he leaned up to her and kissed her fingers lightly, putting his face to hers and looking into her eyes with a pale grin. She stepped back, affronted.
`Offended --?' he asked ironically, suddenly going quite still and reserved again. `I thought you liked the light fantastic.'
`Not like that,' she said, confused and bewildered, almost affronted. Yet somewhere inside her she was fascinated by the sight of his loose, vibrating body, perfectly abandoned to its own dropping and swinging, and by the pallid, sardonic-smiling face above. Yet automatically she stiffened herself away, and disapproved. It seemed almost an obscenity, in a man who talked as a rule so very seriously.
`Why not like that?' he mocked. And immediately he dropped again into the incredibly rapid, slack-waggling dance, watching her malevolently. And moving in the rapid, stationary dance, he came a little nearer, and reached forward with an incredibly mocking, satiric gleam on his face, and would have kissed her again, had she not started back.
`No, don't!' she cried, really afraid.
`Cordelia after all,' he said satirically. She was stung, as if this were an insult. She knew he intended it as such, and it bewildered her.
`And you,' she cried in retort, `why do you always take your soul in your mouth, so frightfully full?'
`So that I can spit it out the more readily,' he said, pleased by his own retort.
Gerald Crich, his face narrowing to an intent gleam, followed up the hill with quick strides, straight after Gudrun. The cattle stood with their noses together on the brow of a slope, watching the scene below, the men in white hovering about the white forms of the women, watching above all Gudrun, who was advancing slowly towards them. She stood a moment, glancing back at Gerald, and then at the cattle.
Then in a sudden motion, she lifted her arms and rushed sheer upon the long-horned bullocks, in shuddering irregular runs, pausing for a second and looking at them, then lifting her hands and running forward with a flash, till they ceased pawing the ground, and gave way, snorting with terror, lifting their heads from the ground and flinging themselves away, galloping off into the evening, becoming tiny in the distance, and still not stopping.
Gudrun remained staring after them, with a mask-like defiant face.
`Why do you want to drive them mad?' asked Gerald, coming up with her.
She took no notice of him, only averted her face from him. `It's not safe, you know,' he persisted. `They're nasty, when they do turn.'
`Turn where? Turn away?' she mocked loudly.
`No,' he said, `turn against you.'
`Turn against me?' she mocked.
He could make nothing of this.
`Anyway, they gored one of the farmer's cows to death, the other day,' he said.
`What do I care?' she said.
`I cared though,' he replied, `seeing that they're my cattle.'
`How are they yours! You haven't swallowed them. Give me one of them now,' she said, holding out her hand.
`You know where they are,' he said, pointing over the hill. `You can have one if you'd like it sent to you later on.'
She looked at him inscrutably.
`You think I'm afraid of you and your cattle, don't you?' she asked.
His eyes narrowed dangerously. There was a faint domineering smile on his face.
`Why should I think that?' he said.
She was watching him all the time with her dark, dilated, inchoate eyes. She leaned forward and swung round her arm, catching him a light blow on the face with the back of her hand.
`That's why,' she said, mocking.
And she felt in her soul an unconquerable desire for deep violence against him. She shut off the fear and dismay that filled her conscious mind. She wanted to do as she did, she was not going to be afraid.
He recoiled from the slight blow on his face. He became deadly pale, and a dangerous flame darkened his eyes. For some seconds he could not speak, his lungs were so suffused with blood, his heart stretched almost to bursting with a great gush of ungovernable emotion. It was as if some reservoir of black emotion had burst within him, and swamped him.
`You have struck the first blow,' he said at last, forcing the words from his lungs, in a voice so soft and low, it sounded like a dream within her, not spoken in the outer air.
`And I shall strike the last,' she retorted involuntarily, with confident assurance. He was silent, he did not contradict her.
She stood negligently, staring away from him, into the distance. On the edge of her consciousness the question was asking itself, automatically:
`Why are you behaving in this impossible and ridiculous fashion.' But she was sullen, she half shoved the question out of herself. She could not get it clean away, so she felt self-conscious.
Gerald, very pale, was watching her closely. His eyes were lit up with intent lights, absorbed and gleaming. She turned suddenly on him.
`It's you who make me behave like this, you know,' she said, almost suggestive.
`I? How?' he said.
But she turned away, and set off towards the lake. Below, on the water, lanterns were coming alight, faint ghosts of warm flame floating in the pallor of the first twilight. The earth was spread with darkness, like lacquer, overhead was a pale sky, all primrose, and the lake was pale as milk in one part. Away at the landing stage, tiniest points of coloured rays were stringing themselves in the dusk. The launch was being illuminated. All round, shadow was gathering from the trees.
Gerald, white like a presence in his summer clothes, was following down the open grassy slope. Gudrun waited for him to come up. Then she softly put out her hand and touched him, saying softly:
`Don't be angry with me.'
A flame flew over him, and he was unconscious. Yet he stammered:
`I'm not angry with you. I'm in love with you.'
His mind was gone, he grasped for sufficient mechanical control, to save himself. She laughed a silvery little mockery, yet intolerably caressive.
`That's one way of putting it,' she said.
The terrible swooning burden on his mind, the awful swooning, the loss of all his control, was too much for him. He grasped her arm in his one hand, as if his hand were iron.
`It's all right, then, is it?' he said, holding her arrested.
She looked at the face with the fixed eyes, set before her, and her blood ran cold.
`Yes, it's all right,' she said softly, as if drugged, her voice crooning and witch-like.
He walked on beside her, a striding, mindless body. But he recovered a little as he went. He suffered badly. He had killed his brother when a boy, and was set apart, like Cain.
They found Birkin and Ursula sitting together by the boats, talking and laughing. Birkin had been teasing Ursula.
`Do you smell this little marsh?' he said, sniffing the air. He was very sensitive to scents, and quick in understanding them.
`It's rather nice,' she said.
`No,' he replied, `alarming.'
`Why alarming?' she laughed.
`It seethes and seethes, a river of darkness,' he said, `putting forth lilies and snakes, and the ignis fatuus, and rolling all the time onward. That's what we never take into count -- that it rolls onwards.'
`What does?'
`The other river, the black river. We always consider the silver river of life, rolling on and quickening all the world to a brightness, on and on to heaven, flowing into a bright eternal sea, a heaven of angels thronging. But the other is our real reality --'
`But what other? I don't see any other,' said Ursula.
`It is your reality, nevertheless,' he said; `that dark river of dissolution. You see it rolls in us just as the other rolls -- the black river of corruption. And our flowers are of this -- our sea-born Aphrodite, all our white phosphorescent flowers of sensuous perfection, all our reality, nowadays.'
`You mean that Aphrodite is really deathly?' asked Ursula.
`I mean she is the flowering mystery of the death-process, yes,' he replied. `When the stream of synthetic creation lapses, we find ourselves part of the inverse process, the blood of destructive creation. Aphrodite is born in the first spasm of universal dissolution -- then the snakes and swans and lotus -- marsh-flowers -- and Gudrun and Gerald -- born in the process of destructive creation.'
`And you and me --?' she asked.
`Probably,' he replied. `In part, certainly. Whether we are that, in toto, I don't yet know.'
`You mean we are flowers of dissolution -- fleurs du mal? I don't feel as if I were,' she protested.
He was silent for a time.
`I don't feel as if we were, altogether,' he replied. `Some people are pure flowers of dark corruption -- lilies. But there ought to be some roses, warm and flamy. You know Herakleitos says "a dry soul is best." I know so well what that means. Do you?'
`I'm not sure,' Ursula replied. `But what if people are all flowers of dissolution -- when they're flowers at all -- what difference does it make?'
`No difference -- and all the difference. Dissolution rolls on, just as production does,' he said. `It is a progressive process -- and it ends in universal nothing -- the end of the world, if you like. But why isn't the end of the world as good as the beginning?'
`I suppose it isn't,' said Ursula, rather angry.
`Oh yes, ultimately,' he said. `It means a new cycle of creation after -but not for us. If it is the end, then we are of the end -- fleurs du mal if you like. If we are fleurs du mal, we are not roses of happiness, and there you are.'
`But I think I am,' said Ursula. `I think I am a rose of happiness.'
`Ready-made?' he asked ironically.
`No -- real,' she said, hurt.
`If we are the end, we are not the beginning,' he said.
`Yes we are,' she said. `The beginning comes out of the end.'
`After it, not out of it. After us, not out of us.'
`You are a devil, you know, really,' she said. `You want to destroy our hope. You want us to be deathly.'
`No,' he said, `I only want us to know what we are.'
`Ha!' she cried in anger. `You only want us to know death.'
`You're quite right,' said the soft voice of Gerald, out of the dusk behind.
Birkin rose. Gerald and Gudrun came up. They all began to smoke, in the moments of silence. One after another, Birkin lighted their cigarettes. The match flickered in the twilight, and they were all smoking peacefully by the water-side. The lake was dim, the light dying from off it, in the midst of the dark land. The air all round was intangible, neither here nor there, and there was an unreal noise of banjoes, or suchlike music.
As the golden swim of light overhead died out, the moon gained brightness, and seemed to begin to smile forth her ascendancy. The dark woods on the opposite shore melted into universal shadow. And amid this universal under-shadow, there was a scattered intrusion of lights. Far down the lake were fantastic pale strings of colour, like beads of wan fire, green and red and yellow. The music came out in a little puff, as the launch, all illuminated, veered into the great shadow, stirring her outlines of half-living lights, puffing out her music in little drifts.
All were lighting up. Here and there, close against the faint water, and at the far end of the lake, where the water lay milky in the last whiteness of the sky, and there was no shadow, solitary, frail flames of lanterns floated from the unseen boats. There was a sound of oars, and a boat passed from the pallor into the darkness under the wood, where her lanterns seemed to kindle into fire, hanging in ruddy lovely globes. And again, in the lake, shadowy red gleams hovered in reflection about the boat. Everywhere were these noiseless ruddy creatures of fire drifting near the surface of the water, caught at by the rarest, scarce visible reflections.
Birkin brought the lanterns from the bigger boat, and the four shadowy white figures gathered round, to light them. Ursula held up the first, Birkin lowered the light from the rosy, glowing cup of his hands, into the depths of the lantern. It was kindled, and they all stood back to look at the great blue moon of light that hung from Ursula's hand, casting a strange gleam on her face. It flickered, and Birkin went bending over the well of light. His face shone out like an apparition, so unconscious, and again, something demoniacal. Ursula was dim and veiled, looming over him.
`That is all right,' said his voice softly.
She held up the lantern. It had a flight of storks streaming through a turquoise sky of light, over a dark earth.
`This is beautiful,' she said.
`Lovely,' echoed Gudrun, who wanted to hold one also, and lift it up full of beauty.
`Light one for me,' she said. Gerald stood by her, incapacitated. Birkin lit the lantern she held up. Her heart beat with anxiety, to see how beautiful it would be. It was primrose yellow, with tall straight flowers growing darkly from their dark leaves, lifting their heads into the primrose day, while butterflies hovered about them, in the pure clear light.
Gudrun gave a little cry of excitement, as if pierced with delight.
`Isn't it beautiful, oh, isn't it beautiful!'
Her soul was really pierced with beauty, she was translated beyond herself. Gerald leaned near to her, into her zone of light, as if to see. He came close to her, and stood touching her, looking with her at the primroseshining globe. And she turned her face to his, that was faintly bright in the light of the lantern, and they stood together in one luminous union, close together and ringed round with light, all the rest excluded.
Birkin looked away, and went to light Ursula's second lantern. It had a pale ruddy sea-bottom, with black crabs and sea-weed moving sinuously under a transparent sea, that passed into flamy ruddiness above.
`You've got the heavens above, and the waters under the earth,' said Birkin to her.
`Anything but the earth itself,' she laughed, watching his live hands that hovered to attend to the light.
`I'm dying to see what my second one is,' cried Gudrun, in a vibrating rather strident voice, that seemed to repel the others from her.
Birkin went and kindled it. It was of a lovely deep blue colour, with a red floor, and a great white cuttle-fish flowing in white soft streams all over it. The cuttle-fish had a face that stared straight from the heart of the light, very fixed and coldly intent.
`How truly terrifying!' exclaimed Gudrun, in a voice of horror. Gerald, at her side, gave a low laugh.
`But isn't it really fearful!' she cried in dismay.
Again he laughed, and said:
`Change it with Ursula, for the crabs.'
Gudrun was silent for a moment.
`Ursula,' she said, `could you bear to have this fearful thing?'
`I think the colouring is lovely,' said Ursula.
`So do I,' said Gudrun. `But could you bear to have it swinging to your boat? Don't you want to destroy it at once?'
`Oh no,' said Ursula. `I don't want to destroy it.'
`Well do you mind having it instead of the crabs? Are you sure you don't mind?'
Gudrun came forward to exchange lanterns.
`No,' said Ursula, yielding up the crabs and receiving the cuttle-fish.
Yet she could not help feeling rather resentful at the way in which Gudrun and Gerald should assume a right over her, a precedence.
`Come then,' said Birkin. `I'll put them on the boats.'
He and Ursula were moving away to the big boat.
`I suppose you'll row me back, Rupert,' said Gerald, out of the pale shadow of the evening.
`Won't you go with Gudrun in the canoe?' said Birkin. `It'll be more interesting.'
There was a moment's pause. Birkin and Ursula stood dimly, with their swinging lanterns, by the water's edge. The world was all illusive.
`Is that all right?' said Gudrun to him.
`It'll suit me very well,' he said. `But what about you, and the rowing? I don't see why you should pull me.'
`Why not?' she said. `I can pull you as well as I could pull Ursula.'
By her tone he could tell she wanted to have him in the boat to herself, and that she was subtly gratified that she should have power over them both. He gave himself, in a strange, electric submission.
She handed him the lanterns, whilst she went to fix the cane at the end of the canoe. He followed after her, and stood with the lanterns dangling against his white-flannelled thighs, emphasising the shadow around.
`Kiss me before we go,' came his voice softly from out of the shadow above.
She stopped her work in real, momentary astonishment.
`But why?' she exclaimed, in pure surprise.
`Why?' he echoed, ironically.
And she looked at him fixedly for some moments. Then she leaned forward and kissed him, with a slow, luxurious kiss, lingering on the mouth. And then she took the lanterns from him, while he stood swooning with the perfect fire that burned in all his joints.
They lifted the canoe into the water, Gudrun took her place, and Gerald pushed off.
`Are you sure you don't hurt your hand, doing that?' she asked, solicitous. `Because I could have done it perfectly.'
`I don't hurt myself,' he said in a low, soft voice, that caressed her with inexpressible beauty.
And she watched him as he sat near her, very near to her, in the stern of the canoe, his legs coming towards hers, his feet touching hers. And she paddled softly, lingeringly, longing for him to say something meaningful to her. But he remained silent.
`You like this, do you?' she said, in a gentle, solicitous voice.
He laughed shortly.
`There is a space between us,' he said, in the same low, unconscious voice, as if something were speaking out of him. And she was as if magically aware of their being balanced in separation, in the boat. She swooned with acute comprehension and pleasure.
`But I'm very near,' she said caressively, gaily.
`Yet distant, distant,' he said.
Again she was silent with pleasure, before she answered, speaking with a reedy, thrilled voice:
`Yet we cannot very well change, whilst we are on the water.' She caressed him subtly and strangely, having him completely at her mercy.
A dozen or more boats on the lake swung their rosy and moon-like lanterns low on the water, that reflected as from a fire. In the distance, the steamer twanged and thrummed and washed with her faintly-splashing paddles, trailing her strings of coloured lights, and occasionally lighting up the whole scene luridly with an effusion of fireworks, Roman candles and sheafs of stars and other simple effects, illuminating the surface of the water, and showing the boats creeping round, low down. Then the lovely darkness fell again, the lanterns and the little threaded lights glimmered softly, there was a muffled knocking of oars and a waving of music.
Gudrun paddled almost imperceptibly. Gerald could see, not far ahead, the rich blue and the rose globes of Ursula's lanterns swaying softly cheek to cheek as Birkin rowed, and iridescent, evanescent gleams chasing in the wake. He was aware, too, of his own delicately coloured lights casting their softness behind him.
Gudrun rested her paddle and looked round. The canoe lifted with the lightest ebbing of the water. Gerald's white knees were very near to her.
`Isn't it beautiful!' she said softly, as if reverently.
She looked at him, as he leaned back against the faint crystal of the lantern-light. She could see his face, although it was a pure shadow. But it was a piece of twilight. And her breast was keen with passion for him, he was so beautiful in his male stillness and mystery. It was a certain pure effluence of maleness, like an aroma from his softly, firmly moulded contours, a certain rich perfection of his presence, that touched her with an ecstasy, a thrill of pure intoxication. She loved to look at him. For the present she did not want to touch him, to know the further, satisfying substance of his living body. He was purely intangible, yet so near. Her hands lay on the paddle like slumber, she only wanted to see him, like a crystal shadow, to feel his essential presence.
`Yes,' he said vaguely. `It is very beautiful.'
He was listening to the faint near sounds, the dropping of water-drops from the oar-blades, the slight drumming of the lanterns behind him, as they rubbed against one another, the occasional rustling of Gudrun's full skirt, an alien land noise. His mind was almost submerged, he was almost transfused, lapsed out for the first time in his life, into the things about him. For he always kept such a keen attentiveness, concentrated and unyielding in himself. Now he had let go, imperceptibly he was melting into oneness with the whole. It was like pure, perfect sleep, his first great sleep of life. He had been so insistent, so guarded, all his life. But here was sleep, and peace, and perfect lapsing out.
`Shall I row to the landing-stage?' asked Gudrun wistfully.
`Anywhere,' he answered. `Let it drift.'
`Tell me then, if we are running into anything,' she replied, in that very quiet, toneless voice of sheer intimacy.
`The lights will show,' he said.
So they drifted almost motionless, in silence. He wanted silence, pure and whole. But she was uneasy yet for some word, for some assurance.
`Nobody will miss you?' she asked, anxious for some communication.
`Miss me?' he echoed. `No! Why?'
`I wondered if anybody would be looking for you.'
`Why should they look for me?' And then he remembered his manners. `But perhaps you want to get back,' he said, in a changed voice.
`No, I don't want to get back,' she replied. `No, I assure you.'
`You're quite sure it's all right for you?'
`Perfectly all right.'
And again they were still. The launch twanged and hooted, somebody was singing. Then as if the night smashed, suddenly there was a great shout, a confusion of shouting, warring on the water, then the horrid noise of paddles reversed and churned violently.
Gerald sat up, and Gudrun looked at him in fear.
`Somebody in the water,' he said, angrily, and desperately, looking keenly across the dusk. `Can you row up?'
`Where, to the launch?' asked Gudrun, in nervous panic.
`Yes.'
`You'll tell me if I don't steer straight,' she said, in nervous apprehension.
`You keep pretty level,' he said, and the canoe hastened forward.
The shouting and the noise continued, sounding horrid through the dusk, over the surface of the water.
`Wasn't this bound to happen?' said Gudrun, with heavy hateful irony. But he hardly heard, and she glanced over her shoulder to see her way. The half-dark waters were sprinkled with lovely bubbles of swaying lights, the launch did not look far off. She was rocking her lights in the early night. Gudrun rowed as hard as she could. But now that it was a serious matter, she seemed uncertain and clumsy in her stroke, it was difficult to paddle swiftly. She glanced at his face. He was looking fixedly into the darkness, very keen and alert and single in himself, instrumental. Her heart sank, she seemed to die a death. `Of course,' she said to herself, `nobody will be drowned. Of course they won't. It would be too extravagant and sensational.' But her heart was cold, because of his sharp impersonal face. It was as if he belonged naturally to dread and catastrophe, as if he were himself again.
Then there came a child's voice, a girl's high, piercing shriek:
`Di -- Di -- Di -- Di -- Oh Di -- Oh Di -- Oh Di!'
The blood ran cold in Gudrun's veins.
`It's Diana, is it,' muttered Gerald. `The young monkey, she'd have to be up to some of her tricks.'
And he glanced again at the paddle, the boat was not going quickly enough for him. It made Gudrun almost helpless at the rowing, this nervous stress. She kept up with all her might. Still the voices were calling and answering.
`Where, where? There you are -- that's it. Which? No -- No-o-o. Damn it all, here, here --' Boats were hurrying from all directions to the scene, coloured lanterns could be seen waving close to the surface of the lake, reflections swaying after them in uneven haste. The steamer hooted again, for some unknown reason. Gudrun's boat was travelling quickly, the lanterns were swinging behind Gerald.
And then again came the child's high, screaming voice, with a note of weeping and impatience in it now:
`Di -- Oh Di -- Oh Di -- Di --!'
It was a terrible sound, coming through the obscure air of the evening.
`You'd be better if you were in bed, Winnie,' Gerald muttered to himself.
He was stooping unlacing his shoes, pushing them off with the foot. Then he threw his soft hat into the bottom of the boat.
`You can't go into the water with your hurt hand,' said Gudrun, panting, in a low voice of horror.
`What? It won't hurt.'
He had struggled out of his jacket, and had dropped it between his feet. He sat bare-headed, all in white now. He felt the belt at his waist. They were nearing the launch, which stood still big above them, her myriad lamps making lovely darts, and sinuous running tongues of ugly red and green and yellow light on the lustrous dark water, under the shadow.
`Oh get her out! Oh Di, darling! Oh get her out! Oh Daddy, Oh Daddy!' moaned the child's voice, in distraction. Somebody was in the water, with a life belt. Two boats paddled near, their lanterns swinging ineffectually, the boats nosing round.
`Hi there -- Rockley! -- hi there!'
`Mr Gerald!' came the captain's terrified voice. `Miss Diana's in the water.'
`Anybody gone in for her?' came Gerald's sharp voice.
`Young Doctor Brindell, sir.'
`Where?'
`Can't see no signs of them, sir. Everybody's looking, but there's nothing so far.'
There was a moment's ominous pause.
`Where did she go in?'
`I think -- about where that boat is,' came the uncertain answer, `that one with red and green lights.'
`Row there,' said Gerald quietly to Gudrun.
`Get her out, Gerald, oh get her out,' the child's voice was crying anxiously. He took no heed.
`Lean back that way,' said Gerald to Gudrun, as he stood up in the frail boat. `She won't upset.'
In another moment, he had dropped clean down, soft and plumb, into the water. Gudrun was swaying violently in her boat, the agitated water shook with transient lights, she realised that it was faintly moonlight, and that he was gone. So it was possible to be gone. A terrible sense of fatality robbed her of all feeling and thought. She knew he was gone out of the world, there was merely the same world, and absence, his absence. The night seemed large and vacuous. Lanterns swayed here and there, people were talking in an undertone on the launch and in the boats. She could hear Winifred moaning: `Oh do find her Gerald, do find her,' and someone trying to comfort the child. Gudrun paddled aimlessly here and there. The terrible, massive, cold, boundless surface of the water terrified her beyond words. Would he never come back? She felt she must jump into the water too, to know the horror also.
She started, hearing someone say: `There he is.' She saw the movement of his swimming, like a water-rat. And she rowed involuntarily to him. But he was near another boat, a bigger one. Still she rowed towards him. She must be very near. She saw him -- he looked like a seal. He looked like a seal as he took hold of the side of the boat. His fair hair was washed down on his round head, his face seemed to glisten suavely. She could hear him panting.
Then he clambered into the boat. Oh, and the beauty of the subjection of his loins, white and dimly luminous as be climbed over the side of the boat, made her want to die, to die. The beauty of his dim and luminous loins as be climbed into the boat, his back rounded and soft -- ah, this was too much for her, too final a vision. She knew it, and it was fatal The terrible hopelessness of fate, and of beauty, such beauty!
He was not like a man to her, he was an incarnation, a great phase of life. She saw him press the water out of his face, and look at the bandage on his hand. And she knew it was all no good, and that she would never go beyond him, he was the final approximation of life to her.
`Put the lights out, we shall see better,' came his voice, sudden and mechanical and belonging to the world of man. She could scarcely believe there was a world of man. She leaned round and blew out her lanterns. They were difficult to blow out. Everywhere the lights were gone save the coloured points on the sides of the launch. The blueygrey, early night spread level around, the moon was overhead, there were shadows of boats here and there.
Again there was a splash, and he was gone under. Gudrun sat, sick at heart, frightened of the great, level surface of the water, so heavy and deadly. She was so alone, with the level, unliving field of the water stretching beneath her. It was not a good isolation, it was a terrible, cold separation of suspense. She was suspended upon the surface of the insidious reality until such time as she also should disappear beneath it.
Then she knew, by a stirring of voices, that he had climbed out again, into a boat. She sat wanting connection with him. Strenuously she claimed her connection with him, across the invisible space of the water. But round her heart was an isolation unbearable, through which nothing would penetrate.
`Take the launch in. It's no use keeping her there. Get lines for the dragging,' came the decisive, instrumental voice, that was full of the sound of the world.
The launch began gradually to beat the waters.
`Gerald! Gerald!' came the wild crying voice of Winifred. He did not answer. Slowly the launch drifted round in a pathetic, clumsy circle, and slunk away to the land, retreating into the dimness. The wash of her paddles grew duller. Gudrun rocked in her light boat, and dipped the paddle automatically to steady herself.
`Gudrun?' called Ursula's voice.
`Ursula!'
The boats of the two sisters pulled together.
`Where is Gerald?' said Gudrun.
`He's dived again,' said Ursula plaintively. `And I know he ought not, with his hurt hand and everything.'
`I'll take him in home this time,' said Birkin.
The boats swayed again from the wash of steamer. Gudrun and Ursula kept a look-out for Gerald.
`There he is!' cried Ursula, who had the sharpest eyes. He had not been long under. Birkin pulled towards him, Gudrun following. He swam slowly, and caught hold of the boat with his wounded hand. It slipped, and he sank back.
`Why don't you help him?' cried Ursula sharply.
He came again, and Birkin leaned to help him in to the boat. Gudrun again watched Gerald climb out of the water, but this time slowly, heavily, with the blind clambering motions of an amphibious beast, clumsy. Again the moon shone with faint luminosity on his white wet figure, on the stooping back and the rounded loins. But it looked defeated now, his body, it clambered and fell with slow clumsiness. He was breathing hoarsely too, like an animal that is suffering. He sat slack and motionless in the boat, his head blunt and blind like a seal's, his whole appearance inhuman, unknowing. Gudrun shuddered as she mechanically followed his boat. Birkin rowed without speaking to the landing-stage.
`Where are you going?' Gerald asked suddenly, as if just waking up.
`Home,' said Birkin.
`Oh no!' said Gerald imperiously. `We can't go home while they're in the water. Turn back again, I'm going to find them.' The women were frightened, his voice was so imperative and dangerous, almost mad, not to be opposed.
`No!' said Birkin. `You can't.' There was a strange fluid compulsion in his voice. Gerald was silent in a battle of wil 
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。
゛臉紅紅....

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。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 15 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 next step. 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 o' 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 drawingroom. 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 role 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.
 
随着时光流逝,厄秀拉变得不那么有生气了,她心胸空虚,感到极端失望。她的激情之血流干了。她陷入了上不着天下不着地的虚无中,对此,她宁可死也不要忍受。
“如果没什么事的话,”她怀着结束痛苦的想法自言自语道,“我将去死,我的生命快完了。”
她置于一片黑暗之中,她已经心厌意懒,不为人注目,这黑暗濒临着死亡。她意识到自己一生都在向着这个死亡的边界靠近,这里没有彼岸,从这里,你只能象萨福①一样跃入未知世界。对即将降临的死亡的感知就象一帖麻醉药一样。冥冥中,不假什么思索,她就知道她接近死亡了。她一生中一直在沿着自我完善的路旅行,现在这旅程该完结了。她懂得了她该懂得的一切,经过了该经过的一切,在痛苦中成熟了,完善了,现在剩下的事就是从树上落下来,进入死亡的境界。一个人至死非练达,非要冒险到底不可。而下一步就是超越生的界线,进入死的领域。就是这么回事!在领悟了这一切后,人也就平静了。
①古希腊著名女诗人。
归根结底,一个人一旦得到了完善,最幸福的事就是象一颗苦果那样熟透了落下来,落入死亡的领域。死是极完美的事,是对完美的体验。它是生的发展。我们还活着的时候就懂得了这一点。那我们还需要进一步思考什么呢?一个人总也无法超越这种完美。死是一种了不起的,最终的体验,这就够了。我们何必还要问这种体验之后会是什么呢,这种体验对我们来说是未知的。让我们死吧,既然这种了不起的体验就要到来,那么,我们面临的就是一场大危机。如果我们等待,如果我们回避这个问题,我们不过是毫无风度地在死之门前焦躁地徘徊罢了。可是在我们面前,如同在萨福面前一样,是无垠的空间。我们的旅程就是通向那儿的。难道我们没有勇气继续走下去吗,难道我们要大呼一声“我不敢”吗?我们会继续走下去,走向死亡,不管死亡意味着什么。如果一个人知道下一步是什么,那么他为什么要惧怕这倒数第二步呢?再下一步是什么我们可以肯定,它就是死亡。
“我要死,越快越好。”厄秀拉有点发狂地自语道,那副镇定明白的样子是一般人无可比拟的。可是在暮色的笼罩下,她的心在痛苦地哭泣、感到绝望。不管它吧,一个人必须追随自己百折不挠的精神,不要因为恐惧就回避这个问题。如果说现在人最大的意愿就是走向未知的死亡境地,那么他会因为浅薄的想法而丧失最深刻的真理吗?
“结束吧,”她自言自语道,下定了决心。这不是一个结束自己性命的问题——她断乎不会自杀,那太令人恶心,也太残暴了。这是一个弄懂下一步是什么的问题。而下一步则导致死的空间。“是吗?或许,那儿——?”
她思绪万千,神情恍惚起来,似乎昏昏欲睡地坐在火炉边上。一坐下那想法又在头脑中出现了。死亡的空间!她能把自己奉献给它吗?啊,是呀,它是一种睡眠。她活够了,她一直坚持,抵抗得太久了。现在是退却的时候了,她再也不要抵抗了。
一阵精神恍惚中,她垮了,让步了,只觉得一片黑暗。在黑暗中,她可以感到自己的肉体也可怕地发出了宣言。那是难以言表的死亡的愤怒、极端的愤怒和厌恶。
“难道说肉体竟是如此之快地回应精神吗?”她询问自己。凭借她最大限度的知识,她知道肉体不过是一种精神的表现,完整的精神嬗变同样也是肉体的嬗变,除非我有一成不变的意志,除非我远离生活的旋律、人变得静止不动、与生活隔绝、与意志溶为一体。不过,宁可死也不这样机械地过重复又重复的生活。去死就是与看不见的东西一并前行。去死也是一种快乐,快乐地服从那比已知更伟大的事物,也就是说纯粹的未知世界。那是一种快乐。可是机械地活着,与生活隔绝,只生活在自己的意志中,只作为一个与未知世界隔绝的实体生活才是可耻、可鄙的呢。不充实的呆板的生活是最可鄙的。生活的确可以变得可鄙可耻。可死决不会是可耻的。
死之本身同无限的空间一样是无法被玷污的。
明天就是星期一了,是另一个教学周的开始!又一个可耻、空洞无物的教学周,例行公事、呆板的活动又要开始了。难道冒险去死不是很值得称道吗?难道死不是比这种生更可爱、更高尚吗?这种生只是空洞的日常公事,没有任何内在的意义,没有任何真正的意义。生活是多么肮脏,现在活着对灵魂来说这是多么可怕的耻辱啊!死是多么洁净,多么庄严啊!这种肮脏的日常公事和呆板的虚无给人带来的耻辱再也让人无法忍受了。或许死可以使人变得完美。她反正是活够了。哪儿才能寻到生活呢?繁忙的机器上是不会开出花朵来的,对于日常公事来说是没有什么天地的,对于这种旋转的运动来说是没有什么空间可言的。所有的生活都是一种旋转的机械运动,与现实没有关系。无法指望从生活中获得点什么——对所有的国家和所有的人来说都是如此。唯一的出路就是死。人尽可以怀着深情仰望死亡的无垠黑夜,就象一个孩子朝教室外面观看一样,看到的是自由。既然现在不是孩子了,就会懂得灵魂是肮脏的生活大厦中的囚徒,除了死,别无出路。
可这是怎样的欢乐了啊!想想,不管人类做什么,它都无法把握死亡的王国,无法取消这个王国,想想这个道理该是多么令人高兴啊!人类把大海变成了屠杀人的峡谷和肮脏的商业之路,为此他们象争夺每一寸肮脏城市的土地一样争吵不休。连空气他们都声称要占有,将之分割,包装起来为某些人所有,为此他们侵犯领空、相互争夺。一切都失去了,被高墙围住,墙头上还布满了尖铁,人非得可鄙地在这些插了尖铁的墙中爬行,在这迷宫似的生活中过活。
人类却偏偏蔑视那无边无际的黑暗的死亡王国。他们在尘世中有许多事要做,他们是一些五花八门的小神仙。可死亡的王国却最终让人类遭到蔑视,在死亡面前,人们都变得庸俗愚蠢。
死是那么美丽、崇高而完美啊,渴望死是多么美好啊。在那儿一个人可以洗涮掉曾沾染上的谎言,耻辱和污垢,死是一场完美的沐浴和清凉剂,使人变得不可知、毫无争议、毫不谦卑。归根结底,人只有获得了完美的死的诺言后才变得富有。这是高于一切的欢乐,令人神往,这纯粹超人的死,是另一个自我。
不管生活是什么样子,它也无法消除死亡,它是人间超验的死亡。哦,我们别问它是什么或不是什么这样的问题吧。了解欲是人的天性,可在死亡中我们什么都不了解,我们不是人了。死的快乐补偿了智识的痛苦和人类的肮脏。在死亡中我们将不再是人,我们不再了解什么。死亡的许诺是我们的传统,我们象继承人一样渴望着死的许诺。
厄秀拉坐在客厅里的火炉旁,娴静、孤独、失神落魄。孩子们在厨房里玩耍,别人都去教堂了,而她则离开了这里进入了自己灵魂的最黑暗处。
门铃响了,她吃了一惊,隔着很远,孩子们疾跑着过来叫道:
“厄秀拉,有人找。”
“我知道了,别犯傻。”她说。她感到吃惊,几乎感到害怕。她几乎不敢去门口。
伯金站在门口,雨衣的领子翻到耳际。在她远离现实的时候,他来了。她发现他的身后是雨夜。
“啊,是你吗?”她说。
“你在家,我很高兴。”他声音低沉地说着走进屋里。
“他们都上教堂去了。”
他脱下雨衣挂了起来。孩子们在角落里偷偷看他。“去,脱衣服睡觉去,比利,朵拉,”厄秀拉说,“妈妈就要回来了,如果你们不上床她会失望的。”
孩子们立刻象天使一样一言不发地退了下去。伯金和厄秀拉进到客厅里。火势减弱了。他看着她,不禁为她丰采照人的娇美所惊叹,她的眼睛又大又明亮。他看着她,心里直叹服,她似乎在灯光下变了个样儿似的。
“你这一天里都做些什么?”他问她。
“就这么干坐着无所事事。”她说。
他看看她,发现她变了。她同他不是一条心了,她自己独自一人显得很有丰采。他们两人坐在柔和的灯光里。他感到他应该离去,他不该来这儿。可他又没勇气一走了之。他知道他在这儿是多余的人,她心不在焉,若即若离。
这时屋里两个孩子羞涩地叫起来,那声音很柔、很细微。
“厄秀拉!厄秀拉!”
她站起来打开了门,发现两个孩子正身穿睡衣站在门口,大睁着眼睛,一副天使般的表情。这时他们表现很好,完全象两个听话的孩子。
“你陪我们上床好吗?”比利大声嘟哝道。
“为什么呢?你今天可是个天使啊。”她温柔地说,“来,向伯金先生道晚安好吗?”
两个孩子光着脚腼腆地挪进屋里来。比利宽大的脸上带着笑容,可他圆圆的眼睛显得他很严肃,是个好孩子。朵拉的眼睛在刘海后面偷看他,象没有灵魂的森林女神那样向后躲闪着。
“跟我道晚安再见好吗?”伯金的声音奇怪得温柔和蔼。朵拉听到他的话立即象风吹下的一片树叶一样飘走了。可比利却慢慢地悄然走过来,紧闭着的小嘴凑了上来很明显是要人吻。厄秀拉看着这个男人的嘴唇异常温柔地吻了小男孩儿的嘴巴。然后,伯金抬起手抚爱地摸着孩子圆圆的、露着信任表情的小脸儿。谁都没有说话。比利看上去很象个天真无邪的天使,又象个小待僧。伯金则象个高大庄重的天使那样俯视着孩子。
“你想让人吻吗?”厄秀拉冲口对女孩儿说。可朵拉象那小小的森林女神一样躲开了,她不让人碰。
“向伯金先生道晚安再见好吗?去吧,他在等你呢。”厄秀拉说,可那女孩儿只是一个劲儿躲他。
“傻瓜朵拉!傻瓜朵拉!”厄秀拉说。
伯金看得出这孩子有点不信任他,跟他不对眼。他弄不明白这是怎么回事。
“来吧,”厄秀拉说,“趁妈妈还没回来咱们上床去吧。”
“那谁来听我们的祈祷呢?”比利不安地问。
“你喜欢让谁听?”
“你愿意吗?”
“好,我愿意。”
“厄秀拉?”
“什么,比利?”
“‘谁’这个字怎么念成了Whom?”
“是的。”
“那,‘Whom’是什么?”
“它是‘谁’这个词的宾格。”
孩子沉默了一会儿,思忖一下后表示信任地说:
“是吗?”
伯金坐在火炉边笑了。当厄秀拉下楼来时,他正稳稳地坐着,胳膊放在膝盖上。她觉得他真象个纹丝不动的天使,象某个蜷缩着的偶像,象某种消亡了的宗教象征。他打量着她时,苍白如同幻影的脸上似乎闪烁着磷光。
“你不舒服吗?”她问,心中有种说不出的不快。
“我没想过。”
“难道你不想就不知道吗?”
他看看她,目光很黑、很迅速,他发现了她的不快。他没回答她的问题。
“你如果不想的话难道就不知道自己身体健康与否吗?”
她坚持问。
“并不总是这样。”他冷漠地说。
“可你不觉得这样太恶毒了点儿吗?”
“恶毒?”
“是的。我觉得当你病了你都不知道,对自己的身体这样漠不关心就是在犯罪。”
他的脸色变得很沉郁。
“你说得对。”他说。
“你病了为什么不卧床休息?你脸色很不好。”
“让人厌恶吗?”他嘲弄地说。
“是的,很让人讨厌,很讨人嫌。”
“啊,这可真太不幸了。”
“下雨了,这个夜晚很可怕。真的,你真不该这样糟践自己的身体——一个如此对待自己身体的人是注定要吃苦头的。”
“如此对待自己的身体,”他呆板地重复着。
她不说话,沉默了。
别人都从教堂做完礼拜回来了,先是姑娘们,而后是母亲和戈珍,最后是父亲和一个男孩儿。
“晚上好啊,”布朗温有点吃惊地说,“是来看我吗?”
“不,”伯金说,“我不是为什么专门的事来的。今天天气不好,我来您不会见怪吧?”
“这天儿是挺让人发闷的,”布朗温太太同情地说。这时只听得楼上的孩子们在叫:“妈妈!妈妈!”她抬起头向远处温和地说:“我这就上去。”然后她对伯金说:“肖特兰兹那儿没什么新鲜玩意儿?唉,”她叹口气道,“没有,真可怜,我想是没有。”
“你今儿个去那儿了?”父亲问。
“杰拉德到我那儿去吃茶,吃完茶我陪他步行回肖特兰兹的。他们家的人过分哀伤,情绪不健康。”
“我觉得他们家的人都缺少节制。”戈珍说。
“太没节制了。”伯金说。
“对,肯定是这么回事。”戈珍有点报复性地说,“有那么一两个人这样。”
“他们都觉得他们应该表现得有点出格儿,”伯金说,“说个悲痛,他们就该象古代人那样捂起脸来退避三舍。”
“是这样的!”戈珍红着脸叫道,“没比这种当众表示悲哀更坏、更可怕,更虚假的了!悲哀是个人的事,要躲起来自顾悲伤才是,他们这算什么?”
“就是,”伯金说。“我在那儿看到他们一个个儿假惺惺悲哀的样子我都替他们害羞,他们非要那么不自然,跟别人不一样不行。”
“可是——”布朗温太太对这种批评表示异意说,“忍受那样的苦恼可不容易。”
说完她上楼去看孩子。
伯金又坐了几分钟就告辞了。他一走,厄秀拉觉得自己恨透他了,她整个身心都恨他,都因为恨他而变得锋芒毕露,紧张起来。她无法想象这是怎么一回事。只是这种深刻的仇恨完全攫住了她,纯粹的仇恨,超越任何思想的仇恨。她无法思考这是怎么回事,她已经无法自持了。她感到自己被控制住了。一连几天,她都被这股仇恨力量控制着,它超过了她已知的任何东西,它似乎要把她抛出尘世,抛入某个可怕的地方,在那儿她以前的自我不再起作用。她感到非常迷惘、惊恐,生活中的她确实死了。
这太不可理解,也太没有理性了。她不知道她为什么恨他,她的恨说不清道不明。她惊恐地意识到她被这纯粹的仇恨所战胜。他是敌人,象钻石一样宝贵,象珠宝一样坚硬,是所有敌意的精华。
她想着他的脸,白净而纯洁,他的黑眼睛里透着坚强的意志。想到这儿,她摸摸自己的前额,试试自己是否疯了,她怒火中烧,人都变样了。
她的仇恨并非暂时,她并不是因为什么这事那事才恨他的;她不想对他采取什么行动,不想跟他有什么瓜葛。她跟他的关系完结了,非语言所能说得清,那仇恨太纯洁、象宝玉一样。似乎他是一道敌对之光,这道光芒不仅毁灭她,还整个儿地否定了她,取消了她的世界。她把他看作是一个极端矛盾着的人,一个宝玉一样的怪人,他的存在宣判了她的死亡。当她听说他又生病了时,她的仇恨立时又增添了几分。这仇恨令她惊恐,也毁了她,但她无法摆脱它,无法摆脱变形的仇恨攫住自己。
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。
゛臉紅紅....

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等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
举报 只看该作者 16楼  发表于: 2013-10-27 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 16 Man to Man


HE LAY sick and unmoved, in pure opposition to everything. He knew how near to breaking was the vessel that held his life. He knew also how strong and durable it was. And he did not care. Better a thousand times take one's chance with death, than accept a life one did not want. But best of all to persist and persist and persist for ever, till one were satisfied in life.
He knew that Ursula was referred back to him. He knew his life rested with her. But he would rather not live than accept the love she proffered. The old way of love seemed a dreadful bondage, a sort of conscription. What it was in him he did not know, but the thought of love, marriage, and children, and a life lived together, in the horrible privacy of domestic and connubial satisfaction, was repulsive. He wanted something clearer, more open, cooler, as it were. The hot narrow intimacy between man and wife was abhorrent. The way they shut their doors, these married people, and shut themselves in to their own exclusive alliance with each other, even in love, disgusted him. It was a whole community of mistrustful couples insulated in private houses or private rooms, always in couples, and no further life, no further immediate, no disinterested relationship admitted: a kaleidoscope of couples, disjoined, separatist, meaningless entities of married couples. True, he hated promiscuity even worse than marriage, and a liaison was only another kind of coupling, reactionary from the legal marriage. Reaction was a greater bore than action.
On the whole, he hated sex, it was such a limitation. It was sex that turned a man into a broken half of a couple, the woman into the other broken half. And he wanted to be single in himself, the woman single in herself. He wanted sex to revert to the level of the other appetites, to be regarded as a functional process, not as a fulfilment. He believed in sex marriage. But beyond this, he wanted a further conjunction, where man had being and woman had being, two pure beings, each constituting the freedom of the other, balancing each other like two poles of one force, like two angels, or two demons.
He wanted so much to be free, not under the compulsion of any need for unification, or tortured by unsatisfied desire. Desire and aspiration should find their object without all this torture, as now, in a world of plenty of water, simple thirst is inconsiderable, satisfied almost unconsciously. And he wanted to be with Ursula as free as with himself, single and clear and cool, yet balanced, polarised with her. The merging, the clutching, the mingling of love was become madly abhorrent to him.
But it seemed to him, woman was always so horrible and clutching, she had such a lust for possession, a greed of self-importance in love. She wanted to have, to own, to control, to be dominant. Everything must be referred back to her, to Woman, the Great Mother of everything, out of whom proceeded everything and to whom everything must finally be rendered up.
It filled him with almost insane fury, this calm assumption of the Magna Mater, that all was hers, because she had borne it. Man was hers because she had borne him. A Mater Dolorosa, she had borne him, a Magna Mater, she now claimed him again, soul and body, sex, meaning, and all. He had a horror of the Magna Mater, she was detestable.
She was on a very high horse again, was woman, the Great Mother. Did he not know it in Hermione. Hermione, the humble, the subservient, what was she all the while but the Mater Dolorosa, in her subservience, claiming with horrible, insidious arrogance and female tyranny, her own again, claiming back the man she had borne in suffering. By her very suffering and humility she bound her son with chains, she held him her everlasting prisoner.
And Ursula, Ursula was the same -- or the inverse. She too was the awful, arrogant queen of life, as if she were a queen bee on whom all the rest depended. He saw the yellow flare in her eyes, he knew the unthinkable overweening assumption of primacy in her. She was unconscious of it herself. She was only too ready to knock her head on the ground before a man. But this was only when she was so certain of her man, that she could worship him as a woman worships her own infant, with a worship of perfect possession.
It was intolerable, this possession at the hands of woman. Always a man must be considered as the broken off fragment of a woman, and the sex was the still aching scar of the laceration. Man must be added on to a woman, before he had any real place or wholeness.
And why? Why should we consider ourselves, men and women, as broken fragments of one whole? It is not true. We are not broken fragments of one whole. Rather we are the singling away into purity and clear being, of things that were mixed. Rather the sex is that which remains in us of the mixed, the unresolved. And passion is the further separating of this mixture, that which is manly being taken into the being of the man, that which is womanly passing to the woman, till the two are clear and whole as angels, the admixture of sex in the highest sense surpassed, leaving two single beings constellated together like two stars.
In the old age, before sex was, we were mixed, each one a mixture. The process of singling into individuality resulted into the great polarisation of sex. The womanly drew to one side, the manly to the other. But the separation was imperfect even them. And so our world-cycle passes. There is now to come the new day, when we are beings each of us, fulfilled in difference. The man is pure man, the woman pure woman, they are perfectly polarised. But there is no longer any of the horrible merging, mingling self-abnegation of love. There is only the pure duality of polarisation, each one free from any contamination of the other. In each, the individual is primal, sex is subordinate, but perfectly polarised. Each has a single, separate being, with its own laws. The man has his pure freedom, the woman hers. Each acknowledges the perfection of the polarised sex-circuit. Each admits the different nature in the other.
So Birkin meditated whilst he was ill. He liked sometimes to be ill enough to take to his bed. For then he got better very quickly, and things came to him clear and sure.
Whilst he was laid up, Gerald came to see him. The two men had a deep, uneasy feeling for each other. Gerald's eyes were quick and restless, his whole manner tense and impatient, he seemed strung up to some activity. According to conventionality, he wore black clothes, he looked formal, handsome and comme il faut. His hair was fair almost to whiteness, sharp like splinters of light, his face was keen and ruddy, his body seemed full of northern energy. Gerald really loved Birkin, though he never quite believed in him. Birkin was too unreal; -- clever, whimsical, wonderful, but not practical enough. Gerald felt that his own understanding was much sounder and safer. Birkin was delightful, a wonderful spirit, but after all, not to be taken seriously, not quite to be counted as a man among men.
`Why are you laid up again?' he asked kindly, taking the sick man's hand. It was always Gerald who was protective, offering the warm shelter of his physical strength.
`For my sins, I suppose,' Birkin said, smiling a little ironically.
`For your sins? Yes, probably that is so. You should sin less, and keep better in health?'
`You'd better teach me.'
He looked at Gerald with ironic eyes.
`How are things with you?' asked Birkin.
`With me?' Gerald looked at Birkin, saw he was serious, and a warm light came into his eyes.
`I don't know that they're any different. I don't see how they could be. There's nothing to change.'
`I suppose you are conducting the business as successfully as ever, and ignoring the demand of the soul.'
`That's it,' said Gerald. `At least as far as the business is concerned. I couldn't say about the soul, I'am sure.'
`No.'
`Surely you don't expect me to?' laughed Gerald.
`No. How are the rest of your affairs progressing, apart from the business?'
`The rest of my affairs? What are those? I couldn't say; I don't know what you refer to.'
`Yes, you do,' said Birkin. `Are you gloomy or cheerful? And what about Gudrun Brangwen?'
`What about her?' A confused look came over Gerald. `Well,' he added, `I don't know. I can only tell you she gave me a hit over the face last time I saw her.'
`A hit over the face! What for?'
`That I couldn't tell you, either.'
`Really! But when?'
`The night of the party -- when Diana was drowned. She was driving the cattle up the hill, and I went after her -- you remember.'
`Yes, I remember. But what made her do that? You didn't definitely ask her for it, I suppose?'
`I? No, not that I know of. I merely said to her, that it was dangerous to drive those Highland bullocks -- as it is. She turned in such a way, and said -- "I suppose you think I'm afraid of you and your cattle, don't you?" So I asked her "why," and for answer she flung me a backhander across the face.'
Birkin laughed quickly, as if it pleased him. Gerald looked at him, wondering, and began to laugh as well, saying:
`I didn't laugh at the time, I assure you. I was never so taken aback in my life.'
`And weren't you furious?'
`Furious? I should think I was. I'd have murdered her for two pins.'
`H'm!' ejaculated Birkin. `Poor Gudrun, wouldn't she suffer afterwards for having given herself away!' He was hugely delighted.
`Would she suffer?' asked Gerald, also amused now.
Both men smiled in malice and amusement.
`Badly, I should think; seeing how self-conscious she is.'
`She is self-conscious, is she? Then what made her do it? For I certainly think it was quite uncalled-for, and quite unjustified.'
`I suppose it was a sudden impulse.'
`Yes, but how do you account for her having such an impulse? I'd done her no harm.'
Birkin shook his head.
`The Amazon suddenly came up in her, I suppose,' he said.
`Well,' replied Gerald, `I'd rather it had been the Orinoco.'
They both laughed at the poor joke. Gerald was thinking how Gudrun had said she would strike the last blow too. But some reserve made him keep this back from Birkin.
`And you resent it?' Birkin asked.
`I don't resent it. I don't care a tinker's curse about it.' He was silent a moment, then he added, laughing. `No, I'll see it through, that's all. She seemed sorry afterwards.'
`Did she? You've not met since that night?'
Gerald's face clouded.
`No,' he said. `We've been -- you can imagine how it's been, since the accident.'
`Yes. Is it calming down?'
`I don't know. It's a shock, of course. But I don't believe mother minds. I really don't believe she takes any notice. And what's so funny, she used to be all for the children -- nothing mattered, nothing whatever mattered but the children. And now, she doesn't take any more notice than if it was one of the servants.'
`No? Did it upset you very much?'
`It's a shock. But I don't feel it very much, really. I don't feel any different. We've all got to die, and it doesn't seem to make any great difference, anyhow, whether you die or not. I can't feel any grief you know. It leaves me cold. I can't quite account for it.'
`You don't care if you die or not?' asked Birkin.
Gerald looked at him with eyes blue as the blue-fibred steel of a weapon. He felt awkward, but indifferent. As a matter of fact, he did care terribly, with a great fear.
`Oh,' he said, `I don't want to die, why should I? But I never trouble. The question doesn't seem to be on the carpet for me at all. It doesn't interest me, you know.'
`Timor mortis conturbat me,' quoted Birkin, adding -- `No, death doesn't really seem the point any more. It curiously doesn't concern one. It's like an ordinary tomorrow.'
Gerald looked closely at his friend. The eyes of the two men met, and an unspoken understanding was exchanged.
Gerald narrowed his eyes, his face was cool and unscrupulous as he looked at Birkin, impersonally, with a vision that ended in a point in space, strangely keen-eyed and yet blind.
`If death isn't the point,' he said, in a strangely abstract, cold, fine voice -- `what is?' He sounded as if he had been found out.
`What is?' re-echoed Birkin. And there was a mocking silence.
`There's long way to go, after the point of intrinsic death, before we disappear,' said Birkin.
`There is,' said Gerald. `But what sort of way?' He seemed to press the other man for knowledge which he himself knew far better than Birkin did.
`Right down the slopes of degeneration -- mystic, universal degeneration. There are many stages of pure degradation to go through: agelong. We live on long after our death, and progressively, in progressive devolution.'
Gerald listened with a faint, fine smile on his face, all the time, as if, somewhere, he knew so much better than Birkin, all about this: as if his own knowledge were direct and personal, whereas Birkin's was a matter of observation and inference, not quite hitting the nail on the head: -though aiming near enough at it. But he was not going to give himself away. If Birkin could get at the secrets, let him. Gerald would never help him. Gerald would be a dark horse to the end.
`Of course,' he said, with a startling change of conversation, `it is father who really feels it. It will finish him. For him the world collapses. All his care now is for Winnie -- he must save Winnie. He says she ought to be sent away to school, but she won't hear of it, and he'll never do it. Of course she is in rather a queer way. We're all of us curiously bad at living. We can do things -- but we can't get on with life at all. It's curious -- a family failing.'
`She oughtn't to be sent away to school,' said Birkin, who was considering a new proposition.
`She oughtn't. Why?'
`She's a queer child -- a special child, more special even than you. And in my opinion special children should never be sent away to school. Only moderately ordinary children should be sent to school -- so it seems to me.'
`I'm inclined to think just the opposite. I think it would probably make her more normal if she went away and mixed with other children.'
`She wouldn't mix, you see. You never really mixed, did you? And she wouldn't be willing even to pretend to. She's proud, and solitary, and naturally apart. If she has a single nature, why do you want to make her gregarious?'
`No, I don't want to make her anything. But I think school would be good for her.'
`Was it good for you?'
Gerald's eyes narrowed uglily. School had been torture to him. Yet he had not questioned whether one should go through this torture. He seemed to believe in education through subjection and torment.
`I hated it at the time, but I can see it was necessary,' he said. `It brought me into line a bit -- and you can't live unless you do come into line somewhere.'
`Well,' said Birkin, `I begin to think that you can't live unless you keep entirely out of the line. It's no good trying to toe the line, when your one impulse is to smash up the line. Winnie is a special nature, and for special natures you must give a special world.'
`Yes, but where's your special world?' said Gerald.
`Make it. Instead of chopping yourself down to fit the world, chop the world down to fit yourself. As a matter of fact, two exceptional people make another world. You and I, we make another, separate world. You don't want a world same as your brothers-in-law. It's just the special quality you value. Do you want to be normal or ordinary! It's a lie. You want to be free and extraordinary, in an extraordinary world of liberty.'
Gerald looked at Birkin with subtle eyes of knowledge. But he would never openly admit what he felt. He knew more than Birkin, in one direction -much more. And this gave him his gentle love for the other man, as if Birkin were in some way young, innocent, child-like: so amazingly clever, but incurably innocent.
`Yet you are so banal as to consider me chiefly a freak,' said Birkin pointedly.
`A freak!' exclaimed Gerald, startled. And his face opened suddenly, as if lighted with simplicity, as when a flower opens out of the cunning bud. `No -- I never consider you a freak.' And he watched the other man with strange eyes, that Birkin could not understand. `I feel,' Gerald continued, `that there is always an element of uncertainty about you -- perhaps you are uncertain about yourself. But I'm never sure of you. You can go away and change as easily as if you had no soul.'
He looked at Birkin with penetrating eyes. Birkin was amazed. He thought he had all the soul in the world. He stared in amazement. And Gerald, watching, saw the amazing attractive goodliness of his eyes, a young, spontaneous goodness that attracted the other man infinitely, yet filled him with bitter chagrin, because he mistrusted it so much. He knew Birkin could do without him -- could forget, and not suffer. This was always present in Gerald's consciousness, filling him with bitter unbelief: this consciousness of the young, animal-like spontaneity of detachment. It seemed almost like hypocrisy and lying, sometimes, oh, often, on Birkin's part, to talk so deeply and importantly.
Quite other things were going through Birkin's mind. Suddenly he saw himself confronted with another problem -- the problem of love and eternal conjunction between two men. Of course this was necessary -- it had been a necessity inside himself all his life -- to love a man purely and fully. Of course he had been loving Gerald all along, and all along denying it.
He lay in the bed and wondered, whilst his friend sat beside him, lost in brooding. Each man was gone in his own thoughts.
`You know how the old German knights used to swear a Blutbruderschaft,' he said to Gerald, with quite a new happy activity in his eyes.
`Make a little wound in their arms, and rub each other's blood into the cut?' said Gerald.
`Yes -- and swear to be true to each other, of one blood, all their lives. That is what we ought to do. No wounds, that is obsolete. But we ought to swear to love each other, you and I, implicitly, and perfectly, finally, without any possibility of going back on it.'
He looked at Gerald with clear, happy eyes of discovery. Gerald looked down at him, attracted, so deeply bondaged in fascinated attraction, that he was mistrustful, resenting the bondage, hating the attraction.
`We will swear to each other, one day, shall we?' pleaded Birkin. `We will swear to stand by each other -- be true to each other -- ultimately -infallibly -- given to each other, organically -- without possibility of taking back.'
Birkin sought hard to express himself. But Gerald hardly listened. His face shone with a certain luminous pleasure. He was pleased. But he kept his reserve. He held himself back.
`Shall we swear to each other, one day?' said Birkin, putting out his hand towards Gerald.
Gerald just touched the extended fine, living hand, as if withheld and afraid.
`We'll leave it till I understand it better,' he said, in a voice of excuse.
Birkin watched him. A little sharp disappointment, perhaps a touch of contempt came into his heart.
`Yes,' he said. `You must tell me what you think, later. You know what I mean? Not sloppy emotionalism. An impersonal union that leaves one free.'
They lapsed both into silence. Birkin was looking at Gerald all the time. He seemed now to see, not the physical, animal man, which he usually saw in Gerald, and which usually he liked so much, but the man himself, complete, and as if fated, doomed, limited. This strange sense of fatality in Gerald, as if he were limited to one form of existence, one knowledge, one activity, a sort of fatal halfness, which to himself seemed wholeness, always overcame Birkin after their moments of passionate approach, and filled him with a sort of contempt, or boredom. It was the insistence on the limitation which so bored Birkin in Gerald. Gerald could never fly away from himself, in real indifferent gaiety. He had a clog, a sort of monomania.
There was silence for a time. Then Birkin said, in a lighter tone, letting the stress of the contact pass:
`Can't you get a good governess for Winifred? -- somebody exceptional?'
`Hermione Roddice suggested we should ask Gudrun to teach her to draw and to model in clay. You know Winnie is astonishingly clever with that plasticine stuff. Hermione declares she is an artist.' Gerald spoke in the usual animated, chatty manner, as if nothing unusual had passed. But Birkin's manner was full of reminder.
`Really! I didn't know that. Oh well then, if Gudrun would teach her, it would be perfect -- couldn't be anything better -- if Winifred is an artist. Because Gudrun somewhere is one. And every true artist is the salvation of every other.'
`I thought they got on so badly, as a rule.'
`Perhaps. But only artists produce for each other the world that is fit to live in. If you can arrange that for Winifred, it is perfect.'
`But you think she wouldn't come?'
`I don't know. Gudrun is rather self-opinionated. She won't go cheap anywhere. Or if she does, she'll pretty soon take herself back. So whether she would condescend to do private teaching, particularly here, in Beldover, I don't know. But it would be just the thing. Winifred has got a special nature. And if you can put into her way the means of being selfsufficient, that is the best thing possible. She'll never get on with the ordinary life. You find it difficult enough yourself, and she is several skins thinner than you are. It is awful to think what her life will be like unless she does find a means of expression, some way of fulfilment. You can see what mere leaving it to fate brings. You can see how much marriage is to be trusted to -- look at your own mother.'
`Do you think mother is abnormal?'
`No! I think she only wanted something more, or other than the common run of life. And not getting it, she has gone wrong perhaps.'
`After producing a brood of wrong children,' said Gerald gloomily.
`No more wrong than any of the rest of us,' Birkin replied. `The most normal people have the worst subterranean selves, take them one by one.'
`Sometimes I think it is a curse to be alive,' said Gerald with sudden impotent anger.
`Well,' said Birkin, `why not! Let it be a curse sometimes to be alive -- at other times it is anything but a curse. You've got plenty of zest in it really.'
`Less than you'd think,' said Gerald, revealing a strange poverty in his look at the other man.
There was silence, each thinking his own thoughts.
`I don't see what she has to distinguish between teaching at the Grammar School, and coming to teach Win,' said Gerald.
`The difference between a public servant and a private one. The only nobleman today, king and only aristocrat, is the public, the public. You are quite willing to serve the public -- but to be a private tutor --'
`I don't want to serve either --'
`No! And Gudrun will probably feel the same.'
Gerald thought for a few minutes. Then he said:
`At all events, father won't make her feel like a private servant. He will be fussy and greatful enough.'
`So he ought. And so ought all of you. Do you think you can hire a woman like Gudrun Brangwen with money? She is your equal like anything -probably your superior.'
`Is she?' said Gerald.
`Yes, and if you haven't the guts to know it, I hope she'll leave you to your own devices.'
`Nevertheless,' said Gerald, `if she is my equal, I wish she weren't a teacher, because I don't think teachers as a rule are my equal.'
`Nor do I, damn them. But am I a teacher because I teach, or a parson because I preach?'
Gerald laughed. He was always uneasy on this score. He did not want to claim social superiority, yet he would not claim intrinsic personal superiority, because he would never base his standard of values on pure being. So he wobbled upon a tacit assumption of social standing. No, Birkin wanted him to accept the fact of intrinsic difference between human beings, which he did not intend to accept. It was against his social honour, his principle. He rose to go.
`I've been neglecting my business all this while,' he said smiling.
`I ought to have reminded you before,' Birkin replied, laughing and mocking.
`I knew you'd say something like that,' laughed Gerald, rather uneasily.
`Did you?'
`Yes, Rupert. It wouldn't do for us all to be like you are -- we should soon be in the cart. When I am above the world, I shall ignore all businesses.'
`Of course, we're not in the cart now,' said Birkin, satirically.
`Not as much as you make out. At any rate, we have enough to eat and drink --'
`And be satisfied,' added Birkin.
Gerald came near the bed and stood looking down at Birkin whose throat was exposed, whose tossed hair fell attractively on the warm brow, above the eyes that were so unchallenged and still in the satirical face. Gerald, full-limbed and turgid with energy, stood unwilling to go, he was held by the presence of the other man. He had not the power to go away.
`So,' said Birkin. `Good-bye.' And he reached out his hand from under the bed-clothes, smiling with a glimmering look.
`Good-bye,' said Gerald, taking the warm hand of his friend in a firm grasp. `I shall come again. I miss you down at the mill.'
`I'll be there in a few days,' said Birkin.
The eyes of the two men met again. Gerald's, that were keen as a hawk's, were suffused now with warm light and with unadmitted love, Birkin looked back as out of a darkness, unsounded and unknown, yet with a kind of warmth, that seemed to flow over Gerald's brain like a fertile sleep.
`Good-bye then. There's nothing I can do for you?'
`Nothing, thanks.'
Birkin watched the black-clothed form of the other man move out of the door, the bright head was gone, he turned over to sleep.
 
他卧病在床,足不出户,看什么都不顺眼。他知道这包容着他生命的空壳快破碎了。他也知道它有多么坚固,可以坚持多久。对此他并不在乎。宁可死上一千次也不过这种不愿过的生活。不过最好还是坚持、坚持、坚持直到对生活满意为止。
他知道厄秀拉又回心转意了,他知道自己的生命寄托于她了。但是,他宁愿死也不接受她奉献出的爱。旧的相爱方式似乎是一种可怕的束缚,是一种招兵买马。他弄不清自己在想什么,可是一想到按旧的方式过一种可怕的家庭生活,在夫妻关系中获得满足他就感到厌恶,什么爱、婚姻、孩子、令人厌恶。他想过一种更为清爽、开放、冷静的生活,可不行,夫妻间火热的小日子和亲昵是可怕的。他们那些结了婚的人关起门来过日子,把自己关在相互间排他的同盟中,尽管他们是相爱的,这也令他感到生厌。整个群体中互不信任的人结成夫妻又关在私人住宅中孤立起来,总是成双成对的,没有比这更进一步的生活,没有直接而又无私的关系得到承认:各式各样的双双对对,尽管结了婚,但他们仍是貌合神离,毫无意义的人。当然,他对杂居比对婚姻更仇恨,私通不过是另一种配偶罢了,是对法律婚姻的反动。反动此行动更令人讨厌。
总的来说,他厌恶性,性的局限太大了。是性把男人变成了一对配偶中的一方,把女人变成另一方。可他希望他自己是独立的自我,女人也是她独立的自我。他希望性回归到另一种欲望的水平上去,只把它看作是官能的作用,而不是一种满足。他相信两性之间的结合,可他更希望有某种超越两性结合的进一步的结合,在那种结合中,男人具有自己的存在,女人也有自己的存在,双方是两个纯粹的存在,每个人都给对方以自由,就象一种力的两极那样相互平衡,就象两个天使或两个魔鬼。
他太渴望自由了,不要受什么统一需要的强迫,不想被无法满足的欲望所折磨。这些欲望和愿意应该在不受折答的情况下得到实现,就象在一个水源充足的世界上焦渴现象是不大可能的,总是能在不自觉的情况下得到满足。他希望同厄秀拉在一起就象自己独自相处时一样自由,清楚、淡泊,同时又相互平衡、极化制约。对他来说纠缠不清、浑浑浊浊的爱是太可怕了。
可在他看来,女人总是很可怕的,她们总要控制人,那种控制欲、自大感很强。她要占有,要控制,要占主导地位,什么都得归还给女人——一切的伟大母亲,一切源于她们,最终一切都得归于她们。
女人们以圣母自居,只因为她们给予了所有人以生命,一切就该归她们所有,这种倨傲态度几乎令他发疯。男人是女人的,因为她生育了他。她是悲伤的圣母玛丽亚,伟大的母亲,她生育了他,现在她又要占有他,从肉体到性到意念上的他,她都要占有。他对伟大的母性怕极了,她太令人厌恶了。
她非常骄横,以伟大的母亲自居。这一点他在赫麦妮那儿早就领教过了。赫麦妮显得谦卑、恭顺,可她实际上也是一个悲伤的圣母玛丽娅,她以可恶、阴险的傲慢和女性的霸道要夺回她在痛苦中生下的男人。她就是以这种痛楚与谦卑将自己的儿子束缚住,令他永远成为她的囚徒。
厄秀拉,厄秀拉也是一样。她也是生活中令人恐惧的骄傲女王,似乎她是蜂王,别的蜂都得依赖她。看到她眼中闪烁的黄色火焰,他就知道她有着难以想象的极高的优越感,对此她自己并没意识到,她在男人面前太容易低头了,当然只是在她非常自信她象一个女人崇拜自己的孩子、彻底占有并崇拜这个男人时她才这样。
太可怕了,受女人的钳制。一个男人总是让人当作女人身上落下的碎片,性更是这伤口上隐隐作痛的疤。男人得先成为女人的附属才能获得真正的地位,获得自己的完整。
可是为什么,为什么我们要把我们自己——男人和女人看成是一个整体的碎片呢?不是这样的,我们不是一个整体的碎片。不如说我们是要脱离混合体,变成纯粹的人。不如说,性是我们在混合体中仍然保留着的,尚未与之混合的天性。而激情则进一步把人们从混合体中分离出来,男性的激情属于男人,女性的激情属于女人,直到这两者象天使一样清纯、完整,直到在最高的意义上超越混合的性,使两个单独的男女象群星一样形成星座。
始初前,没有性这一说,我们是混合的,每个人都是一个混合体。个体化的结果是性的极化。女人成为一极,男人成为另一极。但尽管如此,这种分离还是不彻底的。世界就是这样旋转的。如今,新的时刻到来了,每个人都在与他人的不同中求得了完善。男人是纯粹的男人,女人是纯粹的女人,他们彻底极化了。再也没有那可怕的混合与搀合着自我克制的爱了。只有这纯粹的双极化,每个人都不受另一个人的污染。对每个人来说,个性是首要的,性是次要的,但两者又是完全相互制约着的。每个人都有其独立的存在,寻着自身的规律行事。男人有自己彻底的自由,女人也一样。每个人都承认极化的性巡环路线,承认对方不同于自己的天性。
伯金生病时做了如是的思索。他有时喜欢病到卧床不起的地步,那样他反倒容易尽快康复,事情对他来说变得更清纯了、更肯定了。
伯金卧病不起时,杰拉德前来看望他,这两个男人心中都深深感到不安。杰拉德的目光是机敏的,但显得躁动不安,他显得紧张而焦躁,似乎紧张地等待做什么事一样。他按照习俗身着丧服,看上去很一本正经、漂亮潇洒又合乎时宜。他头发的颜色很淡,几乎淡到发白的程度,象一道道电光一样闪烁着。他的脸色很好,表情很机智,他浑身都洋溢着北方人的活力。
尽管杰拉德并不怎么信任伯金,可他的确很喜欢他。伯金这人太虚无缥缈了——聪明,异想天开,神奇但不够现实。杰拉德觉得自己的理解力比伯金更准确、保险。伯金是个令人愉快、一个很奇妙的人,可还不够举足轻重,还不那么算得上人上人。
“你怎么又卧床不起了?”杰拉德握住伯金的手和善地问。他们之间总是杰拉德显出保护人的样子,以自己的体魄向伯金奉献出温暖的庇护所。
“我觉得这是因为我犯了罪,在受罚。”伯金自嘲地淡然一笑道。
“犯罪受罚?对,很可能是这样。你是不是应该少犯点罪,这样就健康多了。”
“你最好开导开导我。”他调侃道。
“你过得怎么样?”伯金问。
“我吗?”杰拉德看看伯金,发现他态度很认真的样子,于是自己的目光也热情起来。
“我不知道现在跟从前有何不同,说不上为什么要有所不同,没什么好变的。”
“我想,你的企业是愈办愈有成效了,可你忽视了精神上的要求。”
“是这样的,”杰拉德说,“至少对于我的企业来说是这样。
我敢说,关于精神我谈不出个所以然来。
“没错儿。”
“你也并不希望我能谈出什么来吧?”杰拉德笑道。
“当然不。除了你的企业,别的事儿怎么样?”
“别的?别的什么?我说不上,我不知道你指的是什么。”
“不,你知道,”伯金说,“过得开心不开心?戈珍·布朗温怎么样?”
“她怎么样?”杰拉德脸上现出迷惑不解的神情。“哦,”他接着说,“我不知道。我唯一能够告诉你的是,上次见到她时她给了我一记耳光。”
“一记耳光!为什么?”
“我也说不清。”
“真的!什么时候?”
“就是水上聚会那天晚上——迪安娜淹死的那天。戈珍往山上赶牛,我追她,记起来了吗?”
“对,想起来了。可她为什么要打你耳光呢?我想不是你愿意要她打的吧?”
“我?不,我说不清。我不过说了一句追赶那些高原公牛是件危险的事儿,确实是这样的嘛。她变了脸,说:‘我觉得你以为我怕你,怕你的牛,是吗?’我只问了一句‘为什么’
她就照我脸上打了一巴掌。”
伯金笑了,似乎感到满足。杰拉德不解地看看他,然后也笑了,说:
“当时我可没笑,真的。我这辈子从未受到过这样的打击。”
“那你发火了吗?”
“发火?我是发火了。我差点杀了她。”
“哼!”伯金说,“可怜的戈珍,她这样失态会后悔不堪的!”
他十分高兴。
“后悔不堪?”杰拉德饶有兴趣地问。
两个人都诡秘地笑了。
“会的,一旦她发现自己那么自负,她会痛苦的。”
“她自负吗?可她为什么要这样呢?我肯定这不必要,也不合乎情理。”
“我以为这是一时冲动。”
“是啊,可你如何解释这种一时的冲动呢?我并没伤害她呀。”
伯金摇摇头。
“我觉得,她突然变成了一个悍妇。”
“哦,”杰拉德说,“我宁可说是奥利诺科①。”
①在英语中“悍妇”与“亚马逊河”是同一个词,亚马逊河是横贯南美的世界第一大河,奥利诺科河是南美另一大河。
两个人都为这个不高明的玩笑感到好笑。杰拉德正在想戈珍说的那句话,她说她也可以最后打他一拳。可他没有对伯金讲这事。
“你对她这样做很反感吗?”伯金问。
“不反感,我才不在乎呢。”他沉默了一会又笑道,“不,我倒要看个究竟,就这些。打那以后她似乎感到点儿负疚。”
“是吗?可你们从那晚以后没再见过面呢?”
杰拉德的脸阴沉了下来。
“是的,”他说,“我们曾——你可以想象自从出了事以后我们的境况。”
“是啊,慢慢平静下来了吧?”
“我不知道,这当然是一个打击。可我不相信母亲对此忧心忡忡,我真地不相信她会注意这事儿。可笑的是,她曾是个一心扑在孩子身上的母亲,那时什么都不算数,她心中什么都没有,只有孩子。现在可好,她对孩子们一点都不理会,似乎他们都是些仆人。”
“是吗?你为此感到很伤脑筋吧?”
“这是个打击。可我对此感受并不很深,真的。我并不觉得这有什么不同。我们反正都得死去,死跟不死之间并没有多大区别。我几乎不怎么悲哀,这你知道的。这只能让我感到寒战,我对此说不太清。”
“你认为你死不死都无所谓吗?”伯金问。
杰拉德用一双蓝色的眼睛看着伯金,那蓝蓝的眼睛真象闪着蓝光的武器。他感到很尴尬,但又觉得无所谓。其实他很怕,非常怕。
“嗨,”他说,“我才不想死呢,我为什么要死呢?不过我从不在乎。这个问题对我来说并不紧迫,压根儿吸引不了我,这你知道的。”
“我对此一点都不怕。”伯金说,“不,似乎真得谈不上什么死不死的,真奇怪,它并非与我无关,它只象一个普通的明天一样。”
杰拉德凝视着伯金,两个人的目光相遇了,双方都心照不宣。
杰拉德眯起眼睛漠然、肆无忌惮地看着伯金,然后目光停留在空中的某一点上,目光很锐利,但他什么也没看。
“如果说死亡不是人生的终点,”他声音显得很古怪、难解、冷漠,“那是什么呢?”听他的话音,他似乎暴露了自己的想法。
“是什么?”伯金重复道。接下来的沉默颇具讽刺意味。
“内在的东西死了以后,还有一段很长的路程要走,然后我们才会消失。”伯金说。
“是有一段很长的路,”杰拉德说,“可那是什么样的路呢?”他似乎要迫使另一个人说出什么来,他自以为比别人懂得多。
“就是堕落的下坡路——神秘的宇宙堕落之路。纯粹的堕落之路是很长的,路上有许多阶段。我们死后还可以活很久,不断地退化。”
杰拉德脸上挂着微笑听伯金说话,那情态表明他比伯金懂得多,似乎他的知识更直接、更是亲身体验的,而伯金的知识不过是经过观察得出的推论,尽管接近要害,但并没打中要害。但他不想暴露自己的内心世界。如果伯金能够触到他的秘密就随他去,他杰拉德是不会帮助他的。杰拉德要最终暴个冷门。
“当然了,”他突然变了一种语调说。“我父亲对此感触最深,这会让他完蛋的。对他来说世界已崩溃了。他现在唯一关心的是温妮——他说什么也要拯救她。他说非送她进学校不可,可她不听话,这样他就办不到了,当然,她太古怪了点儿。我们大家对生都有一种很不好的感觉。我们毫无办法,可我们又无法生活得和谐起来。很奇怪,这是一个家族的衰败。”
“不应该送她去学校嘛。”伯金说,此时他有了新主意。
“不应该?为什么?”
“她是个奇怪的孩子,她有她的特异之处,比你更特殊些。我认为,特殊的孩子就不应该往学校里送。往学校送的都是些稍逊色的、普通孩子,我就是这么看的。”
“我的看法恰恰相反。我认为如果她离开家跟其他孩子在一起会使她变得更正常些。”
“可她不会跟那些人打成一片,你看着吧。你从没有真正与人为伍,对吗?而她则连装样儿都不会,更不会与人为伍。她高傲、孤独,天生来不合群儿。既然她爱独往独来,你干吗要让她合群儿呢?”
“我并不想让她怎么样。我不过认为上学校对她有好处。”
“上学对你有过好处吗?”
杰拉德听到这话,眼睛眯了起来,样子很难看。学校对他来说曾是一大折磨。可他从未提出过疑问:一个人是否应该从头至尾忍受这种折磨。他似乎相信用驯服和折磨的手段可以达到教育的目的。
“我曾恨过学校,可现在我可以看得出学校的必要性,”他说,“学校教育让我同别人处得和谐了点——的确,如果你跟别人处不好你就无法生存。”
“那,”伯金说,“我可以说,如果你不跟别人彻底脱离关系你就无法生存。如果你想冲破这种关系,你就别想走进那个圈子。温妮有一种特殊的天性,对这些有特殊天性的人,你应该给其一个特殊的世界。”
“是啊,可你那个特殊世界在哪儿呢?”
“创造一个嘛。不是削足适履而是让世界适应你。事实上,两个特殊人物就构成一个世界。你和我,我们构成一个与众不同的世界。你并不想要你妹夫们那样的世界,这正是你的特殊价值所在。你想变得循规蹈矩,变得平平常常吗?这是撒谎。你其实要自由,要出人头地,在一个自由的不凡的世界里出人头地。”
杰拉德微妙地看着伯金。可他永远不会公开承认他的感受。在某一方面他比伯金懂得多,就是为了这一点,他才给予伯金以柔情的爱,似乎伯金年少,幼稚,还象个孩子,聪明得惊人但又天真得无可救药。
“可是如果你觉得我是个畸型人你可就太庸俗了。”伯金一针见血地说。
“畸型人!”杰拉德吃惊地叫道。随之他的脸色舒朗了,变得清纯,就象一朵花蕾绽开一般。“不,我从未把你当成畸型人。”他看着伯金,那目光令伯金难以理解。“我觉得,”杰拉德接着说,“你总让人捉摸不透,也许你自己就无法相信自己。反正我从来拿不准你的想法。你一转身就可以改变思想,似乎你没有头脑似的。”
他一双锋利的目光直视伯金。伯金很是惊讶。他觉得他有世人都有的头脑。他目瞪口呆了。杰拉德看出伯金的眼睛是那么迷人,这年轻、率直的目光让他着迷得很,他不禁为自己以前不信任伯金感到深深的懊悔。他知道伯金可以没有他这个朋友,他会忘记他,没有什么痛苦地忘记他,杰拉德意识到这一点,但又难以置信:这年轻人何以如此象个动物一样超然,这般自然?这几乎有点虚伪,象谎言,是的,常有这回事,伯金谈起什么来都那么深奥、那么煞有介事。
而此时伯金想的却是另一回事儿。他突然发现自己面临着另一个问题——爱和两个男人之间永恒的联系问题。这当然是个必要的问题——他一生中心里都有这个问题——纯粹、完全地爱一个男人。当然他一直是爱杰拉德的,可他又不愿承认它。
他躺在床上思忖着,杰拉德坐在旁边沉思着。两个人都各自想自己的心事。
“你知道吗,古时候德国的骑士习惯宣誓结成血谊兄弟的。”他对杰拉德说,眼里闪动着幸福的光芒,这眼神是原先所没有的。
“在胳膊上割一个小口子,伤口与伤口磨擦,相互交流血液?”杰拉德问。
“是的,还要宣誓相互忠诚,一生中都是一个血统。咱们也该这么做。不过不用割伤口,这种做法太陈旧了。我们应该宣誓相爱,你和我,明明白白地,彻底地,永远地,永不违约。”
他看着杰拉德,目光清澈,透着幸福之光。杰拉德俯视着他,深深受到他的吸引,他甚至不相信、厌恶伯金的吸引力。
“咱们哪天也宣誓吧,好吗?”伯金请求道,“咱们宣誓站在同一立场上,相互忠诚——彻底地,完全相互奉献,永不再索回。
伯金绞尽脑汁力图表达自己的思想,可杰拉德并不怎么听他的。他脸上挂着一种快意。他很得意,但他掩饰着,他退却了。
“咱们哪天宣誓好吗?”伯金向杰拉德伸出手说。
杰拉德触摸了一下伸过来的那只活生生的手,似乎害怕地缩了回去。
“等我更好地理解了再宣誓不好吗?”他寻着借口说。
伯金看着他,心中感到极大的失望,或许此时他蔑视杰拉德了。
“可以,”他说,“以后你一定要告诉我你的想法。你知道我的意思吗?这不是什么感情冲动的胡说。这是超越人性的联合,可以自由选择。”
他们都沉默了。伯金一直看着杰拉德。现在似乎看到的不是肉体的、有生命的杰拉德,那个杰拉德是司空见惯的,他很喜欢那个杰拉德,而是作为人的杰拉德,整个儿的人,似乎杰拉德的命运已经被宣判了,他受着命运的制约。杰拉德身上的这种宿命感总会在激情的接触之后压倒伯金,让伯金感到厌倦从而蔑视他、似乎杰拉德只有一种生存的形式,一种知识,一种行动,他命中注定是个只有一知半解的人,可他自己却觉得自己很完美。就是杰拉德的这种局限性让伯金厌倦,杰拉德抱残守缺,永远也不会真正快乐地飞离自我。他有点象偏执狂,自身有一种障碍物。
一时间他们沉默了好一会儿。伯金语调轻松起来,语气无所加重地说:
“你不能为温妮弗莱德找一个好的家庭教师吗?找一个不平凡的人物做她的老师。”
“赫麦妮·罗迪斯建议请戈珍来教她绘画和雕刻泥塑。温妮在泥塑方面聪明得惊人,这你知道的。赫麦妮说她是个艺术家。”杰拉德语调象往常一样快活,似乎刚才没有发生什么了不起的事。可伯金的态度却处处让人想起刚才的事。
“是吗!我还不知道呢。哦,那好,如果戈珍愿意教她,那可太好了,再没比这更好的了,温妮成为艺术家就好。戈珍就是个艺术家。每个真正的艺术家都能拯救别人。”
“一般来说,她们总是处不好。”
“或许是吧。可是,只有艺术家才能为别的艺术家创造一个适于生存的世界。如果你能为温妮弗莱德安排一个这样的世界,那就太好了。
“你觉得戈珍不会来教她吗?”
“我不知道。戈珍很有自己的见解。开价低了她是不会干的。如果她干,很快也会辞掉不干的。所以我不知道她是否会降尊来这儿执教,特别是来贝多弗当私人教师。可是还非得这样不可。温妮弗莱德禀性跟别人不同。如果你能让她变得自信,那可再好不过了。她永远也过不惯普通人的生活。让你过你也会觉得困难的,而她比你更有甚之,不知难多少倍。很难想象如果她寻找不到表达方式,寻找不到自我完善的途径她的生活将会怎样。你可以明白,命运将会把单纯的生活引向何方。你可以明白婚姻有多少可信的程度——看看你自己的母亲就知道了。”
“你认为我母亲反常吗?”
“不!我觉得她不过是需要更多的东西,或是需要与普通生活不同的东西。得不到这些,她就变得不正常了,或许是这样吧。”
“可她养了一群不肖的儿女。”杰拉德阴郁地说。
“跟我们其余的人一样,都是不肖的儿女。”伯金说,“最正常的人有着最见不得人的自我,个个儿如此。”
“有时我觉得活着就是一种诅咒。”杰拉德突然用一种苍白的愤然口吻说。
“对,”伯金说,“何尝不是这样!活着是一种诅咒,什么时候都是如此,只能是一种诅咒,常常诅咒得有滋有味儿的,真是这样。”
“并不象你想象的那么有滋味儿。”杰拉德看看伯金,那表情显得他内心很贫困。
他们沉默着,各想各的心事。
“我不明白她何以认为在小学教书与来家里教温妮有什么不同。”杰拉德说。
“它们的不同就是公与私。今日唯一上等的事是公事,人们都愿意为公共事业效力,可是要做一个私人教师嘛——”
“我不会愿意干的——”
“对呀!戈珍很可能也这么想。”
杰拉德思忖了片刻说:
“不管怎么说,我父亲是不会让她感觉自己是私人教师的。父亲会感到惊奇,并会对她感恩戴德的。”
“他应该这样。你们都应该这样。你以为你光有钱就可以雇佣戈珍·布朗温这样的女人吗?她同你们是平等的,或许比你们还优越。”
“是吗?”
“是的,如果你没有勇气承认这一点,我希望她别管你的事。”
“无论如何,”杰拉德说,“如果她跟我平等,我希望她别当教师,一般来说,教师是不会与我平等的。”
“我也是这么想,去他们的吧。可是,难道因为我教书我就是教师,我布道我就是牧师吗?”
杰拉德笑了。在这方面他总感到不自在。他并不要求社会地位的优越,他也不以内在的个性优越自居,因为他从不把自己的价值尺度建立在纯粹的存在上。为此,他总对心照不宣的社会地位表示怀疑。现在伯金要他承认人与人之间内在的不同,可他并无承认之意。这样做是与他的名誉和原则相悖的。他站起身来要走。
“我快把我的公务忘了。”他笑道。
“我早该提醒你的。”伯金笑着调侃道。
“我知道你会这样说的。”杰拉德不自在地笑道。
“是吗?”
“是的,卢伯特。我们可不能都象你那样啊,否则我们就都陷入困境了。当我超越了这个世界时,我将蔑视一切商业。”
“当然,我们现在并不是陷在困境中。”伯金嘲弄地说。
“并不象你理解的那样。至少我们有足够的吃喝——”
“并对此很满意。”伯金补了一句。
杰拉德走近床边俯视着伯金。伯金仰躺着,脖颈全暴露了出来,零乱的头发搭在眉毛上,眉毛下,挂着嘲弄表情的脸上镶着一双透着沉静目光的眼睛。杰拉德尽管四肢健壮,浑身满是活力,却被另一个人迷惑住了,他还不想走。他无力迈开步伐。
“就这样吧,”伯金说,“再见。”说着他从被子下伸出手,微笑着。
“再见,”杰拉德紧紧握着朋友火热的手说,“我会再来,我会想念你的,我就在磨房那儿。”
“过几天我就去那儿。”伯金说。
两个人的目光又相遇了。杰拉德的目光本是鹰一般锐利,可现在却变得温暖,充满了爱——他并不会承认这一点。伯金还之以茫然的目光,可是那目光中的温暖似乎令杰拉德昏然睡去。
“再见吧。我能为你做点什么吗?”
“不用了,谢谢。”
伯金目送着黑衣人走出门去,那堂皇的头颅在视线中消失了以后,他就翻身睡去了。
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。
゛臉紅紅....

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等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
举报 只看该作者 17楼  发表于: 2013-10-27 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 17 The Industrial Magnate


IN BELDOVER, there was both for Ursula and for Gudrun an interval. It seemed to Ursula as if Birkin had gone out of her for the time, he had lost his significance, he scarcely mattered in her world. She had her own friends, her own activities, her own life. She turned back to the old ways with zest, away from him.
And Gudrun, after feeling every moment in all her veins conscious of Gerald Crich, connected even physically with him, was now almost indifferent to the thought of him. She was nursing new schemes for going away and trying a new form of life. All the time, there was something in her urging her to avoid the final establishing of a relationship with Gerald. She felt it would be wiser and better to have no more than a casual acquaintance with him.
She had a scheme for going to St Petersburg, where she had a friend who was a sculptor like herself, and who lived with a wealthy Russian whose hobby was jewel-making. The emotional, rather rootless life of the Russians appealed to her. She did not want to go to Paris. Paris was dry, and essentially boring. She would like to go to Rome, Munich, Vienna, or to St Petersburg or Moscow. She had a friend in St Petersburg and a friend in Munich. To each of these she wrote, asking about rooms.
She had a certain amount of money. She had come home partly to save, and now she had sold several pieces of work, she had been praised in various shows. She knew she could become quite the `go' if she went to London. But she knew London, she wanted something else. She had seventy pounds, of which nobody knew anything. She would move soon, as soon as she heard from her friends. Her nature, in spite of her apparent placidity and calm, was profoundly restless.
The sisters happened to call in a cottage in Willey Green to buy honey. Mrs Kirk, a stout, pale, sharp-nosed woman, sly, honied, with something shrewish and cat-like beneath, asked the girls into her toocosy, too tidy kitchen. There was a cat-like comfort and cleanliness everywhere.
`Yes, Miss Brangwen,' she said, in her slightly whining, insinuating voice, `and how do you like being back in the old place, then?'
Gudrun, whom she addressed, hated her at once.
`I don't care for it,' she replied abruptly.
`You don't? Ay, well, I suppose you found a difference from London. You like life, and big, grand places. Some of us has to be content with Willey Green and Beldover. And what do you think of our Grammar School, as there's so much talk about?'
`What do I think of it?' Gudrun looked round at her slowly. `Do you mean, do I think it's a good school?'
`Yes. What is your opinion of it?'
"I do think it's a good school.'
Gudrun was very cold and repelling. She knew the common people hated the school.
`Ay, you do, then! I've heard so much, one way and the other. It's nice to know what those that's in it feel. But opinions vary, don't they? Mr Crich up at Highclose is all for it. Ay, poor man, I'm afraid he's not long for this world. He's very poorly.'
`Is he worse?' asked Ursula.
`Eh, yes -- since they lost Miss Diana. He's gone off to a shadow. Poor man, he's had a world of trouble.'
`Has he?' asked Gudrun, faintly ironic.
`He has, a world of trouble. And as nice and kind a gentleman as ever you could wish to meet. His children don't take after him.'
`I suppose they take after their mother?' said Ursula.
`In many ways.' Mrs Krik lowered her voice a little. `She was a proud haughty lady when she came into these parts -- my word, she was that! She mustn't be looked at, and it was worth your life to speak to her.' The woman made a dry, sly face.
`Did you know her when she was first married?'
`Yes, I knew her. I nursed three of her children. And proper little terrors they were, little fiends -- that Gerald was a demon if ever there was one, a proper demon, ay, at six months old.' A curious malicious, sly tone came into the woman's voice.
`Really,' said Gudrun.
`That wilful, masterful -- he'd mastered one nurse at six months. Kick, and scream, and struggle like a demon. Many's the time I've pinched his little bottom for him, when he was a child in arms. Ay, and he'd have been better if he'd had it pinched oftener. But she wouldn't have them corrected -- no-o, wouldn't hear of it. I can remember the rows she had with Mr Crich, my word. When he'd got worked up, properly worked up till he could stand no more, he'd lock the study door and whip them. But she paced up and down all the while like a tiger outside, like a tiger, with very murder in her face. She had a face that could look death. And when the door was opened, she'd go in with her hands lifted -- "What have you been doing to my children, you coward." She was like one out of her mind. I believe he was frightened of her; he had to be driven mad before he'd lift a finger. Didn't the servants have a life of it! And didn't we used to be thankful when one of them caught it. They were the torment of your life.'
`Really!' said Gudrun.
`In every possible way. If you wouldn't let them smash their pots on the table, if you wouldn't let them drag the kitten about with a string round its neck, if you wouldn't give them whatever they asked for, every mortal thing -- then there was a shine on, and their mother coming in asking -"What's the matter with him? What have you done to him? What is it, Darling?" And then she'd turn on you as if she'd trample you under her feet. But she didn't trample on me. I was the only one that could do anything with her demons -- for she wasn't going to be bothered with them herself. No, she took no trouble for them. But they must just have their way, they mustn't be spoken to. And Master Gerald was the beauty. I left when he was a year and a half, I could stand no more. But I pinched his little bottom for him when he was in arms, I did, when there was no holding him, and I'm not sorry I did --'
Gudrun went away in fury and loathing. The phrase, `I pinched his little bottom for him,' sent her into a white, stony fury. She could not bear it, she wanted to have the woman taken out at once and strangled. And yet there the phrase was lodged in her mind for ever, beyond escape. She felt, one day, she would have to tell him, to see how he took it. And she loathed herself for the thought.
But at Shortlands the life-long struggle was coming to a close. The father was ill and was going to die. He had bad internal pains, which took away all his attentive life, and left him with only a vestige of his consciousness. More and more a silence came over him, he was less and less acutely aware of his surroundings. The pain seemed to absorb his activity. He knew it was there, he knew it would come again. It was like something lurking in the darkness within him. And he had not the power, or the will, to seek it out and to know it. There it remained in the darkness, the great pain, tearing him at times, and then being silent. And when it tore him he crouched in silent subjection under it, and when it left him alone again, he refused to know of it. It was within the darkness, let it remain unknown. So he never admitted it, except in a secret corner of himself, where all his never-revealed fears and secrets were accumulated. For the rest, he had a pain, it went away, it made no difference. It even stimulated him, excited him.
But it gradually absorbed his life. Gradually it drew away all his potentiality, it bled him into the dark, it weaned him of life and drew him away into the darkness. And in this twilight of his life little remained visible to him. The business, his work, that was gone entirely. His public interests had disappeared as if they had never been. Even his family had become extraneous to him, he could only remember, in some slight nonessential part of himself, that such and such were his children. But it was historical fact, not vital to him. He had to make an effort to know their relation to him. Even his wife barely existed. She indeed was like the darkness, like the pain within him. By some strange association, the darkness that contained the pain and the darkness that contained his wife were identical. All his thoughts and understandings became blurred and fused, and now his wife and the consuming pain were the same dark secret power against him, that he never faced. He never drove the dread out of its lair within him. He only knew that there was a dark place, and something inhabiting this darkness which issued from time to time and rent him. But he dared not penetrate and drive the beast into the open. He had rather ignore its existence. Only, in his vague way, the dread was his wife, the destroyer, and it was the pain, the destruction, a darkness which was one and both.
He very rarely saw his wife. She kept her room. Only occasionally she came forth, with her head stretched forward, and in her low, possessed voice, she asked him how he was. And he answered her, in the habit of more than thirty years: `Well, I don't think I'm any the worse, dear.' But he was frightened of her, underneath this safeguard of habit, frightened almost to the verge of death.
But all his life, he had been so constant to his lights, he had never broken down. He would die even now without breaking down, without knowing what his feelings were, towards her. All his life, he had said: `Poor Christiana, she has such a strong temper.' With unbroken will, he had stood by this position with regard to her, he had substituted pity for all his hostility, pity had been his shield and his safeguard, and his infallible weapon. And still, in his consciousness, he was sorry for her, her nature was so violent and so impatient.
But now his pity, with his life, was wearing thin, and the dread almost amounting to horror, was rising into being. But before the armour of his pity really broke, he would die, as an insect when its shell is cracked. This was his final resource. Others would live on, and know the living death, the ensuing process of hopeless chaos. He would not. He denied death its victory.
He had been so constant to his lights, so constant to charity, and to his love for his neighbour. Perhaps he had loved his neighbour even better than himself -- which is going one further than the commandment. Always, this flame had burned in his heart, sustaining him through everything, the welfare of the people. He was a large employer of labour, he was a great mine-owner. And he had never lost this from his heart, that in Christ he was one with his workmen. Nay, he had felt inferior to them, as if they through poverty and labour were nearer to God than he. He had always the unacknowledged belief, that it was his workmen, the miners, who held in their hands the means of salvation. To move nearer to God, he must move towards his miners, his life must gravitate towards theirs. They were, unconsciously, his idol, his God made manifest. In them he worshipped the highest, the great, sympathetic, mindless Godhead of humanity.
And all the while, his wife had opposed him like one of the great demons of hell. Strange, like a bird of prey, with the fascinating beauty and abstraction of a hawk, she had beat against the bars of his philanthropy, and like a hawk in a cage, she had sunk into silence. By force of circumstance, because all the world combined to make the cage unbreakable, he had been too strong for her, he had kept her prisoner. And because she was his prisoner, his passion for her had always remained keen as death. He had always loved her, loved her with intensity. Within the cage, she was denied nothing, she was given all licence.
But she had gone almost mad. Of wild and overweening temper, she could not bear the humiliation of her husband's soft, half-appealing kindness to everybody. He was not deceived by the poor. He knew they came and sponged on him, and whined to him, the worse sort; the majority, luckily for him, were much too proud to ask for anything, much too independent to come knocking at his door. But in Beldover, as everywhere else, there were the whining, parasitic, foul human beings who come crawling after charity, and feeding on the living body of the public like lice. A kind of fire would go over Christiana Crich's brain, as she saw two more palefaced, creeping women in objectionable black clothes, cringing lugubriously up the drive to the door. She wanted to set the dogs on them, `Hi Rip! Hi Ring! Ranger! At 'em boys, set 'em off.' But Crowther, the butler, with all the rest of the servants, was Mr Crich's man. Nevertheless, when her husband was away, she would come down like a wolf on the crawling supplicants;
`What do you people want? There is nothing for you here. You have no business on the drive at all. Simpson, drive them away and let no more of them through the gate.'
The servants had to obey her. And she would stand watching with an eye like the eagle's, whilst the groom in clumsy confusion drove the lugubrious persons down the drive, as if they were rusty fowls, scuttling before him.
But they learned to know, from the lodge-keeper, when Mrs Crich was away, and they timed their visits. How many times, in the first years, would Crowther knock softly at the door: `Person to see you, sir.'
`What name?'
`Grocock, sir.'
`What do they want?' The question was half impatient, half gratified. He liked hearing appeals to his charity.
`About a child, sir.'
`Show them into the library, and tell them they shouldn't come after eleven o'clock in the morning.'
`Why do you get up from dinner? -- send them off,' his wife would say abruptly.
`Oh, I can't do that. It's no trouble just to hear what they have to say.'
`How many more have been here today? Why don't you establish open house for them? They would soon oust me and the children.'
`You know dear, it doesn't hurt me to hear what they have to say. And if they really are in trouble -- well, it is my duty to help them out of it.'
`It's your duty to invite all the rats in the world to gnaw at your bones.'
`Come, Christiana, it isn't like that. Don't be uncharitable.'
But she suddenly swept out of the room, and out to the study. There sat the meagre charity-seekers, looking as if they were at the doctor's.
`Mr Crich can't see you. He can't see you at this hour. Do you think he is your property, that you can come whenever you like? You must go away, there is nothing for you here.'
The poor people rose in confusion. But Mr Crich, pale and black-bearded and deprecating, came behind her, saying:
`Yes, I don't like you coming as late as this. I'll hear any of you in the morning part of the day, but I can't really do with you after. What's amiss then, Gittens. How is your Missis?'
`Why, she's sunk very low, Mester Crich, she's a'most gone, she is --'
Sometimes, it seemed to Mrs Crich as if her husband were some subtle funeral bird, feeding on the miseries of the people. It seemed to her he was never satisfied unless there was some sordid tale being poured out to him, which he drank in with a sort of mournful, sympathetic satisfaction. He would have no raison d'etre if there were no lugubrious miseries in the world, as an undertaker would have no meaning if there were no funerals.
Mrs Crich recoiled back upon herself, she recoiled away from this world of creeping democracy. A band of tight, baleful exclusion fastened round her heart, her isolation was fierce and hard, her antagonism was passive but terribly pure, like that of a hawk in a cage. As the years went on, she lost more and more count of the world, she seemed rapt in some glittering abstraction, almost purely unconscious. She would wander about the house and about the surrounding country, staring keenly and seeing nothing. She rarely spoke, she had no connection with the world. And she did not even think. She was consumed in a fierce tension of opposition, like the negative pole of a magnet.
And she bore many children. For, as time went on, she never opposed her husband in word or deed. She took no notice of him, externally. She submitted to him, let him take what he wanted and do as he wanted with her. She was like a hawk that sullenly submits to everything. The relation between her and her husband was wordless and unknown, but it was deep, awful, a relation of utter inter-destruction. And he, who triumphed in the world, he became more and more hollow in his vitality, the vitality was bled from within him, as by some haemorrhage. She was hulked like a hawk in a cage, but her heart was fierce and undiminished within her, though her mind was destroyed.
So to the last he would go to her and hold her in his arms sometimes, before his strength was all gone. The terrible white, destructive light that burned in her eyes only excited and roused him. Till he was bled to death, and then he dreaded her more than anything. But he always said to himself, how happy he had been, how he had loved her with a pure and consuming love ever since he had known her. And he thought of her as pure, chaste; the white flame which was known to him alone, the flame of her sex, was a white flower of snow to his mind. She was a wonderful white snow-flower, which he had desired infinitely. And now he was dying with all his ideas and interpretations intact. They would only collapse when the breath left his body. Till then they would be pure truths for him. Only death would show the perfect completeness of the lie. Till death, she was his white snow-flower. He had subdued her, and her subjugation was to him an infinite chastity in her, a virginity which he could never break, and which dominated him as by a spell.
She had let go the outer world, but within herself she was unbroken and unimpaired. She only sat in her room like a moping, dishevelled hawk, motionless, mindless. Her children, for whom she had been so fierce in her youth, now meant scarcely anything to her. She had lost all that, she was quite by herself. Only Gerald, the gleaming, had some existence for her. But of late years, since he had become head of the business, he too was forgotten. Whereas the father, now he was dying, turned for compassion to Gerald. There had always been opposition between the two of them. Gerald had feared and despised his father, and to a great extent had avoided him all through boyhood and young manhood. And the father had felt very often a real dislike of his eldest son, which, never wanting to give way to, he had refused to acknowledge. He had ignored Gerald as much as possible, leaving him alone.
Since, however, Gerald had come home and assumed responsibility in the firm, and had proved such a wonderful director, the father, tired and weary of all outside concerns, had put all his trust of these things in his son, implicitly, leaving everything to him, and assuming a rather touching dependence on the young enemy. This immediately roused a poignant pity and allegiance in Gerald's heart, always shadowed by contempt and by unadmitted enmity. For Gerald was in reaction against Charity; and yet he was dominated by it, it assumed supremacy in the inner life, and he could not confute it. So he was partly subject to that which his father stood for, but he was in reaction against it. Now he could not save himself. A certain pity and grief and tenderness for his father overcame him, in spite of the deeper, more sullen hostility.
The father won shelter from Gerald through compassion. But for love he had Winifred. She was his youngest child, she was the only one of his children whom he had ever closely loved. And her he loved with all the great, overweening, sheltering love of a dying man. He wanted to shelter her infinitely, infinitely, to wrap her in warmth and love and shelter, perfectly. If he could save her she should never know one pain, one grief, one hurt. He had been so right all his life, so constant in his kindness and his goodness. And this was his last passionate righteousness, his love for the child Winifred. Some things troubled him yet. The world had passed away from him, as his strength ebbed. There were no more poor and injured and humble to protect and succour. These were all lost to him. There were no more sons and daughters to trouble him, and to weigh on him as an unnatural responsibility. These too had faded out of reality All these things had fallen out of his hands, and left him free.
There remained the covert fear and horror of his wife, as she sat mindless and strange in her room, or as she came forth with slow, prowling step, her head bent forward. But this he put away. Even his life-long righteousness, however, would not quite deliver him from the inner horror. Still, he could keep it sufficiently at bay. It would never break forth openly. Death would come first.
Then there was Winifred! If only he could be sure about her, if only he could be sure. Since the death of Diana, and the development of his illness, his craving for surety with regard to Winifred amounted almost to obsession. It was as if, even dying, he must have some anxiety, some responsibility of love, of Charity, upon his heart.
She was an odd, sensitive, inflammable child, having her father's dark hair and quiet bearing, but being quite detached, momentaneous. She was like a changeling indeed, as if her feelings did not matter to her, really. She often seemed to be talking and playing like the gayest and most childish of children, she was full of the warmest, most delightful affection for a few things -- for her father, and for her animals in particular. But if she heard that her beloved kitten Leo had been run over by the motor-car she put her head on one side, and replied, with a faint contraction like resentment on her face: `Has he?' Then she took no more notice. She only disliked the servant who would force bad news on her, and wanted her to be sorry. She wished not to know, and that seemed her chief motive. She avoided her mother, and most of the members of her family. She loved her Daddy, because he wanted her always to be happy, and because he seemed to become young again, and irresponsible in her presence. She liked Gerald, because he was so self-contained. She loved people who would make life a game for her. She had an amazing instinctive critical faculty, and was a pure anarchist, a pure aristocrat at once. For she accepted her equals wherever she found them, and she ignored with blithe indifference her inferiors, whether they were her brothers and sisters, or whether they were wealthy guests of the house, or whether they were the common people or the servants. She was quite single and by herself, deriving from nobody. It was as if she were cut off from all purpose or continuity, and existed simply moment by moment.
The father, as by some strange final illusion, felt as if all his fate depended on his ensuring to Winifred her happiness. She who could never suffer, because she never formed vital connections, she who could lose the dearest things of her life and be just the same the next day, the whole memory dropped out, as if deliberately, she whose will was so strangely and easily free, anarchistic, almost nihilistic, who like a soulless bird flits on its own will, without attachment or responsibility beyond the moment, who in her every motion snapped the threads of serious relationship with blithe, free hands, really nihilistic, because never troubled, she must be the object of her father's final passionate solicitude.
When Mr Crich heard that Gudrun Brangwen might come to help Winifred with her drawing and modelling he saw a road to salvation for his child. He believed that Winifred had talent, he had seen Gudrun, he knew that she was an exceptional person. He could give Winifred into her hands as into the hands of a right being. Here was a direction and a positive force to be lent to his child, he need not leave her directionless and defenceless. If he could but graft the girl on to some tree of utterance before he died, he would have fulfilled his responsibility. And here it could be done. He did not hesitate to appeal to Gudrun.
Meanwhile, as the father drifted more and more out of life, Gerald experienced more and more a sense of exposure. His father after all had stood for the living world to him. Whilst his father lived Gerald was not responsible for the world. But now his father was passing away, Gerald found himself left exposed and unready before the storm of living, like the mutinous first mate of a ship that has lost his captain, and who sees only a terrible chaos in front of him. He did not inherit an established order and a living idea. The whole unifying idea of mankind seemed to be dying with his father, the centralising force that had held the whole together seemed to collapse with his father, the parts were ready to go asunder in terrible disintegration. Gerald was as if left on board of a ship that was going asunder beneath his feet, he was in charge of a vessel whose timbers were all coming apart.
He knew that all his life he had been wrenching at the frame of life to break it apart. And now, with something of the terror of a destructive child, he saw himself on the point of inheriting his own destruction. And during the last months, under the influence of death, and of Birkin's talk, and of Gudrun's penetrating being, he had lost entirely that mechanical certainty that had been his triumph. Sometimes spasms of hatred came over him, against Birkin and Gudrun and that whole set. He wanted to go back to the dullest conservatism, to the most stupid of conventional people. He wanted to revert to the strictest Toryism. But the desire did not last long enough to carry him into action.
During his childhood and his boyhood he had wanted a sort of savagedom. The days of Homer were his ideal, when a man was chief of an army of heroes, or spent his years in wonderful Odyssey. He hated remorselessly the circumstances of his own life, so much that he never really saw Beldover and the colliery valley. He turned his face entirely away from the blackened mining region that stretched away on the right hand of Shortlands, he turned entirely to the country and the woods beyond Willey Water. It was true that the panting and rattling of the coal mines could always be heard at Shortlands. But from his earliest childhood, Gerald had paid no heed to this. He had ignored the whole of the industrial sea which surged in coal-blackened tides against the grounds of the house. The world was really a wilderness where one hunted and swam and rode. He rebelled against all authority. Life was a condition of savage freedom.
Then he had been sent away to school, which was so much death to him. He refused to go to Oxford, choosing a German university. He had spent a certain time at Bonn, at Berlin, and at Frankfurt. There, a curiosity had been aroused in his mind. He wanted to see and to know, in a curious objective fashion, as if it were an amusement to him. Then he must try war. Then he must travel into the savage regions that had so attracted him.
The result was, he found humanity very much alike everywhere, and to a mind like his, curious and cold, the savage was duller, less exciting than the European. So he took hold of all kinds of sociological ideas, and ideas of reform. But they never went more than skin-deep, they were never more than a mental amusement. Their interest lay chiefly in the reaction against the positive order, the destructive reaction.
He discovered at last a real adventure in the coal-mines. His father asked him to help in the firm. Gerald had been educated in the science of mining, and it had never interested him. Now, suddenly, with a sort of exultation, he laid hold of the world.
There was impressed photographically on his consciousness the great industry. Suddenly, it was real, he was part of it. Down the valley ran the colliery railway, linking mine with mine. Down the railway ran the trains, short trains of heavily laden trucks, long trains of empty wagons, each one bearing in big white letters the initials:
`C.B.&Co.'
These white letters on all the wagons he had seen since his first childhood, and it was as if he had never seen them, they were so familiar, and so ignored. Now at last he saw his own name written on the wall. Now he had a vision of power.
So many wagons, bearing his initial, running all over the country. He saw them as he entered London in the train, he saw them at Dover. So far his power ramified. He looked at Beldover, at Selby, at Whatmore, at Lethley Bank, the great colliery villages which depended entirely on his mines. They were hideous and sordid, during his childhood they had been sores in his consciousness. And now he saw them with pride. Four raw new towns, and many ugly industrial hamlets were crowded under his dependence. He saw the stream of miners flowing along the causeways from the mines at the end of the afternoon, thousands of blackened, slightly distorted human beings with red mouths, all moving subjugate to his will. He pushed slowly in his motor-car through the little market-top on Friday nights in Beldover, through a solid mass of human beings that were making their purchases and doing their weekly spending. They were all subordinate to him. They were ugly and uncouth, but they were his instruments. He was the God of the machine. They made way for his motor-car automatically, slowly.
He did not care whether they made way with alacrity, or grudgingly. He did not care what they thought of him. His vision had suddenly crystallised. Suddenly he had conceived the pure instrumentality of mankind. There had been so much humanitarianism, so much talk of sufferings and feelings. It was ridiculous. The sufferings and feelings of individuals did not matter in the least. They were mere conditions, like the weather. What mattered was the pure instrumentality of the individual. As a man as of a knife: does it cut well? Nothing else mattered.
Everything in the world has its function, and is good or not good in so far as it fulfils this function more or less perfectly. Was a miner a good miner? Then he was complete. Was a manager a good manager? That was enough. Gerald himself, who was responsible for all this industry, was he a good director? If he were, he had fulfilled his life. The rest was by-play.
The mines were there, they were old. They were giving out, it did not pay to work the seams. There was talk of closing down two of them. It was at this point that Gerald arrived on the scene.
He looked around. There lay the mines. They were old, obsolete. They were like old lions, no more good. He looked again. Pah! the mines were nothing but the clumsy efforts of impure minds. There they lay, abortions of a half-trained mind. Let the idea of them be swept away. He cleared his brain of them, and thought only of the coal in the under earth. How much was there?
There was plenty of coal. The old workings could not get at it, that was all. Then break the neck of the old workings. The coal lay there in its seams, even though the seams were thin. There it lay, inert matter, as it had always lain, since the beginning of time, subject to the will of man. The will of man was the determining factor. Man was the archgod of earth. His mind was obedient to serve his will. Man's will was the absolute, the only absolute.
And it was his will to subjugate Matter to his own ends. The subjugation itself was the point, the fight was the be-all, the fruits of victory were mere results. It was not for the sake of money that Gerald took over the mines. He did not care about money, fundamentally. He was neither ostentatious nor luxurious, neither did he care about social position, not finally. What he wanted was the pure fulfilment of his own will in the struggle with the natural conditions. His will was now, to take the coal out of the earth, profitably. The profit was merely the condition of victory, but the victory itself lay in the feat achieved. He vibrated with zest before the challenge. Every day he was in the mines, examining, testing, he consulted experts, he gradually gathered the whole situation into his mind, as a general grasps the plan of his campaign.
Then there was need for a complete break. The mines were run on an old system, an obsolete idea. The initial idea had been, to obtain as much money from the earth as would make the owners comfortably rich, would allow the workmen sufficient wages and good conditions, and would increase the wealth of the country altogether. Gerald's father, following in the second generation, having a sufficient fortune, had thought only of the men. The mines, for him, were primarily great fields to produce bread and plenty for all the hundreds of human beings gathered about them. He had lived and striven with his fellow owners to benefit the men every time. And the men had been benefited in their fashion. There were few poor, and few needy. All was plenty, because the mines were good and easy to work. And the miners, in those days, finding themselves richer than they might have expected, felt glad and triumphant. They thought themselves well-off, they congratulated themselves on their good-fortune, they remembered how their fathers had starved and suffered, and they felt that better times had come. They were grateful to those others, the pioneers, the new owners, who had opened out the pits, and let forth this stream of plenty.
But man is never satisfied, and so the miners, from gratitude to their owners, passed on to murmuring. Their sufficiency decreased with knowledge, they wanted more. Why should the master be so out-of-allproportion rich?
There was a crisis when Gerald was a boy, when the Masters' Federation closed down the mines because the men would not accept a reduction. This lock-out had forced home the new conditions to Thomas Crich. Belonging to the Federation, he had been compelled by his honour to close the pits against his men. He, the father, the Patriarch, was forced to deny the means of life to his sons, his people. He, the rich man who would hardly enter heaven because of his possessions, must now turn upon the poor, upon those who were nearer Christ than himself, those who were humble and despised and closer to perfection, those who were manly and noble in their labours, and must say to them: `Ye shall neither labour nor eat bread.'
It was this recognition of the state of war which really broke his heart. He wanted his industry to be run on love. Oh, he wanted love to be the directing power even of the mines. And now, from under the cloak of love, the sword was cynically drawn, the sword of mechanical necessity.
This really broke his heart. He must have the illusion and now the illusion was destroyed. The men were not against him, but they were against the masters. It was war, and willy nilly he found himself on the wrong side, in his own conscience. Seething masses of miners met daily, carried away by a new religious impulse. The idea flew through them: `All men are equal on earth,' and they would carry the idea to its material fulfilment. After all, is it not the teaching of Christ? And what is an idea, if not the germ of action in the material world. `All men are equal in spirit, they are all sons of God. Whence then this obvious disquality?' It was a religious creed pushed to its material conclusion. Thomas Crich at least had no answer. He could but admit, according to his sincere tenets, that the disquality was wrong. But he could not give up his goods, which were the stuff of disquality. So the men would fight for their rights. The last impulses of the last religious passion left on earth, the passion for equality, inspired them.
Seething mobs of men marched about, their faces lighted up as for holy war, with a smoke of cupidity. How disentangle the passion for equality from the passion of cupidity, when begins the fight for equality of possessions? But the God was the machine. Each man claimed equality in the Godhead of the great productive machine. Every man equally was part of this Godhead. But somehow, somewhere, Thomas Crich knew this was false. When the machine is the Godhead, and production or work is worship, then the most mechanical mind is purest and highest, the representative of God on earth. And the rest are subordinate, each according to his degree.
Riots broke out, Whatmore pit-head was in flames. This was the pit furthest in the country, near the woods. Soldiers came. From the windows of Shortlands, on that fatal day, could be seen the flare of fire in the sky not far off, and now the little colliery train, with the workmen's carriages which were used to convey the miners to the distant Whatmore, was crossing the valley full of soldiers, full of redcoats. Then there was the far-off sound of firing, then the later news that the mob was dispersed, one man was shot dead, the fire was put out.
Gerald, who was a boy, was filled with the wildest excitement and delight. He longed to go with the soldiers to shoot the men. But he was not allowed to go out of the lodge gates. At the gates were stationed sentries with guns. Gerald stood near them in delight, whilst gangs of derisive miners strolled up and down the lanes, calling and jeering:
`Now then, three ha'porth o'coppers, let's see thee shoot thy gun.' Insults were chalked on the walls and the fences, the servants left.
And all this while Thomas Crich was breaking his heart, and giving away hundreds of pounds in charity. Everywhere there was free food, a surfeit of free food. Anybody could have bread for asking, and a loaf cost only three-ha'pence. Every day there was a free tea somewhere, the children had never had so many treats in their lives. On Friday afternoon great basketfuls of buns and cakes were taken into the schools, and great pitchers of milk, the school children had what they wanted. They were sick with eating too much cake and milk.
And then it came to an end, and the men went back to work. But it was never the same as before. There was a new situation created, a new idea reigned. Even in the machine, there should be equality. No part should be subordinate to any other part: all should be equal. The instinct for chaos had entered. Mystic equality lies in abstraction, not in having or in doing, which are processes. In function and process, one man, one part, must of necessity be subordinate to another. It is a condition of being. But the desire for chaos had risen, and the idea of mechanical equality was the weapon of disruption which should execute the will of man, the will for chaos.
Gerald was a boy at the time of the strike, but he longed to be a man, to fight the colliers. The father however was trapped between two halftruths, and broken. He wanted to be a pure Christian, one and equal with all men. He even wanted to give away all he had, to the poor. Yet he was a great promoter of industry, and he knew perfectly that he must keep his goods and keep his authority. This was as divine a necessity in him, as the need to give away all he possessed -- more divine, even, since this was the necessity he acted upon. Yet because he did not act on the other ideal, it dominated him, he was dying of chagrin because he must forfeit it. He wanted to be a father of loving kindness and sacrificial benevolence. The colliers shouted to him about his thousands a year. They would not be deceived.
When Gerald grew up in the ways of the world, he shifted the position. He did not care about the equality. The whole Christian attitude of love and self-sacrifice was old hat. He knew that position and authority were the right thing in the world, and it was useless to cant about it. They were the right thing, for the simple reason that they were functionally necessary. They were not the be-all and the end-all. It was like being part of a machine. He himself happened to be a controlling, central part, the masses of men were the parts variously controlled. This was merely as it happened. As well get excited because a central hub drives a hundred outer wheels or because the whole universe wheels round the sun. After all, it would be mere silliness to say that the moon and the earth and Saturn and Jupiter and Venus have just as much right to be the centre of the universe, each of them separately, as the sun. Such an assertion is made merely in the desire of chaos.
Without bothering to think to a conclusion, Gerald jumped to a conclusion. He abandoned the whole democratic-equality problem as a problem of silliness. What mattered was the great social productive machine. Let that work perfectly, let it produce a sufficiency of everything, let every man be given a rational portion, greater or less according to his functional degree or magnitude, and then, provision made, let the devil supervene, let every man look after his own amusements and appetites, so long as he interfered with nobody.
So Gerald set himself to work, to put the great industry in order. In his travels, and in his accompanying readings, he had come to the conclusion that the essential secret of life was harmony. He did not define to himself at all clearly what harmony was. The word pleased him, he felt he had come to his own conclusions. And he proceeded to put his philosophy into practice by forcing order into the established world, translating the mystic word harmony into the practical word organisation.
Immediately he saw the firm, he realised what he could do. He had a fight to fight with Matter, with the earth and the coal it enclosed. This was the sole idea, to turn upon the inanimate matter of the underground, and reduce it to his will. And for this fight with matter, one must have perfect instruments in perfect organisation, a mechanism so subtle and harmonious in its workings that it represents the single mind of man, and by its relentless repetition of given movement, will accomplish a purpose irresistibly, inhumanly. It was this inhuman principle in the mechanism he wanted to construct that inspired Gerald with an almost religious exaltation. He, the man, could interpose a perfect, changeless, godlike medium between himself and the Matter he had to subjugate. There were two opposites, his will and the resistant Matter of the earth. And between these he could establish the very expression of his will, the incarnation of his power, a great and perfect machine, a system, an activity of pure order, pure mechanical repetition, repetition ad infinitum, hence eternal and infinite. He found his eternal and his infinite in the pure machineprinciple of perfect co-ordination into one pure, complex, infinitely repeated motion, like the spinning of a wheel; but a productive spinning, as the revolving of the universe may be called a productive spinning, a productive repetition through eternity, to infinity. And this is the Godmotion, this productive repetition ad infinitum. And Gerald was the God of the machine, Deus ex Machina. And the whole productive will of man was the Godhead.
He had his life-work now, to extend over the earth a great and perfect system in which the will of man ran smooth and unthwarted, timeless, a Godhead in process. He had to begin with the mines. The terms were given: first the resistant Matter of the underground; then the instruments of its subjugation, instruments human and metallic; and finally his own pure will, his own mind. It would need a marvellous adjustment of myriad instruments, human, animal, metallic, kinetic, dynamic, a marvellous casting of myriad tiny wholes into one great perfect entirety. And then, in this case there was perfection attained, the will of the highest was perfectly fulfilled, the will of mankind was perfectly enacted; for was not mankind mystically contra-distinguished against inanimate Matter, was not the history of mankind just the history of the conquest of the one by the other?
The miners were overreached. While they were still in the toils of divine equality of man, Gerald had passed on, granted essentially their case, and proceeded in his quality of human being to fulfil the will of mankind as a whole. He merely represented the miners in a higher sense when he perceived that the only way to fulfil perfectly the will of man was to establish the perfect, inhuman machine. But he represented them very essentially, they were far behind, out of date, squabbling for their material equality. The desire had already transmuted into this new and greater desire, for a perfect intervening mechanism between man and Matter, the desire to translate the Godhead into pure mechanism.
As soon as Gerald entered the firm, the convulsion of death ran through the old system. He had all his life been tortured by a furious and destructive demon, which possessed him sometimes like an insanity. This temper now entered like a virus into the firm, and there were cruel eruptions. Terrible and inhuman were his examinations into every detail; there was no privacy he would spare, no old sentiment but he would turn it over. The old grey managers, the old grey clerks, the doddering old pensioners, he looked at them, and removed them as so much lumber. The whole concern seemed like a hospital of invalid employees. He had no emotional qualms. He arranged what pensions were necessary, he looked for efficient substitutes, and when these were found, he substituted them for the old hands.
`I've a pitiful letter here from Letherington,' his father would say, in a tone of deprecation and appeal. `Don't you think the poor fellow might keep on a little longer. I always fancied he did very well.'
`I've got a man in his place now, father. He'll be happier out of it, believe me. You think his allowance is plenty, don't you?'
`It is not the allowance that he wants, poor man. He feels it very much, that he is superannuated. Says he thought he had twenty more years of work in him yet.'
`Not of this kind of work I want. He doesn't understand.'
The father sighed. He wanted not to know any more. He believed the pits would have to be overhauled if they were to go on working. And after all, it would be worst in the long run for everybody, if they must close down. So he could make no answer to the appeals of his old and trusty servants, he could only repeat `Gerald says.'
So the father drew more and more out of the light. The whole frame of the real life was broken for him. He had been right according to his lights. And his lights had been those of the great religion. Yet they seemed to have become obsolete, to be superseded in the world. He could not understand. He only withdrew with his lights into an inner room, into the silence. The beautiful candles of belief, that would not do to light the world any more, they would still burn sweetly and sufficiently in the inner room of his soul, and in the silence of his retirement.
Gerald rushed into the reform of the firm, beginning with the office. It was needful to economise severely, to make possible the great alterations he must introduce.
`What are these widows' coals?' he asked.
`We have always allowed all widows of men who worked for the firm a load of coals every three months.'
`They must pay cost price henceforward. The firm is not a charity institution, as everybody seems to think.'
Widows, these stock figures of sentimental humanitarianism, he felt a dislike at the thought of them. They were almost repulsive. Why were they not immolated on the pyre of the husband, like the sati in India? At any rate, let them pay the cost of their coals.
In a thousand ways he cut down the expenditure, in ways so fine as to be hardly noticeable to the men. The miners must pay for the cartage of their coals, heavy cartage too; they must pay for their tools, for the sharpening, for the care of lamps, for the many trifling things that made the bill of charges against every man mount up to a shilling or so in the week. It was not grasped very definitely by the miners, though they were sore enough. But it saved hundreds of pounds every week for the firm.
Gradually Gerald got hold of everything. And then began the great reform. Expert engineers were introduced in every department. An enormous electric plant was installed, both for lighting and for haulage underground, and for power. The electricity was carried into every mine. New machinery was brought from America, such as the miners had never seen before, great iron men, as the cutting machines were called, and unusual appliances. The working of the pits was thoroughly changed, all the control was taken out of the hands of the miners, the butty system was abolished. Everything was run on the most accurate and delicate scientific method, educated and expert men were in control everywhere, the miners were reduced to mere mechanical instruments. They had to work hard, much harder than before, the work was terrible and heart-breaking in its mechanicalness.
But they submitted to it all. The joy went out of their lives, the hope seemed to perish as they became more and more mechanised. And yet they accepted the new conditions. They even got a further satisfaction out of them. At first they hated Gerald Crich, they swore to do something to him, to murder him. But as time went on, they accepted everything with some fatal satisfaction. Gerald was their high priest, he represented the religion they really felt. His father was forgotten already. There was a new world, a new order, strict, terrible, inhuman, but satisfying in its very destructiveness. The men were satisfied to belong to the great and wonderful machine, even whilst it destroyed them. It was what they wanted. It was the highest that man had produced, the most wonderful and superhuman. They were exalted by belonging to this great and superhuman system which was beyond feeling or reason, something really godlike. Their hearts died within them, but their souls were satisfied. It was what they wanted. Otherwise Gerald could never have done what he did. He was just ahead of them in giving them what they wanted, this participation in a great and perfect system that subjected life to pure mathematical principles. This was a sort of freedom, the sort they really wanted. It was the first great step in undoing, the first great phase of chaos, the substitution of the mechanical principle for the organic, the destruction of the organic purpose, the organic unity, and the subordination of every organic unit to the great mechanical purpose. It was pure organic disintegration and pure mechanical organisation. This is the first and finest state of chaos.
Gerald was satisfied. He knew the colliers said they hated him. But he had long ceased to hate them. When they streamed past him at evening, their heavy boots slurring on the pavement wearily, their shoulders slightly distorted, they took no notice of him, they gave him no greeting whatever, they passed in a grey-black stream of unemotional acceptance. They were not important to him, save as instruments, nor he to them, save as a supreme instrument of control. As miners they had their being, he had his being as director. He admired their qualities. But as men, personalities, they were just accidents, sporadic little unimportant phenomena. And tacitly, the men agreed to this. For Gerald agreed to it in himself.
He had succeeded. He had converted the industry into a new and terrible purity. There was a greater output of coal than ever, the wonderful and delicate system ran almost perfectly. He had a set of really clever engineers, both mining and electrical, and they did not cost much. A highly educated man cost very little more than a workman. His managers, who were all rare men, were no more expensive than the old bungling fools of his father's days, who were merely colliers promoted. His chief manager, who had twelve hundred a year, saved the firm at least five thousand. The whole system was now so perfect that Gerald was hardly necessary any more.
It was so perfect that sometimes a strange fear came over him, and he did not know what to do. He went on for some years in a sort of trance of activity. What he was doing seemed supreme, he was almost like a divinity. He was a pure and exalted activity.
But now he had succeeded -- he had finally succeeded. And once or twice lately, when he was alone in the evening and had nothing to do, he had suddenly stood up in terror, not knowing what he was. And he went to the mirror and looked long and closely at his own face, at his own eyes, seeking for something. He was afraid, in mortal dry fear, but he knew not what of. He looked at his own face. There it was, shapely and healthy and the same as ever, yet somehow, it was not real, it was a mask. He dared not touch it, for fear it should prove to be only a composition mask. His eyes were blue and keen as ever, and as firm in their sockets. Yet he was not sure that they were not blue false bubbles that would burst in a moment and leave clear annihilation. He could see the darkness in them, as if they were only bubbles of darkness. He was afraid that one day he would break down and be a purely meaningless babble lapping round a darkness.
But his will yet held good, he was able to go away and read, and think about things. He liked to read books about the primitive man, books of anthropology, and also works of speculative philosophy. His mind was very active. But it was like a bubble floating in the darkness. At any moment it might burst and leave him in chaos. He would not die. He knew that. He would go on living, but the meaning would have collapsed out of him, his divine reason would be gone. In a strangely indifferent, sterile way, he was frightened. But he could not react even to the fear. It was as if his centres of feeling were drying up. He remained calm, calculative and healthy, and quite freely deliberate, even whilst he felt, with faint, small but final sterile horror, that his mystic reason was breaking, giving way now, at this crisis.
And it was a strain. He knew there was no equilibrium. He would have to go in some direction, shortly, to find relief. Only Birkin kept the fear definitely off him, saved him his quick sufficiency in life, by the odd mobility and changeableness which seemed to contain the quintessence of faith. But then Gerald must always come away from Birkin, as from a Church service, back to the outside real world of work and life. There it was, it did not alter, and words were futilities. He had to keep himself in reckoning with the world of work and material life. And it became more and more difficult, such a strange pressure was upon him, as if the very middle of him were a vacuum, and outside were an awful tension.
He had found his most satisfactory relief in women. After a debauch with some desperate woman, he went on quite easy and forgetful. The devil of it was, it was so hard to keep up his interest in women nowadays. He didn't care about them any more. A Pussum was all right in her way, but she was an exceptional case, and even she mattered extremely little. No, women, in that sense, were useless to him any more. He felt that his mind needed acute stimulation, before he could be physically roused.
 
住在贝多弗的厄秀拉和戈珍都有了一段空闲时间。在厄秀拉心目中,一时间伯金不存在了,他失去了自己的意义,对她来说变得无足轻重。厄秀拉又兴高采烈地按原样儿生活起来,跟他断了关系。
前一段时间戈珍几乎每时每刻都惦念着杰拉德·克里奇,甚至觉得自己跟他肉体上都产生了联系,可现在她拿杰拉德根本不当一回事了。她心里正酝酿着出走,试图过一种新型的生活。她心里一直有什么在警告她防止同杰拉德建立最终的关系。她感到最好是同他保持一种一般熟人的关系,这样做更明智。
她计划去圣·皮特斯堡的一位朋友那儿,那人跟她一样也是个雕塑家,同一位爱好宝石的俄国阔佬儿住在一起。那位俄国人放荡的情感生活对戈珍很有吸引力。她并不想到巴黎去,巴黎太枯燥,太令人生厌。她倒愿意去罗马、慕尼黑、维也纳、圣·皮特斯堡或莫斯科,圣·皮特斯堡和慕尼黑那儿她都有朋友,她给这两个朋友都写信问及住房的事。
她手里有一笔钱。她回家里来的一个目的就是攒钱。现在她已经卖出了几件作品,在各种展览中她都受到了好评。她知道如果去伦敦,她的作品会很时髦的。可是她太了解伦敦了,她想去别处。她有七十镑,对此别人一无所知。一得到朋友的消息,她就可以动身走了。别看她表面上温和平静,其实她的性格是躁动型的。
有一天姐妹两人到威利·格林的一个农家去买蜂蜜。女主人科克太太身躯肥胖,脸色苍白,鼻子很尖,人很滑头,满口的甜言蜜语,可这掩盖不住她猫一样狡猾的内心。她把姑娘们请进了她那间非常干净舒适的厨房里。屋里真是每个角落都那么干净、惬意。
“布朗温小姐,”她有点讨好地说,“回到老地方,还喜欢这儿吧?”
戈珍一听她说话就讨厌上她了。
“我无所谓。”她生硬地回答。
“是吗?嗨,我以为你会觉得这儿跟伦敦不一样的。你喜欢大地方儿的生活。我们嘛,不得不将就着在威利·格林和贝多弗过日子。你对我们这儿的小学校还喜欢吧,人们都爱念叨它。”
“我喜欢它?”戈珍扫了她一眼道,“你的意思是我觉得它不错?”
“对的,你的看法是什么?”
“我确实觉得这是一所挺不错的学校。”
戈珍感到很厌恶,态度很冷淡。她知道这儿的庸人们都讨厌学校。
“你真这样想啊!我可听人们议论的太多了,说什么的都有,能知道内部人的看法太好了。不过,意见也不一样吧?克里奇先生完全赞成。哦,可怜的人啊,我真怕他不久于世了。
他身体太不好了。”
“他的病又厉害了?”厄秀拉问。
“是啊,自从失去了迪安娜小姐他的病就重了,瘦得不成样子。可怜的人,他的烦恼太多了。”
“是吗?”戈珍有点嘲弄地说。
“他够烦恼的。你们还没见过象他那样和气的人呢。可是他的孩子们一点也不象他。”
“我觉得,他们都象他们的母亲。”厄秀拉说。
“好多方面都象,”科克太太压低嗓门儿说,“她可是个傲慢的女人哩,我敢说,一点不错!她这人可看不得,能跟她说上句话可不容易。”说着这女人做个鬼脸。
“她刚结婚时你认识她吗?”
“认识。我给她家当保姆,看大了三个孩子呢。那可是几个可怕的东西,小魔鬼,杰拉德是个从没见过的魔王,从六个月开始就那个样子。”那女人的话音里透着一种恶气。
“是吗?”戈珍说。
“他是个任性、霸道的孩子,刚六个月就指使得保姆团团转。又踢又叫,象个魔鬼一样折腾。他还是个吃奶的孩子时,我不知掐他的屁股多少回了。要是再多掐几次,也许他就变好了。可他母亲就是不肯改掉他的坏毛病,你说什么她也听不进去。我还记得她跟克里奇先生吵闹的样子呢。他实在气坏了,实在无法忍受了,就关起门来用鞭子抽他们。可是太太却象一只老虎一样在门外来来回回地游荡,一脸杀气腾腾的样子。门一开她就举着双手冲进去向先生大叫‘你这个胆小鬼,你把我的孩子怎么样了?’那样子真跟疯了一样。我敢说先生怕太太,他气疯了也不敢动她一手指头。想想仆人们过的是什么日子吧。一旦他们当中有人受惩罚我们怎么能不高兴呢?”
“真的!”戈珍说。
“什么事都有。如果你不让他们把桌子上的茶壶打碎,如果你不让他们用绳子拴着猫的脖子拉着乱转,如果他们要什么你不给什么,他们就好闹一场,然后他们的母亲就会进来问:‘他怎么了?你怎么他了?宝贝儿,怎么了?’问完了她会恶狠狠地看着你,恨不能把你踩在脚下。不过她倒是没把我踩在脚下。我是唯一能对付她的人。她自己是不会管孩子的,她才不找这份麻烦呢。可这些孩子太任性,他们可让人说不得,小霸王杰拉德可真不得了。他一岁半时我离开了他家,我实在受不了了。他小时候我拧过他的小屁股,我拧了,管不住他我就拧他,我一点也不惭愧——”
听到这儿戈珍愤愤然走了。“我拧了他的小屁股”这句话把她气坏了。她听不得这样的话。她恨不得把这女人赶出去绑起来。可这句话在她的脑子里永远生了根,赶也赶不走。她觉得哪一天要把这话告诉他,看他如何受得了。可一想到这一点,她又恨起自己来。
但是,在肖特兰兹,那场持久的斗争就要结束了。父亲病了,就要死了。间歇性的疼痛让他失去了活力,人已经不那么清醒了。沉寂渐渐笼罩了他的头脑,他对周围的事儿愈来愈无法注意了,病痛似乎吸走了他的活力,他知道这种疼痛何在,知道它会再回到自己身上。这疼痛象自己体内奔涌着的什么东西。可他没有力量或意志去把它找出来,更无法知道这是什么样的东西。它就藏在黑暗中,这巨痛时时撕裂他,然后又陷入平静中。每当它来撕扯自己,他就蜷缩起来忍着,一但它离去,他又拒绝知道它是何物。既然它是在黑暗中,那就不要去知道它好了。所以他从不承认有什么疼痛,只有他独处一隅时,当他全部的神经越来越恐怖时他才认可。在其它时候,他不过认为刚才疼了一下,过去了,没什么。有时这疼痛甚至更令他激动。
可病痛渐渐吞噬了他。渐渐地,他的力量都耗尽了,他被吹进了黑暗中,他的生命被吸走了,他被吸进黑暗中。在他生命的薄暮时节,他能看清的太少了。企业,他的工作都彻底地离他而去了。他对社会的兴趣业已消失,好象从来没有过一样。甚至他的家对他来说也陌生了,他只淡淡地记起某某某是他的子女。这些对他只是个历史事实,毫无生命意义了。要想弄清他们跟他的关系那非得花一番力气不可。甚至他的妻子对他来说也跟没有存在一样。她确实象他体内的黑暗和病痛一样。出于某种奇特的联想,他觉得他的病痛藏身之处与藏有他妻子的所在是一样的黑暗。他全部的思维和悟性都模糊了,现在他的妻子和那熬煎人的病痛变成了同一种黑暗的力量来对付他,而他以前从未正视过这股力量。他从未把这种恐惧驱赶开。他只知道有一个黑暗的地方,那里占据着什么东西,不时地出来撕扯他。可他从未敢穿破黑暗把这野兽赶出来,他反而忽视了它的存在。只是,他模模糊糊地感到,恐怖来自他的妻子,她会毁灭他,那病痛也是一股黑暗的毁灭力量。
他很少见到他的妻子。她有自己的一间屋。她只是偶尔来到他的房间,伸长脖子压低嗓门询问他情况如何。而他则三十年如一日地回答说:“哦,我不觉得情况有什么不好,亲爱的。”可他很怕她,表面上很平静,其实他怕她怕得要死。
但他一直信奉自己的处世哲学,他从没有在精神上垮下来。他就是现在死,他的精神也不会垮,他仍会明白自己对她的感情。一生中,他常常说:“可怜的克里斯蒂娜,她的脾气真是太倔犟了。”他对她始终是这样的态度,他用怜悯代替了仇恨,怜悯成了他的保护伞,成了他的常胜武器。他理智上仍然为她感到可怜,她的性子也太暴烈了。
可惜的是,如今,他的怜悯,他的生命都渐渐耗尽了,他开始感到可怕甚至恐怖。他就是死了,他的怜悯心也不会破灭,不会象一只壳虫那样被 
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。
゛臉紅紅....

ZxID:704295


等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
举报 只看该作者 18楼  发表于: 2013-10-27 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 18 Rabbit


GUDRUN KNEW that it was a critical thing for her to go to Shortlands. She knew it was equivalent to accepting Gerald Crich as a lover. And though she hung back, disliking the condition, yet she knew she would go on. She equivocated. She said to herself, in torment recalling the blow and the kiss, `after all, what is it? What is a kiss? What even is a blow? It is an instant, vanished at once. I can go to Shortlands just for a time, before I go away, if only to see what it is like.' For she had an insatiable curiosity to see and to know everything.
She also wanted to know what Winifred was really like. Having heard the child calling from the steamer in the night, she felt some mysterious connection with her.
Gudrun talked with the father in the library. Then he sent for his daughter. She came accompanied by Mademoiselle.
`Winnie, this is Miss Brangwen, who will be so kind as to help you with your drawing and making models of your animals,' said the father.
The child looked at Gudrun for a moment with interest, before she came forward and with face averted offered her hand. There was a complete sang froid and indifference under Winifred's childish reserve, a certain irresponsible callousness.
`How do you do?' said the child, not lifting her face.
`How do you do?' said Gudrun.
Then Winifred stood aside, and Gudrun was introduced to Mademoiselle.
`You have a fine day for your walk,' said Mademoiselle, in a bright manner.
`Quite fine,' said Gudrun.
Winifred was watching from her distance. She was as if amused, but rather unsure as yet what this new person was like. She saw so many new persons, and so few who became real to her. Mademoiselle was of no count whatever, the child merely put up with her, calmly and easily, accepting her little authority with faint scorn, compliant out of childish arrogance of indifference.
`Well, Winifred,' said the father, `aren't you glad Miss Brangwen has come? She makes animals and birds in wood and in clay, that the people in London write about in the papers, praising them to the skies.'
Winifred smiled slightly.
`Who told you, Daddie?' she asked.
`Who told me? Hermione told me, and Rupert Birkin.'
`Do you know them?' Winifred asked of Gudrun, turning to her with faint challenge.
`Yes,' said Gudrun.
Winifred readjusted herself a little. She had been ready to accept Gudrun as a sort of servant. Now she saw it was on terms of friendship they were intended to meet. She was rather glad. She had so many half inferiors, whom she tolerated with perfect good-humour.
Gudrun was very calm. She also did not take these things very seriously. A new occasion was mostly spectacular to her. However, Winifred was a detached, ironic child, she would never attach herself. Gudrun liked her and was intrigued by her. The first meetings went off with a certain humiliating clumsiness. Neither Winifred nor her instructress had any social grace.
Soon, however, they met in a kind of make-belief world. Winifred did not notice human beings unless they were like herself, playful and slightly mocking. She would accept nothing but the world of amusement, and the serious people of her life were the animals she had for pets. On those she lavished, almost ironically, her affection and her companionship. To the rest of the human scheme she submitted with a faint bored indifference.
She had a pekinese dog called Looloo, which she loved.
`Let us draw Looloo,' said Gudrun, `and see if we can get his Looliness, shall we?'
`Darling!' cried Winifred, rushing to the dog, that sat with contemplative sadness on the hearth, and kissing its bulging brow. `Darling one, will you be drawn? Shall its mummy draw its portrait?' Then she chuckled gleefully, and turning to Gudrun, said: `Oh let's!'
They proceeded to get pencils and paper, and were ready.
`Beautifullest,' cried Winifred, hugging the dog, `sit still while its mummy draws its beautiful portrait.' The dog looked up at her with grievous resignation in its large, prominent eyes. She kissed it fervently, and said: `I wonder what mine will be like. It's sure to be awful.'
As she sketched she chuckled to herself, and cried out at times:
`Oh darling, you're so beautiful!'
And again chuckling, she rushed to embrace the dog, in penitence, as if she were doing him some subtle injury. He sat all the time with the resignation and fretfulness of ages on his dark velvety face. She drew slowly, with a wicked concentration in her eyes, her head on one side, an intense stillness over her. She was as if working the spell of some enchantment. Suddenly she had finished. She looked at the dog, and then at her drawing, and then cried, with real grief for the dog, and at the same time with a wicked exultation:
`My beautiful, why did they?'
She took her paper to the dog, and held it under his nose. He turned his head aside as in chagrin and mortification, and she impulsively kissed his velvety bulging forehead.
`'s a Loolie, 's a little Loozie! Look at his portrait, darling, look at his portrait, that his mother has done of him.' She looked at her paper and chuckled. Then, kissing the dog once more, she rose and came gravely to Gudrun, offering her the paper.
It was a grotesque little diagram of a grotesque little animal, so wicked and so comical, a slow smile came over Gudrun's face, unconsciously. And at her side Winifred chuckled with glee, and said:
`It isn't like him, is it? He's much lovelier than that. He's so beautiful-mmm, Looloo, my sweet darling.' And she flew off to embrace the chagrined little dog. He looked up at her with reproachful, saturnine eyes, vanquished in his extreme agedness of being. Then she flew back to her drawing, and chuckled with satisfaction.
`It isn't like him, is it?' she said to Gudrun.
`Yes, it's very like him,' Gudrun replied.
The child treasured her drawing, carried it about with her, and showed it, with a silent embarrassment, to everybody.
`Look,' she said, thrusting the paper into her father's hand.
`Why that's Looloo!' he exclaimed. And he looked down in surprise, hearing the almost inhuman chuckle of the child at his side.
Gerald was away from home when Gudrun first came to Shortlands. But the first morning he came back he watched for her. It was a sunny, soft morning, and he lingered in the garden paths, looking at the flowers that had come out during his absence. He was clean and fit as ever, shaven, his fair hair scrupulously parted at the side, bright in the sunshine, his short, fair moustache closely clipped, his eyes with their humorous kind twinkle, which was so deceptive. He was dressed in black, his clothes sat well on his well-nourished body. Yet as he lingered before the flower-beds in the morning sunshine, there was a certain isolation, a fear about him, as of something wanting.
Gudrun came up quickly, unseen. She was dressed in blue, with woollen yellow stockings, like the Bluecoat boys. He glanced up in surprise. Her stockings always disconcerted him, the pale-yellow stockings and the heavy heavy black shoes. Winifred, who had been playing about the garden with Mademoiselle and the dogs, came flitting towards Gudrun. The child wore a dress of black-and-white stripes. Her hair was rather short, cut round and hanging level in her neck.
`We're going to do Bismarck, aren't we?' she said, linking her hand through Gudrun's arm.
`Yes, we're going to do Bismarck. Do you want to?'
`Oh yes--oh I do! I want most awfully to do Bismarck. He looks so splendid this morning, so fierce. He's almost as big as a lion.' And the child chuckled sardonically at her own hyperbole. `He's a real king, he really is.'
`Bon jour, Mademoiselle,' said the little French governess, wavering up with a slight bow, a bow of the sort that Gudrun loathed, insolent.
`Winifred veut tant faire le portrait de Bismarck--! Oh, mais toute la matinee--"We will do Bismarck this morning!"--Bismarck, Bismarck, toujours Bismarck! C'est un lapin, n'est-ce pas, mademoiselle?'
`Oui, c'est un grand lapin blanc et noir. Vous ne l'avez pas vu?' said Gudrun in her good, but rather heavy French.
`Non, mademoiselle, Winifred n'a jamais voulu me le faire voir. Tant de fois je le lui ai demande, "Qu'est ce donc que ce Bismarck, Winifred?" Mais elle n'a pas voulu me le dire. Son Bismarck, c'etait un mystere.'
`Oui, c'est un mystere, vraiment un mystere! Miss Brangwen, say that Bismarck is a mystery,' cried Winifred.
`Bismarck, is a mystery, Bismarck, c'est un mystere, der Bismarck, er ist ein Wunder,' said Gudrun, in mocking incantation.
`Ja, er ist ein Wunder,' repeated Winifred, with odd seriousness, under which lay a wicked chuckle.
`Ist er auch ein Wunder?' came the slightly insolent sneering of Mademoiselle.
`Doch!' said Winifred briefly, indifferent.
`Doch ist er nicht ein Konig. Beesmarck, he was not a king, Winifred, as you have said. He was only--il n'etait que chancelier.'
`Qu'est ce qu'un chancelier?' said Winifred, with slightly contemptuous indifference.
`A chancelier is a chancellor, and a chancellor is, I believe, a sort of judge,' said Gerald coming up and shaking hands with Gudrun. `You'll have made a song of Bismarck soon,' said he.
Mademoiselle waited, and discreetly made her inclination, and her greeting.
`So they wouldn't let you see Bismarck, Mademoiselle?' he said.
`Non, Monsieur.'
`Ay, very mean of them. What are you going to do to him, Miss Brangwen? I want him sent to the kitchen and cooked.'
`Oh no,' cried Winifred.
`We're going to draw him,' said Gudrun.
`Draw him and quarter him and dish him up,' he said, being purposely fatuous.
`Oh no,' cried Winifred with emphasis, chuckling.
Gudrun detected the tang of mockery in him, and she looked up and smiled into his face. He felt his nerves caressed. Their eyes met in knowledge.
`How do you like Shortlands?' he asked.
`Oh, very much,' she said, with nonchalance.
`Glad you do. Have you noticed these flowers?'
He led her along the path. She followed intently. Winifred came, and the governess lingered in the rear. They stopped before some veined salpiglossis flowers.
`Aren't they wonderful?' she cried, looking at them absorbedly. Strange how her reverential, almost ecstatic admiration of the flowers caressed his nerves. She stooped down, and touched the trumpets, with infinitely fine and delicate-touching finger-tips. It filled him with ease to see her. When she rose, her eyes, hot with the beauty of the flowers, looked into his.
`What are they?' she asked.
`Sort of petunia, I suppose,' he answered. `I don't really know them.'
`They are quite strangers to me,' she said.
They stood together in a false intimacy, a nervous contact. And he was in love with her.
She was aware of Mademoiselle standing near, like a little French beetle, observant and calculating. She moved away with Winifred, saying they would go to find Bismarck.
Gerald watched them go, looking all the while at the soft, full, still body of Gudrun, in its silky cashmere. How silky and rich and soft her body must be. An excess of appreciation came over his mind, she was the alldesirable, the all-beautiful. He wanted only to come to her, nothing more. He was only this, this being that should come to her, and be given to her.
At the same time he was finely and acutely aware of Mademoiselle's neat, brittle finality of form. She was like some elegant beetle with thin ankles, perched on her high heels, her glossy black dress perfectly correct, her dark hair done high and admirably. How repulsive her completeness and her finality was! He loathed her.
Yet he did admire her. She was perfectly correct. And it did rather annoy him, that Gudrun came dressed in startling colours, like a macaw, when the family was in mourning. Like a macaw she was! He watched the lingering way she took her feet from the ground. And her ankles were pale yellow, and her dress a deep blue. Yet it pleased him. It pleased him very much. He felt the challenge in her very attire--she challenged the whole world. And he smiled as to the note of a trumpet.
Gudrun and Winifred went through the house to the back, where were the stables and the out-buildings. Everywhere was still and deserted. Mr Crich had gone out for a short drive, the stableman had just led round Gerald's horse. The two girls went to the hutch that stood in a corner, and looked at the great black-and-white rabbit.
`Isn't he beautiful! Oh, do look at him listening! Doesn't he look silly!' she laughed quickly, then added `Oh, do let's do him listening, do let us, he listens with so much of himself;--don't you darling Bismarck?'
`Can we take him out?' said Gudrun.
`He's very strong. He really is extremely strong.' She looked at Gudrun, her head on one side, in odd calculating mistrust.
`But we'll try, shall we?'
`Yes, if you like. But he's a fearful kicker!'
They took the key to unlock the door. The rabbit exploded in a wild rush round the hutch.
`He scratches most awfully sometimes,' cried Winifred in excitement. `Oh do look at him, isn't he wonderful!' The rabbit tore round the hutch in a hurry. `Bismarck!' cried the child, in rousing excitement. `How dreadful you are! You are beastly.' Winifred looked up at Gudrun with some misgiving in her wild excitement. Gudrun smiled sardonically with her mouth. Winifred made a strange crooning noise of unaccountable excitement. `Now he's still!' she cried, seeing the rabbit settled down in a far corner of the hutch. `Shall we take him now?' she whispered excitedly, mysteriously, looking up at Gudrun and edging very close. `Shall we get him now?--' she chuckled wickedly to herself.
They unlocked the door of the hutch. Gudrun thrust in her arm and seized the great, lusty rabbit as it crouched still, she grasped its long ears. It set its four feet flat, and thrust back. There was a long scraping sound as it was hauled forward, and in another instant it was in mid-air, lunging wildly, its body flying like a spring coiled and released, as it lashed out, suspended from the ears. Gudrun held the black-and-white tempest at arms' length, averting her face. But the rabbit was magically strong, it was all she could do to keep her grasp. She almost lost her presence of mind.
`Bismarck, Bismarck, you are behaving terribly,' said Winifred in a rather frightened voice, `Oh, do put him down, he's beastly.'
Gudrun stood for a moment astounded by the thunder-storm that had sprung into being in her grip. Then her colour came up, a heavy rage came over her like a cloud. She stood shaken as a house in a storm, and utterly overcome. Her heart was arrested with fury at the mindlessness and the bestial stupidity of this struggle, her wrists were badly scored by the claws of the beast, a heavy cruelty welled up in her.
Gerald came round as she was trying to capture the flying rabbit under her arm. He saw, with subtle recognition, her sullen passion of cruelty.
`You should let one of the men do that for you,' he said hurrying up.
`Oh, he's so horrid!' cried Winifred, almost frantic.
He held out his nervous, sinewy hand and took the rabbit by the ears, from Gudrun.
`It's most fearfully strong,' she cried, in a high voice, like the crying a seagull, strange and vindictive.
The rabbit made itself into a ball in the air, and lashed out, flinging itself into a bow. It really seemed demoniacal. Gudrun saw Gerald's body tighten, saw a sharp blindness come into his eyes.
`I know these beggars of old,' he said.
The long, demon-like beast lashed out again, spread on the air as if it were flying, looking something like a dragon, then closing up again, inconceivably powerful and explosive. The man's body, strung to its efforts, vibrated strongly. Then a sudden sharp, white-edged wrath came up in him. Swift as lightning he drew back and brought his free hand down like a hawk on the neck of the rabbit. Simultaneously, there came the unearthly abhorrent scream of a rabbit in the fear of death. It made one immense writhe, tore his wrists and his sleeves in a final convulsion, all its belly flashed white in a whirlwind of paws, and then he had slung it round and had it under his arm, fast. It cowered and skulked. His face was gleaming with a smile.
`You wouldn't think there was all that force in a rabbit,' he said, looking at Gudrun. And he saw her eyes black as night in her pallid face, she looked almost unearthly. The scream of the rabbit, after the violent tussle, seemed to have torn the veil of her consciousness. He looked at her, and the whitish, electric gleam in his face intensified.
`I don't really like him,' Winifred was crooning. `I don't care for him as I do for Loozie. He's hateful really.'
A smile twisted Gudrun's face, as she recovered. She knew she was revealed. `Don't they make the most fearful noise when they scream?' she cried, the high note in her voice, like a sea-gull's cry.
`Abominable,' he said.
`He shouldn't be so silly when he has to be taken out,' Winifred was saying, putting out her hand and touching the rabbit tentatively, as it skulked under his arm, motionless as if it were dead.
`He's not dead, is he Gerald?' she asked.
`No, he ought to be,' he said.
`Yes, he ought!' cried the child, with a sudden flush of amusement. And she touched the rabbit with more confidence. `His heart is beating so fast. Isn't he funny? He really is.'
`Where do you want him?' asked Gerald.
`In the little green court,' she said.
Gudrun looked at Gerald with strange, darkened eyes, strained with underworld knowledge, almost supplicating, like those of a creature which is at his mercy, yet which is his ultimate victor. He did not know what to say to her. He felt the mutual hellish recognition. And he felt he ought to say something, to cover it. He had the power of lightning in his nerves, she seemed like a soft recipient of his magical, hideous white fire. He was unconfident, he had qualms of fear.
`Did he hurt you?' he asked.
`No,' she said.
`He's an insensible beast,' he said, turning his face away.
They came to the little court, which was shut in by old red walls in whose crevices wall-flowers were growing. The grass was soft and fine and old, a level floor carpeting the court, the sky was blue overhead. Gerald tossed the rabbit down. It crouched still and would not move. Gudrun watched it with faint horror.
`Why doesn't it move?' she cried.
`It's skulking,' he said.
She looked up at him, and a slight sinister smile contracted her white face.
`Isn't it a fool!' she cried. `Isn't it a sickening fool?' The vindictive mockery in her voice made his brain quiver. Glancing up at him, into his eyes, she revealed again the mocking, white-cruel recognition. There was a league between them, abhorrent to them both. They were implicated with each other in abhorrent mysteries.
`How many scratches have you?' he asked, showing his hard forearm, white and hard and torn in red gashes.
`How really vile!' she cried, flushing with a sinister vision. `Mine is nothing.'
She lifted her arm and showed a deep red score down the silken white flesh.
`What a devil!' he exclaimed. But it was as if he had had knowledge of her in the long red rent of her forearm, so silken and soft. He did not want to touch her. He would have to make himself touch her, deliberately. The long, shallow red rip seemed torn across his own brain, tearing the surface of his ultimate consciousness, letting through the forever unconscious, unthinkable red ether of the beyond, the obscene beyond.
`It doesn't hurt you very much, does it?' he asked, solicitous.
`Not at all,' she cried.
And suddenly the rabbit, which had been crouching as if it were a flower, so still and soft, suddenly burst into life. Round and round the court it went, as if shot from a gun, round and round like a furry meteorite, in a tense hard circle that seemed to bind their brains. They all stood in amazement, smiling uncannily, as if the rabbit were obeying some unknown incantation. Round and round it flew, on the grass under the old red walls like a storm.
And then quite suddenly it settled down, hobbled among the grass, and sat considering, its nose twitching like a bit of fluff in the wind. After having considered for a few minutes, a soft bunch with a black, open eye, which perhaps was looking at them, perhaps was not, it hobbled calmly forward and began to nibble the grass with that mean motion of a rabbit's quick eating.
`It's mad,' said Gudrun. `It is most decidedly mad.'
He laughed.
`The question is,' he said, `what is madness? I don't suppose it is rabbitmad.'
`Don't you think it is?' she asked.
`No. That's what it is to be a rabbit.'
There was a queer, faint, obscene smile over his face. She looked at him and saw him, and knew that he was initiate as she was initiate. This thwarted her, and contravened her, for the moment.
`God be praised we aren't rabbits,' she said, in a high, shrill voice.
The smile intensified a little, on his face.
`Not rabbits?' he said, looking at her fixedly.
Slowly her face relaxed into a smile of obscene recognition.
`Ah Gerald,' she said, in a strong, slow, almost man-like way. `--All that, and more.' Her eyes looked up at him with shocking nonchalance.
He felt again as if she had torn him across the breast, dully, finally. He turned aside.
`Eat, eat my darling!' Winifred was softly conjuring the rabbit, and creeping forward to touch it. It hobbled away from her. `Let its mother stroke its fur then, darling, because it is so mysterious--'
 
戈珍深知,到肖特兰兹去是件至关紧要的事。她知道这等于接受了杰拉德·克里奇的爱。尽管她不喜欢这样,可她知道她应该继续下去。她痛苦地回忆起那一个耳光和吻,含糊其词地自己问自己,“归根结蒂,这算什么?一个吻是什么?一记耳光是什么意思?那不过是个偶然的现象,很快就消失了。我可以到肖特兰兹去一会儿,在离开这儿之前看看它是什么样子就行了。”她有一种无法满足好奇心,什么都想知道。
她也想知道温妮弗莱德到底是个什么样子。那天听到这孩子在汽船上的叫声,她就感到与她有了某种神秘的联系。
戈珍同她父亲在书房里谈着话,父亲就派人去叫女儿来。
不一会儿女儿就在法国女教师的陪伴下来了。
“温妮,这位是布朗温小姐,她将帮助你学绘画、塑造小动物。”父亲说。
孩子很有兴趣地看了戈珍一会儿,然后走上前来,扭着头把手伸了过来,显得很拘谨,十分镇定、冷漠。
“你好?”孩子头也不抬地说。
“你好。”戈珍说。
说完,温妮站在一边,戈珍与法国教师相会。
“今天天气很好。”法国女教师愉快地说。
“很好。”戈珍说。
温妮弗莱德在远处打量着这边。她似乎感到很有趣儿,但有点拿不准这位新来的人会是什么样的人。她见过不少生客,但没有几个是她真正了解的。这位法国女教师算不了什么,这孩子还可以跟她平静相处,承认她的小小权威,但对她不无轻蔑,尽管服从她,心里仍然很傲,拿她并不当一回事。
“温妮弗莱德,”父亲说,“布朗温小姐来咱家你不高兴吗?她用木头和泥雕塑的小动物和小鸟伦敦的人都称赞,他们还在报纸上写文章赞扬她呢。”
温妮弗莱德微微笑了。
“谁告诉你的,爸爸?”她问。
“谁告诉我的?赫麦妮告诉我的,卢伯特·伯金也说起过。”
“你认识他们?”温妮弗莱德有点挑战似地问戈珍。
“认识,”戈珍说。
温妮弗莱德有点松了口气。她本来就是把戈珍当作仆人看的,她们之间没什么友谊可讲。她很高兴,她有了这么多比她地位低下的人,她尽可以以良好的心情容忍她们。
戈珍很平静。她也没把这些事看得很重。一个新的场合对她来说是很新奇的,可温妮弗莱德这孩子却那么不讨人喜欢,那么损,她永远也不会合群。戈珍喜欢她,迷上了她。第一次会面就这么不光彩,这么尴尬地结束了,无论是温妮弗莱德还是她的女教师都不那么通情达理。
不久,她们就在一个虚幻的世界中相聚了。温妮弗莱德不怎么注意别人,除非他们象她一样顽皮并有点儿损。她只喜欢娱乐,她生活中严肃的“人”是她喜爱的小动物。对那些小动物她慷慨地施舍着自己的怜悯心,真有点好笑。对人间其它的事她感到不耐烦,无所谓。
她有一头小狮子狗,起名儿鲁鲁,她可喜欢鲁鲁了。
“咱们画画鲁鲁吧,”戈珍说,“看看我们能不能画出它的乖样儿,好吗?”
“亲爱的!”温妮弗莱德跑过去,有点忧郁地坐下,吻着鲁鲁凸出的额头说:“小亲亲,你让我们画你吗?让妈妈画张画儿吧,啊?”说完她高兴地扑哧一笑,转身对戈珍说:“哦,画吧!”
她们过去取来铅笔和纸准备画了。
“太漂亮了,”温妮弗莱德搂着小狗说,“妈妈为他画画儿时他安安静静地坐着。”小狗儿大大的眼睛中露出忧郁、无可奈何的神情。她热烈地吻着小狗说:“不知道我的画儿作出来是什么样,肯定不好看。”
她边画边吃吃地笑,不时大叫:
“啊,亲爱的,你太漂亮了!”
她笑着跑过去忏悔地抱住小狗,似乎她伤害了它。小狗黑丝绒般的脸上挂着岁月留下的无可奈何与烦恼的表情。温妮慢慢地画着,目光很专注地看着狗,头偏向一边,全神贯注地画着,她似乎是在画着什么咒符。她画完了,看看狗,再看看自己的画儿,然后突然松口气兴奋淘气地大叫:
“我的美人儿,为什么这么美?”
她拿着画纸走向小狗,把画儿放在它鼻子底下。小狗似乎懊恼屈辱地把头扭向一边,温妮竟冲动地吻它那黑丝绒般凸出的前额。
“好鲁鲁,小鲁鲁!看看这幅画儿,亲爱的,看看吧,这是妈妈画的呀。”她看看画,又吃吃地笑了起来。她又吻吻小狗,然后站起身庄重地走到戈珍面前把画儿交给她。
这是一张画有一头奇怪的小动物的荒诞画儿,很淘气又很有喜剧味儿,戈珍看着画儿脸上不由得浮上一丝笑意。温妮弗莱德在她身边吃吃笑道:
“不象它,对吗?它比画儿上的它要可爱得多。它太漂亮了,呣,鲁鲁,我可爱的达令。”说着她反奔过去拥抱那懊恼的小狗,它抬起一双不满、忧郁的眼睛看看她,任她去抱。然后她又跑回到图画边上,满意地笑道:
“不象它,是吗?”她问戈珍。
“象,很象。”戈珍说。
这孩子很珍惜这幅画儿,带着它,有点不好意思地向别人展示。
“看,”她说着把图画送到爸爸眼前。
“这不是鲁鲁吗?!”他叫着。他吃惊地看着图,听到身边女儿在笑。
戈珍第一次来肖特兰兹时杰拉德不在家。
他回来的那天早晨就寻找她。那天早晨阳光和煦,他留连在花园小径上,观赏着他离家后盛开的鲜花。他仍象原先一样整洁、健康,脸刮得很干净,淡黄色的头发仔细地梳向一边,在阳光下闪闪发光。他漂亮的上髭修剪得很整齐,眼睛里闪烁着温和但不可靠的光芒。他身着黑衣,衣服穿在他健壮的身体上很合体。他在花坛前徘徊,阳光下他显得有点孤单,似乎因为缺少什么而感到害怕。
戈珍快步走来,无声无息地出现在园子中。她身着蓝衣和黄色的袜子,有点象年轻的警察。看到她,他吃了一惊。她的长袜总让他感到窘迫:浅黄色的袜子配黑鞋子,真是岂有此理。温妮弗莱德此时正在园子中同法国女教师牵着狗玩,见到戈珍就飞跑过去。这孩子身穿黑白相间的条状衣服,齐耳短发剪成了圆型。
“咱们画俾斯麦①吧,好吗?”她说着挽住戈珍的胳膊。
①俾斯麦(1815—1898),德国第一任首相,有“铁血宰相”之称。在这里,“俾斯麦”是一只兔子的外号。
“好,我们就画俾斯麦,你喜欢?”
“是的,我喜欢!我非常想画俾斯麦。今天早晨我发现它非常神气,非常残忍。它几乎象一头狮子那么大。”说着她为自己的夸张笑了起来。“它是个真正的国王,真的。”
“你好,”矮小的法国女教师微微鞠个躬向戈珍问好,戈珍对这种鞠躬最讨厌。
“温妮弗莱德很想画俾斯麦!哦,整个早上她都在叫:‘今天上午我们画俾斯麦吧!’俾斯麦,俾斯麦,就是这个俾斯麦!它是一只兔子,对吗,小姐?”
“对,是一只黑白两色的花兔子。你见过它吗?”戈珍说一口好听的法语。
“没有,小姐。温妮弗莱德从没想让我见它。好几次我问它‘温妮弗莱德,俾斯麦是什么东西?’可她就是不告诉我。
就这样,俾斯麦成了一个秘密。”
“它的确是个秘密!布朗温小姐说俾斯麦是个秘密。”温妮弗莱德叫道。
“俾斯麦是个秘密,俾斯麦是个秘密,俾斯麦是个奇迹,”
戈珍用英语、法语和德语念咒般地说。
“对,就是一个奇迹,”温妮弗莱德的话音出奇得严肃,可掩饰不住淘气的窃笑。
“是奇迹吗?”女教师有点傲气十足地讽刺说。
“是的!”温妮弗莱德毫不在乎地说。
“可他不象温妮弗莱德说的那样是国王。俾斯麦不是国王,温妮弗莱德。他不过——不过是个宰相罢了。”
“宰相是什么?”温妮弗莱德很看不起女教师,爱搭不理地说。
“宰相就是宰相,宰相就是,我相信,是一个法官,”杰拉德说着走上来同戈珍握手。“你很快就可以编一首关于俾斯麦的歌曲。”他说。
法国女教师等待着,谨慎地同他打个招呼。
“她们不让你看俾斯麦,是吗?”他问女教师。
“是的,先生。”
“哦,她们可真下作。布朗温小姐,你们准备拿它怎么办?
我希望把它送厨房去做菜吃。”
“不。”温妮弗莱德叫道。
“我们要画它,”戈珍说。
“拉他,撕碎他,再把他做成菜。①”杰拉德故意装傻。
①英语中“画”和“拉”是同音同形词,杰拉德以此来开玩笑。
“哦,不嘛。”温妮弗莱德笑着大叫。
戈珍不喜欢他的嘲弄口吻,她抬起头冲他笑笑。他感到自己的神经受到了抚慰,他们的双目交换了理解的目光。
“你喜欢肖特兰兹吗?”他问。
“哦,太喜欢了。”戈珍漠然地说。
“这太让我高兴了。你有没有注意这些花儿?”
他带她走上小径,她专心致致地跟在他身后走着,随后温妮弗莱德也跟了上来,法国女教师在最后面磨磨蹭蹭地跟着走。他们在四下里蔓延着的喇叭舌草前停住了脚步。
“这太漂亮了!”戈珍着了迷似地看着花儿大叫。她对花草那种激情的崇拜奇怪地抚慰着他的神经。说着她弯下腰用纤细的手指优雅地抚摸着喇叭花儿。看到她这样爱花儿,他感到很惬意。当她直起腰,她那双花一样美丽的大眼睛火辣辣地看着他。
“这是什么花儿?”她问。
“牵牛花一类的吧,我想是。”他说,“我并不太懂。”
“这种花儿对我来说太陌生了。”她说。
他们假作亲昵地站在一起,心里都很紧张。他是爱她的。
她注意到法国女教师就站在附近,象一只法国甲虫一样观察着、算计着什么。她带温妮弗莱德走开了,说是去找俾斯麦。
杰拉德目送她们远去,目不转睛地看着戈珍那柔韧,娴静的体态,丰满的上身穿着绸开士米外套。她的身体一定是丰腴、光滑、柔软的。他太欣赏她了,她是那么令人渴望,那么美。他只是想接近她,只想这样,接近她,把自己给她。
同时他敏感地注意到了法国女教师那衣着整洁、脆弱的身姿。她象一种高傲、长着细腿的甲虫高高地站立着,她闪光的黑衣十分合时宜,黑发做得很高、很令人羡慕。她那种完美的样子多么令人生厌!他讨厌她。
可他的确崇拜她。她十分合时宜。令他恼火的是,当克里奇家人还在丧期时,戈珍竟身穿鲜艳的衣服来了,简直象一只鳱鹯!他盯着她抬腿离开地面,她的腕踝处露出浅黄色的袜子,她的衣服是深蓝色的。可他又不禁感到欣喜,很欣喜。他感到她的衣着是一种挑战——对整个世界的挑战。于是他看着喇叭花笑了。
戈珍和温妮弗莱德从屋中穿过来到后院,那儿有马厩和仓库,四下里一片寂静,荒凉。克里奇先生驾车出去了,马夫正在为杰拉德遛马。两个姑娘走到墙角里的一间小棚子那儿去看那只黑白花兔。
“太漂亮了!看它在听什么呢!它显得多傻呀!”她笑道:“我们就画它听声音的样子吧,它听得多认真呀,是吗,亲爱的俾斯麦?”
“我们可以把它弄出来吗?”戈珍问。
“它太强壮了。它真的十分有劲儿。”她偏着头,不信任地打量着戈珍说。
“但我们可以试试,不行吗?”
“可以,你愿意就试试吧。不过它踢人可疼了。”
她们取来钥匙开门。兔子开始在棚子里蹦跳着打起转来。
“它有时抓人抓得可厉害了,”温妮弗莱德激动地叫道,“快看看它,多么奇妙啊!”兔子在里面慌慌张张地窜来窜去。
“俾斯麦!”这孩子激动地大叫:“你多么可怕啊!你象个野兽。”温妮弗莱德有点恐惧地抬头看看戈珍。戈珍的嘴角上挂着嘲讽的笑。温妮发出无比激动的怪叫声。“它安静了!”看到兔子在远处的一个角落里蹲着她叫了起来。“咱们现在就把它弄出来不好吗?”她怪模怪样地看着戈珍喃言着,慢慢凑了过来。
“咱们这就把它弄出来吧?”她说着调皮地笑了。
她们打开了小棚子的门。那只强壮的大兔子安静地蜷伏着,戈珍伸进胳膊去抓住了它的长耳朵。兔子张开爪子扒住地面,身体向后缩着。它被戈珍往外拖着,爪子抓着地发出刺耳的声响。它被举到空中,身体剧烈地抽动着,就象秋千一样荡着。最后戈珍终于把它摔了出来。戈珍用双臂抱住它,忙扭过脸去躲避它的抓挠。可这兔子强壮得出奇,她竭尽全力才能抓住它。在这场搏斗中她几乎失去了意识。
“俾斯麦,俾斯麦,你太可怕了,”温妮弗莱德有点害怕地说,“快把它放下,它是一头野兽。”
戈珍被她怀抱中这头暴风雨般的东西惊呆了。她绯红了脸,怒火中烧。她颤抖着,就象暴风雨中的小屋,完全被征服了。这场全无理智、愚蠢的搏斗令她感到恼火,她的手腕也被这只野兽的爪子抓破了,她的心变残酷了。
正当她试图抱住要从她怀中窜开的兔子时,杰拉德来了。
他敏感地看出她心中憋着火儿。
“你应该叫个仆人来替你做这件事。”他说着急忙赶上前来。
“哦,它太可怕了!”温妮弗莱德有点发疯地叫道。
他强壮的手颤抖着揪住兔子耳朵把它从戈珍手中抱了出来。
“它太强壮了,”戈珍高声叫着,象一只海鸥那样,声音奇怪,一心要报复。
兔子全身缩成一团窜了出去,身体在空中形成弯弓型。它真有点魔气。戈珍看到,杰拉德浑身紧张,眼中一片空白。
“我早就了解这类叫花子。”他说。
那魔鬼般的野兽又一次跳到空中,看上去就象一条龙在飞舞,难以想象地强壮、具有爆发力。然后它又停了下来。杰拉德全身憋足了力气,剧烈地颤抖着。突然他感到一股怒火烧遍全身,闪电般地用一只手魔爪一样地抓住兔子的脖子。立时兔子发出一声死亡般可怕的尖叫。它剧烈地扭动着全身,抽搐着撕扯杰拉德的手腕和袖子,四爪旋风般舞动着,露出白白的肚皮。杰拉德揪着它旋了一圈,然后把它紧紧夹在腋下。
它屈服了,老实了。杰拉德脸上露出了微笑。
“你不要以为一只兔子有多大的力气。”他看着戈珍说。他看到,戈珍苍白的脸上嵌着一双夜一样黑的眼睛,她看上去有几分仙气。一阵搏斗后兔子发出的尖叫声似乎打破了她的意识,他看着她,脸上炽烈的光芒凝聚了起来。
“我并不真喜欢它,”温妮弗莱德嘟哝着。“我可不象关心鲁鲁一样关心它。它真可恶。”
戈珍清醒过来以后尴尬地笑了。她知道自己露馅儿了。
“难道兔子尖叫时都那么可怕吗?”她叫着,尖尖的声音很象海鸥的叫声。
“很可怕。”他说。
“反正它是要让人拖出来的,它干吗那么傻乎乎地不出来?”温妮弗莱德试探地摸着兔子说。兔子老老实实地让他夹在腋下,死了一样地纹丝不动。
“它没死吧,杰拉德?”她问。
“没有,它应该活。”
“对,它应该!”温妮突然很开心地叫。然后她更有信心地摸着兔子说:“它的心跳得很快,它多好玩呀,真的。”
“你们想带它去哪儿?”杰拉德问。
“到那个绿色的小院儿里去。”她说。
戈珍好奇地打量着杰拉德,她的目光黯淡了,她以某种阴间的知识感知着杰拉德,几乎象只动物在乞求他,可这动物最终会战胜他。他不知对她说什么好。他感到他们双方相互象魔鬼一样认识了。他感到他应该说些什么来掩盖这一事实。他有力量去点燃自己的神经,而她就象一只柔软的接受器,接收他炽烈的火焰。他并不那么自信,时时感到害怕。
“它伤着你了吗?”他问。
“没有。”她说。
“它是一只没有理智的野兽。”他扭过头去说。
他们来到小院跟前。小院红砖围墙的裂缝中开着黄色的草花儿。院子里长着柔软的青草,小院地面平整,上空是一片蓝瓦瓦的春天。杰拉德把兔子一抖放到草里去。它静静地蜷缩着,根本就不动窝儿。戈珍有点恐惧地看着它。
“它怎么不动啊?”她叫着。
“它服气了呗。”他说。
她冲他笑笑,那种不无善意的笑容使她苍白的脸都缩紧了。
“它可真是个傻瓜!”她叫道,“一个令人厌恶的傻瓜!”她话语中报复的口吻令杰拉德发抖。她抬头看看他的眼睛,暴露了她嘲弄、残酷的内心。他们之间结成了某种同盟,这种心照不宣的同盟令他们害怕。他们两人就这样卷入了共同的神秘之中。
“它抓了你几下?”他说着伸出自己被抓破的白皙但结实的前臂。
“真可恶啊!”她目光畏惧,红着脸说:“我的手没事。”
她抬起手,光滑白嫩的手上有一道深深的红疤。
“真是个魔鬼!”他吼道。他似乎从她光滑白嫩的手臂上那长长的红疤中认识了她。他并不想抚摸她,但他要有意识地迫使自己去抚摸她。那长长的红疤似乎从他的头脑中划过,撕破了他意识的表面,让永恒的无意识——难以想象的彼岸的红色气息——猥亵侵入。
“伤得不厉害吧?”他关切地问。
“没什么。”她说。
突然那只象娴静的小花儿般蜷缩着的兔子还阳了。它象出膛的子弹跳将出去,在院子中一圈又一圈地跑着,象一颗流星一样转着圈子,令人们眼花缭乱。他们都呆呆地看着兔子,莫名其妙地笑着。那兔子似乎被什么咒语驱使着,象一阵暴风雨在旧红墙下旋转飞奔着。
突然,它停下在草丛中蹒跚了几下,然后蹲下来思索,鼻翼歙动着就象风中飘动着的一根绒毛。它思索了片刻,除开黑眼睛有意无意地瞟了他们一眼,然后它开始静静地向前蹒跚而去,飞快地啃吃青草。
“它疯了,”戈珍说,“它绝对是疯了。”
杰拉德笑了。
“问题是,”他说,“什么叫疯?我才不信兔子会疯。”
“你不认为它是疯了吗?”她问。
“不。兔子就是这样。”
他脸上露出一幅猥亵的笑容。她看着他,知道他是进攻型的人,如同她也是进攻型的人一样。这一点令她不愉快,一时间她心里很不痛快。
“我们之所以不是兔子,这得感谢上帝。”她尖着嗓门说。
他脸上的笑容凝聚了起来。
“我们不是兔子吗?”他凝视着她。
她的表情缓和下来,有点猥亵地笑着。
“啊,杰拉德,”她象男人一样粗着嗓子缓缓地说。“都是兔子,更有甚之。”她漠然地看着他。
他似乎感到她又一次打了他一记耳光——甚至觉得她用力地撕裂了他的胸膛。他转向一边不看她。
“吃,吃,我的宝贝儿!”温妮弗莱德恳求着兔子并爬过去抚摸它。兔子蹒跚着躲开她。“让妈妈摸摸你的毛儿吧,宝贝儿,你太神秘了——”
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。
゛臉紅紅....

ZxID:704295


等级: 内阁元老
把每一次都当作是最后一次。
举报 只看该作者 19楼  发表于: 2013-10-27 0
。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。

Chapter 19


Moony AFTER HIS ILLNESS Birkin went to the south of France for a time. He did not write, nobody heard anything of him. Ursula, left alone, felt as if everything were lapsing out. There seemed to be no hope in the world. One was a tiny little rock with the tide of nothingness rising higher and higher She herself was real, and only herself -- just like a rock in a wash of flood-water. The rest was all nothingness. She was hard and indifferent, isolated in herself.
There was nothing for it now, but contemptuous, resistant indifference. All the world was lapsing into a grey wish-wash of nothingness, she had no contact and no connection anywhere. She despised and detested the whole show. From the bottom of her heart, from the bottom of her soul, she despised and detested people, adult people. She loved only children and animals: children she loved passionately, but coldly. They made her want to hug them, to protect them, to give them life. But this very love, based on pity and despair, was only a bondage and a pain to her. She loved best of all the animals, that were single and unsocial as she herself was. She loved the horses and cows in the field. Each was single and to itself, magical. It was not referred away to some detestable social principle. It was incapable of soulfulness and tragedy, which she detested so profoundly.
She could be very pleasant and flattering, almost subservient, to people she met. But no one was taken in. Instinctively each felt her contemptuous mockery of the human being in himself, or herself. She had a profound grudge against the human being. That which the word `human' stood for was despicable and repugnant to her.
Mostly her heart was closed in this hidden, unconscious strain of contemptuous ridicule. She thought she loved, she thought she was full of love. This was her idea of herself. But the strange brightness of her presence, a marvellous radiance of intrinsic vitality, was a luminousness of supreme repudiation, nothing but repudiation.
Yet, at moments, she yielded and softened, she wanted pure love, only pure love. This other, this state of constant unfailing repudiation, was a strain, a suffering also. A terrible desire for pure love overcame her again.
She went out one evening, numbed by this constant essential suffering. Those who are timed for destruction must die now. The knowledge of this reached a finality, a finishing in her. And the finality released her. If fate would carry off in death or downfall all those who were timed to go, why need she trouble, why repudiate any further. She was free of it all, she could seek a new union elsewhere.
Ursula set off to Willey Green, towards the mill. She came to Willey Water. It was almost full again, after its period of emptiness. Then she turned off through the woods. The night had fallen, it was dark. But she forgot to be afraid, she who had such great sources of fear. Among the trees, far from any human beings, there was a sort of magic peace. The more one could find a pure loneliness, with no taint of people, the better one felt. She was in reality terrified, horrified in her apprehension of people.
She started, noticing something on her right hand, between the tree trunks. It was like a great presence, watching her, dodging her. She started violently. It was only the moon, risen through the thin trees. But it seemed so mysterious, with its white and deathly smile. And there was no avoiding it. Night or day, one could not escape the sinister face, triumphant and radiant like this moon, with a high smile. She hurried on, cowering from the white planet. She would just see the pond at the mill before she went home.
Not wanting to go through the yard, because of the dogs, she turned off along the hill-side to descend on the pond from above. The moon was transcendent over the bare, open space, she suffered from being exposed to it. There was a glimmer of nightly rabbits across the ground. The night was as clear as crystal, and very still. She could hear a distant coughing of a sheep.
So she swerved down to the steep, tree-hidden bank above the pond, where the alders twisted their roots. She was glad to pass into the shade out of the moon. There she stood, at the top of the fallen-away bank, her hand on the rough trunk of a tree, looking at the water, that was perfect in its stillness, floating the moon upon it. But for some reason she disliked it. It did not give her anything. She listened for the hoarse rustle of the sluice. And she wished for something else out of the night, she wanted another night, not this moon-brilliant hardness. She could feel her soul crying out in her, lamenting desolately.
She saw a shadow moving by the water. It would be Birkin. He had come back then, unawares. She accepted it without remark, nothing mattered to her. She sat down among the roots of the alder tree, dim and veiled, hearing the sound of the sluice like dew distilling audibly into the night. The islands were dark and half revealed, the reeds were dark also, only some of them had a little frail fire of reflection. A fish leaped secretly, revealing the light in the pond. This fire of the chill night breaking constantly on to the pure darkness, repelled her. She wished it were perfectly dark, perfectly, and noiseless and without motion. Birkin, small and dark also, his hair tinged with moonlight, wandered nearer. He was quite near, and yet he did not exist in her. He did not know she was there. Supposing he did something he would not wish to be seen doing, thinking he was quite private? But there, what did it matter? What did the small priyacies matter? How could it matter, what he did? How can there be any secrets, we are all the same organisms? How can there be any secrecy, when everything is known to all of us?
He was touching unconsciously the dead husks of flowers as he passed by, and talking disconnectedly to himself.
`You can't go away,' he was saying. `There is no away. You only withdraw upon yourself.'
He threw a dead flower-husk on to the water.
`An antiphony -- they lie, and you sing back to them. There wouldn't have to be any truth, if there weren't any lies. Then one needn't assert anything --'
He stood still, looking at the water, and throwing upon it the husks of the flowers.
`Cybele -- curse her! The accursed Syria Dea! Does one begrudge it her? What else is there -- ?'
Ursula wanted to laugh loudly and hysterically, hearing his isolated voice speaking out. It was so ridiculous.
He stood staring at the water. Then he stooped and picked up a stone, which he threw sharply at the pond. Ursula was aware of the bright moon leaping and swaying, all distorted, in her eyes. It seemed to shoot out arms of fire like a cuttle-fish, like a luminous polyp, palpitating strongly before her.
And his shadow on the border of the pond, was watching for a few moments, then he stooped and groped on the ground. Then again there was a burst of sound, and a burst of brilliant light, the moon had exploded on the water, and was flying asunder in flakes of white and dangerous fire. Rapidly, like white birds, the fires all broken rose across the pond, fleeing in clamorous confusion, battling with the flock of dark waves that were forcing their way in. The furthest waves of light, fleeing out, seemed to be clamouring against the shore for escape, the waves of darkness came in heavily, running under towards the centre. But at the centre, the heart of all, was still a vivid, incandescent quivering of a white moon not quite destroyed, a white body of fire writhing and striving and not even now broken open, not yet violated. It seemed to be drawing itself together with strange, violent pangs, in blind effort. It was getting stronger, it was reasserting itself, the inviolable moon. And the rays were hastening in in thin lines of light, to return to the strengthened moon, that shook upon the water in triumphant reassumption.
Birkin stood and watched, motionless, till the pond was almost calm, the moon was almost serene. Then, satisfied of so much, he looked for more stones. She felt his invisible tenacity. And in a moment again, the broken lights scattered in explosion over her face, dazzling her; and then, almost immediately, came the second shot. The moon leapt up white and burst through the air. Darts of bright light shot asunder, darkness swept over the centre. There was no moon, only a battlefield of broken lights and shadows, running close together. Shadows, dark and heavy, struck again and again across the place where the heart of the moon had been, obliterating it altogether. The white fragments pulsed up and down, and could not find where to go, apart and brilliant on the water like the petals of a rose that a wind has blown far and wide.
Yet again, they were flickering their way to the centre, finding the path blindly, enviously. And again, all was still, as Birkin and Ursula watched. The waters were loud on the shore. He saw the moon regathering itself insidiously, saw the heart of the rose intertwining vigorously and blindly, calling back the scattered fragments, winning home the fragments, in a pulse and in effort of return.
And he was not satisfied. Like a madness, he must go on. He got large stones, and threw them, one after the other, at the white-burning centre of the moon, till there was nothing but a rocking of hollow noise, and a pond surged up, no moon any more, only a few broken flakes tangled and glittering broadcast in the darkness, without aim or meaning, a darkened confusion, like a black and white kaleidoscope tossed at random. The hollow night was rocking and crashing with noise, and from the sluice came sharp, regular flashes of sound. Flakes of light appeared here and there, glittering tormented among the shadows, far off, in strange places; among the dripping shadow of the willow on the island. Birkin stood and listened and was satisfied.
Ursula was dazed, her mind was all gone. She felt she had fallen to the ground and was spilled out, like water on the earth. Motionless and spent she remained in the gloom. Though even now she was aware, unseeing, that in the darkness was a little tumult of ebbing flakes of light, a cluster dancing secretly in a round, twining and coming steadily together. They were gathering a heart again, they were coming once more into being. Gradually the fragments caught together re-united, heaving, rocking, dancing, falling back as in panic, but working their way home again persistently, making semblance of fleeing away when they had advanced, but always flickering nearer, a little closer to the mark, the cluster growing mysteriously larger and brighter, as gleam after gleam fell in with the whole, until a ragged rose, a distorted, frayed moon was shaking upon the waters again, re-asserted, renewed, trying to recover from its convulsion, to get over the disfigurement and the agitation, to be whole and composed, at peace.
Birkin lingered vaguely by the water. Ursula was afraid that he would stone the moon again. She slipped from her seat and went down to him, saying:
`You won't throw stones at it any more, will you?'
`How long have you been there?'
`All the time. You won't throw any more stones, will you?'
`I wanted to see if I could make it be quite gone off the pond,' he said.
`Yes, it was horrible, really. Why should you hate the moon? It hasn't done you any harm, has it?'
`Was it hate?' he said.
And they were silent for a few minutes.
`When did you come back?' she said.
`Today.'
`Why did you never write?'
`I could find nothing to say.'
`Why was there nothing to say?'
`I don't know. Why are there no daffodils now?'
`No.'
Again there was a space of silence. Ursula looked at the moon. It had gathered itself together, and was quivering slightly.
`Was it good for you, to be alone?' she asked.
`Perhaps. Not that I know much. But I got over a good deal. Did you do anything important?'
`No. I looked at England, and thought I'd done with it.'
`Why England?' he asked in surprise.
`I don't know, it came like that.'
`It isn't a question of nations,' he said. `France is far worse.'
`Yes, I know. I felt I'd done with it all.'
They went and sat down on the roots of the trees, in the shadow. And being silent, he remembered the beauty of her eyes, which were sometimes filled with light, like spring, suffused with wonderful promise. So he said to her, slowly, with difficulty:
`There is a golden light in you, which I wish you would give me.' It was as if he had been thinking of this for some time.
She was startled, she seemed to leap clear of him. Yet also she was pleased.
`What kind of a light,' she asked.
But he was shy, and did not say any more. So the moment passed for this time. And gradually a feeling of sorrow came over her.
`My life is unfulfilled,' she said.
`Yes,' he answered briefly, not wanting to hear this.
`And I feel as if nobody could ever really love me,' she said.
But he did not answer.
`You think, don't you,' she said slowly, `that I only want physical things? It isn't true. I want you to serve my spirit.'
`I know you do. I know you don't want physical things by themselves. But, I want you to give me -- to give your spirit to me -- that golden light which is you -- which you don't know -- give it me --'
After a moment's silence she replied:
`But how can I, you don't love me! You only want your own ends. You don't want to serve me, and yet you want me to serve you. It is so onesided!'
It was a great effort to him to maintain this conversation, and to press for the thing he wanted from her, the surrender of her spirit.
`It is different,' he said. `The two kinds of service are so different. I serve you in another way -- not through yourself -- somewhere else. But I want us to be together without bothering about ourselves -- to be really together because we are together, as if it were a phenomenon, not a not a thing we have to maintain by our own effort.'
`No,' she said, pondering. `You are just egocentric. You never have any enthusiasm, you never come out with any spark towards me. You want yourself, really, and your own affairs. And you want me just to be there, to serve you.'
But this only made him shut off from her.
`Ah well,' he said, `words make no matter, any way. The thing is between us, or it isn't.'
`You don't even love me,' she cried.
`I do,' he said angrily. `But I want --' His mind saw again the lovely golden light of spring transfused through her eyes, as through some wonderful window. And he wanted her to be with him there, in this world of proud indifference. But what was the good of telling her he wanted this company in proud indifference. What was the good of talking, any way? It must happen beyond the sound of words. It was merely ruinous to try to work her by conviction. This was a paradisal bird that could never be netted, it must fly by itself to the heart.
`I always think I am going to be loved -- and then I am let down. You don't love me, you know. You don't want to serve me. You only want yourself.'
A shiver of rage went over his veins, at this repeated: `You don't want to serve me.' All the paradisal disappeared from him.
`No,' he said, irritated, `I don't want to serve you, because there is nothing there to serve. What you want me to serve, is nothing, mere nothing. It isn't even you, it is your mere female quality. And I wouldn't give a straw for your female ego -- it's a rag doll.'
`Ha!' she laughed in mockery. `That's all you think of me, is it? And then you have the impudence to say you love me.'
She rose in anger, to go home.
You want the paradisal unknowing,' she said, turning round on him as he still sat half-visible in the shadow. `I know what that means, thank you. You want me to be your thing, never to criticise you or to have anything to say for myself. You want me to be a mere thing for you! No thank you! If you want that, there are plenty of women who will give it to you. There are plenty of women who will lie down for you to walk over them -- go to them then, if that's what you want -- go to them.'
`No,' he said, outspoken with anger. `I want you to drop your assertive will, your frightened apprehensive self-insistence, that is what I want. I want you to trust yourself so implicitly, that you can let yourself go.'
`Let myself go!' she re-echoed in mockery. `I can let myself go, easily enough. It is you who can't let yourself go, it is you who hang on to yourself as if it were your only treasure. You -- you are the Sunday school teacher -- You -- you preacher.'
The amount of truth that was in this made him stiff and unheeding of her.
`I don't mean let yourself go in the Dionysic ecstatic way,' he said. `I know you can do that. But I hate ecstasy, Dionysic or any other. It's like going round in a squirrel cage. I want you not to care about yourself, just to be there and not to care about yourself, not to insist -- be glad and sure and indifferent.'
`Who insists?' she mocked. `Who is it that keeps on insisting? It isn't me!'
There was a weary, mocking bitterness in her voice. He was silent for some time.
`I know,' he said. `While ever either of us insists to the other, we are all wrong. But there we are, the accord doesn't come.'
They sat in stillness under the shadow of the trees by the bank. The night was white around them, they were in the darkness, barely conscious.
Gradually, the stillness and peace came over them. She put her hand tentatively on his. Their hands clasped softly and silently, in peace.
`Do you really love me?' she said.
He laughed.
`I call that your war-cry,' he replied, amused.
`Why!' she cried, amused and really wondering.
`Your insistence -- Your war-cry -- "A Brangwen, A Brangwen" -- an old battle-cry. Yours is, "Do you love me? Yield knave, or die." '
`No,' she said, pleading, `not like that. Not like that. But I must know that you love me, mustn't I?'
`Well then, know it and have done with it.'
`But do you?'
`Yes, I do. I love you, and I know it's final. It is final, so why say any more about it.'
She was silent for some moments, in delight and doubt.
`Are you sure?' she said, nestling happily near to him.
`Quite sure -- so now have done -- accept it and have done.'
She was nestled quite close to him.
`Have done with what?' she murmured, happily.
`With bothering,' he said.
She clung nearer to him. He held her close, and kissed her softly, gently. It was such peace and heavenly freedom, just to fold her and kiss her gently, and not to have any thoughts or any desires or any will, just to be still with her, to be perfectly still and together, in a peace that was not sleep, but content in bliss. To be content in bliss, without desire or insistence anywhere, this was heaven: to be together in happy stillness.
For a long time she nestled to him, and he kissed her softly, her hair, her face, her ears, gently, softly, like dew falling. But this warm breath on her ears disturbed her again, kindled the old destructive fires. She cleaved to him, and he could feel his blood changing like quicksilver.
`But we'll be still, shall we?' he said.
`Yes,' she said, as if submissively.
And she continued to nestle against him.
But in a little while she drew away and looked at him.
`I must be going home,' she said.
`Must you -- how sad,' he replied.
She leaned forward and put up her mouth to be kissed.
`Are you really sad?' she murmured, smiling.
`Yes,' he said, `I wish we could stay as we were, always.'
`Always! Do you?' she murmured, as he kissed her. And then, out of a full throat, she crooned `Kiss me! Kiss me!' And she cleaved close to him. He kissed her many times. But he too had his idea and his will. He wanted only gentle communion, no other, no passion now. So that soon she drew away, put on her hat and went home.
The next day however, he felt wistful and yearning. He thought he had been wrong, perhaps. Perhaps he had been wrong to go to her with an idea of what he wanted. Was it really only an idea, or was it the interpretation of a profound yearning? If the latter, how was it he was always talking about sensual fulfilment? The two did not agree very well.
Suddenly he found himself face to face with a situation. It was as simple as this: fatally simple. On the one hand, he knew he did not want a further sensual experience -- something deeper, darker, than ordinary life could give. He remembered the African fetishes he had seen at Halliday's so often. There came back to him one, a statuette about two feet high, a tall, slim, elegant figure from West Africa, in dark wood, glossy and suave. It was a woman, with hair dressed high, like a melon-shaped dome. He remembered her vividly: she was one of his soul's intimates. Her body was long and elegant, her face was crushed tiny like a beetle's, she had rows of round heavy collars, like a column of quoits, on her neck. He remembered her: her astonishing cultured elegance, her diminished, beetle face, the astounding long elegant body, on short, ugly legs, with such protuberant buttocks, so weighty and unexpected below her slim long loins. She knew what he himself did not know. She had thousands of years of purely sensual, purely unspiritual knowledge behind her. It must have been thousands of years since her race had died, mystically: that is, since the relation between the senses and the outspoken mind had broken, leaving the experience all in one sort, mystically sensual. Thousands of years ago, that which was imminent in himself must have taken place in these Africans: the goodness, the holiness, the desire for creation and productive happiness must have lapsed, leaving the single impulse for knowledge in one sort, mindless progressive knowledge through the senses, knowledge arrested and ending in the senses, mystic knowledge in disintegration and dissolution, knowledge such as the beetles have, which live purely within the world of corruption and cold dissolution. This was why her face looked like a beetle's: this was why the Egyptians worshipped the ball-rolling scarab: because of the principle of knowledge in dissolution and corruption.
There is a long way we can travel, after the death-break: after that point when the soul in intense suffering breaks, breaks away from its organic hold like a leaf that falls. We fall from the connection with life and hope, we lapse from pure integral being, from creation and liberty, and we fall into the long, long African process of purely sensual understanding, knowledge in the mystery of dissolution.
He realised now that this is a long process -- thousands of years it takes, after the death of the creative spirit. He realised that there were great mysteries to be unsealed, sensual, mindless, dreadful mysteries, far beyond the phallic cult. How far, in their inverted culture, had these West Africans gone beyond phallic knowledge? Very, very far. Birkin recalled again the female figure: the elongated, long, long body, the curious unexpected heavy buttocks, he long, imprisoned neck, the face with tiny features like a beetle's. This was far beyond any phallic knowledge, sensual subtle realities far beyond the scope of phallic investigation.
There remained this way, this awful African process, to be fulfilled. It would be done differently by the white races. The white races, having the arctic north behind them, the vast abstraction of ice and snow, would fulfil a mystery of ice-destructive knowledge, snow-abstract annihilation. Whereas the West Africans, controlled by the burning death-abstraction of the Sahara, had been fulfilled in sun-destruction, the putrescent mystery of sun-rays.
Was this then all that remained? Was there left now nothing but to break off from the happy creative being, was the time up? Is our day of creative life finished? Does there remain to us only the strange, awful afterwards of the knowledge in dissolution, the African knowledge, but different in us, who are blond and blue-eyed from the north?
Birkin thought of Gerald. He was one of these strange white wonderful demons from the north, fulfilled in the destructive frost mystery. And was he fated to pass away in this knowledge, this one process of frostknowledge, death by perfect cold? Was he a messenger, an omen of the universal dissolution into whiteness and snow?
Birkin was frightened. He was tired too, when he had reached this length of speculation. Suddenly his strange, strained attention gave way, he could not attend to these mysteries any more. There was another way, the way of freedom. There was the paradisal entry into pure, single being, the individual soul taking precedence over love and desire for union, stronger than any pangs of emotion, a lovely state of free proud singleness, which accepted the obligation of the permanent connection with others, and with the other, submits to the yoke and leash of love, but never forfeits its own proud individual singleness, even while it loves and yields.
There was the other way, the remaining way. And he must run to follow it. He thought of Ursula, how sensitive and delicate she really was, her skin so over-fine, as if one skin were wanting. She was really so marvellously gentle and sensitive. Why did he ever forget it? He must go to her at once. He must ask her to marry him. They must marry at once, and so make a definite pledge, enter into a definite communion. He must set out at once and ask her, this moment. There was no moment to spare.
He drifted on swiftly to Beldover, half-unconscious of his own movement. He saw the town on the slope of the hill, not straggling, but as if walled-in with the straight, final streets of miners' dwellings, making a great square, and it looked like Jerusalem to his fancy. The world was all strange and transcendent.
Rosalind opened the door to him. She started slightly, as a young girl will, and said:
`Oh, I'll tell father.'
With which she disappeared, leaving Birkin in the hall, looking at some reproductions from Picasso, lately introduced by Gudrun. He was admiring the almost wizard, sensuous apprehension of the earth, when Will Brangwen appeared, rolling down his shirt sleeves.
`Well,' said Brangwen, `I'll get a coat.' And he too disappeared for a moment. Then he returned, and opened the door of the drawing-room, saying:
`You must excuse me, I was just doing a bit of work in the shed. Come inside, will you.'
Birkin entered and sat down. He looked at the bright, reddish face of the other man, at the narrow brow and the very bright eyes, and at the rather sensual lips that unrolled wide and expansive under the black cropped moustache. How curious it was that this was a human being! What Brangwen thought himself to be, how meaningless it was, confronted with the reality of him. Birkin could see only a strange, inexplicable, almost patternless collection of passions and desires and suppressions and traditions and mechanical ideas, all cast unfused and disunited into this slender, bright-faced man of nearly fifty, who was as unresolved now as he was at twenty, and as uncreated. How could he be the parent of Ursula, when he was not created himself. He was not a parent. A slip of living flesh had been transmitted through him, but the spirit had not come from him. The spirit had not come from any ancestor, it had come out of the unknown. A child is the child of the mystery, or it is uncreated.
`The weather's not so bad as it has been,' said Brangwen, after waiting a moment. There was no connection between the two men.
`No,' said Birkin. `It was full moon two days ago.'
`Oh! You believe in the moon then, affecting the weather?'
`No, I don't think I do. I don't really know enough about it.'
`You know what they say? The moon and the weather may change together, but the change of the moon won't change the weather.'
`Is that it?' said Birkin. `I hadn't heard it.'
There was a pause. Then Birkin said:
`Am I hindering you? I called to see Ursula, really. Is she at home?'
`I don't believe she is. I believe she's gone to the library. I'll just see.'
Birkin could hear him enquiring in the dining-room.
`No,' he said, coming back. `But she won't be long. You wanted to speak to her?'
Birkin looked across at the other man with curious calm, clear eyes.
`As a matter of fact,' he said, `I wanted to ask her to marry me.'
A point of light came on the golden-brown eyes of the elder man.
`O-oh?' he said, looking at Birkin, then dropping his eyes before the calm, steadily watching look of the other: `Was she expecting you then?'
`No,' said Birkin.
`No? I didn't know anything of this sort was on foot -- ' Brangwen smiled awkwardly.
Birkin looked back at him, and said to himself: `I wonder why it should be "on foot"!' Aloud he said:
`No, it's perhaps rather sudden.' At which, thinking of his relationship with Ursula, he added -- `but I don't know -- '
`Quite sudden, is it? Oh!' said Brangwen, rather baffled and annoyed.
`In one way,' replied Birkin, `-- not in another.'
There was a moment's pause, after which Brangwen said:
`Well, she pleases herself -- '
`Oh yes!' said Birkin, calmly.
A vibration came into Brangwen's strong voice, as he replied:
`Though I shouldn't want her to be in too big a hurry, either. It's no good looking round afterwards, when it's too late.'
`Oh, it need never be too late,' said Birkin, `as far as that goes.'
`How do you mean?' asked the father.
`If one repents being married, the marriage is at an end,' said Birkin.
`You think so?'
`Yes.'
`Ay, well that may be your way of looking at it.'
Birkin, in silence, thought to himself: `So it may. As for your way of looking at it, William Brangwen, it needs a little explaining.'
`I suppose,' said Brangwen, `you know what sort of people we are? What sort of a bringing-up she's had?'
` "She",' thought Birkin to himself, remembering his childhood's corrections, `is the cat's mother.'
`Do I know what sort of a bringing-up she's had?' he said aloud.
He seemed to annoy Brangwen intentionally.
`Well,' he said, `she's had everything that's right for a girl to have -- as far as possible, as far as we could give it her.'
`I'm sure she has,' said Birkin, which caused a perilous full-stop. The father was becoming exasperated. There was something naturally irritant to him in Birkin's mere presence.
`And I don't want to see her going back on it all,' he said, in a clanging voice.
`Why?' said Birkin.
This monosyllable exploded in Brangwen's brain like a shot.
`Why! I don't believe in your new-fangled ways and new-fangled ideas -in and out like a frog in a gallipot. It would never do for me.'
Birkin watched him with steady emotionless eyes. The radical antagnoism in the two men was rousing.
`Yes, but are my ways and ideas new-fangled?' asked Birkin.
`Are they?' Brangwen caught himself up. `I'm not speaking of you in particular,' he said. `What I mean is that my children have been brought up to think and do according to the religion I was brought up in myself, and I don't want to see them going away from that.'
There was a dangerous pause.
`And beyond that --?' asked Birkin.
The father hesitated, he was in a nasty position.
`Eh? What do you mean? All I want to say is that my daughter' -- he tailed off into silence, overcome by futility. He knew that in some way he was off the track.
`Of course,' said Birkin, `I don't want to hurt anybody or influence anybody. Ursula does exactly as she pleases.'
There was a complete silence, because of the utter failure in mutual understanding. Birkin felt bored. Her father was not a coherent human being, he was a roomful of old echoes. The eyes of the younger man rested on the face of the elder. Brangwen looked up, and saw Birkin looking at him. His face was covered with inarticulate anger and humiliation and sense of inferiority in strength.
`And as for beliefs, that's one thing,' he said. `But I'd rather see my daughters dead tomorrow than that they should be at the beck and call of the first man that likes to come and whistle for them.'
A queer painful light came into Birkin's eyes.
`As to that,' he said, `I only know that it's much more likely that it's I who am at the beck and call of the woman, than she at mine.'
Again there was a pause. The father was somewhat bewildered.
`I know,' he said, `she'll please herself -- she always has done. I've done my best for them, but that doesn't matter. They've got themselves to please, and if they can help it they'll please nobody but themselves. But she's a right to consider her mother, and me as well -- '
Brangwen was thinking his own thoughts.
`And I tell you this much, I would rather bury them, than see them getting into a lot of loose ways such as you see everywhere nowadays. I'd rather bury them -- '
`Yes but, you see,' said Birkin slowly, rather wearily, bored again by this new turn, `they won't give either you or me the chance to bury them, because they're not to be buried.'
Brangwen looked at him in a sudden flare of impotent anger.
`Now, Mr Birkin,' he said, `I don't know what you've come here for, and I don't know what you're asking for. But my daughters are my daughters -- and it's my business to look after them while I can.'
Birkin's brows knitted suddenly, his eyes concentrated in mockery. But he remained perfectly stiff and still. There was a pause.
`I've nothing against your marrying Ursula,' Brangwen began at length. `It's got nothing to do with me, she'll do as she likes, me or no me.'
Birkin turned away, looking out of the window and letting go his consciousness. After all, what good was this? It was hopeless to keep it up. He would sit on till Ursula came home, then speak to her, then go away. He would not accept trouble at the hands of her father. It was all unnecessary, and he himself need not have provoked it.
The two men sat in complete silence, Birkin almost unconscious of his own whereabouts. He had come to ask her to marry him -- well then, he would wait on, and ask her. As for what she said, whether she accepted or not, he did not think about it. He would say what he had come to say, and that was all he was conscious of. He accepted the complete insignificance of this household, for him. But everything now was as if fated. He could see one thing ahead, and no more. From the rest, he was absolved entirely for the time being. It had to be left to fate and chance to resolve the issues.
At length they heard the gate. They saw her coming up the steps with a bundle of books under her arm. Her face was bright and abstracted as usual, with the abstraction, that look of being not quite there, not quite present to the facts of reality, that galled her father so much. She had a maddening faculty of assuming a light of her own, which excluded the reality, and within which she looked radiant as if in sunshine.
They heard her go into the dining-room, and drop her armful of books on the table.
`Did you bring me that Girl's Own?' cried Rosalind.
`Yes, I brought it. But I forgot which one it was you wanted.'
`You would,' cried Rosalind angrily. `It's right for a wonder.'
Then they heard her say something in a lowered tone.
`Where?' cried Ursula.
Again her sister's voice was muffled.
Brangwen opened the door, and called, in his strong, brazen voice:
`Ursula.'
She appeared in a moment, wearing her hat.
`Oh how do you do!' she cried, seeing Birkin, and all dazzled as if taken by surprise. He wondered at her, knowing she was aware of his presence. She had her queer, radiant, breathless manner, as if confused by the actual world, unreal to it, having a complete bright world of her self alone.
`Have I interrupted a conversation?' she asked.
`No, only a complete silence,' said Birkin.
`Oh,' said Ursula, vaguely, absent. Their presence was not vital to her, she was withheld, she did not take them in. It was a subtle insult that never failed to exasperate her father.
`Mr Birkin came to speak to you, not to me,' said her father.
`Oh, did he!' she exclaimed vaguely, as if it did not concern her. Then, recollecting herself, she turned to him rather radiantly, but still quite superficially, and said: `Was it anything special?'
`I hope so,' he said, ironically.
`-- To propose to you, according to all accounts,' said her father.
`Oh,' said Ursula.
`Oh,' mocked her father, imitating her. `Have you nothing more to say?'
She winced as if violated.
`Did you really come to propose to me?' she asked of Birkin, as if it were a joke.
`Yes,' he said. `I suppose I came to propose.' He seemed to fight shy of the last word.
`Did you?' she cried, with her vague radiance. He might have been saying anything whatsoever. She seemed pleased.
`Yes,' he answered. `I wanted to -- I wanted you to agree to marry me.'
She looked at him. His eyes were flickering with mixed lights, wanting something of her, yet not wanting it. She shrank a little, as if she were exposed to his eyes, and as if it were a pain to her. She darkened, her soul clouded over, she turned aside. She had been driven out of her own radiant, single world. And she dreaded contact, it was almost unnatural to her at these times.
`Yes,' she said vaguely, in a doubting, absent voice.
Birkin's heart contracted swiftly, in a sudden fire of bitterness. It all meant nothing to her. He had been mistaken again. She was in some selfsatisfied world of her own. He and his hopes were accidentals, violations to her. It drove her father to a pitch of mad exasperation. He had had to put up with this all his life, from her.
`Well, what do you say?' he cried.
She winced. Then she glanced down at her father, half-frightened, and she said:
`I didn't speak, did I?' as if she were afraid she might have committed herself.
`No,' said her father, exasperated. `But you needn't look like an idiot. You've got your wits, haven't you?'
She ebbed away in silent hostility.
`I've got my wits, what does that mean?' she repeated, in a sullen voice of antagonism.
`You heard what was asked you, didn't you?' cried her father in anger.
`Of course I heard.'
`Well then, can't you answer?' thundered her father.
`Why should I?'
At the impertinence of this retort, he went stiff. But he said nothing.
`No,' said Birkin, to help out the occasion, `there's no need to answer at once. You can say when you like.'
Her eyes flashed with a powerful light.
`Why should I say anything?' she cried. `You do this off your own bat, it has nothing to do with me. Why do you both want to bully me?'
`Bully you! Bully you!' cried her father, in bitter, rancorous anger. `Bully you! Why, it's a pity you can't be bullied into some sense and decency. Bully you! You'll see to that, you self-willed creature.'
She stood suspended in the middle of the room, her face glimmering and dangerous. She was set in satisfied defiance. Birkin looked up at her. He too was angry.
`But none is bullying you,' he said, in a very soft dangerous voice also.
`Oh yes,' she cried. `You both want to force me into something.'
`That is an illusion of yours,' he said ironically.
`Illusion!' cried her father. `A self-opinionated fool, that's what she is.'
Birkin rose, saying:
`However, we'll leave it for the time being.'
And without another word, he walked out of the house.
`You fool! You fool!' her father cried to her, with extreme bitterness. She left the room, and went upstairs, singing to herself. But she was terribly fluttered, as after some dreadful fight. From her window, she could see Birkin going up the road. He went in such a blithe drift of rage, that her mind wondered over him. He was ridiculous, but she was afraid of him. She was as if escaped from some danger.
Her father sat below, powerless in humiliation and chagrin. It was as if he were possessed with all the devils, after one of these unaccountable conflicts with Ursula. He hated her as if his only reality were in hating her to the last degree. He had all hell in his heart. But he went away, to escape himself. He knew he must despair, yield, give in to despair, and have done.
Ursula's face closed, she completed herself against them all. Recoiling upon herself, she became hard and self-completed, like a jewel. She was bright and invulnerable, quite free and happy, perfectly liberated in her self-possession. Her father had to learn not to see her blithe obliviousness, or it would have sent him mad. She was so radiant with all things, in her possession of perfect hostility.
She would go on now for days like this, in this bright frank state of seemingly pure spontaneity, so essentially oblivious of the existence of anything but herself, but so ready and facile in her interest. Ah it was a bitter thing for a man to be near her, and her father cursed his fatherhood. But he must learn not to see her, not to know.
She was perfectly stable in resistance when she was in this state: so bright and radiant and attractive in her pure opposition, so very pure, and yet mistrusted by everybody, disliked on every hand. It was her voice, curiously clear and repellent, that gave her away. Only Gudrun was in accord with her. It was at these times that the intimacy between the two sisters was most complete, as if their intelligence were one. They felt a strong, bright bond of understanding between them, surpassing everything else. And during all these days of blind bright abstraction and intimacy of his two daughters, the father seemed to breathe an air of death, as if he were destroyed in his very being. He was irritable to madness, he could not rest, his daughters seemed to be destroying him. But he was inarticulate and helpless against them. He was forced to breathe the air of his own death. He cursed them in his soul, and only wanted, that they should be removed from him.
They continued radiant in their easy female transcendancy, beautiful to look at. They exchanged confidences, they were intimate in their revelations to the last degree, giving each other at last every secret. They withheld nothing, they told everything, till they were over the border of evil. And they armed each other with knowledge, they extracted the subtlest flavours from the apple of knowledge. It was curious how their knowledge was complementary, that of each to that of the other.
Ursula saw her men as sons, pitied their yearning and admired their courage, and wondered over them as a mother wonders over her child, with a certain delight in their novelty. But to Gudrun, they were the opposite camp. She feared them and despised them, and respected their activities even overmuch.
`Of course,' she said easily, `there is a quality of life in Birkin which is quite remarkable. There is an extraordinary rich spring of life in him, really amazing, the way he can give himself to things. But there are so many things in life that he simply doesn't know. Either he is not aware of their existence at all, or he dismisses them as merely negligible -- things which are vital to the other person. In a way, he is not clever enough, he is too intense in spots.'
`Yes,' cried Ursula, `too much of a preacher. He is really a priest.'
`Exactly! He can't hear what anybody else has to say -- he simply cannot hear. His own voice is so loud.'
`Yes. He cries you down.'
`He cries you down,' repeated Gudrun. `And by mere force of violence. And of course it is hopeless. Nobody is convinced by violence. It makes talking to him impossible -- and living with him I should think would be more than impossible.'
`You don't think one could live with him' asked Ursula.
`I think it would be too wearing, too exhausting. One would be shouted down every time, and rushed into his way without any choice. He would want to control you entirely. He cannot allow that there is any other mind than his own. And then the real clumsiness of his mind is its lack of selfcriticism. No, I think it would be perfectly intolerable.'
`Yes,' assented Ursula vaguely. She only half agreed with Gudrun. `The nuisance is,' she said, `that one would find almost any man intolerable after a fortnight.'
`It's perfectly dreadful,' said Gudrun. `But Birkin -- he is too positive. He couldn't bear it if you called your soul your own. Of him that is strictly true.'
`Yes,' said Ursula. `You must have his soul.'
`Exactly! And what can you conceive more deadly?' This was all so true, that Ursula felt jarred to the bottom of her soul with ugly distaste.
She went on, with the discord jarring and jolting through her, in the most barren of misery.
Then there started a revulsion from Gudrun. She finished life off so thoroughly, she made things so ugly and so final. As a matter of fact, even if it were as Gudrun said, about Birkin, other things were true as well. But Gudrun would draw two lines under him and cross him out like an account that is settled. There he was, summed up, paid for, settled, done with. And it was such a lie. This finality of Gudrun's, this dispatching of people and things in a sentence, it was all such a lie. Ursula began to revolt from her sister.
One day as they were walking along the lane, they saw a robin sitting on the top twig of a bush, singing shrilly. The sisters stood to look at him. An ironical smile flickered on Gudrun's face.
`Doesn't he feel important?' smiled Gudrun.
`Doesn't he!' exclaimed Ursula, with a little ironical grimace. `Isn't he a little Lloyd George of the air!'
`Isn't he! Little Lloyd George of the air! That's just what they are,' cried Gudrun in delight. Then for days, Ursula saw the persistent, obtrusive birds as stout, short politicians lifting up their voices from the platform, little men who must make themselves heard at any cost.
But even from this there came the revulsion. Some yellowhammers suddenly shot along the road in front of her. And they looked to her so uncanny and inhuman, like flaring yellow barbs shooting through the air on some weird, living errand, that she said to herself: `After all, it is impudence to call them little Lloyd Georges. They are really unknown to us, they are the unknown forces. It is impudence to look at them as if they were the same as human beings. They are of another world. How stupid anthropomorphism is! Gudrun is really impudent, insolent, making herself the measure of everything, making everything come down to human standards. Rupert is quite right, human beings are boring, painting the universe with their own image. The universe is non-human, thank God.' It seemed to her irreverence, destructive of all true life, to make little Lloyd Georges of the birds. It was such a lie towards the robins, and such a defamation. Yet she had done it herself. But under Gudrun's influence: so she exonerated herself.
So she withdrew away from Gudrun and from that which she stood for, she turned in spirit towards Birkin again. She had not seen him since the fiasco of his proposal. She did not want to, because she did not want the question of her acceptance thrust upon her. She knew what Birkin meant when he asked her to marry him; vaguely, without putting it into speech, she knew. She knew what kind of love, what kind of surrender he wanted. And she was not at all sure that this was the kind of love that she herself wanted. She was not at all sure that it was this mutual unison in separateness that she wanted. She wanted unspeakable intimacies. She wanted to have him, utterly, finally to have him as her own, oh, so unspeakably, in intimacy. To drink him down -- ah, like a life-draught. She made great professions, to herself, of her willingness to warm his foot-soles between her breasts, after the fashion of the nauseous Meredith poem. But only on condition that he, her lover, loved her absolutely, with complete self-abandon. And subtly enough, she knew he would never abandon himself finally to her. He did not believe in final selfabandonment. He said it openly. It was his challenge. She was prepared to fight him for it. For she believed in an absolute surrender to love. She believed that love far surpassed the individual. He said the individual was more than love, or than any relationship. For him, the bright, single soul accepted love as one of its conditions, a condition of its own equilibrium. She believed that love was everything. Man must render himself up to her. He must be quaffed to the dregs by her. Let him be her man utterly, and she in return would be his humble slave -- whether she wanted it or not.
 
病愈之后,伯金到法国南部住了一段时间。她没给人写信,谁也不知道他的情况。厄秀拉孤伶伶一人,感到万念俱灰,似乎世界上不再有什么希望了,一个人就如同虚无浪潮中的一块小石头,随波起伏。她自己是真实的,只有她自己,就象洪水中的一块石头,其余的都无意义。她很冷漠,很孤独。
对此她毫无办法,只有蔑视、漠然地进行着抗争。整个世界都没入了灰色的无聊与虚无之中,她与什么都没有联系了。对这全部的景象她表示轻蔑。她打心灵深处蔑视、厌恶人,厌恶成年人。她只喜欢小孩和动物。她充满激情但又不无冷漠地喜爱儿童。她真想拥抱、保护他们,赋予他们生命。可这种爱是建立在怜悯和绝望上的,对她来说只能是枷锁和痛苦。她最爱的还是动物,动物同她一样独往独来,没有社会性。她喜欢田野中的马和牛,它们个个儿我行我素,很有魔力。动物并不遵守那些可恶的社会原则,它不会有什么热情,也不会闹出什么悲剧来,省得让人深恶痛绝。
她对别人可以显出愉快,讨人喜欢的样子,几乎很恭顺。但谁也不会上她的当。谁都可以凭直觉感到她对人类所持的嘲讽态度。她怨恨人类。“人”这个词所表达的含义令她感到厌恶。
她的心灵就封闭在这种蔑视与嘲弄的潜意识之中。她自以为自己有一颗爱心,心中充满了爱。她就是这样看待自己的。可她那副精神焕发的样子,她神态中闪烁着的直觉活力却否定了她对自己的看法。
可有时她也会变得柔弱,她需要纯粹的爱,只有纯粹的爱。她时时自我否定,精神上扭曲了,感到很痛苦。
那天晚上,她感到痛苦到了极点,人都木然了,于是走出家门。注定要被毁灭的人此时是必死无疑了。这种感受已达到了极限,感受到这一点她也就释然了。如果命运要把那些注定要离开这个世界的人卷入死亡与陷落,她为什么还要烦恼、为什么还要进一步否定自己呢?她感到释然,她可以到别处去寻觅一个新的同盟。
她信步向威利·格林的磨房走去。她来到了威利湖畔,湖里又注满了水,不再象前一阵放水后那么干枯。然后她转身向林子中走去。夜幕早已降临,一片漆黑。可是她忘了什么叫害怕,尽管她是个极胆小的人。这里的丛林远离人间,这里似乎有一种宁静的魔力。一个人愈是能够寻找到不为人迹腐蚀的纯粹孤独,她的感受就愈佳。在现实中她害怕人,怕得要死。
她发现她右边的树枝中有什么东西象巨大的幽灵在盯着她,躲躲闪闪的。她浑身一惊。其实那不过是丛林中升起的明月。可这月亮似乎很神秘,露着苍白、死一样的笑脸。对此她无法躲避。无论白天还是黑夜,你无法躲避象这轮月亮一样凶恶的脸,它得意洋洋地闪着光,趾高气扬地笑着。她对这张惨白的脸怕极了,急忙朝前走。她要看一眼磨房边的水池再回家。
她怕院子里的狗,因此不想从院子中穿过,转身走上山坡从高处下来。空旷的天际悬着一轮月亮,她就暴露在月光下,心里很难受。这里有兔子出没,在月光下一闪一晃。夜,水晶般清纯,异常宁静。她可以听到远处一只羊儿的叹息。
她转身来到林木掩映着的岸上,这里桤木树盘根错节连成一片。她很高兴能够躲开月亮,进入阴影中。她站在倾斜的岸上,一只手扶着粗糙的树干俯视着脚下的湖水,一轮月亮就在水中浮动。可不知为什么,她不喜欢这幅景色。它没有给予她什么。她在倾听水闸里咆哮的水声。她希望这夜晚还能提供给她别的什么,她需要另一种夜,不要现在这冷清的月夜。她可以感到她的心在呼叫,悲哀地呼叫。
她看到水边有个人影在动,那肯定是伯金。他已经回来了。她一言不发,若无其事地坐在桤木树根上,笼罩在阴影中,倾听着水闸放水的声音在夜空中回响。水中小鸟在黑暗中若稳若现,芦苇荡也一片漆黑,只有少许苇子在月光下闪着微光。一条鱼偷偷跃出水面,拖出一道光线。寒夜中湖水的闪光刺破了黑暗,令她反感。她企望这夜空漆黑一片,没有声音,也没有动静。伯金在月光下的身影又小又黑,他头发上沾着一星儿月光,慢慢向她走近。他已经走得很近了,但她仍旧不在乎。他不知道她在这儿。如果他要做什么事,他并不希望别人看到他做,他觉得自己做得很保密。可这又有什么关系?他这点小小的隐私又有什么重要的?他的所做所为怎么会重要呢?我们都是人,怎么会有什么秘密呢?当一切都明明白白、人人都知道时,何处会有秘密?
他边走边漫不经心地抚摸着花朵,语无伦次地喃喃自语着。
“你不能走,”他说,“没有出路。你只能依靠自己。”
说着他把一朵枯干了的花朵扔进水中。
“这是一部应答对唱——他们对你说谎,你歌唱回答他们。不需要有什么真理,只要没有谎言,就不需有什么真理。
这样的话,一个人就不用维护什么了。”
他伫立着,看看水面,又往水面上扔下几朵花儿。
“自然女神,去她的吧!这可咒的女神!难道有人妒忌她吗?还有别的什么——?”
厄秀拉真想高声、歇斯底里地大笑,她觉得他那凄凉的口吻实在可笑。
他站在那儿凝视着水面。然后他弯下腰去拾起一块石头,用力把石头扔向水池中。厄秀拉看到明亮的月亮跳动着、荡漾着,月亮在眼中变形了,它就象乌贼鱼一样似乎伸出手臂来要放火,象珊瑚虫一样在她眼前颤动。
他站在水塘边凝视着水面,又弯下身去在地上摸索着。一阵响声过后,水面上亮起一道水光,月亮在水面上炸散开去,飞溅起雪白、可怕的火一样的光芒。这火一样的光芒象白色的鸟儿迅速飞掠过水面,喧嚣着,与黑色的浪头撞击着。远处浪顶的光芒飞逝了,似乎喧闹着冲击堤岸寻找出路,然后压过来沉重的黑浪,直冲水面的中心涌来。就在这中心,那生动、白亮白亮的月亮在震颤,但没有被毁灭。这闪着白光的躯体在蠕动、在挣扎,但没有破碎。它似乎盲目地极力缩紧全身。它的光芒愈来愈强烈,再一次显示出自己的力量,表明它是不可侵犯的。月亮再一次聚起强烈的光线,凯旋般地在水面上飘荡着。
伯金伫立着凝视水面,直到水面平静下来,月亮也安宁下来。他满足了,又开始寻找石块。厄秀拉可以感到他那股看不见的固执劲。不一会儿,水面上又炸开了一片光线,令她目眩。然后他又投去另一块石头。月亮拖着白光跳到半空中。光芒四射,水面中心变得一片黑暗。不再有月亮,水面上成了光线与阴影的战场,短兵相接。黑暗而沉重的阴影一次又一次地袭击着月亮的所在地,淹没了月亮。断断续续的破碎月光上上下下弹跳着,找不到出路,散落在水面上,就象一阵风吹散了的玫瑰花瓣。
可这些光线仍然闪烁着聚回到中间去,盲目地寻找着路。一切重又平静下来,伯金和厄秀拉仍凝视着水面。浪头拍击着岸边,发出“哗哗”的声响。他看着月光暗暗地聚了起来,看到那玫瑰花的中心强有力、盲目地交织着,召回那细碎的光点,令它们跳动着聚合起来。
可他不满足,发疯似地抓起石块,一块又一块地把石头向水中找去,直投向那一轮闪着白光的月亮,直到月影消失,只听得空荡荡的响声,只见水浪涌起,没了月亮,黑暗中只有几片破裂的光在闪烁,毫无目的,毫无意义,一片混乱,就象一幅黑白万花筒景色被任意震颤。空旷的夜晚在晃荡,在撞击,发出声响,夹杂着水闸那边有节奏的刺耳水声。远处的什么地方,散乱的光芒与阴影交错,小岛的垂柳阴影中也掩映着星星点点的光。伯金倾听着这一片水声,满足了。
厄秀拉感到极为惊诧,一时间茫然了。她感到自己倒在地上,象泼出去的一盆水一样。她精疲力竭,阴郁地呆坐着。即便在这种情况下,她仍然感觉得出黑暗中光影在零乱骚动着,舞动着渐渐聚在一起。它们重新聚成一个中心,再一次获得生命。渐渐地,零乱的光影又聚合在一起,喘息着,跳动者,似乎惊慌地向后退了几步,然后又顽强地向着目标前行,每前进之前先装作后退。它们闪烁着渐渐聚了起来,光束神秘地扩大了,更明亮了,一道又一道聚起来,直到聚成一朵变形的玫瑰花。形状不整齐的月亮又在水面上颤抖起来,它试图停止震颤,战胜自身的畸形与骚动,获得自身的完整,获得宁馨。
伯金呆滞地徘徊在水边。厄秀拉真怕他再次往水中扔石块。她从自己坐的地方滑下去,对他说:
“别往水中扔石头了,好吗?”
“你来多久了?”
“一直在这儿。不要再扔石头了,好吗?”
“我想看看我是否可以把月亮赶出水面。”
“这太可怕了,真的。你为什么憎恨月亮?它没有伤害你呀,对吗?”
“是憎恨吗?”
他们沉默了好一会儿。
“你什么时候回来的?”
“今天。”
“为什么连封信都没有?”
“没什么可说的。”
“为什么没什么可说的?”
“我不知道。怎么现在没有雏菊了?”
“是没有。”
又是一阵沉默。厄秀拉看看水中的月亮,它又聚合起来,微微颤抖着。
“独处一隅对你有好处吗?”她问。
“或许是吧。当然我懂得并不多。不过我好多了。你最近有什么作为?”
“没有。看着英格兰,我就知道我跟它没关系了。”
“为什么是英格兰呢?”他惊诧地问。
“我不知道,反正有这种感觉。”
“这是民族的问题。法兰西更糟。”
“是啊,我知道。我觉得我跟这一切都没关系了。”
说着他们走下坡坐在阴影中的树根上。沉寂中,他又想起她那双美丽的眼睛,有时那双眼象泉水一样明亮,充满了希望。于是他缓缓地、不无吃力地对她说:
“你身上闪烁着金子样的光,我希望你能把它给予我。”听他的话,他似乎对这个问题想了好久了。
她一惊,似乎要跳开去。但她仍然感到愉快。
“什么光?”她问。
他很腼腆,没再说什么,就这样沉默着。渐渐地,她开始感到不安。
“我的生活并不美满。”她说。
“嗯,”他应付着,他并不想听这种话。
“我觉得不会有人真正爱我的。”她说。
他并不回答。
“你是否也这样想,”她缓缓地说,“你是否以为我只需要肉体的爱?不,不是,我需要你精神上陪伴我。”
“我知道你这样,我知道你并不只要求肉体上的东西。可我要你把你的精神——那金色的光芒给予我,那就是你,你并不懂,把它给我吧。”
沉默了一会她回答道:
“我怎么能这样呢?你并不爱我呀!你只要达到你的目的。你并不想为我做什么,却只要我为你做。这太不公平了!”
他尽了最大的努力来维持这种对话并强迫她在精神上投降。
“两回事,”他说,“这是两回事。我会以另一种方式为你尽义务,不是通过你,而是通过另一种方式。不过,我想我们可以不通过我们自身而结合在一起——因为我们在一起所以我们才在一起,如同这就是一种现象,并不是我们要通过自己的努力才能维持的东西。”
“不,”她思忖着说,“你是个自我中心者。你从来就没什么热情,你从来没有对我释放出火花来。你只需要你自己,真的,只想你自己的事。你需要我,仅仅在这个意义上,要我为你服务。”
可她这番话只能让他关上自己的心扉。
“怎么个说法并没关系。我们之间存在还是不存在那种东西呢?”
“你根本就不爱我。”她叫道。
“我爱,”他气愤地说,“可我要——”他的心又一次看到了她眼中溢满的泉水一样的金光,那光芒就象从什么窗口射出来的一样。在这个人情淡漠的世界上,他要她跟他在一起。可是,告诉她这些干什么呢?跟她交谈干什么?这想法是难以言表的。让她起什么誓只能毁了她。这想法是一只天堂之鸟,永远也不会进窝,它一定要自己飞向爱情不可。
“我一直觉得我会得到爱情,可你却让我失望了。你不爱我,这你知道的。你不想对我尽义务。你只需要你自己。”
一听她又重复那句“你不想对我尽义务”,他就觉得血管里涌过一股怒火。他心中再也没有什么天堂鸟了。
“不,”他生气地说,“我不想为你尽义务,因为没什么义务可尽。你什么义务也不需要我尽,什么也没有,甚至你自己也不需要我尽义务,这是你的女性特点。我不会为你的女性自我贡献任何东西,它不过是一块破布做成的玩具。”
“哈!”她嘲弄地笑道,“你就是这样看我的吗?你还无礼地说你爱我!”
她气愤地站起来要回家。
“你需要的是虚无缥缈的未知世界。”她转过身冲着他朦胧的身影说,“我知道你的话是什么意思了,谢谢。你想让我成为你的什么所属品,不批评你,不在你面前为我自己伸张什么。你要我仅仅成为你的什么东西!不,谢谢!如果你需要那个,倒是有不少女人可以 
  

。|。|。Women in Love。|。|。
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