She closed the gate, and crept quickly and noiselessly back to bed. When she was in her room, and the door closed, and all safe, she breathed freely, and a great weight fell off her. She nestled down in bed, in the groove his body had made, in the warmth he had left. And excited, worn-out, yet still satisfied, she fell soon into a deep, heavy sleep.
Gerald walked quickly through the raw darkness of the coming dawn. He met nobody. His mind was beautifully still and thoughtless, like a still pool, and his body full and warm and rich. He went quickly along towards Shortlands, in a grateful self-sufficiency.
CHAPTER XXV.
MARRIAGE OR NOT
The Brangwen family was going to move from Beldover. It was necessary now for the father to be in town.
Birkin had taken out a marriage licence, yet Ursula deferred from day to day. She would not fix any definite time—she still wavered. Her month’s notice to leave the Grammar School was in its third week. Christmas was not far off.
Gerald waited for the Ursula-Birkin marriage. It was something crucial to him.
‘Shall we make it a double-barrelled affair?’ he said to Birkin one day.
‘Who for the second shot?’ asked Birkin.
‘Gudrun and me,’ said Gerald, the venturesome twinkle in his eyes.
Birkin looked at him steadily, as if somewhat taken aback.
‘Serious—or joking?’ he asked.
‘Oh, serious. Shall I? Shall Gudrun and I rush in along with you?’
‘Do by all means,’ said Birkin. ‘I didn’t know you’d got that length.’
‘What length?’ said Gerald, looking at the other man, and laughing.
‘Oh yes, we’ve gone all the lengths.’
‘There remains to put it on a broad social basis, and to achieve a high moral purpose,’ said Birkin.
‘Something like that: the length and breadth and height of it,’ replied Gerald, smiling.
‘Oh well,’ said Birkin,’ it’s a very admirable step to take, I should say.’
Gerald looked at him closely.
‘Why aren’t you enthusiastic?’ he asked. ‘I thought you were such dead nuts on marriage.’
Birkin lifted his shoulders.
‘One might as well be dead nuts on noses. There are all sorts of noses, snub and otherwise-‘
Gerald laughed.
‘And all sorts of marriage, also snub and otherwise?’ he said.
‘That’s it.’
‘And you think if I marry, it will be snub?’ asked Gerald quizzically, his head a little on one side.
Birkin laughed quickly.
‘How do I know what it will be!’ he said. ‘Don’t lambaste me with my own parallels-‘
Gerald pondered a while.
‘But I should like to know your opinion, exactly,’ he said.
‘On your marriage?—or marrying? Why should you want my opinion? I’ve got no opinions. I’m not interested in legal marriage, one way or another. It’s a mere question of convenience.’
Still Gerald watched him closely.
‘More than that, I think,’ he said seriously. ‘However you may be bored by the ethics of marriage, yet really to marry, in one’s own personal case, is something critical, final-‘
‘You mean there is something final in going to the registrar with a woman?’
‘If you’re coming back with her, I do,’ said Gerald. ‘It is in some way irrevocable.’
‘Yes, I agree,’ said Birkin.
‘No matter how one regards legal marriage, yet to enter into the married state, in one’s own personal instance, is final-‘
‘I believe it is,’ said Birkin, ‘somewhere.’
‘The question remains then, should one do it,’ said Gerald.
Birkin watched him narrowly, with amused eyes.
‘You are like Lord Bacon, Gerald,’ he said. ‘You argue it like a lawyer—or like Hamlet’s to-be-or-not-to-be. If I were you I would NOT marry: but ask Gudrun, not me. You’re not marrying me, are you?’
Gerald did not heed the latter part of this speech.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘one must consider it coldly. It is something critical. One comes to the point where one must take a step in one direction or another. And marriage is one direction-‘
