‘Go on—go on,’ said Maxim. ‘What comes next? It’s really very interesting.’
‘I think it’s awful cheek to write like that,’ said the Pussum.
‘Yes—yes, so do I,’ said the Russian. ‘He is a megalomaniac, of course, it is a form of religious mania. He thinks he is the Saviour of man—go on reading.’
‘Surely,’ Halliday intoned, ‘“surely goodness and mercy hath followed me all the days of my life—”’ he broke off and giggled. Then he began again, intoning like a clergyman. ‘“Surely there will come an end in us to this desire—for the constant going apart,—this passion for putting asunder—everything—ourselves, reducing ourselves part from part—reacting in intimacy only for destruction,—using sex as a great reducing agent, reducing the two great elements of male and female from their highly complex unity—reducing the old ideas, going back to the savages for our sensations,—always seeking to LOSE ourselves in some ultimate black sensation, mindless and infinite—burning only with destructive fires, raging on with the hope of being burnt out utterly—”’
‘I want to go,’ said Gudrun to Gerald, as she signalled the waiter. Her eyes were flashing, her cheeks were flushed. The strange effect of Birkin’s letter read aloud in a perfect clerical sing-song, clear and resonant, phrase by phrase, made the blood mount into her head as if she were mad.
She rose, whilst Gerald was paying the bill, and walked over to Halliday’s table. They all glanced up at her.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Is that a genuine letter you are reading?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Halliday. ‘Quite genuine.’
‘May I see?’
Smiling foolishly he handed it to her, as if hypnotised.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
And she turned and walked out of the Cafe with the letter, all down the brilliant room, between the tables, in her measured fashion. It was some moments before anybody realised what was happening.
From Halliday’s table came half articulate cries, then somebody booed, then all the far end of the place began booing after Gudrun’s retreating form. She was fashionably dressed in blackish-green and silver, her hat was brilliant green, like the sheen on an insect, but the brim was soft dark green, a falling edge with fine silver, her coat was dark green, lustrous, with a high collar of grey fur, and great fur cuffs, the edge of her dress showed silver and black velvet, her stockings and shoes were silver grey. She moved with slow, fashionable indifference to the door. The porter opened obsequiously for her, and, at her nod, hurried to the edge of the pavement and whistled for a taxi. The two lights of a vehicle almost immediately curved round towards her, like two eyes.
Gerald had followed in wonder, amid all the booing, not having caught her misdeed. He heard the Pussum’s voice saying:
‘Go and get it back from her. I never heard of such a thing! Go and get it back from her. Tell Gerald Crich— there he goes—go and make him give it up.’
Gudrun stood at the door of the taxi, which the man held open for her.
‘To the hotel?’ she asked, as Gerald came out, hurriedly.
‘Where you like,’ he answered.
‘Right!’ she said. Then to the driver, ‘Wagstaff’s—Barton Street.’
The driver bowed his head, and put down the flag.
Gudrun entered the taxi, with the deliberate cold movement of a woman who is well-dressed and contemptuous in her soul. Yet she was frozen with overwrought feelings. Gerald followed her.
‘You’ve forgotten the man,’ she said cooly, with a slight nod of her hat. Gerald gave the porter a shilling. The man saluted. They were in motion.
‘What was all the row about?’ asked Gerald, in wondering excitement.
‘I walked away with Birkin’s letter,’ she said, and he saw the crushed paper in her hand.
His eyes glittered with satisfaction.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Splendid! A set of jackasses!’
‘I could have KILLED them!’ she cried in passion. ‘DOGS!—they are dogs! Why is Rupert such a FOOL as to write such letters to them? Why does he give himself away to such canaille? It’s a thing that CANNOT BE BORNE.’
Gerald wondered over her strange passion.
And she could not rest any longer in London. They must go by the morning train from Charing Cross. As they drew over the bridge, in the train, having glimpses of the river between the great iron girders, she cried:
‘I feel I could NEVER see this foul town again—I couldn’t BEAR to come back to it.’
CHAPTER XXIX.
CONTINENTAL
Ursula went on in an unreal suspense, the last weeks before going away. She was not herself,—she was not anything. She was something that is going to be—soon—soon—very soon. But as yet, she was only imminent.
She went to see her parents. It was a rather stiff, sad meeting, more like a verification of separateness than a reunion. But they were all vague and indefinite with one another, stiffened in the fate that moved them apart.
She did not really come to until she was on the ship crossing from Dover to Ostend. Dimly she had come down to London with Birkin, London had been a vagueness, so had the train-journey to Dover. It was all like a sleep.
And now, at last, as she stood in the stern of the ship, in a pitch-dark, rather blowy night, feeling the motion of the sea, and watching the small, rather desolate little lights that twinkled on the shores of England, as on the shores of nowhere, watched them sinking smaller and smaller on the profound and living darkness, she felt her soul stirring to awake from its anaesthetic sleep.
