‘God knows,’ he said. ‘Some satisfaction in basic repulsion, it seems to me. They seem to creep down some ghastly tunnel of darkness, and will never be satisfied till they’ve come to the end.’
Gerald looked out into the mist of fine snow that was blowing by. Everywhere was blind today, horribly blind.
‘And what is the end?’ he asked.
Birkin shook his head.
‘I’ve not got there yet, so I don’t know. Ask Loerke, he’s pretty near. He is a good many stages further than either you or I can go.’
‘Yes, but stages further in what?’ cried Gerald, irritated.
Birkin sighed, and gathered his brows into a knot of anger.
‘Stages further in social hatred,’ he said. ‘He lives like a rat, in the river of corruption, just where it falls over into the bottomless pit. He’s further on than we are. He hates the ideal more acutely. He HATES the ideal utterly, yet it still dominates him. I expect he is a Jew—or part Jewish.’
‘Probably,’ said Gerald.
‘He is a gnawing little negation, gnawing at the roots of life.’
‘But why does anybody care about him?’ cried Gerald.
‘Because they hate the ideal also, in their souls. They want to explore the sewers, and he’s the wizard rat that swims ahead.’
Still Gerald stood and stared at the blind haze of snow outside.
‘I don’t understand your terms, really,’ he said, in a flat, doomed voice. ‘But it sounds a rum sort of desire.’
‘I suppose we want the same,’ said Birkin. ‘Only we want to take a quick jump downwards, in a sort of ecstasy—and he ebbs with the stream, the sewer stream.’
Meanwhile Gudrun and Ursula waited for the next opportunity to talk to Loerke. It was no use beginning when the men were there. Then they could get into no touch with the isolated little sculptor. He had to be alone with them. And he preferred Ursula to be there, as a sort of transmitter to Gudrun.
‘Do you do nothing but architectural sculpture?’ Gudrun asked him one evening.
‘Not now,’ he replied. ‘I have done all sorts—except portraits—I never did portraits. But other things—’
‘What kind of things?’ asked Gudrun.
He paused a moment, then rose, and went out of the room. He returned almost immediately with a little roll of paper, which he handed to her. She unrolled it. It was a photogravure reproduction of a statuette, signed F. Loerke.
‘That is quite an early thing—NOT mechanical,’ he said, ‘more popular.’
The statuette was of a naked girl, small, finely made, sitting on a great naked horse. The girl was young and tender, a mere bud. She was sitting sideways on the horse, her face in her hands, as if in shame and grief, in a little abandon. Her hair, which was short and must be flaxen, fell forward, divided, half covering her hands.
Her limbs were young and tender. Her legs, scarcely formed yet, the legs of a maiden just passing towards cruel womanhood, dangled childishly over the side of the powerful horse, pathetically, the small feet folded one over the other, as if to hide. But there was no hiding. There she was exposed naked on the naked flank of the horse.
The horse stood stock still, stretched in a kind of start. It was a massive, magnificent stallion, rigid with pent- up power. Its neck was arched and terrible, like a sickle, its flanks were pressed back, rigid with power.
Gudrun went pale, and a darkness came over her eyes, like shame, she looked up with a certain supplication, almost slave-like. He glanced at her, and jerked his head a little.
‘How big is it?’ she asked, in a toneless voice, persisting in appearing casual and unaffected.
‘How big?’ he replied, glancing again at her. ‘Without pedestal—so high—’ he measured with his hand—’with pedestal, so—’
He looked at her steadily. There was a little brusque, turgid contempt for her in his swift gesture, and she seemed to cringe a little.
‘And what is it done in?’ she asked, throwing back her head and looking at him with affected coldness.
He still gazed at her steadily, and his dominance was not shaken.
‘Bronze—green bronze.’
‘Green bronze!’ repeated Gudrun, coldly accepting his challenge. She was thinking of the slender, immature, tender limbs of the girl, smooth and cold in green bronze.
‘Yes, beautiful,’ she murmured, looking up at him with a certain dark homage.
He closed his eyes and looked aside, triumphant.
‘Why,’ said Ursula, ‘did you make the horse so stiff? It is as stiff as a block.’
‘Stiff?’ he repeated, in arms at once.
‘Yes. LOOK how stock and stupid and brutal it is. Horses are sensitive, quite delicate and sensitive, really.’
He raised his shoulders, spread his hands in a shrug of slow indifference, as much as to inform her she was an amateur and an impertinent nobody.
