‘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 diningroom. 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 diningroom.
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:
