“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 taxicab.
“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.
VI
Crème de Menthe
They met again in the café 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
