“I thought they got on so badly, as a rule.”
“Perhaps. But only artists produce for each other the world that is fit to live in. If you can arrange that for Winifred, it is perfect.”
“But you think she wouldn’t come?”
“I don’t know. Gudrun is rather self-opinionated. She won’t go cheap anywhere. Or if she does, she’ll pretty soon take herself back. So whether she would condescend to do private teaching, particularly here, in Beldover, I don’t know. But it would be just the thing. Winifred has got a special nature. And if you can put into her way the means of being self-sufficient, that is the best thing possible. She’ll never get on with the ordinary life. You find it difficult enough yourself, and she is several skins thinner than you are. It is awful to think what her life will be like unless she does find a means of expression, some way of fulfilment. You can see what mere leaving it to fate brings. You can see how much marriage is to be trusted to—look at your own mother.”
“Do you think mother is abnormal?”
“No! I think she only wanted something more, or other than the common run of life. And not getting it, she has gone wrong perhaps.”
“After producing a brood of wrong children,” said Gerald gloomily.
“No more wrong than any of the rest of us,” Birkin replied. “The most normal people have the worst subterranean selves, take them one by one.”
“Sometimes I think it is a curse to be alive,” said Gerald with sudden impotent anger.
“Well,” said Birkin, “why not! Let it be a curse sometimes to be alive—at other times it is anything but a curse. You’ve got plenty of zest in it really.”
“Less than you’d think,” said Gerald, revealing a strange poverty in his look at the other man.
There was silence, each thinking his own thoughts.
“I don’t see what she has to distinguish between teaching at the Grammar School, and coming to teach Win,” said Gerald.
“The difference between a public servant and a private one. The only nobleman today, king and only aristocrat, is the public, the public. You are quite willing to serve the public—but to be a private tutor—”
“I don’t want to serve either—”
“No! And Gudrun will probably feel the same.”
Gerald thought for a few minutes. Then he said:
“At all events, father won’t make her feel like a private servant. He will be fussy and greatful enough.”
“So he ought. And so ought all of you. Do you think you can hire a woman like Gudrun Brangwen with money? She is your equal like anything—probably your superior.”
“Is she?” said Gerald.
“Yes, and if you haven’t the guts to know it, I hope she’ll leave you to your own devices.”
“Nevertheless,” said Gerald, “if she is my equal, I wish she weren’t a teacher, because I don’t think teachers as a rule are my equal.”
“Nor do I, damn them. But am I a teacher because I teach, or a parson because I preach?”
Gerald laughed. He was always uneasy on this score. He did not want to claim social superiority, yet he would not claim intrinsic personal superiority, because he would never base his standard of values on pure being. So he wobbled upon a tacit assumption of social standing. No, Birkin wanted him to accept the fact of intrinsic difference between human beings, which he did not intend to accept. It was against his social honour, his principle. He rose to go.
“I’ve been neglecting my business all this while,” he said smiling.
“I ought to have reminded you before,” Birkin replied, laughing and mocking.
“I knew you’d say something like that,” laughed Gerald, rather uneasily.
“Did you?”
“Yes, Rupert. It wouldn’t do for us all to be like you are—we should soon be in the cart. When I am above the world, I shall ignore all businesses.”
“Of course, we’re not in the cart now,” said Birkin, satirically.
“Not as much as you make out. At any rate, we have enough to eat and drink—”
“And be satisfied,” added Birkin.
Gerald came near the bed and stood looking down at Birkin whose throat was exposed, whose tossed hair fell attractively on the warm brow, above the eyes that were so unchallenged and still in the satirical face. Gerald, full-limbed and turgid with energy, stood unwilling to go, he was held by the presence of the other man. He had not the power to go away.
“So,” said Birkin. “Goodbye.” And he reached out his hand from under the bedclothes, smiling with a glimmering look.
“Goodbye,” said Gerald, taking the warm hand of his friend in a firm grasp. “I shall come again. I miss you down at the mill.”
“I’ll be there in a few days,” said Birkin.
The eyes of the two men met again. Gerald’s, that were keen as a hawk’s, were suffused now with warm light and with unadmitted love, Birkin looked back as out of a darkness, unsounded and unknown, yet with a kind of warmth, that seemed to flow over Gerald’s brain like a fertile sleep.
“Goodbye then. There’s nothing I can do for you?”
“Nothing, thanks.”
Birkin watched the black-clothed form of the other man move out of the door, the bright head was gone, he turned over to sleep.
XVII
The Industrial Magnate
In Beldover, there was both for Ursula and for Gudrun an interval. It seemed to Ursula as if Birkin had gone out of her for the time, he had lost his significance, he scarcely mattered in her world. She had her own friends, her own activities, her own life. She turned back to the old ways with zest, away from him.
And Gudrun, after feeling every moment in all her veins conscious of Gerald Crich, connected even physically with him, was now almost indifferent to the thought of him. She was nursing new schemes for going away and trying a new form of life. All the time,
