“Ha!” she laughed in mockery. “That’s all you think of me, is it? And then you have the impudence to say you love me.”
She rose in anger, to go home.
“You want the paradisal unknowing,” she said, turning round on him as he still sat half-visible in the shadow. “I know what that means, thank you. You want me to be your thing, never to criticise you or to have anything to say for myself. You want me to be a mere thing for you! No thank you! If you want that, there are plenty of women who will give it to you. There are plenty of women who will lie down for you to walk over them—go to them then, if that’s what you want—go to them.”
“No,” he said, outspoken with anger. “I want you to drop your assertive will, your frightened apprehensive self-insistence, that is what I want. I want you to trust yourself so implicitly, that you can let yourself go.”
“Let myself go!” she reechoed in mockery. “I can let myself go, easily enough. It is you who can’t let yourself go, it is you who hang on to yourself as if it were your only treasure. You—you are the Sunday school teacher—You—you preacher.”
The amount of truth that was in this made him stiff and unheeding of her.
“I don’t mean let yourself go in the Dionysic ecstatic way,” he said. “I know you can do that. But I hate ecstasy, Dionysic or any other. It’s like going round in a squirrel cage. I want you not to care about yourself, just to be there and not to care about yourself, not to insist—be glad and sure and indifferent.”
“Who insists?” she mocked. “Who is it that keeps on insisting? It isn’t me!”
There was a weary, mocking bitterness in her voice. He was silent for some time.
“I know,” he said. “While ever either of us insists to the other, we are all wrong. But there we are, the accord doesn’t come.”
They sat in stillness under the shadow of the trees by the bank. The night was white around them, they were in the darkness, barely conscious.
Gradually, the stillness and peace came over them. She put her hand tentatively on his. Their hands clasped softly and silently, in peace.
“Do you really love me?” she said.
He laughed.
“I call that your war-cry,” he replied, amused.
“Why!” she cried, amused and really wondering.
“Your insistence—Your war-cry—‘A Brangwen, A Brangwen’—an old battle-cry. Yours is, ‘Do you love me? Yield knave, or die.’ ”
“No,” she said, pleading, “not like that. Not like that. But I must know that you love me, mustn’t I?”
“Well then, know it and have done with it.”
“But do you?”
“Yes, I do. I love you, and I know it’s final. It is final, so why say any more about it.”
She was silent for some moments, in delight and doubt.
“Are you sure?” she said, nestling happily near to him.
“Quite sure—so now have done—accept it and have done.”
She was nestled quite close to him.
“Have done with what?” she murmured, happily.
“With bothering,” he said.
She clung nearer to him. He held her close, and kissed her softly, gently. It was such peace and heavenly freedom, just to fold her and kiss her gently, and not to have any thoughts or any desires or any will, just to be still with her, to be perfectly still and together, in a peace that was not sleep, but content in bliss. To be content in bliss, without desire or insistence anywhere, this was heaven: to be together in happy stillness.
For a long time she nestled to him, and he kissed her softly, her hair, her face, her ears, gently, softly, like dew falling. But this warm breath on her ears disturbed her again, kindled the old destructive fires. She cleaved to him, and he could feel his blood changing like quicksilver.
“But we’ll be still, shall we?” he said.
“Yes,” she said, as if submissively.
And she continued to nestle against him.
But in a little while she drew away and looked at him.
“I must be going home,” she said.
“Must you—how sad,” he replied.
She leaned forward and put up her mouth to be kissed.
“Are you really sad?” she murmured, smiling.
“Yes,” he said, “I wish we could stay as we were, always.”
“Always! Do you?” she murmured, as he kissed her. And then, out of a full throat, she crooned “Kiss me! Kiss me!” And she cleaved close to him. He kissed her many times. But he too had his idea and his will. He wanted only gentle communion, no other, no passion now. So that soon she drew away, put on her hat and went home.
The next day however, he felt wistful and yearning. He thought he had been wrong, perhaps. Perhaps he had been wrong to go to her with an idea of what he wanted. Was it really only an idea, or was it the interpretation of a profound yearning? If the latter, how was it he was always talking about sensual fulfilment? The two did not agree very well.
Suddenly he found himself face to face with a situation. It was as simple as this: fatally simple. On the one hand, he knew he did not want a further sensual experience—something deeper, darker, than ordinary life could give. He remembered the African fetishes he had seen at Halliday’s so often. There came back to him one, a statuette about two feet high, a tall, slim, elegant figure from West Africa, in dark wood, glossy and suave. It was a woman, with hair dressed high, like a melon-shaped dome. He remembered her vividly: she was one of his soul’s intimates. Her body was long and elegant, her face was crushed tiny like a beetle’s, she had rows of round heavy collars, like a column of quoits, on her neck. He remembered her: her astonishing cultured elegance, her diminished, beetle face, the astounding long elegant body, on short, ugly legs, with such protuberant buttocks, so weighty and unexpected
