CHAPTER 13. MINO

The days went by, and she received no sign. Was he going to ignore her,

was he going to take no further notice of her secret? A dreary weight of

anxiety and acrid bitterness settled on her. And yet Ursula knew she was

only deceiving herself, and that he would proceed. She said no word to

anybody.

Then, sure enough, there came a note from him, asking if she would

come to tea with Gudrun, to his rooms in town.

'Why does he ask Gudrun as well?' she asked herself at once. 'Does he

want to protect himself, or does he think I would not go alone?' She was

tormented by the thought that he wanted to protect himself. But at the

end of all, she only said to herself:

'I don't want Gudrun to be there, because I want him to say something

more to me. So I shan't tell Gudrun anything about it, and I shall go

alone. Then I shall know.'

She found herself sitting on the tram-car, mounting up the hill going out

of the town, to the place where he had his lodging. She seemed to have

passed into a kind of dream world, absolved from the conditions of

actuality. She watched the sordid streets of the town go by beneath her,

as if she were a spirit disconnected from the material universe. What had

it all to do with her? She was palpitating and formless within the flux of

the ghost life. She could not consider any more, what anybody would say

of her or think about her. People had passed out of her range, she was

absolved. She had fallen strange and dim, out of the sheath of the

material life, as a berry falls from the only world it has ever known, down

out of the sheath on to the real unknown.

Birkin was standing in the middle of the room, when she was shown in

by the landlady. He too was moved outside himself. She saw him agitated

and shaken, a frail, unsubstantial body silent like the node of some

violent force, that came out from him and shook her almost into a

swoon.

'You are alone?' he said.

'Yes—Gudrun could not come.'

He instantly guessed why.

And they were both seated in silence, in the terrible tension of the room.

She was aware that it was a pleasant room, full of light and very restful in

its form—aware also of a fuchsia tree, with dangling scarlet and purple

flowers.

'How nice the fuchsias are!' she said, to break the silence.

'Aren't they! Did you think I had forgotten what I said?'

A swoon went over Ursula's mind.

'I don't want you to remember it—if you don't want to,' she struggled to

say, through the dark mist that covered her.

There was silence for some moments.

'No,' he said. 'It isn't that. Only—if we are going to know each other, we

must pledge ourselves for ever. If we are going to make a relationship,

even of friendship, there must be something final and infallible about it.'

There was a clang of mistrust and almost anger in his voice. She did not

answer. Her heart was too much contracted. She could not have spoken.

Seeing she was not going to reply, he continued, almost bitterly, giving

himself away:

'I can't say it is love I have to offer—and it isn't love I want. It is

something much more impersonal and harder—and rarer.'

There was a silence, out of which she said:

'You mean you don't love me?'

She suffered furiously, saying that.

'Yes, if you like to put it like that. Though perhaps that isn't true. I don't

know. At any rate, I don't feel the emotion of love for you—no, and I

don't want to. Because it gives out in the last issues.'

'Love gives out in the last issues?' she asked, feeling numb to the lips

'Yes, it does. At the very last, one is alone, beyond the influence of love.

There is a real impersonal me, that is beyond love, beyond any emotional

relationship. So it is with you. But we want to delude ourselves that love

is the root. It isn't. It is only the branches. The root is beyond love, a

naked kind of isolation, an isolated me, that does NOT meet and mingle,

and never can.'

She watched him with wide, troubled eyes. His face was incandescent in

its abstract earnestness.

'And you mean you can't love?' she asked, in trepidation.

'Yes, if you like. I have loved. But there is a beyond, where there is not

love.'

She could not submit to this. She felt it swooning over her. But she could

not submit.

'But how do you know—if you have never REALLY loved?' she asked.

'It is true, what I say; there is a beyond, in you, in me, which is further

than love, beyond the scope, as stars are beyond the scope of vision,

some of them.'

'Then there is no love,' cried Ursula.

'Ultimately, no, there is something else. But, ultimately, there IS no love.'

Ursula was given over to this statement for some moments. Then she

half rose from her chair, saying, in a final, repellent voice:

'Then let me go home—what am I doing here?'

'There is the door,' he said. 'You are a free agent.'

He was suspended finely and perfectly in this extremity. She hung

motionless for some seconds, then she sat down again.

'If there is no love, what is there?' she cried, almost jeering.

'Something,' he said, looking at her, battling with his soul, with all his

might.

'What?'

He was silent for a long time, unable to be in communication with her

while she was in this state of opposition.

'There is,' he said, in a voice of pure abstraction; 'a final me which is

stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a final you.

And it is there I would want to meet you—not in the emotional, loving

plane—but there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms of

agreement. There we are two stark, unknown beings, two utterly strange

creatures, I would want to approach you, and you me. And there could be

no obligation, because there is no standard for action there, because no

understanding has been reaped from that plane. It is quite inhuman,—so

there can be no calling to book, in any form whatsoever—because one is

outside the pale of all that is accepted, and nothing known applies. One

can only follow the impulse, taking that which lies in front, and

responsible for nothing, asked for nothing, giving nothing, only each

taking according to the primal desire.'

Ursula listened to this speech, her mind dumb and almost senseless,

what he said was so unexpected and so untoward.

'It is just purely selfish,' she said.

'If it is pure, yes. But it isn't selfish at all. Because I don't KNOW what I

want of you. I deliver MYSELF over to the unknown, in coming to you, I

am without reserves or defences, stripped entirely, into the unknown.

Only there needs the pledge between us, that we will both cast off

everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that which is

perfectly ourselves can take place in us.'

She pondered along her own line of thought.

'But it is because you love me, that you want me?' she persisted.

'No it isn't. It is because I believe in you—if I DO believe in you.'

'Aren't you sure?' she laughed, suddenly hurt.

He was looking at her steadfastly, scarcely heeding what she said.

'Yes, I must believe in you, or else I shouldn't be here saying this,' he

replied. 'But that is all the proof I have. I don't feel any very strong belief

at this particular moment.'

She disliked him for this sudden relapse into weariness and

faithlessness.

'But don't you think me good-looking?' she persisted, in a mocking voice.

He looked at her, to see if he felt that she was good-looking.

'I don't FEEL that you're good-looking,' he said.

'Not even attractive?' she mocked, bitingly.

He knitted his brows in sudden exasperation.

'Don't you see that it's not a question of visual appreciation in the least,'

he cried. 'I don't WANT to see you. I've seen plenty of women, I'm sick

and weary of seeing them. I want a woman I don't see.'

'I'm sorry I can't oblige you by being invisible,' she laughed.

'Yes,' he said, 'you are invisible to me, if you don't force me to be visually

aware of you. But I don't want to see you or hear you.'

'What did you ask me to tea for, then?' she mocked.

But he would take no notice of her. He was talking to himself.

'I want to find you, where you don't know your own existence, the you

that your common self denies utterly. But I don't want your good looks,

and I don't want your womanly feelings, and I don't want your thoughts

nor opinions nor your ideas—they are all bagatelles to me.'

'You are very conceited, Monsieur,' she mocked. 'How do you know what

my womanly feelings are, or my thoughts or my ideas? You don't even

know what I think of you now.'

'Nor do I care in the slightest.'

'I think you are very silly. I think you want to tell me you love me, and

you go all this way round to do it.'

'All right,' he said, looking up with sudden exasperation. 'Now go away

then, and leave me alone. I don't want any more of your meretricious

persiflage.'

'Is it really persiflage?' she mocked, her face really relaxing into laughter.

She interpreted it, that he had made a deep confession of love to her. But

he was so absurd in his words, also.

They were silent for many minutes, she was pleased and elated like a

child. His concentration broke, he began to look at her simply and

naturally.

'What I want is a strange conjunction with you—' he said quietly; 'not

meeting and mingling—you are quite right—but an equilibrium, a pure

balance of two single beings—as the stars balance each other.'

She looked at him. He was very earnest, and earnestness was always

rather ridiculous, commonplace, to her. It made her feel unfree and

uncomfortable. Yet she liked him so much. But why drag in the stars.

'Isn't this rather sudden?' she mocked.

He began to laugh.

'Best to read the terms of the contract, before we sign,' he said.

A young grey cat that had been sleeping on the sofa jumped down and

stretched, rising on its long legs, and arching its slim back. Then it sat

considering for a moment, erect and kingly. And then, like a dart, it had

shot out of the room, through the open window-doors, and into the

garden.

'What's he after?' said Birkin, rising.

The young cat trotted lordly down the path, waving his tail. He was an

ordinary tabby with white paws, a slender young gentleman. A

crouching, fluffy, brownish-grey cat was stealing up the side of the fence.

The Mino walked statelily up to her, with manly nonchalance. She

crouched before him and pressed herself on the ground in humility, a

fluffy soft outcast, looking up at him with wild eyes that were green and

lovely as great jewels. He looked casually down on her. So she crept a few

inches further, proceeding on her way to the back door, crouching in a

wonderful, soft, self-obliterating manner, and moving like a shadow.

He, going statelily on his slim legs, walked after her, then suddenly, for

pure excess, he gave her a light cuff with his paw on the side of her face.

She ran off a few steps, like a blown leaf along the ground, then crouched

unobtrusively, in submissive, wild patience. The Mino pretended to take

no notice of her. He blinked his eyes superbly at the landscape. In a

minute she drew herself together and moved softly, a fleecy brown-grey

shadow, a few paces forward. She began to quicken her pace, in a

moment she would be gone like a dream, when the young grey lord

sprang before her, and gave her a light handsome cuff. She subsided at

once, submissively.

'She is a wild cat,' said Birkin. 'She has come in from the woods.'

The eyes of the stray cat flared round for a moment, like great green fires

staring at Birkin. Then she had rushed in a soft swift rush, half way down

the garden. There she paused to look round. The Mino turned his face in

pure superiority to his master, and slowly closed his eyes, standing in

statuesque young perfection. The wild cat's round, green, wondering eyes

were staring all the while like uncanny fires. Then again, like a shadow,

she slid towards the kitchen.

In a lovely springing leap, like a wind, the Mino was upon her, and had

boxed her twice, very definitely, with a white, delicate fist. She sank and

slid back, unquestioning. He walked after her, and cuffed her once or

twice, leisurely, with sudden little blows of his magic white paws.

'Now why does he do that?' cried Ursula in indignation.

'They are on intimate terms,' said Birkin.

'And is that why he hits her?'

'Yes,' laughed Birkin, 'I think he wants to make it quite obvious to her.'

'Isn't it horrid of him!' she cried; and going out into the garden she called

to the Mino:

'Stop it, don't bully. Stop hitting her.'

The stray cat vanished like a swift, invisible shadow. The Mino glanced at

Ursula, then looked from her disdainfully to his master.

'Are you a bully, Mino?' Birkin asked.The young slim cat looked at him, and slowly narrowed its eyes. Then it

glanced away at the landscape, looking into the distance as if completely

oblivious of the two human beings.

'Mino,' said Ursula, 'I don't like you. You are a bully like all males.'

'No,' said Birkin, 'he is justified. He is not a bully. He is only insisting to

the poor stray that she shall acknowledge him as a sort of fate, her own

fate: because you can see she is fluffy and promiscuous as the wind. I am

with him entirely. He wants superfine stability.'

'Yes, I know!' cried Ursula. 'He wants his own way—I know what your

fine words work down to—bossiness, I call it, bossiness.'

The young cat again glanced at Birkin in disdain of the noisy woman.

'I quite agree with you, Miciotto,' said Birkin to the cat. 'Keep your male

dignity, and your higher understanding.'

Again the Mino narrowed his eyes as if he were looking at the sun. Then,

suddenly affecting to have no connection at all with the two people, he

went trotting off, with assumed spontaneity and gaiety, his tail erect, his

white feet blithe.

'Now he will find the belle sauvage once more, and entertain her with his

superior wisdom,' laughed Birkin.

Ursula looked at the man who stood in the garden with his hair blowing

and his eyes smiling ironically, and she cried:

'Oh it makes me so cross, this assumption of male superiority! And it is

such a lie! One wouldn't mind if there were any justification for it.'

'The wild cat,' said Birkin, 'doesn't mind. She perceives that it is

justified.'

'Does she!' cried Ursula. 'And tell it to the Horse Marines.'

'To them also.'

'It is just like Gerald Crich with his horse—a lust for bullying—a real

Wille zur Macht—so base, so petty.''I agree that the Wille zur Macht is a base and petty thing. But with the

Mino, it is the desire to bring this female cat into a pure stable

equilibrium, a transcendent and abiding RAPPORT with the single male.

Whereas without him, as you see, she is a mere stray, a fluffy sporadic bit

of chaos. It is a volonte de pouvoir, if you like, a will to ability, taking

pouvoir as a verb.'

'Ah—! Sophistries! It's the old Adam.'

'Oh yes. Adam kept Eve in the indestructible paradise, when he kept her

single with himself, like a star in its orbit.'

'Yes—yes—' cried Ursula, pointing her finger at him. 'There you are—a

star in its orbit! A satellite—a satellite of Mars—that's what she is to be!

There—there—you've given yourself away! You want a satellite, Mars and

his satellite! You've said it—you've said it—you've dished yourself!'

He stood smiling in frustration and amusement and irritation and

admiration and love. She was so quick, and so lambent, like discernible

fire, and so vindictive, and so rich in her dangerous flamy sensitiveness.

'I've not said it at all,' he replied, 'if you will give me a chance to speak.'

'No, no!' she cried. 'I won't let you speak. You've said it, a satellite, you're

not going to wriggle out of it. You've said it.'

'You'll never believe now that I HAVEN'T said it,' he answered. 'I neither

implied nor indicated nor mentioned a satellite, nor intended a satellite,

never.'

'YOU PREVARICATOR!' she cried, in real indignation.

'Tea is ready, sir,' said the landlady from the doorway.

They both looked at her, very much as the cats had looked at them, a

little while before.

'Thank you, Mrs Daykin.'

An interrupted silence fell over the two of them, a moment of breach.

'Come and have tea,' he said.

'Yes, I should love it,' she replied, gathering herself together

They sat facing each other across the tea table.

'I did not say, nor imply, a satellite. I meant two single equal stars

balanced in conjunction—'

'You gave yourself away, you gave away your little game completely,' she

cried, beginning at once to eat. He saw that she would take no further

heed of his expostulation, so he began to pour the tea.

'What GOOD things to eat!' she cried.

'Take your own sugar,' he said.

He handed her her cup. He had everything so nice, such pretty cups and

plates, painted with mauve-lustre and green, also shapely bowls and

glass plates, and old spoons, on a woven cloth of pale grey and black and

purple. It was very rich and fine. But Ursula could see Hermione's

influence.

'Your things are so lovely!' she said, almost angrily.

'I like them. It gives me real pleasure to use things that are attractive in

themselves—pleasant things. And Mrs Daykin is good. She thinks

everything is wonderful, for my sake.'

'Really,' said Ursula, 'landladies are better than wives, nowadays. They

certainly CARE a great deal more. It is much more beautiful and

complete here now, than if you were married.'

'But think of the emptiness within,' he laughed.

'No,' she said. 'I am jealous that men have such perfect landladies and

such beautiful lodgings. There is nothing left them to desire.'

'In the house-keeping way, we'll hope not. It is disgusting, people

marrying for a home.'

'Still,' said Ursula, 'a man has very little need for a woman now, has he?'

'In outer things, maybe—except to share his bed and bear his children.

But essentially, there is just the same need as there ever was. Only

nobody takes the trouble to be essential.'

'How essential?' she said.

'I do think,' he said, 'that the world is only held together by the mystic

conjunction, the ultimate unison between people—a bond. And the

immediate bond is between man and woman.'

'But it's such old hat,' said Ursula. 'Why should love be a bond? No, I'm

not having any.'

'If you are walking westward,' he said, 'you forfeit the northern and

eastward and southern direction. If you admit a unison, you forfeit all

the possibilities of chaos.'

'But love is freedom,' she declared.

'Don't cant to me,' he replied. 'Love is a direction which excludes all

other directions. It's a freedom TOGETHER, if you like.'

'No,' she said, 'love includes everything.'

'Sentimental cant,' he replied. 'You want the state of chaos, that's all. It is

ultimate nihilism, this freedom-in-love business, this freedom which is

love and love which is freedom. As a matter of fact, if you enter into a

pure unison, it is irrevocable, and it is never pure till it is irrevocable.

And when it is irrevocable, it is one way, like the path of a star.'

'Ha!' she cried bitterly. 'It is the old dead morality.'

'No,' he said, 'it is the law of creation. One is committed. One must

commit oneself to a conjunction with the other—for ever. But it is not

selfless—it is a maintaining of the self in mystic balance and integrity—

like a star balanced with another star.'

'I don't trust you when you drag in the stars,' she said. 'If you were quite

true, it wouldn't be necessary to be so far-fetched.'

'Don't trust me then,' he said, angry. 'It is enough that I trust myself.'

'And that is where you make another mistake,' she replied. 'You DON'T

trust yourself. You don't fully believe yourself what you are saying. You

don't really want this conjunction, otherwise you wouldn't talk so much

about it, you'd get it.'

He was suspended for a moment, arrested.

'How?' he said.

'By just loving,' she retorted in defiance.

He was still a moment, in anger. Then he said:

'I tell you, I don't believe in love like that. I tell you, you want love to

administer to your egoism, to subserve you. Love is a process of

subservience with you—and with everybody. I hate it.'

'No,' she cried, pressing back her head like a cobra, her eyes flashing. 'It

is a process of pride—I want to be proud—'

'Proud and subservient, proud and subservient, I know you,' he retorted

dryly. 'Proud and subservient, then subservient to the proud—I know you

and your love. It is a tick-tack, tick-tack, a dance of opposites.'

'Are you sure?' she mocked wickedly, 'what my love is?'

'Yes, I am,' he retorted.

'So cocksure!' she said. 'How can anybody ever be right, who is so

cocksure? It shows you are wrong.'

He was silent in chagrin.

They had talked and struggled till they were both wearied out.

'Tell me about yourself and your people,' he said.

And she told him about the Brangwens, and about her mother, and about

Skrebensky, her first love, and about her later experiences. He sat very

still, watching her as she talked. And he seemed to listen with reverence.

Her face was beautiful and full of baffled light as she told him all the

things that had hurt her or perplexed her so deeply. He seemed to warm

and comfort his soul at the beautiful light of her nature.

'If she REALLY could pledge herself,' he thought to himself, with

passionate insistence but hardly any hope. Yet a curious little

irresponsible laughter appeared in his heart.

'We have all suffered so much,' he mocked, ironically.

She looked up at him, and a flash of wild gaiety went over her face, a

strange flash of yellow light coming from her eyes.

'Haven't we!' she cried, in a high, reckless cry. 'It is almost absurd, isn't

it?'

'Quite absurd,' he said. 'Suffering bores me, any more.'

'So it does me.'

He was almost afraid of the mocking recklessness of her splendid face.

Here was one who would go to the whole lengths of heaven or hell,

whichever she had to go. And he mistrusted her, he was afraid of a

woman capable of such abandon, such dangerous thoroughness of

destructivity. Yet he chuckled within himself also.

She came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, looking down at

him with strange golden-lighted eyes, very tender, but with a curious

devilish look lurking underneath.

'Say you love me, say "my love" to me,' she pleaded

He looked back into her eyes, and saw. His face flickered with sardonic

comprehension. 'I love you right enough,' he said, grimly. 'But I want it

to be something else.'

'But why? But why?' she insisted, bending her wonderful luminous face

to him. 'Why isn't it enough?'

'Because we can go one better,' he said, putting his arms round her.

'No, we can't,' she said, in a strong, voluptuous voice of yielding. 'We can

only love each other. Say "my love" to me, say it, say it.'

She put her arms round his neck. He enfolded her, and kissed her subtly,

murmuring in a subtle voice of love, and irony, and submission: 'Yes,—

my love, yes,—my love. Let love be enough then. I love you then—I love

you. I'm bored by the rest.'

'Yes,' she murmured, nestling very sweet and close to him.