CHAPTER 23. EXCURSE

Next day Birkin sought Ursula out. It happened to be the half-day at the

Grammar School. He appeared towards the end of the morning, and

asked her, would she drive with him in the afternoon. She consented. But

her face was closed and unresponding, and his heart sank.

The afternoon was fine and dim. He was driving the motor-car, and she

sat beside him. But still her face was closed against him, unresponding.

When she became like this, like a wall against him, his heart contracted.

His life now seemed so reduced, that he hardly cared any more. At

moments it seemed to him he did not care a straw whether Ursula or

Hermione or anybody else existed or did not exist. Why bother! Why

strive for a coherent, satisfied life? Why not drift on in a series of

accidents-like a picaresque novel? Why not? Why bother about human

relationships? Why take them seriously-male or female? Why form any

serious connections at all? Why not be casual, drifting along, taking all

for what it was worth?

And yet, still, he was damned and doomed to the old effort at serious

living.

'Look,' he said, 'what I bought.' The car was running along a broad white

road, between autumn trees.

He gave her a little bit of screwed-up paper. She took it and opened it.

'How lovely,' she cried.

She examined the gift.

'How perfectly lovely!' she cried again. 'But why do you give them me?'

She put the question offensively.

His face flickered with bored irritation. He shrugged his shoulders

slightly.

'I wanted to,' he said, coolly.

'But why? Why should you?''Am I called on to find reasons?' he asked.

There was a silence, whilst she examined the rings that had been screwed

up in the paper.

'I think they are BEAUTIFUL,' she said, 'especially this. This is

wonderful-'

It was a round opal, red and fiery, set in a circle of tiny rubies.

'You like that best?' he said.

'I think I do.'

'I like the sapphire,' he said.

'This?'

It was a rose-shaped, beautiful sapphire, with small brilliants.

'Yes,' she said, 'it is lovely.' She held it in the light. 'Yes, perhaps it IS the

best-'

'The blue-' he said.

'Yes, wonderful-'

He suddenly swung the car out of the way of a farm-cart. It tilted on the

bank. He was a careless driver, yet very quick. But Ursula was frightened.

There was always that something regardless in him which terrified her.

She suddenly felt he might kill her, by making some dreadful accident

with the motor-car. For a moment she was stony with fear.

'Isn't it rather dangerous, the way you drive?' she asked him.

'No, it isn't dangerous,' he said. And then, after a pause: 'Don't you like

the yellow ring at all?'

It was a squarish topaz set in a frame of steel, or some other similar

mineral, finely wrought.

'Yes,' she said, 'I do like it. But why did you buy these rings?'

'I wanted them. They are second-hand.'

'You bought them for yourself?''No. Rings look wrong on my hands.'

'Why did you buy them then?'

'I bought them to give to you.'

'But why? Surely you ought to give them to Hermione! You belong to

her.'

He did not answer. She remained with the jewels shut in her hand. She

wanted to try them on her fingers, but something in her would not let

her. And moreover, she was afraid her hands were too large, she shrank

from the mortification of a failure to put them on any but her little

finger. They travelled in silence through the empty lanes.

Driving in a motor-car excited her, she forgot his presence even.

'Where are we?' she asked suddenly.

'Not far from Worksop.'

'And where are we going?'

'Anywhere.'

It was the answer she liked.

She opened her hand to look at the rings. They gave her SUCH pleasure,

as they lay, the three circles, with their knotted jewels, entangled in her

palm. She would have to try them on. She did so secretly, unwilling to let

him see, so that he should not know her finger was too large for them.

But he saw nevertheless. He always saw, if she wanted him not to. It was

another of his hateful, watchful characteristics.

Only the opal, with its thin wire loop, would go on her ring finger. And

she was superstitious. No, there was ill-portent enough, she would not

accept this ring from him in pledge.

'Look,' she said, putting forward her hand, that was half-closed and

shrinking. 'The others don't fit me.'

He looked at the red-glinting, soft stone, on her over-sensitive skin.

'Yes,' he said.'But opals are unlucky, aren't they?' she said wistfully.

'No. I prefer unlucky things. Luck is vulgar. Who wants what LUCK

would bring? I don't.'

'But why?' she laughed.

And, consumed with a desire to see how the other rings would look on

her hand, she put them on her little finger.

'They can be made a little bigger,' he said.

'Yes,' she replied, doubtfully. And she sighed. She knew that, in accepting

the rings, she was accepting a pledge. Yet fate seemed more than herself.

She looked again at the jewels. They were very beautiful to her eyes-not

as ornament, or wealth, but as tiny fragments of loveliness.

'I'm glad you bought them,' she said, putting her hand, half unwillingly,

gently on his arm.

He smiled, slightly. He wanted her to come to him. But he was angry at

the bottom of his soul, and indifferent. He knew she had a passion for

him, really. But it was not finally interesting. There were depths of

passion when one became impersonal and indifferent, unemotional.

Whereas Ursula was still at the emotional personal level-always so

abominably personal. He had taken her as he had never been taken

himself. He had taken her at the roots of her darkness and shame-like a

demon, laughing over the fountain of mystic corruption which was one of

the sources of her being, laughing, shrugging, accepting, accepting

finally. As for her, when would she so much go beyond herself as to

accept him at the quick of death?

She now became quite happy. The motor-car ran on, the afternoon was

soft and dim. She talked with lively interest, analysing people and their

motives-Gudrun, Gerald. He answered vaguely. He was not very much

interested any more in personalities and in people-people were all

different, but they were all enclosed nowadays in a definite limitation, he

said; there were only about two great ideas, two great streams of activity

remaining, with various forms of reaction therefrom. The reactions were

all varied in various people, but they followed a few great laws, and

intrinsically there was no difference. They acted and reactedinvoluntarily according to a few great laws, and once the laws, the great

principles, were known, people were no longer mystically interesting.

They were all essentially alike, the differences were only variations on a

theme. None of them transcended the given terms.

Ursula did not agree-people were still an adventure to her-but-perhaps

not as much as she tried to persuade herself. Perhaps there was

something mechanical, now, in her interest. Perhaps also her interest

was destructive, her analysing was a real tearing to pieces. There was an

under-space in her where she did not care for people and their

idiosyncracies, even to destroy them. She seemed to touch for a moment

this undersilence in herself, she became still, and she turned for a

moment purely to Birkin.

'Won't it be lovely to go home in the dark?' she said. 'We might have tea

rather late-shall we?-and have high tea? Wouldn't that be rather nice?'

'I promised to be at Shortlands for dinner,' he said.

'But-it doesn't matter-you can go tomorrow-'

'Hermione is there,' he said, in rather an uneasy voice. 'She is going away

in two days. I suppose I ought to say good-bye to her. I shall never see

her again.'

Ursula drew away, closed in a violent silence. He knitted his brows, and

his eyes began to sparkle again in anger.

'You don't mind, do you?' he asked irritably.

'No, I don't care. Why should I? Why should I mind?' Her tone was

jeering and offensive.

'That's what I ask myself,' he said; 'why SHOULD you mind! But you

seem to.' His brows were tense with violent irritation.

'I ASSURE you I don't, I don't mind in the least. Go where you belong-it's

what I want you to do.'

'Ah you fool!' he cried, 'with your "go where you belong." It's finished

between Hermione and me. She means much more to YOU, if it comes to

that, than she does to me. For you can only revolt in pure reaction from

her-and to be her opposite is to be her counterpart.''Ah, opposite!' cried Ursula. 'I know your dodges. I am not taken in by

your word-twisting. You belong to Hermione and her dead show. Well, if

you do, you do. I don't blame you. But then you've nothing to do with

me.

In his inflamed, overwrought exasperation, he stopped the car, and they

sat there, in the middle of the country lane, to have it out. It was a crisis

of war between them, so they did not see the ridiculousness of their

situation.

'If you weren't a fool, if only you weren't a fool,' he cried in bitter despair,

'you'd see that one could be decent, even when one has been wrong. I

WAS wrong to go on all those years with Hermione—it was a deathly

process. But after all, one can have a little human decency. But no, you

would tear my soul out with your jealousy at the very mention of

Hermione's name.'

'I jealous! I—jealous! You ARE mistaken if you think that. I'm not jealous

in the least of Hermione, she is nothing to me, not THAT!' And Ursula

snapped her fingers. 'No, it's you who are a liar. It's you who must

return, like a dog to his vomit. It is what Hermione STANDS FOR that I

HATE. I HATE it. It is lies, it is false, it is death. But you want it, you

can't help it, you can't help yourself. You belong to that old, deathly way

of living—then go back to it. But don't come to me, for I've nothing to do

with it.'

And in the stress of her violent emotion, she got down from the car and

went to the hedgerow, picking unconsciously some flesh-pink

spindleberries, some of which were burst, showing their orange seeds.

'Ah, you are a fool,' he cried, bitterly, with some contempt.

'Yes, I am. I AM a fool. And thank God for it. I'm too big a fool to swallow

your cleverness. God be praised. You go to your women—go to them—

they are your sort—you've always had a string of them trailing after you—

and you always will. Go to your spiritual brides—but don't come to me as

well, because I'm not having any, thank you. You're not satisfied, are

you? Your spiritual brides can't give you what you want, they aren't

common and fleshy enough for you, aren't they? So you come to me, and

keep them in the background! You will marry me for daily use. But you'll

keep yourself well provided with spiritual brides in the background. Iknow your dirty little game.' Suddenly a flame ran over her, and she

stamped her foot madly on the road, and he winced, afraid that she

would strike him. 'And I, I'M not spiritual enough, I'M not as spiritual as

that Hermione—!' Her brows knitted, her eyes blazed like a tiger's. 'Then

go to her, that's all I say, GO to her, GO. Ha, she spiritual—SPIRITUAL,

she! A dirty materialist as she is. SHE spiritual? What does she care for,

what is her spirituality? What IS it?' Her fury seemed to blaze out and

burn his face. He shrank a little. 'I tell you it's DIRT, DIRT, and nothing

BUT dirt. And it's dirt you want, you crave for it. Spiritual! Is THAT

spiritual, her bullying, her conceit, her sordid materialism? She's a

fishwife, a fishwife, she is such a materialist. And all so sordid. What

does she work out to, in the end, with all her social passion, as you call it.

Social passion—what social passion has she?—show it me!—where is it?

She wants petty, immediate POWER, she wants the illusion that she is a

great woman, that is all. In her soul she's a devilish unbeliever, common

as dirt. That's what she is at the bottom. And all the rest is pretence—but

you love it. You love the sham spirituality, it's your food. And why?

Because of the dirt underneath. Do you think I don't know the foulness

of your sex life—and her's?—I do. And it's that foulness you want, you

liar. Then have it, have it. You're such a liar.'

She turned away, spasmodically tearing the twigs of spindleberry from

the hedge, and fastening them, with vibrating fingers, in the bosom of

her coat.

He stood watching in silence. A wonderful tenderness burned in him, at

the sight of her quivering, so sensitive fingers: and at the same time he

was full of rage and callousness.

'This is a degrading exhibition,' he said coolly.

'Yes, degrading indeed,' she said. 'But more to me than to you.'

'Since you choose to degrade yourself,' he said. Again the flash came over

her face, the yellow lights concentrated in her eyes.

'YOU!' she cried. 'You! You truth-lover! You purity-monger! It STINKS,

your truth and your purity. It stinks of the offal you feed on, you

scavenger dog, you eater of corpses. You are foul, FOUL and you must

know it. Your purity, your candour, your goodness—yes, thank you,

we've had some. What you are is a foul, deathly thing, obscene, that'swhat you are, obscene and perverse. You, and love! You may well say,

you don't want love. No, you want YOURSELF, and dirt, and death—

that's what you want. You are so PERVERSE, so death-eating. And

then—'

'There's a bicycle coming,' he said, writhing under her loud denunciation.

She glanced down the road.

'I don't care,' she cried.

Nevertheless she was silent. The cyclist, having heard the voices raised in

altercation, glanced curiously at the man, and the woman, and at the

standing motor-car as he passed.

'—Afternoon,' he said, cheerfully.

'Good-afternoon,' replied Birkin coldly.

They were silent as the man passed into the distance.

A clearer look had come over Birkin's face. He knew she was in the main

right. He knew he was perverse, so spiritual on the one hand, and in

some strange way, degraded, on the other. But was she herself any

better? Was anybody any better?

'It may all be true, lies and stink and all,' he said. 'But Hermione's

spiritual intimacy is no rottener than your emotional-jealous intimacy.

One can preserve the decencies, even to one's enemies: for one's own

sake. Hermione is my enemy—to her last breath! That's why I must bow

her off the field.'

'You! You and your enemies and your bows! A pretty picture you make of

yourself. But it takes nobody in but yourself. I JEALOUS! I! What I say,'

her voice sprang into flame, 'I say because it is TRUE, do you see,

because you are YOU, a foul and false liar, a whited sepulchre. That's

why I say it. And YOU hear it.'

'And be grateful,' he added, with a satirical grimace.

'Yes,' she cried, 'and if you have a spark of decency in you, be grateful.'

'Not having a spark of decency, however—' he retorted'No,' she cried, 'you haven't a SPARK. And so you can go your way, and

I'll go mine. It's no good, not the slightest. So you can leave me now, I

don't want to go any further with you—leave me—'

'You don't even know where you are,' he said.

'Oh, don't bother, I assure you I shall be all right. I've got ten shillings in

my purse, and that will take me back from anywhere YOU have brought

me to.' She hesitated. The rings were still on her fingers, two on her little

finger, one on her ring finger. Still she hesitated.

'Very good,' he said. 'The only hopeless thing is a fool.'

'You are quite right,' she said.

Still she hesitated. Then an ugly, malevolent look came over her face, she

pulled the rings from her fingers, and tossed them at him. One touched

his face, the others hit his coat, and they scattered into the mud.

'And take your rings,' she said, 'and go and buy yourself a female

elsewhere—there are plenty to be had, who will be quite glad to share

your spiritual mess,—or to have your physical mess, and leave your

spiritual mess to Hermione.'

With which she walked away, desultorily, up the road. He stood

motionless, watching her sullen, rather ugly walk. She was sullenly

picking and pulling at the twigs of the hedge as she passed. She grew

smaller, she seemed to pass out of his sight. A darkness came over his

mind. Only a small, mechanical speck of consciousness hovered near

him.

He felt tired and weak. Yet also he was relieved. He gave up his old

position. He went and sat on the bank. No doubt Ursula was right. It was

true, really, what she said. He knew that his spirituality was concomitant

of a process of depravity, a sort of pleasure in self-destruction. There

really WAS a certain stimulant in self-destruction, for him—especially

when it was translated spiritually. But then he knew it—he knew it, and

had done. And was not Ursula's way of emotional intimacy, emotional

and physical, was it not just as dangerous as Hermione's abstract

spiritual intimacy? Fusion, fusion, this horrible fusion of two beings,

which every woman and most men insisted on, was it not nauseous andhorrible anyhow, whether it was a fusion of the spirit or of the emotional

body? Hermione saw herself as the perfect Idea, to which all men must

come: And Ursula was the perfect Womb, the bath of birth, to which all

men must come! And both were horrible. Why could they not remain

individuals, limited by their own limits? Why this dreadful all-

comprehensiveness, this hateful tyranny? Why not leave the other being,

free, why try to absorb, or melt, or merge? One might abandon oneself

utterly to the MOMENTS, but not to any other being.

He could not bear to see the rings lying in the pale mud of the road. He

picked them up, and wiped them unconsciously on his hands. They were

the little tokens of the reality of beauty, the reality of happiness in warm

creation. But he had made his hands all dirty and gritty.

There was a darkness over his mind. The terrible knot of consciousness

that had persisted there like an obsession was broken, gone, his life was

dissolved in darkness over his limbs and his body. But there was a point

of anxiety in his heart now. He wanted her to come back. He breathed

lightly and regularly like an infant, that breathes innocently, beyond the

touch of responsibility.

She was coming back. He saw her drifting desultorily under the high

hedge, advancing towards him slowly. He did not move, he did not look

again. He was as if asleep, at peace, slumbering and utterly relaxed.

She came up and stood before him, hanging her head.

'See what a flower I found you,' she said, wistfully holding a piece of

purple-red bell-heather under his face. He saw the clump of coloured

bells, and the tree-like, tiny branch: also her hands, with their over-fine,

over-sensitive skin.

'Pretty!' he said, looking up at her with a smile, taking the flower.

Everything had become simple again, quite simple, the complexity gone

into nowhere. But he badly wanted to cry: except that he was weary and

bored by emotion.

Then a hot passion of tenderness for her filled his heart. He stood up and

looked into her face. It was new and oh, so delicate in its luminous

wonder and fear. He put his arms round her, and she hid her face on his

shoulder.It was peace, just simple peace, as he stood folding her quietly there on

the open lane. It was peace at last. The old, detestable world of tension

had passed away at last, his soul was strong and at ease.

She looked up at him. The wonderful yellow light in her eyes now was

soft and yielded, they were at peace with each other. He kissed her,

softly, many, many times. A laugh came into her eyes.

'Did I abuse you?' she asked.

He smiled too, and took her hand, that was so soft and given.

'Never mind,' she said, 'it is all for the good.' He kissed her again, softly,

many times.

'Isn't it?' she said.

'Certainly,' he replied. 'Wait! I shall have my own back.'

She laughed suddenly, with a wild catch in her voice, and flung her arms

around him.

'You are mine, my love, aren't you?' she cried straining him close.

'Yes,' he said, softly.

His voice was so soft and final, she went very still, as if under a fate

which had taken her. Yes, she acquiesced—but it was accomplished

without her acquiescence. He was kissing her quietly, repeatedly, with a

soft, still happiness that almost made her heart stop beating.

'My love!' she cried, lifting her face and looking with frightened, gentle

wonder of bliss. Was it all real? But his eyes were beautiful and soft and

immune from stress or excitement, beautiful and smiling lightly to her,

smiling with her. She hid her face on his shoulder, hiding before him,

because he could see her so completely. She knew he loved her, and she

was afraid, she was in a strange element, a new heaven round about her.

She wished he were passionate, because in passion she was at home. But

this was so still and frail, as space is more frightening than force.

Again, quickly, she lifted her head.

'Do you love me?' she said, quickly, impulsively.'Yes,' he replied, not heeding her motion, only her stillness.

She knew it was true. She broke away.

'So you ought,' she said, turning round to look at the road. 'Did you find

the rings?'

'Yes.'

'Where are they?'

'In my pocket.'

She put her hand into his pocket and took them out.

She was restless.

'Shall we go?' she said.

'Yes,' he answered. And they mounted to the car once more, and left

behind them this memorable battle-field.

They drifted through the wild, late afternoon, in a beautiful motion that

was smiling and transcendent. His mind was sweetly at ease, the life

flowed through him as from some new fountain, he was as if born out of

the cramp of a womb.

'Are you happy?' she asked him, in her strange, delighted way.

'Yes,' he said.

'So am I,' she cried in sudden ecstacy, putting her arm round him and

clutching him violently against her, as he steered the motor-car.

'Don't drive much more,' she said. 'I don't want you to be always doing

something.'

'No,' he said. 'We'll finish this little trip, and then we'll be free.'

'We will, my love, we will,' she cried in delight, kissing him as he turned

to her.

He drove on in a strange new wakefulness, the tension of his

consciousness broken. He seemed to be conscious all over, all his body

awake with a simple, glimmering awareness, as if he had just comeawake, like a thing that is born, like a bird when it comes out of an egg,

into a new universe.

They dropped down a long hill in the dusk, and suddenly Ursula

recognised on her right hand, below in the hollow, the form of Southwell

Minster.

'Are we here!' she cried with pleasure.

The rigid, sombre, ugly cathedral was settling under the gloom of the

coming night, as they entered the narrow town, the golden lights showed

like slabs of revelation, in the shop-windows.

'Father came here with mother,' she said, 'when they first knew each

other. He loves it—he loves the Minster. Do you?'

'Yes. It looks like quartz crystals sticking up out of the dark hollow. We'll

have our high tea at the Saracen's Head.'

As they descended, they heard the Minster bells playing a hymn, when

the hour had struck six.

Glory to thee my God this night

For all the blessings of the light—

So, to Ursula's ear, the tune fell out, drop by drop, from the unseen sky

on to the dusky town. It was like dim, bygone centuries sounding. It was

all so far off. She stood in the old yard of the inn, smelling of straw and

stables and petrol. Above, she could see the first stars. What was it all?

This was no actual world, it was the dream-world of one's childhood—a

great circumscribed reminiscence. The world had become unreal. She

herself was a strange, transcendent reality.

They sat together in a little parlour by the fire.

'Is it true?' she said, wondering.

'What?'

'Everything—is everything true?'

'The best is true,' he said, grimacing at her.

'Is it?' she replied, laughing, but unassured.She looked at him. He seemed still so separate. New eyes were opened in

her soul. She saw a strange creature from another world, in him. It was

as if she were enchanted, and everything were metamorphosed. She

recalled again the old magic of the Book of Genesis, where the sons of

God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair. And he was one of

these, one of these strange creatures from the beyond, looking down at

her, and seeing she was fair.

He stood on the hearth-rug looking at her, at her face that was upturned

exactly like a flower, a fresh, luminous flower, glinting faintly golden

with the dew of the first light. And he was smiling faintly as if there were

no speech in the world, save the silent delight of flowers in each other.

Smilingly they delighted in each other's presence, pure presence, not to

be thought of, even known. But his eyes had a faintly ironical

contraction.

And she was drawn to him strangely, as in a spell. Kneeling on the

hearth-rug before him, she put her arms round his loins, and put her

face against his thigh. Riches! Riches! She was overwhelmed with a sense

of a heavenful of riches.

'We love each other,' she said in delight.

'More than that,' he answered, looking down at her with his glimmering,

easy face.

Unconsciously, with her sensitive fingertips, she was tracing the back of

his thighs, following some mysterious life-flow there. She had discovered

something, something more than wonderful, more wonderful than life

itself. It was the strange mystery of his life-motion, there, at the back of

the thighs, down the flanks. It was a strange reality of his being, the very

stuff of being, there in the straight downflow of the thighs. It was here

she discovered him one of the sons of God such as were in the beginning

of the world, not a man, something other, something more.

This was release at last. She had had lovers, she had known passion. But

this was neither love nor passion. It was the daughters of men coming

back to the sons of God, the strange inhuman sons of God who are in the

beginning.Her face was now one dazzle of released, golden light, as she looked up at

him, and laid her hands full on his thighs, behind, as he stood before her.

He looked down at her with a rich bright brow like a diadem above his

eyes. She was beautiful as a new marvellous flower opened at his knees, a

paradisal flower she was, beyond womanhood, such a flower of

luminousness. Yet something was tight and unfree in him. He did not

like this crouching, this radiance—not altogether.

It was all achieved, for her. She had found one of the sons of God from

the Beginning, and he had found one of the first most luminous

daughters of men.

She traced with her hands the line of his loins and thighs, at the back,

and a living fire ran through her, from him, darkly. It was a dark flood of

electric passion she released from him, drew into herself. She had

established a rich new circuit, a new current of passional electric energy,

between the two of them, released from the darkest poles of the body and

established in perfect circuit. It was a dark fire of electricity that rushed

from him to her, and flooded them both with rich peace, satisfaction.

'My love,' she cried, lifting her face to him, her eyes, her mouth open in

transport.

'My love,' he answered, bending and kissing her, always kissing her.

She closed her hands over the full, rounded body of his loins, as he

stooped over her, she seemed to touch the quick of the mystery of

darkness that was bodily him. She seemed to faint beneath, and he

seemed to faint, stooping over her. It was a perfect passing away for both

of them, and at the same time the most intolerable accession into being,

the marvellous fullness of immediate gratification, overwhelming, out-

flooding from the source of the deepest life-force, the darkest, deepest,

strangest life-source of the human body, at the back and base of the

loins.

After a lapse of stillness, after the rivers of strange dark fluid richness

had passed over her, flooding, carrying away her mind and flooding

down her spine and down her knees, past her feet, a strange flood,

sweeping away everything and leaving her an essential new being, she

was left quite free, she was free in complete ease, her complete self. So

she rose, stilly and blithe, smiling at him. He stood before her,glimmering, so awfully real, that her heart almost stopped beating. He

stood there in his strange, whole body, that had its marvellous fountains,

like the bodies of the sons of God who were in the beginning. There were

strange fountains of his body, more mysterious and potent than any she

had imagined or known, more satisfying, ah, finally, mystically-

physically satisfying. She had thought there was no source deeper than

the phallic source. And now, behold, from the smitten rock of the man's

body, from the strange marvellous flanks and thighs, deeper, further in

mystery than the phallic source, came the floods of ineffable darkness

and ineffable riches.

They were glad, and they could forget perfectly. They laughed, and went

to the meal provided. There was a venison pasty, of all things, a large

broad-faced cut ham, eggs and cresses and red beet-root, and medlars

and apple-tart, and tea.

'What GOOD things!' she cried with pleasure. 'How noble it looks!—shall

I pour out the tea?—'

She was usually nervous and uncertain at performing these public duties,

such as giving tea. But today she forgot, she was at her ease, entirely

forgetting to have misgivings. The tea-pot poured beautifully from a

proud slender spout. Her eyes were warm with smiles as she gave him

his tea. She had learned at last to be still and perfect.

'Everything is ours,' she said to him.

'Everything,' he answered.

She gave a queer little crowing sound of triumph.

'I'm so glad!' she cried, with unspeakable relief.

'So am I,' he said. 'But I'm thinking we'd better get out of our

responsibilities as quick as we can.'

'What responsibilities?' she asked, wondering.

'We must drop our jobs, like a shot.'

A new understanding dawned into her face.

'Of course,' she said, 'there's that.''We must get out,' he said. 'There's nothing for it but to get out, quick.'

She looked at him doubtfully across the table.

'But where?' she said.

'I don't know,' he said. 'We'll just wander about for a bit.'

Again she looked at him quizzically.

'I should be perfectly happy at the Mill,' she said.

'It's very near the old thing,' he said. 'Let us wander a bit.'

His voice could be so soft and happy-go-lucky, it went through her veins

like an exhilaration. Nevertheless she dreamed of a valley, and wild

gardens, and peace. She had a desire too for splendour—an aristocratic

extravagant splendour. Wandering seemed to her like restlessness,

dissatisfaction.

'Where will you wander to?' she asked.

'I don't know. I feel as if I would just meet you and we'd set off—just

towards the distance.'

'But where can one go?' she asked anxiously. 'After all, there is only the

world, and none of it is very distant.'

'Still,' he said, 'I should like to go with you—nowhere. It would be rather

wandering just to nowhere. That's the place to get to—nowhere. One

wants to wander away from the world's somewheres, into our own

nowhere.'

Still she meditated.

'You see, my love,' she said, 'I'm so afraid that while we are only people,

we've got to take the world that's given—because there isn't any other.'

'Yes there is,' he said. 'There's somewhere where we can be free—

somewhere where one needn't wear much clothes—none even—where

one meets a few people who have gone through enough, and can take

things for granted—where you be yourself, without bothering. There is

somewhere—there are one or two people—'

'But where—?' she sighed.'Somewhere—anywhere. Let's wander off. That's the thing to do—let's

wander off.'

'Yes—' she said, thrilled at the thought of travel. But to her it was only

travel.

'To be free,' he said. 'To be free, in a free place, with a few other people!'

'Yes,' she said wistfully. Those 'few other people' depressed her.

'It isn't really a locality, though,' he said. 'It's a perfected relation

between you and me, and others—the perfect relation—so that we are

free together.'

'It is, my love, isn't it,' she said. 'It's you and me. It's you and me, isn't it?'

She stretched out her arms to him. He went across and stooped to kiss

her face. Her arms closed round him again, her hands spread upon his

shoulders, moving slowly there, moving slowly on his back, down his

back slowly, with a strange recurrent, rhythmic motion, yet moving

slowly down, pressing mysteriously over his loins, over his flanks. The

sense of the awfulness of riches that could never be impaired flooded her

mind like a swoon, a death in most marvellous possession, mystic-sure.

She possessed him so utterly and intolerably, that she herself lapsed out.

And yet she was only sitting still in the chair, with her hands pressed

upon him, and lost.

Again he softly kissed her.

'We shall never go apart again,' he murmured quietly. And she did not

speak, but only pressed her hands firmer down upon the source of

darkness in him.

They decided, when they woke again from the pure swoon, to write their

resignations from the world of work there and then. She wanted this.

He rang the bell, and ordered note-paper without a printed address. The

waiter cleared the table.

'Now then,' he said, 'yours first. Put your home address, and the date—

then "Director of Education, Town Hall—Sir—" Now then!—I don't know

how one really stands—I suppose one could get out of it in less than

month—Anyhow "Sir—I beg to resign my post as classmistress in theWilley Green Grammar School. I should be very grateful if you would

liberate me as soon as possible, without waiting for the expiration of the

month's notice." That'll do. Have you got it? Let me look. "Ursula

Brangwen." Good! Now I'll write mine. I ought to give them three

months, but I can plead health. I can arrange it all right.'

He sat and wrote out his formal resignation.

'Now,' he said, when the envelopes were sealed and addressed, 'shall we

post them here, both together? I know Jackie will say, "Here's a

coincidence!" when he receives them in all their identity. Shall we let him

say it, or not?'

'I don't care,' she said.

'No—?' he said, pondering.

'It doesn't matter, does it?' she said.

'Yes,' he replied. 'Their imaginations shall not work on us. I'll post yours

here, mine after. I cannot be implicated in their imaginings.'

He looked at her with his strange, non-human singleness.

'Yes, you are right,' she said.

She lifted her face to him, all shining and open. It was as if he might

enter straight into the source of her radiance. His face became a little

distracted.

'Shall we go?' he said.

'As you like,' she replied.

They were soon out of the little town, and running through the uneven

lanes of the country. Ursula nestled near him, into his constant warmth,

and watched the pale-lit revelation racing ahead, the visible night.

Sometimes it was a wide old road, with grass-spaces on either side, flying

magic and elfin in the greenish illumination, sometimes it was trees

looming overhead, sometimes it was bramble bushes, sometimes the

walls of a crew-yard and the butt of a barn.

'Are you going to Shortlands to dinner?' Ursula asked him suddenly. He

started.'Good God!' he said. 'Shortlands! Never again. Not that. Besides we

should be too late.'

'Where are we going then—to the Mill?'

'If you like. Pity to go anywhere on this good dark night. Pity to come out

of it, really. Pity we can't stop in the good darkness. It is better than

anything ever would be—this good immediate darkness.'

She sat wondering. The car lurched and swayed. She knew there was no

leaving him, the darkness held them both and contained them, it was not

to be surpassed Besides she had a full mystic knowledge of his suave

loins of darkness, dark-clad and suave, and in this knowledge there was

some of the inevitability and the beauty of fate, fate which one asks for,

which one accepts in full.

He sat still like an Egyptian Pharoah, driving the car. He felt as if he were

seated in immemorial potency, like the great carven statues of real

Egypt, as real and as fulfilled with subtle strength, as these are, with a

vague inscrutable smile on the lips. He knew what it was to have the

strange and magical current of force in his back and loins, and down his

legs, force so perfect that it stayed him immobile, and left his face subtly,

mindlessly smiling. He knew what it was to be awake and potent in that

other basic mind, the deepest physical mind. And from this source he

had a pure and magic control, magical, mystical, a force in darkness, like

electricity.

It was very difficult to speak, it was so perfect to sit in this pure living

silence, subtle, full of unthinkable knowledge and unthinkable force,

upheld immemorially in timeless force, like the immobile, supremely

potent Egyptians, seated forever in their living, subtle silence.

'We need not go home,' he said. 'This car has seats that let down and

make a bed, and we can lift the hood.'

She was glad and frightened. She cowered near to him.

'But what about them at home?' she said.

'Send a telegram.'Nothing more was said. They ran on in silence. But with a sort of second

consciousness he steered the car towards a destination. For he had the

free intelligence to direct his own ends. His arms and his breast and his

head were rounded and living like those of the Greek, he had not the

unawakened straight arms of the Egyptian, nor the sealed, slumbering

head. A lambent intelligence played secondarily above his pure Egyptian

concentration in darkness.

They came to a village that lined along the road. The car crept slowly

along, until he saw the post-office. Then he pulled up.

'I will send a telegram to your father,' he said. 'I will merely say

"spending the night in town," shall I?'

'Yes,' she answered. She did not want to be disturbed into taking

thought.

She watched him move into the post-office. It was also a shop, she saw.

Strange, he was. Even as he went into the lighted, public place he

remained dark and magic, the living silence seemed the body of reality in

him, subtle, potent, indiscoverable. There he was! In a strange uplift of

elation she saw him, the being never to be revealed, awful in its potency,

mystic and real. This dark, subtle reality of him, never to be translated,

liberated her into perfection, her own perfected being. She too was dark

and fulfilled in silence.

He came out, throwing some packages into the car.

'There is some bread, and cheese, and raisins, and apples, and hard

chocolate,' he said, in his voice that was as if laughing, because of the

unblemished stillness and force which was the reality in him. She would

have to touch him. To speak, to see, was nothing. It was a travesty to look

and to comprehend the man there. Darkness and silence must fall

perfectly on her, then she could know mystically, in unrevealed touch.

She must lightly, mindlessly connect with him, have the knowledge

which is death of knowledge, the reality of surety in not-knowing.

Soon they had run on again into the darkness. She did not ask where

they were going, she did not care. She sat in a fullness and a pure

potency that was like apathy, mindless and immobile. She was next to

him, and hung in a pure rest, as a star is hung, balanced unthinkably.Still there remained a dark lambency of anticipation. She would touch

him. With perfect fine finger-tips of reality she would touch the reality in

him, the suave, pure, untranslatable reality of his loins of darkness. To

touch, mindlessly in darkness to come in pure touching upon the living

reality of him, his suave perfect loins and thighs of darkness, this was her

sustaining anticipation.

And he too waited in the magical steadfastness of suspense, for her to

take this knowledge of him as he had taken it of her. He knew her darkly,

with the fullness of dark knowledge. Now she would know him, and he

too would be liberated. He would be night-free, like an Egyptian,

steadfast in perfectly suspended equilibrium, pure mystic nodality of

physical being. They would give each other this star-equilibrium which

alone is freedom.

She saw that they were running among trees—great old trees with dying

bracken undergrowth. The palish, gnarled trunks showed ghostly, and

like old priests in the hovering distance, the fern rose magical and

mysterious. It was a night all darkness, with low cloud. The motor-car

advanced slowly.

'Where are we?' she whispered.

'In Sherwood Forest.'

It was evident he knew the place. He drove softly, watching. Then they

came to a green road between the trees. They turned cautiously round,

and were advancing between the oaks of the forest, down a green lane.

The green lane widened into a little circle of grass, where there was a

small trickle of water at the bottom of a sloping bank. The car stopped.

'We will stay here,' he said, 'and put out the lights.'

He extinguished the lamps at once, and it was pure night, with shadows

of trees like realities of other, nightly being. He threw a rug on to the

bracken, and they sat in stillness and mindless silence. There were faint

sounds from the wood, but no disturbance, no possible disturbance, the

world was under a strange ban, a new mystery had supervened. They

threw off their clothes, and he gathered her to him, and found her, found

the pure lambent reality of her forever invisible flesh. Quenched,

inhuman, his fingers upon her unrevealed nudity were the fingers ofsilence upon silence, the body of mysterious night upon the body of

mysterious night, the night masculine and feminine, never to be seen

with the eye, or known with the mind, only known as a palpable

revelation of living otherness.

She had her desire of him, she touched, she received the maximum of

unspeakable communication in touch, dark, subtle, positively silent, a

magnificent gift and give again, a perfect acceptance and yielding, a

mystery, the reality of that which can never be known, vital, sensual

reality that can never be transmuted into mind content, but remains

outside, living body of darkness and silence and subtlety, the mystic

body of reality. She had her desire fulfilled. He had his desire fulfilled.

For she was to him what he was to her, the immemorial magnificence of

mystic, palpable, real otherness.

They slept the chilly night through under the hood of the car, a night of

unbroken sleep. It was already high day when he awoke. They looked at

each other and laughed, then looked away, filled with darkness and

secrecy. Then they kissed and remembered the magnificence of the

night. It was so magnificent, such an inheritance of a universe of dark

reality, that they were afraid to seem to remember. They hid away the

remembrance and the knowledge.