CHAPTER 30. SNOWED UP

When Ursula and Birkin were gone, Gudrun felt herself free in her

contest with Gerald. As they grew more used to each other, he seemed to

press upon her more and more. At first she could manage him, so that

her own will was always left free. But very soon, he began to ignore her

female tactics, he dropped his respect for her whims and her privacies,

he began to exert his own will blindly, without submitting to hers.

Already a vital conflict had set in, which frightened them both. But he

was alone, whilst already she had begun to cast round for external

resource.

When Ursula had gone, Gudrun felt her own existence had become stark

and elemental. She went and crouched alone in her bedroom, looking out

of the window at the big, flashing stars. In front was the faint shadow of

the mountain-knot. That was the pivot. She felt strange and inevitable,

as if she were centred upon the pivot of all existence, there was no

further reality.

Presently Gerald opened the door. She knew he would not be long before

he came. She was rarely alone, he pressed upon her like a frost,

deadening her.

'Are you alone in the dark?' he said. And she could tell by his tone he

resented it, he resented this isolation she had drawn round herself. Yet,

feeling static and inevitable, she was kind towards him.

'Would you like to light the candle?' she asked.

He did not answer, but came and stood behind her, in the darkness.

'Look,' she said, 'at that lovely star up there. Do you know its name?'

He crouched beside her, to look through the low window.

'No,' he said. 'It is very fine.'

'ISN'T it beautiful! Do you notice how it darts different coloured fires—it

flashes really superbly—'They remained in silence. With a mute, heavy gesture she put her hand

on his knee, and took his hand.

'Are you regretting Ursula?' he asked.

'No, not at all,' she said. Then, in a slow mood, she asked:

'How much do you love me?'

He stiffened himself further against her.

'How much do you think I do?' he asked.

'I don't know,' she replied.

'But what is your opinion?' he asked.

There was a pause. At length, in the darkness, came her voice, hard and

indifferent:

'Very little indeed,' she said coldly, almost flippant.

His heart went icy at the sound of her voice.

'Why don't I love you?' he asked, as if admitting the truth of her

accusation, yet hating her for it.

'I don't know why you don't—I've been good to you. You were in a

FEARFUL state when you came to me.'

Her heart was beating to suffocate her, yet she was strong and

unrelenting.

'When was I in a fearful state?' he asked.

'When you first came to me. I HAD to take pity on you. But it was never

love.'

It was that statement 'It was never love,' which sounded in his ears with

madness.

'Why must you repeat it so often, that there is no love?' he said in a voice

strangled with rage.

'Well you don't THINK you love, do you?' she asked.He was silent with cold passion of anger.

'You don't think you CAN love me, do you?' she repeated almost with a

sneer.

'No,' he said.

'You know you never HAVE loved me, don't you?'

'I don't know what you mean by the word 'love,' he replied.

'Yes, you do. You know all right that you have never loved me. Have you,

do you think?'

'No,' he said, prompted by some barren spirit of truthfulness and

obstinacy.

'And you never WILL love me,' she said finally, 'will you?'

There was a diabolic coldness in her, too much to bear.

'No,' he said.

'Then,' she replied, 'what have you against me!'

He was silent in cold, frightened rage and despair. 'If only I could kill

her,' his heart was whispering repeatedly. 'If only I could kill her—I

should be free.'

It seemed to him that death was the only severing of this Gordian knot.

'Why do you torture me?' he said.

She flung her arms round his neck.

'Ah, I don't want to torture you,' she said pityingly, as if she were

comforting a child. The impertinence made his veins go cold, he was

insensible. She held her arms round his neck, in a triumph of pity. And

her pity for him was as cold as stone, its deepest motive was hate of him,

and fear of his power over her, which she must always counterfoil.

'Say you love me,' she pleaded. 'Say you will love me for ever—won't

you—won't you?'But it was her voice only that coaxed him. Her senses were entirely apart

from him, cold and destructive of him. It was her overbearing WILL that

insisted.

'Won't you say you'll love me always?' she coaxed. 'Say it, even if it isn't

true—say it Gerald, do.'

'I will love you always,' he repeated, in real agony, forcing the words out.

She gave him a quick kiss.

'Fancy your actually having said it,' she said with a touch of raillery.

He stood as if he had been beaten.

'Try to love me a little more, and to want me a little less,' she said, in a

half contemptuous, half coaxing tone.

The darkness seemed to be swaying in waves across his mind, great

waves of darkness plunging across his mind. It seemed to him he was

degraded at the very quick, made of no account.

'You mean you don't want me?' he said.

'You are so insistent, and there is so little grace in you, so little fineness.

You are so crude. You break me—you only waste me—it is horrible to

me.'

'Horrible to you?' he repeated.

'Yes. Don't you think I might have a room to myself, now Ursula has

gone? You can say you want a dressing room.'

'You do as you like—you can leave altogether if you like,' he managed to

articulate.

'Yes, I know that,' she replied. 'So can you. You can leave me whenever

you like—without notice even.'

The great tides of darkness were swinging across his mind, he could

hardly stand upright. A terrible weariness overcame him, he felt he must

lie on the floor. Dropping off his clothes, he got into bed, and lay like a

man suddenly overcome by drunkenness, the darkness lifting andplunging as if he were lying upon a black, giddy sea. He lay still in this

strange, horrific reeling for some time, purely unconscious.

At length she slipped from her own bed and came over to him. He

remained rigid, his back to her. He was all but unconscious.

She put her arms round his terrifying, insentient body, and laid her

cheek against his hard shoulder.

'Gerald,' she whispered. 'Gerald.'

There was no change in him. She caught him against her. She pressed

her breasts against his shoulders, she kissed his shoulder, through the

sleeping jacket. Her mind wondered, over his rigid, unliving body. She

was bewildered, and insistent, only her will was set for him to speak to

her.

'Gerald, my dear!' she whispered, bending over him, kissing his ear.

Her warm breath playing, flying rhythmically over his ear, seemed to

relax the tension. She could feel his body gradually relaxing a little,

losing its terrifying, unnatural rigidity. Her hands clutched his limbs, his

muscles, going over him spasmodically.

The hot blood began to flow again through his veins, his limbs relaxed.

'Turn round to me,' she whispered, forlorn with insistence and triumph.

So at last he was given again, warm and flexible. He turned and gathered

her in his arms. And feeling her soft against him, so perfectly and

wondrously soft and recipient, his arms tightened on her. She was as if

crushed, powerless in him. His brain seemed hard and invincible now

like a jewel, there was no resisting him.

His passion was awful to her, tense and ghastly, and impersonal, like a

destruction, ultimate. She felt it would kill her. She was being killed.

'My God, my God,' she cried, in anguish, in his embrace, feeling her life

being killed within her. And when he was kissing her, soothing her, her

breath came slowly, as if she were really spent, dying.

'Shall I die, shall I die?' she repeated to herself.

And in the night, and in him, there was no answer to the question.And yet, next day, the fragment of her which was not destroyed remained

intact and hostile, she did not go away, she remained to finish the

holiday, admitting nothing. He scarcely ever left her alone, but followed

her like a shadow, he was like a doom upon her, a continual 'thou shalt,'

'thou shalt not.' Sometimes it was he who seemed strongest, whist she

was almost gone, creeping near the earth like a spent wind; sometimes it

was the reverse. But always it was this eternal see-saw, one destroyed

that the other might exist, one ratified because the other was nulled.

'In the end,' she said to herself, 'I shall go away from him.'

'I can be free of her,' he said to himself in his paroxysms of suffering.

And he set himself to be free. He even prepared to go away, to leave her

in the lurch. But for the first time there was a flaw in his will.

'Where shall I go?' he asked himself.

'Can't you be self-sufficient?' he replied to himself, putting himself upon

his pride.

'Self-sufficient!' he repeated.

It seemed to him that Gudrun was sufficient unto herself, closed round

and completed, like a thing in a case. In the calm, static reason of his

soul, he recognised this, and admitted it was her right, to be closed

round upon herself, self-complete, without desire. He realised it, he

admitted it, it only needed one last effort on his own part, to win for

himself the same completeness. He knew that it only needed one

convulsion of his will for him to be able to turn upon himself also, to

close upon himself as a stone fixes upon itself, and is impervious, self-

completed, a thing isolated.

This knowledge threw him into a terrible chaos. Because, however much

he might mentally WILL to be immune and self-complete, the desire for

this state was lacking, and he could not create it. He could see that, to

exist at all, he must be perfectly free of Gudrun, leave her if she wanted

to be left, demand nothing of her, have no claim upon her.

But then, to have no claim upon her, he must stand by himself, in sheer

nothingness. And his brain turned to nought at the idea. It was a state of

nothingness. On the other hand, he might give in, and fawn to her. Or,finally, he might kill her. Or he might become just indifferent,

purposeless, dissipated, momentaneous. But his nature was too serious,

not gay enough or subtle enough for mocking licentiousness.

A strange rent had been torn in him; like a victim that is torn open and

given to the heavens, so he had been torn apart and given to Gudrun.

How should he close again? This wound, this strange, infinitely-sensitive

opening of his soul, where he was exposed, like an open flower, to all the

universe, and in which he was given to his complement, the other, the

unknown, this wound, this disclosure, this unfolding of his own covering,

leaving him incomplete, limited, unfinished, like an open flower under

the sky, this was his cruellest joy. Why then should he forego it? Why

should he close up and become impervious, immune, like a partial thing

in a sheath, when he had broken forth, like a seed that has germinated,

to issue forth in being, embracing the unrealised heavens.

He would keep the unfinished bliss of his own yearning even through the

torture she inflicted upon him. A strange obstinacy possessed him. He

would not go away from her whatever she said or did. A strange, deathly

yearning carried him along with her. She was the determinating

influence of his very being, though she treated him with contempt,

repeated rebuffs, and denials, still he would never be gone, since in being

near her, even, he felt the quickening, the going forth in him, the release,

the knowledge of his own limitation and the magic of the promise, as

well as the mystery of his own destruction and annihilation.

She tortured the open heart of him even as he turned to her. And she was

tortured herself. It may have been her will was stronger. She felt, with

horror, as if he tore at the bud of her heart, tore it open, like an

irreverent persistent being. Like a boy who pulls off a fly's wings, or tears

open a bud to see what is in the flower, he tore at her privacy, at her very

life, he would destroy her as an immature bud, torn open, is destroyed.

She might open towards him, a long while hence, in her dreams, when

she was a pure spirit. But now she was not to be violated and ruined. She

closed against him fiercely.

They climbed together, at evening, up the high slope, to see the sunset.

In the finely breathing, keen wind they stood and watched the yellow sun

sink in crimson and disappear. Then in the east the peaks and ridgesglowed with living rose, incandescent like immortal flowers against a

brown-purple sky, a miracle, whilst down below the world was a bluish

shadow, and above, like an annunciation, hovered a rosy transport in

mid-air.

To her it was so beautiful, it was a delirium, she wanted to gather the

glowing, eternal peaks to her breast, and die. He saw them, saw they

were beautiful. But there arose no clamour in his breast, only a bitterness

that was visionary in itself. He wished the peaks were grey and

unbeautiful, so that she should not get her support from them. Why did

she betray the two of them so terribly, in embracing the glow of the

evening? Why did she leave him standing there, with the ice-wind

blowing through his heart, like death, to gratify herself among the rosy

snow-tips?

'What does the twilight matter?' he said. 'Why do you grovel before it? Is

it so important to you?'

She winced in violation and in fury.

'Go away,' she cried, 'and leave me to it. It is beautiful, beautiful,' she

sang in strange, rhapsodic tones. 'It is the most beautiful thing I have

ever seen in my life. Don't try to come between it and me. Take yourself

away, you are out of place—'

He stood back a little, and left her standing there, statue-like,

transported into the mystic glowing east. Already the rose was fading,

large white stars were flashing out. He waited. He would forego

everything but the yearning.

'That was the most perfect thing I have ever seen,' she said in cold, brutal

tones, when at last she turned round to him. 'It amazes me that you

should want to destroy it. If you can't see it yourself, why try to debar

me?' But in reality, he had destroyed it for her, she was straining after a

dead effect.

'One day,' he said, softly, looking up at her, 'I shall destroy YOU, as you

stand looking at the sunset; because you are such a liar.'

There was a soft, voluptuous promise to himself in the words. She was

chilled but arrogant.from which there was no escape. He wanted so to come to the end—he

had had enough. Yet he did not sleep.

He surged painfully up, sometimes having to cross a slope of black rock,

that was blown bare of snow. Here he was afraid of falling, very much

afraid of falling. And high up here, on the crest, moved a wind that

almost overpowered him with a sleep-heavy iciness. Only it was not here,

the end, and he must still go on. His indefinite nausea would not let him

stay.

Having gained one ridge, he saw the vague shadow of something higher

in front. Always higher, always higher. He knew he was following the

track towards the summit of the slopes, where was the marienhutte, and

the descent on the other side. But he was not really conscious. He only

wanted to go on, to go on whilst he could, to move, to keep going, that

was all, to keep going, until it was finished. He had lost all his sense of

place. And yet in the remaining instinct of life, his feet sought the track

where the skis had gone.

He slithered down a sheer snow slope. That frightened him. He had no

alpenstock, nothing. But having come safely to rest, he began to walk on,

in the illuminated darkness. It was as cold as sleep. He was between two

ridges, in a hollow. So he swerved. Should he climb the other ridge, or

wander along the hollow? How frail the thread of his being was

stretched! He would perhaps climb the ridge. The snow was firm and

simple. He went along. There was something standing out of the snow.

He approached, with dimmest curiosity.

It was a half-buried Crucifix, a little Christ under a little sloping hood, at

the top of a pole. He sheered away. Somebody was going to murder him.

He had a great dread of being murdered. But it was a dread which stood

outside him, like his own ghost.

Yet why be afraid? It was bound to happen. To be murdered! He looked

round in terror at the snow, the rocking, pale, shadowy slopes of the

upper world. He was bound to be murdered, he could see it. This was the

moment when the death was uplifted, and there was no escape.

Lord Jesus, was it then bound to be—Lord Jesus! He could feel the blow

descending, he knew he was murdered. Vaguely wandering forward, hishands lifted as if to feel what would happen, he was waiting for the

moment when he would stop, when it would cease. It was not over yet.

He had come to the hollow basin of snow, surrounded by sheer slopes

and precipices, out of which rose a track that brought one to the top of

the mountain. But he wandered unconsciously, till he slipped and fell

down, and as he fell something broke in his soul, and immediately he

went to sleep.