They arrived at a large block of buildings, went up in a lift, and presently a door was being opened for them by a Hindu. Gerald looked in surprise, wondering if he were a gentleman, one of the Hindus down from Oxford, perhaps. But no, he was the man-servant.
'Make tea, Hasan,' said Halliday.
'There is a room for me?' said Birkin.
To both of which questions the man grinned, and murmured.
He made Gerald uncertain, because, being tall and slender and reticent, he looked like a gentleman.
'Who is your servant?' he asked of Halliday. 'He looks a swell.'
'Oh yes—that's because he's dressed in another man's clothes. He's anything but a swell, really. We found him in the road, starving. So I took him here, and another man gave him clothes. He's anything but what he seems to be—his only advantage is that he can't speak English and can't understand it, so he's perfectly safe.'
'He's very dirty,' said the young Russian swiftly and silently.
Directly, the man appeared in the doorway.
'What is it?' said Halliday.
The Hindu grinned, and murmured shyly:
'Want to speak to master.'
Gerald watched curiously. The fellow in the doorway was goodlooking and clean-limbed, his bearing was calm, he looked elegant, aristocratic. Yet he was half a savage, grinning foolishly. Halliday went out into the corridor to speak with him.
'What?' they heard his voice. 'What? What do you say? Tell me again. What? Want money? Want MORE money? But what do you want money for?' There was the confused sound of the Hindu's talking, then Halliday appeared in the room, smiling also foolishly, and saying:
'He says he wants money to buy underclothing. Can anybody lend me a shilling? Oh thanks, a shilling will do to buy all the underclothes he wants.' He took the money from Gerald and went out into the passage again, where they heard him saying, 'You can't want more money, you had three and six yesterday. You mustn't ask for any more. Bring the tea in quickly.'
Gerald looked round the room. It was an ordinary London sitting-room in a flat, evidently taken furnished, rather common and ugly. But there were several negro statues, wood-carvings from West Africa, strange and disturbing, the carved negroes looked almost like the foetus of a human being. One was a woman sitting naked in a strange posture, and looking tortured, her abdomen stuck out. The young Russian explained that she was sitting in child-birth, clutching the ends of the band that hung from her neck, one in each hand, so that she could bear down, and help labour. The strange, transfixed, rudimentary face of the woman again reminded Gerald of a foetus, it was also rather wonderful, conveying the suggestion of the extreme of physical sensation, beyond the limits of mental consciousness.
'Aren't they rather obscene?' he asked, disapproving.
'I don't know,' murmured the other rapidly. 'I have never defined the obscene. I think they are very good.'
Gerald turned away. There were one or two new pictures in the room, in the Futurist manner; there was a large piano. And these, with some ordinary London lodging-house furniture of the better sort, completed the whole.
The Pussum had taken off her hat and coat, and was seated on the sofa. She was evidently quite at home in the house, but uncertain, suspended. She did not quite know her position. Her alliance for the time being was with Gerald, and she did not know how far this was admitted by any of the men. She was considering how she should carry off the situation. She was determined to have her experience. Now, at this eleventh hour, she was not to be baulked. Her face was flushed as with battle, her eye was brooding but inevitable.
The man came in with tea and a bottle of Kummel. He set the tray on a little table before the couch.
'Pussum,' said Halliday, 'pour out the tea.'
She did not move.
'Won't you do it?' Halliday repeated, in a state of nervous apprehension.
'I've not come back here as it was before,' she said. 'I only came because the others wanted me to, not for your sake.'
'My dear Pussum, you know you are your own mistress. I don't want you to do anything but use the flat for your own convenience—you know it, I've told you so many times.'
She did not reply, but silently, reservedly reached for the tea-pot. They all sat round and drank tea. Gerald could feel the electric connection between him and her so strongly, as she sat there quiet and withheld, that another set of conditions altogether had come to pass. Her silence and her immutability perplexed him. HOW was he going to come to her? And yet he felt it quite inevitable. He trusted completely to the current that held them. His perplexity was only superficial, new conditions reigned, the old were surpassed; here one did as one was possessed to do, no matter what it was.
Birkin rose. It was nearly one o'clock.
'I'm going to bed,' he said. 'Gerald, I'll ring you up in the morning at your place or you ring me up here.'
'Right,' said Gerald, and Birkin went out.
When he was well gone, Halliday said in a stimulated voice, to Gerald:
'I say, won't you stay here—oh do!'
'You can't put everybody up,' said Gerald.
'Oh but I can, perfectly—there are three more beds besides mine—do stay, won't you. Everything is quite ready—there is always somebody here—I always put people up—I love having the house crowded.'
'But there are only two rooms,' said the Pussum, in a cold, hostile voice, 'now Rupert's here.'
'I know there are only two rooms,' said Halliday, in his odd, high way of speaking. 'But what does that matter?'
He was smiling rather foolishly, and he spoke eagerly, with an insinuating determination.
'Julius and I will share one room,' said the Russian in his discreet, precise voice. Halliday and he were friends since Eton.
'It's very simple,' said Gerald, rising and pressing back his arms, stretching himself. Then he went again to look at one of the pictures. Every one of his limbs was turgid with electric force, and his back was tense like a tiger's, with slumbering fire. He was very proud.
The Pussum rose. She gave a black look at Halliday, black and deadly, which brought the rather foolishly pleased smile to that young man's face. Then she went out of the room, with a cold good-night to them all generally.
There was a brief interval, they heard a door close, then Maxim said, in his refined voice:
'That's all right.'
He looked significantly at Gerald, and said again, with a silent nod:
'That's all right—you're all right.'
Gerald looked at the smooth, ruddy, comely face, and at the strange, significant eyes, and it seemed as if the voice of the young Russian, so small and perfect, sounded in the blood rather than in the air.
'I'M all right then,' said Gerald.
'Yes! Yes! You're all right,' said the Russian.
Halliday continued to smile, and to say nothing.
Suddenly the Pussum appeared again in the door, her small, childish face looking sullen and vindictive.
'I know you want to catch me out,' came her cold, rather resonant voice. 'But I don't care, I don't care how much you catch me out.'
She turned and was gone again. She had been wearing a loose dressing-gown of purple silk, tied round her waist. She looked so small and childish and vulnerable, almost pitiful. And yet the black looks of her eyes made Gerald feel drowned in some potent darkness that almost frightened him.
The men lit another cigarette and talked casually.
CHAPTER VII.
FETISH
In the morning Gerald woke late. He had slept heavily. Pussum was still asleep, sleeping childishly and pathetically. There was something small and curled up and defenceless about her, that roused an unsatisfied flame of passion in the young man's blood, a devouring avid pity. He looked at her again. But it would be too cruel to wake her. He subdued himself, and went away.
Hearing voices coming from the sitting-room, Halliday talking to Libidnikov, he went to the door and glanced in. He had on a silk wrap of a beautiful bluish colour, with an amethyst hem.
To his surprise he saw the two young men by the fire, stark naked. Halliday looked up, rather pleased.
'Good-morning,' he said. 'Oh—did you want towels?' And stark naked he went out into the hall, striding a strange, white figure between the unliving furniture. He came back with the towels, and took his former position, crouching seated before the fire on the fender.
'Don't you love to feel the fire on your skin?' he said.
'It IS rather pleasant,' said Gerald.
'How perfectly splendid it must be to be in a climate where one could do without clothing altogether,' said Halliday.
'Yes,' said Gerald, 'if there weren't so many things that sting and bite.'
'That's a disadvantage,' murmured Maxim.
Gerald looked at him, and with a slight revulsion saw the human animal, golden skinned and bare, somehow humiliating. Halliday was different. He had a rather heavy, slack, broken beauty, white and firm. He was like a Christ in a Pieta. The animal was not there at all, only the heavy, broken beauty. And Gerald realised how Halliday's eyes were beautiful too, so blue and warm and confused, broken also in their expression. The fireglow fell on his heavy, rather bowed shoulders, he sat slackly crouched on the fender, his face was uplifted, weak, perhaps slightly disintegrate, and yet with a moving beauty of its own.
'Of course,' said Maxim, 'you've been in hot countries where the people go about naked.'
'Oh really!' exclaimed Halliday. 'Where?'
'South America—Amazon,' said Gerald.
'Oh but how perfectly splendid! It's one of the things I want most to do—to live from day to day without EVER putting on any sort of clothing whatever. If I could do that, I should feel I had lived.'
'But why?' said Gerald. 'I can't see that it makes so much difference.'
'Oh, I think it would be perfectly splendid. I'm sure life would be entirely another thing—entirely different, and perfectly wonderful.'
'But why?' asked Gerald. 'Why should it?'
'Oh—one would FEEL things instead of merely looking at them. I should feel the air move against me, and feel the things I touched, instead of having only to look at them. I'm sure life is all wrong because it has become much too visual—we can neither hear nor feel nor understand, we can only see. I'm sure that is entirely wrong.'
'Yes, that is true, that is true,' said the Russian.
Gerald glanced at him, and saw him, his suave, golden coloured body with the black hair growing fine and freely, like tendrils, and his limbs like smooth plant-stems. He was so healthy and well-made, why did he make one ashamed, why did one feel repelled? Why should Gerald even dislike it, why did it seem to him to detract from his own dignity. Was that all a human being amounted to? So uninspired! thought Gerald.
Birkin suddenly appeared in the doorway, in white pyjamas and wet hair, and a towel over his arm. He was aloof and white, and somehow evanescent.
'There's the bath-room now, if you want it,' he said generally, and was going away again, when Gerald called:
'I say, Rupert!'
'What?' The single white figure appeared again, a presence in the room.
'What do you think of that figure there? I want to know,' Gerald asked.
Birkin, white and strangely ghostly, went over to the carved figure of the negro woman in labour. Her nude, protuberant body crouched in a strange, clutching posture, her hands gripping the ends of the band, above her breast.
'It is art,' said Birkin.
'Very beautiful, it's very beautiful,' said the Russian.
They all drew near to look. Gerald looked at the group of men, the Russian golden and like a water-plant, Halliday tall and heavily, brokenly beautiful, Birkin very white and indefinite, not to be assigned, as he looked closely at the carven woman. Strangely elated, Gerald also lifted his eyes to the face of the wooden figure. And his heart contracted.
He saw vividly with his spirit the grey, forward-stretching face of the negro woman, African and tense, abstracted in utter physical stress. It was a terrible face, void, peaked, abstracted almost into meaninglessness by the weight of sensation beneath. He saw the Pussum in it. As in a dream, he knew her.
'Why is it art?' Gerald asked, shocked, resentful.
'It conveys a complete truth,' said Birkin. 'It contains the whole truth of that state, whatever you feel about it.'
'But you can't call it HIGH art,' said Gerald.
'High! There are centuries and hundreds of centuries of development in a straight line, behind that carving; it is an awful pitch of culture, of a definite sort.'
'What culture?' Gerald asked, in opposition. He hated the sheer African thing.
'Pure culture in sensation, culture in the physical consciousness, really ultimate PHYSICAL consciousness, mindless, utterly sensual. It is so sensual as to be final, supreme.'
But Gerald resented it. He wanted to keep certain illusions, certain ideas like clothing.
'You like the wrong things, Rupert,' he said, 'things against yourself.'
'Oh, I know, this isn't everything,' Birkin replied, moving away.
When Gerald went back to his room from the bath, he also carried his clothes. He was so conventional at home, that when he was really away, and on the loose, as now, he enjoyed nothing so much as full outrageousness. So he strode with his blue silk wrap over his arm and felt defiant.
The Pussum lay in her bed, motionless, her round, dark eyes like black, unhappy pools. He could only see the black, bottomless pools of her eyes. Perhaps she suffered. The sensation of her inchoate suffering roused the old sharp flame in him, a mordant pity, a passion almost of cruelty.
'You are awake now,' he said to her.
'What time is it?' came her muted voice.
She seemed to flow back, almost like liquid, from his approach, to sink helplessly away from him. Her inchoate look of a violated slave, whose fulfilment lies in her further and further violation, made his nerves quiver with acutely desirable sensation. After all, his was the only will, she was the passive substance of his will. He tingled with the subtle, biting sensation. And then he knew, he must go away from her, there must be pure separation between them.
