第 50 页

corrosive salt around the last substance of his being,

destroying him, destroying him in the kiss. And her soul

crystallized with triumph, and his soul was dissolved with agony

and annihilation. So she held him there, the victim, consumed,

annihilated. She had triumphed: he was not any more.

Gradually she began to come to herself. Gradually a sort of

daytime consciousness came back to her. Suddenly the night was

struck back into its old, accustomed, mild reality. Gradually

she realized that the night was common and ordinary, that the

great, blistering, transcendent night did not really exist. She

was overcome with slow horror. Where was she? What was this

nothingness she felt? The nothingness was Skrebensky. Was he

really there?--who was he? He was silent, he was not there.

What had happened? Had she been mad: what horrible thing had

possessed her? She was filled with overpowering fear of herself,

overpowering desire that it should not be, that other burning,

corrosive self. She was seized with a frenzied desire that what

had been should never be remembered, never be thought of, never

be for one moment allowed possible. She denied it with all her

might. With all her might she turned away from it. She was good,

she was loving. Her heart was warm, her blood was dark and warm

and soft. She laid her hand caressively on Anton's shoulder.

"Isn't it lovely?" she said, softly, coaxingly, caressingly.

And she began to caress him to life again. For he was dead. And

she intended that he should never know, never become aware of

what had been. She would bring him back from the dead without

leaving him one trace of fact to remember his annihilation

by.

She exerted all her ordinary, warm self, she touched him, she

did him homage of loving awareness. And gradually he came back

to her, another man. She was soft and winning and caressing. She

was his servant, his adoring slave. And she restored the whole

shell of him. She restored the whole form and figure of him. But

the core was gone. His pride was bolstered up, his blood ran

once more in pride. But there was no core to him: as a distinct

male he had no core. His triumphant, flaming, overweening heart

of the intrinsic male would never beat again. He would be

subject now, reciprocal, never the indomitable thing with a core

of overweening, unabateable fire. She had abated that fire, she

had broken him.

But she caressed him. She would not have him remember what

had been. She would not remember herself.

"Kiss me, Anton, kiss me," she pleaded.

He kissed her, but she knew he could not touch her. His arms

were round her, but they had not got her. She could feel his

mouth upon her, but she was not at all compelled by it.

"Kiss me," she whispered, in acute distress, "kiss me."

And he kissed her as she bade him, but his heart was hollow.

She took his kisses, outwardly. But her soul was empty and

finished.

Looking away, she saw the delicate glint of oats dangling

from the side of the stack, in the moonlight, something proud

and royal, and quite impersonal. She had been proud with them,

where they were, she had been also. But in this temporary warm

world of the commonplace, she was a kind, good girl. She reached

out yearningly for goodness and affection. She wanted to be kind

and good.

They went home through the night that was all pale and

glowing around, with shadows and glimmerings and presences.

Distinctly, she saw the flowers in the hedge-bottoms, she saw

the thin, raked sheaves flung white upon the thorny hedge.

How beautiful, how beautiful it was! She thought with anguish

how wildly happy she was to-night, since he had kissed her. But

as he walked with his arm round her waist, she turned with a

great offering of herself to the night that glistened

tremendous, a magnificent godly moon white and candid as a

bridegroom, flowers silvery and transformed filling up the

shadows.

He kissed her again, under the yew trees at home, and she

left him. She ran from the intrusion of her parents at home, to

her bedroom, where, looking out on the moonlit country, she

stretched up her arms, hard, hard, in bliss, agony offering

herself to the blond, debonair presence of the night.

But there was a wound of sorrow, she had hurt herself, as if

she had bruised herself, in annihilating him. She covered up her

two young breasts with her hands, covering them to herself; and

covering herself with herself, she crouched in bed, to

sleep.

In the morning the sun shone, she got up strong and dancing.

Skrebensky was still at the Marsh. He was coming to church. How

lovely, how amazing life was! On the fresh Sunday morning she

went out to the garden, among the yellows and the deep-vibrating

reds of autumn, she smelled the earth and felt the gossamer, the

cornfields across the country were pale and unreal, everywhere

was the intense silence of the Sunday morning, filled with

unacquainted noises. She smelled the body of the earth, it

seemed to stir its powerful flank beneath her as she stood. In

the bluish air came the powerful exudation, the peace was the

peace of strong, exhausted breathing, the reds and yellows and

the white gleam of stubble were the quivers and motion of the

last subsiding transports and clear bliss of fulfilment.

The church-bells were ringing when he came. She looked up in

keen anticipation at his entry. But he was troubled and his

pride was hurt. He seemed very much clothed, she was conscious

of his tailored suit.

"Wasn't it lovely last night?" she whispered to him.

"Yes," he said. But his face did not open nor become

free.

The service and the singing in church that morning passed

unnoticed by her. She saw the coloured glow of the windows, the

forms of the worshippers. Only she glanced at the book of

Genesis, which was her favourite book in the Bible.

"And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be

fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.

"And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every

beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all

that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes in the sea;

into your hand are they delivered.

"Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even

as the green herb have I given you all things."

But Ursula was not moved by the history this morning.

Multiplying and replenishing the earth bored her. Altogether it

seemed merely a vulgar and stock-raising sort of business. She

was left quite cold by man's stock-breeding lordship over beast

and fishes.

"And you, be ye fruitful and multiply; bring forth abundantly

in the earth, and multiply therein."

In her soul she mocked at this multiplication, every cow

becoming two cows, every turnip ten turnips.

"And God said; This is the token of the covenant which I make

between me and you and every living creature that is with you,

for perpetual generations;

"I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a token of a

covenant between me and the earth.

"And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the

earth, that a bow shall be seen in the cloud;

"And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you

and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall no

more become a flood to destroy all flesh."

"Destroy all flesh," why "flesh" in particular? Who was this

lord of flesh? After all, how big was the Flood? Perhaps a few

dryads and fauns had just run into the hills and the farther

valleys and woods, frightened, but most had gone on blithely

unaware of any flood at all, unless the nymphs should tell them.

It pleased Ursula to think of the naiads in Asia Minor meeting

the nereids at the mouth of the streams, where the sea washed

against the fresh, sweet tide, and calling to their sisters the

news of Noah's Flood. They would tell amusing accounts of Noah

in his ark. Some nymphs would relate how they had hung on the

side of the ark, peeped in, and heard Noah and Shem and Ham and

Japeth, sitting in their place under the rain, saying, how they

four were the only men on earth now, because the Lord had

drowned all the rest, so that they four would have everything to

themselves, and be masters of every thing, sub-tenants under the

great Proprietor.

Ursula wished she had been a nymph. She would have laughed

through the window of the ark, and flicked drops of the flood at

Noah, before she drifted away to people who were less important

in their Proprietor and their Flood.

What was God, after all? If maggots in a dead dog be but God

kissing carrion, what then is not God? She was surfeited of this

God. She was weary of the Ursula Brangwen who felt troubled

about God. What ever God was, He was, and there was no need for

her to trouble about Him. She felt she had now all licence.

Skrebensky sat beside her, listening to the sermon, to the

voice of law and order. "The very hairs of your head are all

numbered." He did not believe it. He believed his own things

were quite at his own disposal. You could do as you liked with

your own things, so long as you left other people's alone.

Ursula caressed him and made love to him. Nevertheless he

knew she wanted to react upon him and to destroy his being. She

was not with him, she was against him. But her making love to

him, her complete admiration of him, in open life, gratified

him.

She caught him out of himself, and they were lovers, in a

young, romantic, almost fantastic way. He gave her a little

ring. They put it in Rhine wine, in their glass, and she drank,

then he drank. They drank till the ring lay exposed at the

bottom of the glass. Then she took the simple jewel, and tied it

on a thread round her neck, where she wore it.

He asked her for a photograph when he was going away. She

went in great excitement to the photographer, with five

shillings. The result was an ugly little picture of herself with

her mouth on one side. She wondered over it and admired it.

He saw only the live face of the girl. The picture hurt him.

He kept it, he always remembered it, but he could scarcely bear

to see it. There was a hurt to his soul in the clear, fearless

face that was touched with abstraction. Its abstraction was

certainly away from him.

Then war was declared with the Boers in South Africa, and

everywhere was a fizz of excitement. He wrote that he might have

to go. And he sent her a box of sweets.

She was slightly dazed at the thought of his going to the

war, not knowing how to feel. It was a sort of romantic

situation that she knew so well in fiction she hardly understood

it in fact. Underneath a top elation was a sort of dreariness,

deep, ashy disappointment.

However, she secreted the sweets under her bed, and ate them

all herself, when she went to bed, and when she woke in the

morning. All the time she felt very guilty and ashamed, but she

simply did not want to share them.

That box of sweets remained stuck in her mind afterwards. Why

had she secreted them and eaten them every one? Why? She did not

feel guilty--she only knew she ought to feel guilty. And

she could not make up her mind. Curiously monumental that box of

sweets stood up, now it was empty. It was a crux for her. What

was she to think of it?

The idea of war altogether made her feel uneasy, uneasy. When

men began organized fighting with each other it seemed to her as

if the poles of the universe were cracking, and the whole might

go tumbling into the bottomless pit. A horrible bottomless

feeling she had. Yet of course there was the minted

superscription of romance and honour and even religion about

war. She was very confused.

Skrebensky was busy, he could not come to see her. She asked

for no assurance, no security. What was between them, was, and

could not be altered by avowals. She knew that by instinct, she

trusted to the intrinsic reality.

But she felt an agony of helplessness. She could do nothing.

Vaguely she knew the huge powers of the world rolling and

crashing together, darkly, clumsily, stupidly, yet colossal, so

that one was brushed along almost as dust. Helpless, helpless,

swirling like dust! Yet she wanted so hard to rebel, to rage, to

fight. But with what?

Could she with her hands fight the face of the earth, beat

the hills in their places? Yet her breast wanted to fight, to

fight the whole world. And these two small hands were all she

had to do it with.

The months went by, and it was Christmas--the snowdrops

came. There was a little hollow in the wood near Cossethay,

where snowdrops grew wild. She sent him some in a box, and he

wrote her a quick little note of thanks--very grateful and

wistful he seemed. Her eyes grew childlike and puzzled. Puzzled

from day to day she went on, helpless, carried along by all that

must happen.

He went about at his duties, giving himself up to them. At

the bottom of his heart his self, the soul that aspired and had

true hope of self-effectuation lay as dead, still-born, a dead

weight in his womb. Who was he, to hold important his personal

connection? What did a man matter personally? He was just a

brick in the whole great social fabric, the nation, the modern

humanity. His personal movements were small, and entirely

subsidiary. The whole form must be ensured, not ruptured, for

any personal reason whatsoever, since no personal reason could

justify such a breaking. What did personal intimacy matter? One

had to fill one's place in the whole, the great scheme of man's

elaborate civilization, that was all. The Whole

mattered--but the unit, the person, had no importance,

except as he represented the Whole.

So Skrebensky left the girl out and went his way, serving

what he had to serve, and enduring what he had to endure,

without remark. To his own intrinsic life, he was dead. And he

could not rise again from the dead. His soul lay in the tomb.

His life lay in the established order of things. He had his five