Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (55 page)

So, to Ursula’s ear, the tune fell out, drop by drop, from the unseen sky on to the dusky town. It was like him, 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 thighs. 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 finger-tips, 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 his 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 fulness of immediate gratification, overwhelming, outflooding 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 beetroot, 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 to-day 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 a month—Anyhow ‘Sir—I beg to resign my post as class-mistress in the Willey 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 Pharaoh, 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.”