CHAPTER XXXI.
EXEUNT
When they brought the body home, the next morning, Gudrun was shut upin her room. From her window she saw men coming along with a burden,over the snow. She sat still and let the minutes go by.
There came a tap at her door. She opened. There stood a woman, sayingsoftly, oh, far too reverently:
'They have found him, madam!'
'Il est mort?'
'Yes--hours ago.'
Gudrun did not know what to say. What should she say? What should shefeel? What should she do? What did they expect of her? She was coldlyat a loss.
'Thank you,' she said, and she shut the door of her room. The womanwent away mortified. Not a word, not a tear--ha! Gudrun was cold, acold woman.
Gudrun sat on in her room, her face pale and impassive. What was she todo? She could not weep and make a scene. She could not alter herself.She sat motionless, hiding from people. Her one motive was to avoidactual contact with events. She only wrote out a long telegram toUrsula and Birkin.
In the afternoon, however, she rose suddenly to look for Loerke. Sheglanced with apprehension at the door of the room that had beenGerald's. Not for worlds would she enter there.
She found Loerke sitting alone in the lounge. She went straight up tohim.
'It isn't true, is it?' she said.
He looked up at her. A small smile of misery twisted his face. Heshrugged his shoulders.
'True?' he echoed.
'We haven't killed him?' she asked.
He disliked her coming to him in such a manner. He raised his shoulderswearily.
'It has happened,' he said.
She looked at him. He sat crushed and frustrated for the time being,quite as emotionless and barren as herself. My God! this was a barrentragedy, barren, barren.
She returned to her room to wait for Ursula and Birkin. She wanted toget away, only to get away. She could not think or feel until she hadgot away, till she was loosed from this position.
The day passed, the next day came. She heard the sledge, saw Ursula andBirkin alight, and she shrank from these also.
Ursula came straight up to her.
'Gudrun!' she cried, the tears running down her cheeks. And she tookher sister in her arms. Gudrun hid her face on Ursula's shoulder, butstill she could not escape the cold devil of irony that froze her soul.
'Ha, ha!' she thought, 'this is the right behaviour.'
But she could not weep, and the sight of her cold, pale, impassive facesoon stopped the fountain of Ursula's tears. In a few moments, thesisters had nothing to say to each other.
'Was it very vile to be dragged back here again?' Gudrun asked atlength.
Ursula looked up in some bewilderment.
'I never thought of it,' she said.
'I felt a beast, fetching you,' said Gudrun. 'But I simply couldn't seepeople. That is too much for me.'
'Yes,' said Ursula, chilled.
Birkin tapped and entered. His face was white and expressionless. Sheknew he knew. He gave her his hand, saying:
'The end of THIS trip, at any rate.'
Gudrun glanced at him, afraid.
There was silence between the three of them, nothing to be said. Atlength Ursula asked in a small voice:
'Have you seen him?'
He looked back at Ursula with a hard, cold look, and did not trouble toanswer.
'Have you seen him?' she repeated.
'I have,' he said, coldly.
Then he looked at Gudrun.
'Have you done anything?' he said.
'Nothing,' she replied, 'nothing.'
She shrank in cold disgust from making any statement.
'Loerke says that Gerald came to you, when you were sitting on thesledge at the bottom of the Rudelbahn, that you had words, and Geraldwalked away. What were the words about? I had better know, so that Ican satisfy the authorities, if necessary.'
Gudrun looked up at him, white, childlike, mute with trouble.
'There weren't even any words,' she said. 'He knocked Loerke down andstunned him, he half strangled me, then he went away.'
To herself she was saying:
'A pretty little sample of the eternal triangle!' And she turnedironically away, because she knew that the fight had been betweenGerald and herself and that the presence of the third party was a merecontingency--an inevitable contingency perhaps, but a contingency nonethe less. But let them have it as an example of the eternal triangle,the trinity of hate. It would be simpler for them.
Birkin went away, his manner cold and abstracted. But she knew he woulddo things for her, nevertheless, he would see her through. She smiledslightly to herself, with contempt. Let him do the work, since he wasso extremely GOOD at looking after other people.
Birkin went again to Gerald. He had loved him. And yet he felt chieflydisgust at the inert body lying there. It was so inert, so coldly dead,a carcase, Birkin's bowels seemed to turn to ice. He had to stand andlook at the frozen dead body that had been Gerald.
It was the frozen carcase of a dead male. Birkin remembered a rabbitwhich he had once found frozen like a board on the snow. It had beenrigid like a dried board when he picked it up. And now this was Gerald,stiff as a board, curled up as if for sleep, yet with the horriblehardness somehow evident. It filled him with horror. The room must bemade warm, the body must be thawed. The limbs would break like glass orlike wood if they had to be straightened.
He reached and touched the dead face. And the sharp, heavy bruise ofice bruised his living bowels. He wondered if he himself were freezingtoo, freezing from the inside. In the short blond moustache thelife-breath was frozen into a block of ice, beneath the silentnostrils. And this was Gerald!
Again he touched the sharp, almost glittering fair hair of the frozenbody. It was icy-cold, hair icy-cold, almost venomous. Birkin's heartbegan to freeze. He had loved Gerald. Now he looked at the shapely,strange-coloured face, with the small, fine, pinched nose and the manlycheeks, saw it frozen like an ice-pebble--yet he had loved it. What wasone to think or feel? His brain was beginning to freeze, his blood wasturning to ice-water. So cold, so cold, a heavy, bruising cold pressingon his arms from outside, and a heavier cold congealing within him, inhis heart and in his bowels.
He went over the snow slopes, to see where the death had been. At lasthe came to the great shallow among the precipices and slopes, near thesummit of the pass. It was a grey day, the third day of greyness andstillness. All was white, icy, pallid, save for the scoring of blackrocks that jutted like roots sometimes, and sometimes were in nakedfaces. In the distance a slope sheered down from a peak, with manyblack rock-slides.
It was like a shallow pot lying among the stone and snow of the upperworld. In this pot Gerald had gone to sleep. At the far end, the guideshad driven iron stakes deep into the snow-wall, so that, by means ofthe great rope attached, they could haul themselves up the massivesnow-front, out on to the jagged summit of the pass, naked to heaven,where the Marienhutte hid among the naked rocks. Round about, spiked,slashed snow-peaks pricked the heaven.
Gerald might have found this rope. He might have hauled himself up tothe crest. He might have heard the dogs in the Marienhutte, and foundshelter. He might have gone on, down the steep, steep fall of thesouth-side, down into the dark valley with its pines, on to the greatImperial road leading south to Italy.
He might! And what then? The Imperial road! The south? Italy? Whatthen? Was it a way out? It was only a way in again. Birkin stood highin the painful air, looking at the peaks, and the way south. Was it anygood going south, to Italy? Down the old, old Imperial road?
He turned away. Either the heart would break, or cease to care. Bestcease to care. Whatever the mystery which has brought forth man and theuniverse, it is a non-human mystery, it has its own great ends, man isnot the criterion. Best leave it all to the vast, creative, non-humanmystery. Best strive with oneself only, not with the universe.
'God cannot do without man.' It was a saying of some great Frenchreligious teacher. But surely this is false. God can do without man.God could do without the ichthyosauri and the mastodon. These monstersfailed creatively to develop, so God, the creative mystery, dispensedwith them. In the same way the mystery could dispense with man, shouldhe too fail creatively to change and develop. The eternal creativemystery could dispose of man, and replace him with a finer createdbeing. Just as the horse has taken the place of the mastodon.
It was very consoling to Birkin, to think this. If humanity ran into aCUL DE SAC and expended itself, the timeless creative mystery wouldbring forth some other being, finer, more wonderful, some new, morelovely race, to carry on the embodiment of creation. The game was neverup. The mystery of creation was fathomless, infallible, inexhaustible,forever. Races came and went, species passed away, but ever new speciesarose, more lovely, or equally lovely, always surpassing wonder. Thefountain-head was incorruptible and unsearchable. It had no limits. Itcould bring forth miracles, create utter new races and new species, inits own hour, new forms of consciousness, new forms of body, new unitsof being. To be man was as nothing compared to the possibilities of thecreative mystery. To have one's pulse beating direct from the mystery,this was perfection, unutterable satisfaction. Human or inhumanmattered nothing. The perfect pulse throbbed with indescribable being,miraculous unborn species.
Birkin went home again to Gerald. He went into the room, and sat downon the bed. Dead, dead and cold!
Imperial Caesar dead, and turned to clay Would stop a hole to keep the wind away.
There was no response from that which had been Gerald. Strange,congealed, icy substance--no more. No more!
Terribly weary, Birkin went away, about the day's business. He did itall quietly, without bother. To rant, to rave, to be tragic, to makesituations--it was all too late. Best be quiet, and bear one's soul inpatience and in fullness.
But when he went in again, at evening, to look at Gerald between thecandles, because of his heart's hunger, suddenly his heart contracted,his own candle all but fell from his hand, as, with a strangewhimpering cry, the tears broke out. He sat down in a chair, shaken bya sudden access. Ursula who had followed him, recoiled aghast from him,as he sat with sunken head and body convulsively shaken, making astrange, horrible sound of tears.
'I didn't want it to be like this--I didn't want it to be like this,'he cried to himself. Ursula could but think of the Kaiser's: 'Ich habeas nicht gewollt.' She looked almost with horror on Birkin.
Suddenly he was silent. But he sat with his head dropped, to hide hisface. Then furtively he wiped his face with his fingers. Then suddenlyhe lifted his head, and looked straight at Ursula, with dark, almostvengeful eyes.
'He should have loved me,' he said. 'I offered him.'
She, afraid, white, with mute lips answered:
'What difference would it have made!'
'It would!' he said. 'It would.'
He forgot her, and turned to look at Gerald. With head oddly lifted,like a man who draws his head back from an insult, half haughtily, hewatched the cold, mute, material face. It had a bluish cast. It sent ashaft like ice through the heart of the living man. Cold, mute,material! Birkin remembered how once Gerald had clutched his hand, witha warm, momentaneous grip of final love. For one second--then let goagain, let go for ever. If he had kept true to that clasp, death wouldnot have mattered. Those who die, and dying still can love, stillbelieve, do not die. They live still in the beloved. Gerald might stillhave been living in the spirit with Birkin, even after death. He mighthave lived with his friend, a further life.
But now he was dead, like clay, like bluish, corruptible ice. Birkinlooked at the pale fingers, the inert mass. He remembered a deadstallion he had seen: a dead mass of maleness, repugnant. He rememberedalso the beautiful face of one whom he had loved, and who had diedstill having the faith to yield to the mystery. That dead face wasbeautiful, no one could call it cold, mute, material. No one couldremember it without gaining faith in the mystery, without the soul'swarming with new, deep life-trust.
And Gerald! The denier! He left the heart cold, frozen, hardly able tobeat. Gerald's father had looked wistful, to break the heart: but notthis last terrible look of cold, mute Matter. Birkin watched andwatched.
Ursula stood aside watching the living man stare at the frozen face ofthe dead man. Both faces were unmoved and unmoving. The candle-flamesflickered in the frozen air, in the intense silence.
'Haven't you seen enough?' she said.
He got up.
'It's a bitter thing to me,' he said.
'What--that he's dead?' she said.
His eyes just met hers. He did not answer.
'You've got me,' she said.
He smiled and kissed her.
'If I die,' he said, 'you'll know I haven't left you.'
'And me?' she cried.
'And you won't have left me,' he said. 'We shan't have any need todespair, in death.'
She took hold of his hand.
'But need you despair over Gerald?' she said.
'Yes,' he answered.
They went away. Gerald was taken to England, to be buried. Birkin andUrsula accompanied the body, along with one of Gerald's brothers. Itwas the Crich brothers and sisters who insisted on the burial inEngland. Birkin wanted to leave the dead man in the Alps, near thesnow. But the family was strident, loudly insistent.
Gudrun went to Dresden. She wrote no particulars of herself. Ursulastayed at the Mill with Birkin for a week or two. They were both veryquiet.
'Did you need Gerald?' she asked one evening.
'Yes,' he said.
'Aren't I enough for you?' she asked.
'No,' he said. 'You are enough for me, as far as a woman is concerned.You are all women to me. But I wanted a man friend, as eternal as youand I are eternal.'
'Why aren't I enough?' she said. 'You are enough for me. I don't wantanybody else but you. Why isn't it the same with you?'
'Having you, I can live all my life without anybody else, any othersheer intimacy. But to make it complete, really happy, I wanted eternalunion with a man too: another kind of love,' he said.
'I don't believe it,' she said. 'It's an obstinacy, a theory, aperversity.'
'Well--' he said.
'You can't have two kinds of love. Why should you!'
It seems as if I can't,' he said. 'Yet I wanted it.'
'You can't have it, because it's false, impossible,' she said.
'I don't believe that,' he answered.