beautiful, no one could call it cold, mute, material. No one could
remember it without gaining faith in the mystery, without the soul's
warming with new, deep life-trust.
And Gerald! The denier! He left the heart cold, frozen, hardly able to
beat. Gerald's father had looked wistful, to break the heart: but not
this last terrible look of cold, mute Matter. Birkin watched and
watched.
Ursula stood aside watching the living man stare at the frozen face of
the dead man. Both faces were unmoved and unmoving. The candle-flames
flickered 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 to
despair, 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 and
Ursula accompanied the body, along with one of Gerald's brothers. It
was the Crich brothers and sisters who insisted on the burial in
England. Birkin wanted to leave the dead man in the Alps, near the
snow. But the family was strident, loudly insistent.
Gudrun went to Dresden. She wrote no particulars of herself. Ursula
stayed at the Mill with Birkin for a week or two. They were both very
quiet.
'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 you
and I are eternal.'
'Why aren't I enough?' she said. 'You are enough for me. I don't want
anybody else but you. Why isn't it the same with you?'
'Having you, I can live all my life without anybody else, any other
sheer intimacy. But to make it complete, really happy, I wanted eternal
union with a man too: another kind of love,' he said.
'I don't believe it,' she said. 'It's an obstinacy, a theory, a
perversity.'
'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.
??
??
??
??
www.HomeEnglish.ru
<<BackPagesTo menu