‘When shall we be married?’ he asked her, quietly, simply, as if it were a mere question of comfort.
She watched the changing pleasure-traffic of the river. He looked at her golden, puzzled museau. The knot gathered in his throat.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
A hot grief gripped his throat
‘Why don’t you know—don’t you want to be married?’ he asked her.
Her head turned slowly, her face, puzzled, like a boy’s face, expressionless because she was trying to think, looked towards his face. She did not see him, because she was pre-occupied. She did not quite know what she was going to say.
‘I don’t think I want to be married,’ she said, and her naïve, troubled, puzzled eyes rested a moment on his, then travelled away, pre-occupied.
‘Do you mean never, or not just yet?’ he asked.
The knot in his throat grew harder, his face was drawn as if he were being strangled.
‘I mean never,’ she said, out of some far self which spoke for once beyond her.
His drawn, strangled face watched her blankly for a few moments, then a strange sound took place in his throat. She started, came to herself, and, horrified, saw him. His head made a queer motion, the chin jerked back against the throat, the curious, crowing, hiccupping sound came again, his face twisted like insanity, and he was crying, crying blind and twisted as if something were broken which kept him in control.
‘Tony—don’t,’ she cried, starting up.
It tore every one of her nerves to see him. He made groping movements to get out of his chair. But he was crying uncontrollably, noiselessly, with his face twisted like a mask, contorted and the tears running down the amazing grooves in his cheeks. Blindly, his face always this horrible working mask, he groped for his hat, for his way down from the terrace. It was eight o’clock, but still brightly light. The other people were staring. In great agitation, part of which was exasperation, she stayed behind, paid the waiter with a half-sovereign, took her yellow silk coat, then followed Skrebensky.
She saw him walking with brittle, blind steps along the path by the river. She could tell by the strange stiffness and brittle-ness of his figure that he was still crying. Hurrying after him, running, she took his arm.
‘Tony,’ she cried, ‘don’t! Why are you like this? What are you doing this for? Don’t. It’s not necessary.’
He heard, and his manhood was cruelly, coldly defaced. Yet it was no good. He could not gain control of his face. His face, his breast, were weeping violently, as if automatically. His will, his knowledge had nothing to do with it. He simply could not stop.
She walked holding his arm, silent with exasperation and perplexity and pain. He took the uncertain steps of a blind man, because his mind was blind with weeping.
‘Shall we go home? Shall we have a taxi?’ she said.
He could pay no attention. Very flustered, very agitated, she signalled indefinitely to a taxi-cab* that was going slowly by. The driver saluted and drew up. She opened the door and pushed Skrebensky in, then took her own place. Her face was uplifted, the mouth closed down, she looked hard and cold and ashamed. She winced as the driver’s dark, red face was thrust round upon her, a full-blooded, animal face with black eyebrows and a thick, short-cut moustache.
‘Where to, lady?’ he said, his white teeth showing. Again for a moment she was flustered.
‘Forty, Rutland Square,’ she said.
He touched his cap and stolidly set the car in motion. He seemed to have a league with her to ignore Skrebensky.
The latter sat as if trapped within the taxi-cab, his face still working, whilst occasionally he made quick slight movements of the head, to shake away his tears. He never moved his hands. She could not bear to look at him. She sat with face uplifted and averted to the window.
At length, when she had regained some control over herself, she turned again to him. He was much quieter. His face was wet, and twitched occasionally, his hands still lay motionless. But his eyes were quite still, like a washed sky after rain, full of a wan light, and quite steady, almost ghost-like.
A pain flamed in her womb, for him.
‘I didn’t think I should hurt you,’ she said, laying her hand very lightly, tentatively, on his arm. ‘The words came without my knowing. They didn’t mean anything, really.’
He remained quite still, hearing, but washed all wan and without feeling. She waited, looking at him, as if he were some curious, not-understandable creature.
‘You won’t cry again, will you Tony?’
Some shame and bitterness against her burned him in the question. She noticed how his moustache was soddened wet with tears. Taking her handkerchief, she wiped his face. The driver’s heavy, stolid back remained always turned to them, as if conscious but indifferent. Skrebensky sat motionless whilst Ursula wiped his face, softly, carefully, and yet clumsily, not as well as he would have wiped it himself.
Her handkerchief was too small. It was soon wet through. She groped in his pocket for his own. Then, with its more ample capacity, she carefully dried his face. He remained motionless all the while. Then she drew his cheek to hers and kissed him. His face was cold. Her heart was hurt. She saw the tears welling quickly to his eyes again. As if he were a child, she again wiped away his tears. By now she herself was on the point of weeping. Her underlip was caught between her teeth.
So she sat still, for fear of her own tears, sitting close by him, holding his hand warm and close and loving. Meanwhile the car ran on, and a soft, midsummer dusk began to gather. For a long while they sat motionless. Only now and again her hand closed more closely, lovingly, over his hand, then gradually relaxed.
The dusk began to fall. One or two lights appeared. The driver drew up to light his lamps. Skrebensky moved for the first time, leaning forward to watch the driver. His face had always the same still, clarified, almost childlike look, impersonal.
They saw the driver’s strange, full, dark face peering into the lamps under drawn brows. Ursula shuddered. It was the face almost of an animal, yet of a quick, strong, wary animal that had them within its knowledge, almost within its power. She clung closer to Skrebensky.
‘My love?’ she said to him, questioningly, when the car was again running in full motion.
He made no movement or sound. He let her hold his hand, he let her reach forward, in the gathering darkness, and kiss his still cheek. The crying had gone by—he would not cry any more. He was whole and himself again.
‘My love,’ she repeated, trying to make him notice her. But as yet he could not.
He watched the road. They were running by Kensington Gardens. For the first time his lips opened.
‘Shall we get out and go into the park?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, quietly, not sure what was coming.
After a moment he took the tube from its peg. She saw the stout, strong, self-contained driver lean his head.
‘Stop at Hyde Park Corner.’
The dark head nodded, the car ran on just the same.
Presently they pulled up. Skrebensky paid the man. Ursula stood back. She saw the driver salute as he received his tip, and then, before he set the car in motion, turn and look at her, with his quick, powerful, animal’s look, his eyes very concentrated and the whites of his eyes flickering. Then he drove away into the crowd. He had let her go. She had been afraid.
Skrebensky turned with her into the park. A band was still playing and the place was thronged with people. They listened to the ebbing music, then went aside to a dark seat, where they sat closely, hand in hand.
Then at length, as out of the silence, she said to him, wondering:
‘What hurt you so?’
She really did not know, at this moment.
‘When you said you wanted never to marry me,’ he replied, with a childish simplicity.
‘But why did that hurt you so?’ she said. ‘You needn’t mind everything I say so particularly.’
‘I don’t know??
?I didn’t want to do it,’ he said, humbly, ashamed.
She pressed his hand warmly. They sat close together, watching the soldiers go by with their sweethearts, the lights trailing in myriads down the great thoroughfares that beat on the edge of the park.
‘I didn’t know you cared so much,’ she said, also humbly.
‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘I was knocked over myself.—But I care—all the world.’
His voice was so quiet and colourless, it made her heart go pale with fear.
‘My love!’ she said, drawing near to him. But she spoke out of fear, not out of love.
‘I care all the world—I care for nothing else—neither in life nor in death,’ he said, in the same steady, colourless voice of essential truth.
‘Than for what?’ she murmured duskily.
‘Than for you—to be with me.’
And again she was afraid. Was she to be conquered by this? She cowered close to him, very close to him. They sat perfectly still, listening to the great, heavy, beating sound of the town, the murmur of lovers going by, the footsteps of soldiers.
She shivered against him.
‘You are cold?’ he said.
‘A little.’
‘We will go and have some supper.’
He was now always quiet and decided and remote, very beautiful. He seemed to have some strange, cold power over her.
They went to a restaurant, and drank chianti. But his pale, wan look did not go away.
‘Don’t leave me to-night,’ he said at length, looking at her, pleading. He was so strange and impersonal, she was afraid.
‘But the people of my place,’ she said, quivering.
‘I will explain to them—they know we are engaged.’
She sat pale and mute. He waited.
‘Shall we go?’ he said at length.
‘Where?’
‘To an hotel.’
Her heart was hardened. Without answering, she rose to acquiesce. But she was now cold and unreal. Yet she could not refuse him It seemed like fate, a fate she did not want.
They went to an Italian hotel somewhere, and had a sombre bedroom with a very large bed, clean, but sombre. The ceiling was painted with a bunch of flowers in a big medallion over the bed. She thought it was pretty.
He came to her, and cleaved to her very close, like steel cleaving and clinching on to her. Her passion was roused, it was fierce but cold. But it was fierce, and extreme, and good, their passion this night. He slept with her fast in his arms. All night long he held her fast against him. She was passive, acquiescent. But her sleep was not very deep nor very real.
She woke in the morning to a sound of water dashed on a courtyard, to sunlight streaming through a lattice. She thought she was in a foreign country. And Skrebensky was there an incubus upon her.
She lay still, thinking, whilst his arm was round her, his head against her shoulders, his body against hers, just behind her. He was still asleep.
She watched the sunshine coming in bars through the persiennes,* and her immediate surroundings again melted away.
She was in some other land, some other world, where the old restraints had dissolved and vanished, where one moved freely, not afraid of one’s fellow men, nor wary, nor on the defensive, but calm, indifferent, at one’s ease. Vaguely, in a sort of silver light, she wandered at large and at ease. The bonds of the world were broken. This world of England had vanished away. She heard a voice in the yard below calling:
‘O Giovann’—O’-O’-O’-Giovann’—!’
And she knew she was in a new country, in a new life. It was very delicious to lie thus still, with one’s soul wandering freely and simply in the silver light of some other, simpler, more finely natural world.
But always there was a foreboding waiting to command her. She became more aware of Skrebensky. She knew he was waking up. She must modify her soul, depart from her further world, for him.
She knew he was awake. He lay still, with a concrete stillness, not as when he slept. Then his arm tightened almost convulsively upon her, and he said, half timidly:
‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Very well.’
‘So did I.’
There was a pause.
‘And do you love me?’ he asked.
She turned and looked at him searchingly. He seemed outside her.
‘I do,’ she said.
But she said it out of complacency and a desire not to be harried. There was a curious breach of silence between them, which frightened him.
They lay rather late, then he rang for breakfast. She wanted to be able to go straight downstairs and away from the place, when she got up. She was happy in this room, but the thought of the publicity of the hall downstairs rather troubled her.
A young Italian, a Sicilian, dark and slightly pock-marked, buttoned up in a sort of grey tunic, appeared with the tray. His face had an almost African imperturbability, impassive, incomprehensible.
‘One might be in Italy,’ Skrebensky said to him, genially. A vacant look, almost like fear, came on the fellow’s face. He did not understand.
‘This is like Italy,’ Skrebensky explained.
The face of the Italian flashed with a non-comprehending smile, he finished setting out the tray, and was gone. He did not understand: he would understand nothing: he disappeared from the door like a half-domesticated wild animal. It made Ursula shudder slightly, the quick, sharp-sighted, intent ani-mality of the man.
Skrebensky was beautiful to her this morning, his face softened and transfused with suffering and with love, his movements very still and gentle. He was beautiful to her, but she was detached from him by a chill distance. Always she seemed to be bearing up against the distance that separated them. But he was unaware. This morning he was transfused and beautiful. She admired his movements, the way he spread honey on his roll, or poured out the coffee.
When breakfast was over, she lay still again on the pillows, whilst he went through his toilet. She watched him, as he sponged himself, and quickly dried himself with the towel. His body was beautiful, his movements intent and quick, she admired him and she appreciated him without reserve. He seemed completed now. He aroused no fruitful fecundity in her. He seemed added up, finished. She knew him all round, not on any side did he lead into the unknown. Poignant, almost passionate appreciation she felt for him, but none of the dreadful wonder, none of the rich fear, the connection with the unknown, or the reverence of love. He was, however, unaware this morning. His body was quiet and fulfilled, his veins complete with satisfaction, he was happy, finished.
Again she went home. But this time he went with her. He wanted to stay by her. He wanted her to marry him. It was already July. In early September he must sail for India. He could not bear to think of going alone. She must come with him. Nervously, he kept beside her.
Her examination was finished, her college career was over. There remained for her now to marry or to work again. She applied for no post. It was concluded she would marry. India tempted her—the strange, strange land. But with the thought of Calcutta, or Bombay, or of Simla,* and of the European population, India was no more attractive to her than Nottingham.
She had failed in her examination: she had gone down: she had not taken her degree. It was a blow to her. It hardened her soul.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘What are the odds, whether you are a Bachelor of Arts or not, according to the London University? All you know, you know, and if you are Mrs Skrebensky, the B.A. is meaningless.’
Instead of consoling her, this made her harder, more ruthless. She was not up against her own fate. It was for her to choose between being Mrs Skrebensky, even Baroness Skrebensky, wife of a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, the Sappers, as he called them, living with the European population in India—or being Ursula Brangwen, spinster, schoolmistress. She was qualified by her Intermediate Arts examination. She would probably even now get a post quite easily as assistant in one of the higher grade schools, or even in W
illey Green School. Which was she to do?
She hated most of all entering the bondage of teaching once more. Very heartily she detested it. Yet at the thought of marriage and living with Skrebensky amid the European population in India, her soul was locked and would not budge. She had very little feeling about it: only there was a dead-lock.
Skrebensky waited, she waited, everybody waited for the decision. When Anton talked to her, and seemed insidiously to suggest himself as a husband to her, she knew how utterly locked out he was. On the other hand, when she saw Dorothy, and discussed the matter, she felt she would marry him promptly, at once, as a sharp disavowal of adherence with Dorothy’s views.
The situation was almost ridiculous.
‘But do you love him?’ asked Dorothy.
‘It isn’t a question of loving him,’ said Ursula. ‘I love him well enough—certainly more than I love anybody else in the world. And I shall never love anybody else the same again. We have had the flower of each other. But I don’t care about love. I don’t value it. I don’t care whether I love or whether I don’t, whether I have love or whether I haven’t. What is it to me?’
And she shrugged her shoulders in fierce, angry contempt.
Dorothy pondered, rather angry and afraid.
‘Then what do you care about?’ she asked, exasperated.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ursula. ‘But something impersonal. Love—love—love—what does it mean—what does it amount to? So much personal gratification. It doesn’t lead anywhere.’
‘It isn’t supposed to lead anywhere, is it?’ said Dorothy, satirically. ‘I thought it was the one thing which is an end in itself.’
‘Then what does it matter to me?’ cried Ursula. ‘As an end in itself, I could love a hundred men, one after the other. Why should I end with a Skrebensky? Why should I not go on, and love all the types I fancy, one after another, if love is an end in itself? There are plenty of men who aren’t Anton, whom I could love—whom I would like to love.’
‘Then you don’t love him,’ said Dorothy.
‘I tell you I do;—quite as much, and perhaps more than I should love any of the others. Only there are plenty of things that aren’t in Anton that I would love in the other men.’