Women in Love

There was the other way, the remaining way. And he must run to follow

it. He thought of Ursula, how sensitive and delicate she really was,

her skin so over-fine, as if one skin were wanting. She was really so

marvellously gentle and sensitive. Why did he ever forget it? He must

go to her at once. He must ask her to marry him. They must marry at

once, and so make a definite pledge, enter into a definite communion.

He must set out at once and ask her, this moment. There was no moment

to spare.

He drifted on swiftly to Beldover, half-unconscious of his own

movement. He saw the town on the slope of the hill, not straggling, but

as if walled-in with the straight, final streets of miners' dwellings,

making a great square, and it looked like Jerusalem to his fancy. The

world was all strange and transcendent.

Rosalind opened the door to him. She started slightly, as a young girl

will, and said: 'Oh, I'll tell father.' With which she disappeared, leaving Birkin in the hall, looking at some

reproductions from Picasso, lately introduced by Gudrun. He was

admiring the almost wizard, sensuous apprehension of the earth, when

Will Brangwen appeared, rolling down his shirt sleeves.

'Well,' said Brangwen, 'I'll get a coat.' And he too disappeared for a

moment. Then he returned, and opened the door of the drawing-room,

saying: 'You must excuse me, I was just doing a bit of work in the shed. Come

inside, will you.' Birkin entered and sat down. He looked at the bright, reddish face of

the other man, at the narrow brow and the very bright eyes, and at the

rather sensual lips that unrolled wide and expansive under the black

cropped moustache. How curious it was that this was a human being! What

Brangwen thought himself to be, how meaningless it was, confronted with

the reality of him. Birkin could see only a strange, inexplicable,

almost patternless collection of passions and desires and suppressions

and traditions and mechanical ideas, all cast unfused and disunited

into this slender, bright-faced man of nearly fifty, who was as

unresolved now as he was at twenty, and as uncreated. How could he be

the parent of Ursula, when he was not created himself. He was not a

parent. A slip of living flesh had been transmitted through him, but

the spirit had not come from him. The spirit had not come from any

ancestor, it had come out of the unknown. A child is the child of the

mystery, or it is uncreated.

'The weather's not so bad as it has been,' said Brangwen, after waiting

a moment. There was no connection between the two men.