Chapter II

SHORTLANDS
The Brangwens went home to Beldover, the weddingparty gathered at Shortlands, the Criches’ home. It was a
long, low old house, a sort of manor farm, that spread
along the top of a slope just beyond the narrow little lake
of Willey Water. Shortlands looked across a sloping
meadow that might be a park, because of the large, solitary
trees that stood here and there, across the water of the
narrow lake, at the wooded hill that successfully hid the
colliery valley beyond, but did not quite hide the rising
smoke. Nevertheless, the scene was rural and picturesque,
very peaceful, and the house had a charm of its own.
It was crowded now with the family and the wedding
guests. The father, who was not well, withdrew to rest.
Gerald was host. He stood in the homely entrance hall,
friendly and easy, attending to the men. He seemed to
take pleasure in his social functions, he smiled, and was
abundant in hospitality.
The women wandered about in a little confusion,
chased hither and thither by the three married daughters of
the house. All the while there could be heard the
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characteristic, imperious voice of one Crich woman or
another calling ‘Helen, come here a minute,’ ‘Marjory, I
want you—here.’ ‘Oh, I say, Mrs Witham—.’ There was
a great rustling of skirts, swift glimpses of smartly-dressed
women, a child danced through the hall and back again, a
maidservant came and went hurriedly.
Meanwhile the men stood in calm little groups,
chatting, smoking, pretending to pay no heed to the
rustling animation of the women’s world. But they could
not really talk, because of the glassy ravel of women’s
excited, cold laughter and running voices. They waited,
uneasy, suspended, rather bored. But Gerald remained as if
genial and happy, unaware that he was waiting or
unoccupied, knowing himself the very pivot of the
occasion.
Suddenly Mrs Crich came noiselessly into the room,
peering about with her strong, clear face. She was still
wearing her hat, and her sac coat of blue silk.
’What is it, mother?’ said Gerald.
’Nothing, nothing!’ she answered vaguely. And she
went straight towards Birkin, who was talking to a Crich
brother-in-law.
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’How do you do, Mr Birkin,’ she said, in her low
voice, that seemed to take no count of her guests. She
held out her hand to him.
’Oh Mrs Crich,’ replied Birkin, in his readily-changing
voice, ‘I couldn’t come to you before.’
’I don’t know half the people here,’ she said, in her low
voice. Her son-in-law moved uneasily away.
’And you don’t like strangers?’ laughed Birkin. ‘I myself
can never see why one should take account of people, just
because they happen to be in the room with one: why
SHOULD I know they are there?’
’Why indeed, why indeed!’ said Mrs Crich, in her low,
tense voice. ‘Except that they ARE there. I don’t know
people whom I find in the house. The children introduce
them to me—‘Mother, this is Mr So-and-so.’ I am no
further. What has Mr So-and-so to do with his own
name?—and what have I to do with either him or his
name?’
She looked up at Birkin. She startled him. He was
flattered too that she came to talk to him, for she took
hardly any notice of anybody. He looked down at her
tense clear face, with its heavy features, but he was afraid
to look into her heavy-seeing blue eyes. He noticed
instead how her hair looped in slack, slovenly strands over
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her rather beautiful ears, which were not quite clean.
Neither was her neck perfectly clean. Even in that he
seemed to belong to her, rather than to the rest of the
company; though, he thought to himself, he was always
well washed, at any rate at the neck and ears.
He smiled faintly, thinking these things. Yet he was
tense, feeling that he and the elderly, estranged woman
were conferring together like traitors, like enemies within
the camp of the other people. He resembled a deer, that
throws one ear back upon the trail behind, and one ear
forward, to know what is ahead.
’People don’t really matter,’ he said, rather unwilling to
continue.
The mother looked up at him with sudden, dark interrogation, as if doubting his sincerity.
’How do you mean, MATTER?’ she asked sharply.
’Not many people are anything at all,’ he answered,
forced to go deeper than he wanted to. ‘They jingle and
giggle. It would be much better if they were just wiped
out. Essentially, they don’t exist, they aren’t there.’
She watched him steadily while he spoke.
’But we didn’t imagine them,’ she said sharply.
’There’s nothing to imagine, that’s why they don’t
exist.’
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’Well,’ she said, ‘I would hardly go as far as that. There
they are, whether they exist or no. It doesn’t rest with me
to decide on their existence. I only know that I can’t be
expected to take count of them all. You can’t expect me
to know them, just because they happen to be there. As
far as I go they might as well not be there.’
’Exactly,’ he replied.
’Mightn’t they?’ she asked again.
’Just as well,’ he repeated. And there was a little pause.
’Except that they ARE there, and that’s a nuisance,’ she
said. ‘There are my sons-in-law,’ she went on, in a sort of
monologue. ‘Now Laura’s got married, there’s another.
And I really don’t know John from James yet. They come
up to me and call me mother. I know what they will
say—‘how are you, mother?’ I ought to say, ‘I am not
your mother, in any sense.’ But what is the use? There
they are. I have had children of my own. I suppose I
know them from another woman’s children.’
’One would suppose so,’ he said.
She looked at him, somewhat surprised, forgetting
perhaps that she was talking to him. And she lost her
thread.
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She looked round the room, vaguely. Birkin could not
guess what she was looking for, nor what she was
thinking. Evidently she noticed her sons.
’Are my children all there?’ she asked him abruptly.
He laughed, startled, afraid perhaps.
’I scarcely know them, except Gerald,’ he replied.
’Gerald!’ she exclaimed. ‘He’s the most wanting of
them all. You’d never think it, to look at him now, would
you?’
’No,’ said Birkin.
The mother looked across at her eldest son, stared at
him heavily for some time.
’Ay,’ she said, in an incomprehensible monosyllable,
that sounded profoundly cynical. Birkin felt afraid, as if he
dared not realise. And Mrs Crich moved away, forgetting
him. But she returned on her traces.
’I should like him to have a friend,’ she said. ‘He has
never had a friend.’
Birkin looked down into her eyes, which were blue,
and watching heavily. He could not understand them.
‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ he said to himself, almost
flippantly.
Then he remembered, with a slight shock, that that was
Cain’s cry. And Gerald was Cain, if anybody. Not that he
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was Cain, either, although he had slain his brother. There
was such a thing as pure accident, and the consequences
did not attach to one, even though one had killed one’s
brother in such wise. Gerald as a boy had accidentally
killed his brother. What then? Why seek to draw a brand
and a curse across the life that had caused the accident? A
man can live by accident, and die by accident. Or can he
not? Is every man’s life subject to pure accident, is it only
the race, the genus, the species, that has a universal
reference? Or is this not true, is there no such thing as
pure accident? Has EVERYTHING that happens a
universal significance? Has it? Birkin, pondering as he
stood there, had forgotten Mrs Crich, as she had forgotten
him.
He did not believe that there was any such thing as
accident. It all hung together, in the deepest sense.
Just as he had decided this, one of the Crich daughters
came up, saying:
’Won’t you come and take your hat off, mother dear?
We shall be sitting down to eat in a minute, and it’s a
formal occasion, darling, isn’t it?’ She drew her arm
through her mother’s, and they went away. Birkin
immediately went to talk to the nearest man.
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The gong sounded for the luncheon. The men looked
up, but no move was made to the dining-room. The
women of the house seemed not to feel that the sound had
meaning for them. Five minutes passed by. The elderly
manservant, Crowther, appeared in the doorway
exasperatedly. He looked with appeal at Gerald. The latter
took up a large, curved conch shell, that lay on a shelf, and
without reference to anybody, blew a shattering blast. It
was a strange rousing noise, that made the heart beat. The
summons was almost magical. Everybody came running, as
if at a signal. And then the crowd in one impulse moved
to the dining-room.
Gerald waited a moment, for his sister to play hostess.
He knew his mother would pay no attention to her duties.
But his sister merely crowded to her seat. Therefore the
young man, slightly too dictatorial, directed the guests to
their places.
There was a moment’s lull, as everybody looked at the
BORS D’OEUVRES that were being handed round. And
out of this lull, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, with her long
hair down her back, said in a calm, self-possessed voice:
’Gerald, you forget father, when you make that
unearthly noise.’
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’Do I?’ he answered. And then, to the company,
‘Father is lying down, he is not quite well.’
’How is he, really?’ called one of the married daughters,
peeping round the immense wedding cake that towered
up in the middle of the table shedding its artificial flowers.
’He has no pain, but he feels tired,’ replied Winifred,
the girl with the hair down her back.
The wine was filled, and everybody was talking
boisterously. At the far end of the table sat the mother,
with her loosely-looped hair. She had Birkin for a
neighbour. Sometimes she glanced fiercely down the rows
of faces, bending forwards and staring unceremoniously.
And she would say in a low voice to Birkin:
’Who is that young man?’
’I don’t know,’ Birkin answered discreetly.
’Have I seen him before?’ she asked.
’I don’t think so. I haven’t,’ he replied. And she was
satisfied. Her eyes closed wearily, a peace came over her
face, she looked like a queen in repose. Then she started, a
little social smile came on her face, for a moment she
looked the pleasant hostess. For a moment she bent
graciously, as if everyone were welcome and delightful.
And then immediately the shadow came back, a sullen,
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eagle look was on her face, she glanced from under her
brows like a sinister creature at bay, hating them all.
’Mother,’ called Diana, a handsome girl a little older
than Winifred, ‘I may have wine, mayn’t I?’
’Yes, you may have wine,’ replied the mother
automatically, for she was perfectly indifferent to the
question.
And Diana beckoned to the footman to fill her glass.
’Gerald shouldn’t forbid me,’ she said calmly, to the
company at large.
’All right, Di,’ said her brother amiably. And she
glanced challenge at him as she drank from her glass.
There was a strange freedom, that almost amounted to
anarchy, in the house. It was rather a resistance to
authority, than liberty. Gerald had some command, by
mere force of personality, not because of any granted
position. There was a quality in his voice, amiable but
dominant, that cowed the others, who were all younger
than he.
Hermione was having a discussion with the bridegroom
about nationality.
’No,’ she said, ‘I think that the appeal to patriotism is a
mistake. It is like one house of business rivalling another
house of business.’
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’Well you can hardly say that, can you?’ exclaimed
Gerald, who had a real PASSION for discussion. ‘You
couldn’t call a race a business concern, could you?—and
nationality roughly corresponds to race, I think. I think it
is MEANT to.’
There was a moment’s pause. Gerald and Hermione
were always strangely but politely and evenly inimical.
’DO you think race corresponds with nationality?’ she
asked musingly, with expressionless indecision.
Birkin knew she was waiting for him to participate.
And dutifully he spoke up.
’I think Gerald is right—race is the essential element in
nationality, in Europe at least,’ he said.
Again Hermione paused, as if to allow this statement to
cool. Then she said with strange assumption of authority:
’Yes, but even so, is the patriotic appeal an appeal to
the racial instinct? Is it not rather an appeal to the
proprietory instinct, the COMMERCIAL instinct? And
isn’t this what we mean by nationality?’
’Probably,’ said Birkin, who felt that such a discussion
was out of place and out of time.
But Gerald was now on the scent of argument.
’A race may have its commercial aspect,’ he said. ‘In
fact it must. It is like a family. You MUST make
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provision. And to make provision you have got to strive
against other families, other nations. I don’t see why you
shouldn’t.’
Again Hermione made a pause, domineering and cold,
before she replied: ‘Yes, I think it is always wrong to
provoke a spirit of rivalry. It makes bad blood. And bad
blood accumulates.’
’But you can’t do away with the spirit of emulation
altogether?’ said Gerald. ‘It is one of the necessary
incentives to production and improvement.’
’Yes,’ came Hermione’s sauntering response. ‘I think
you can do away with it.’
’I must say,’ said Birkin, ‘I detest the spirit of
emulation.’ Hermione was biting a piece of bread, pulling
it from between her teeth with her fingers, in a slow,
slightly derisive movement. She turned to Birkin.
’You do hate it, yes,’ she said, intimate and gratified.
’Detest it,’ he repeated.
’Yes,’ she murmured, assured and satisfied.
’But,’ Gerald insisted, ‘you don’t allow one man to take
away his neighbour’s living, so why should you allow one
nation to take away the living from another nation?’
There was a long slow murmur from Hermione before
she broke into speech, saying with a laconic indifference:
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’It is not always a question of possessions, is it? It is not
all a question of goods?’
Gerald was nettled by this implication of vulgar
materialism.
’Yes, more or less,’ he retorted. ‘If I go and take a
man’s hat from off his head, that hat becomes a symbol of
that man’s liberty. When he fights me for his hat, he is
fighting me for his liberty.’
Hermione was nonplussed.
’Yes,’ she said, irritated. ‘But that way of arguing by
imaginary instances is not supposed to be genuine, is it? A
man does NOT come and take my hat from off my head,
does he?’
’Only because the law prevents him,’ said Gerald.
’Not only,’ said Birkin. ‘Ninety-nine men out of a
hundred don’t want my hat.’
’That’s a matter of opinion,’ said Gerald.
’Or the hat,’ laughed the bridegroom.
’And if he does want my hat, such as it is,’ said Birkin,
‘why, surely it is open to me to decide, which is a greater
loss to me, my hat, or my liberty as a free and indifferent
man. If I am compelled to offer fight, I lose the latter. It is
a question which is worth more to me, my pleasant liberty
of conduct, or my hat.’
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’Yes,’ said Hermione, watching Birkin strangely. ‘Yes.’
’But would you let somebody come and snatch your
hat off your head?’ the bride asked of Hermione.
The face of the tall straight woman turned slowly and
as if drugged to this new speaker.
’No,’ she replied, in a low inhuman tone, that seemed
to contain a chuckle. ‘No, I shouldn’t let anybody take my
hat off my head.’
’How would you prevent it?’ asked Gerald.
’I don’t know,’ replied Hermione slowly. ‘Probably I
should kill him.’
There was a strange chuckle in her tone, a dangerous
and convincing humour in her bearing.
’Of course,’ said Gerald, ‘I can see Rupert’s point. It is
a question to him whether his hat or his peace of mind is
more important.’
’Peace of body,’ said Birkin.
’Well, as you like there,’ replied Gerald. ‘But how are
you going to decide this for a nation?’
’Heaven preserve me,’ laughed Birkin.
’Yes, but suppose you have to?’ Gerald persisted.
’Then it is the same. If the national crown-piece is an
old hat, then the thieving gent may have it.’
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’But CAN the national or racial hat be an old hat?’
insisted Gerald.
’Pretty well bound to be, I believe,’ said Birkin.
’I’m not so sure,’ said Gerald.
’I don’t agree, Rupert,’ said Hermione.
’All right,’ said Birkin.
’I’m all for the old national hat,’ laughed Gerald.
’And a fool you look in it,’ cried Diana, his pert sister
who was just in her teens.
’Oh, we’re quite out of our depths with these old hats,’
cried Laura Crich. ‘Dry up now, Gerald. We’re going to
drink toasts. Let us drink toasts. Toasts—glasses, glasses—
now then, toasts! Speech! Speech!’
Birkin, thinking about race or national death, watched
his glass being filled with champagne. The bubbles broke
at the rim, the man withdrew, and feeling a sudden thirst
at the sight of the fresh wine, Birkin drank up his glass. A
queer little tension in the room roused him. He felt a
sharp constraint.
’Did I do it by accident, or on purpose?’ he asked
himself. And he decided that, according to the vulgar
phrase, he had done it ‘accidentally on purpose.’ He
looked round at the hired footman. And the hired
footman came, with a silent step of cold servant-like
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disapprobation. Birkin decided that he detested toasts, and
footmen, and assemblies, and mankind altogether, in most
of its aspects. Then he rose to make a speech. But he was
somehow disgusted.
At length it was over, the meal. Several men strolled
out into the garden. There was a lawn, and flower-beds,
and at the boundary an iron fence shutting off the little
field or park. The view was pleasant; a highroad curving
round the edge of a low lake, under the trees. In the
spring air, the water gleamed and the opposite woods were
purplish with new life. Charming Jersey cattle came to the
fence, breathing hoarsely from their velvet muzzles at the
human beings, expecting perhaps a crust.
Birkin leaned on the fence. A cow was breathing wet
hotness on his hand.
’Pretty cattle, very pretty,’ said Marshall, one of the
brothers-in-law. ‘They give the best milk you can have.’
’Yes,’ said Birkin.
’Eh, my little beauty, eh, my beauty!’ said Marshall, in a
queer high falsetto voice, that caused the other man to
have convulsions of laughter in his stomach.
’Who won the race, Lupton?’ he called to the
bridegroom, to hide the fact that he was laughing.
The bridegroom took his cigar from his mouth.
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’The race?’ he exclaimed. Then a rather thin smile
came over his face. He did not want to say anything about
the flight to the church door. ‘We got there together. At
least she touched first, but I had my hand on her
shoulder.’
’What’s this?’ asked Gerald.
Birkin told him about the race of the bride and the
bridegroom.
’H’m!’ said Gerald, in disapproval. ‘What made you late
then?’
’Lupton would talk about the immortality of the soul,’
said Birkin, ‘and then he hadn’t got a button-hook.’
’Oh God!’ cried Marshall. ‘The immortality of the soul
on your wedding day! Hadn’t you got anything better to
occupy your mind?’
’What’s wrong with it?’ asked the bridegroom, a cleanshaven naval man, flushing sensitively.
’Sounds as if you were going to be executed instead of
married. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL!’
repeated the brother-in-law, with most killing emphasis.
But he fell quite flat.
’And what did you decide?’ asked Gerald, at once
pricking up his ears at the thought of a metaphysical
discussion.
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’You don’t want a soul today, my boy,’ said Marshall.
‘It’d be in your road.’
’Christ! Marshall, go and talk to somebody else,’ cried
Gerald, with sudden impatience.
’By God, I’m willing,’ said Marshall, in a temper. ‘Too
much bloody soul and talk altogether—’
He withdrew in a dudgeon, Gerald staring after him
with angry eyes, that grew gradually calm and amiable as
the stoutly-built form of the other man passed into the
distance.
’There’s one thing, Lupton,’ said Gerald, turning
suddenly to the bridegroom. ‘Laura won’t have brought
such a fool into the family as Lottie did.’
’Comfort yourself with that,’ laughed Birkin.
’I take no notice of them,’ laughed the bridegroom.
’What about this race then—who began it?’ Gerald
asked.
’We were late. Laura was at the top of the churchyard
steps when our cab came up. She saw Lupton bolting
towards her. And she fled. But why do you look so cross?
Does it hurt your sense of the family dignity?’
’It does, rather,’ said Gerald. ‘If you’re doing a thing,
do it properly, and if you’re not going to do it properly,
leave it alone.’
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’Very nice aphorism,’ said Birkin.
’Don’t you agree?’ asked Gerald.
’Quite,’ said Birkin. ‘Only it bores me rather, when
you become aphoristic.’
’Damn you, Rupert, you want all the aphorisms your
own way,’ said Gerald.
’No. I want them out of the way, and you’re always
shoving them in it.’
Gerald smiled grimly at this humorism. Then he made
a little gesture of dismissal, with his eyebrows.
’You don’t believe in having any standard of behaviour
at all, do you?’ he challenged Birkin, censoriously.
’Standard—no. I hate standards. But they’re necessary
for the common ruck. Anybody who is anything can just
be himself and do as he likes.’
’But what do you mean by being himself?’ said Gerald.
‘Is that an aphorism or a cliche?’
’I mean just doing what you want to do. I think it was
perfect good form in Laura to bolt from Lupton to the
church door. It was almost a masterpiece in good form.
It’s the hardest thing in the world to act spontaneously on
one’s impulses—and it’s the only really gentlemanly thing
to do—provided you’re fit to do it.’
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’You don’t expect me to take you seriously, do you?’
asked Gerald.
’Yes, Gerald, you’re one of the very few people I do
expect that of.’
’Then I’m afraid I can’t come up to your expectations
here, at any rate. You think people should just do as they
like.’
’I think they always do. But I should like them to like
the purely individual thing in themselves, which makes
them act in singleness. And they only like to do the
collective thing.’
’And I,’ said Gerald grimly, ‘shouldn’t like to be in a
world of people who acted individually and
spontaneously, as you call it. We should have everybody
cutting everybody else’s throat in five minutes.’
’That means YOU would like to be cutting
everybody’s throat,’ said Birkin.
’How does that follow?’ asked Gerald crossly.
’No man,’ said Birkin, ‘cuts another man’s throat unless
he wants to cut it, and unless the other man wants it
cutting. This is a complete truth. It takes two people to
make a murder: a murderer and a murderee. And a
murderee is a man who is murderable. And a man who is
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murderable is a man who in a profound if hidden lust
desires to be murdered.’
’Sometimes you talk pure nonsense,’ said Gerald to
Birkin. ‘As a matter of fact, none of us wants our throat
cut, and most other people would like to cut it for us—
some time or other—’
’It’s a nasty view of things, Gerald,’ said Birkin, ‘and no
wonder you are afraid of yourself and your own
unhappiness.’
’How am I afraid of myself?’ said Gerald; ‘and I don’t
think I am unhappy.’
’You seem to have a lurking desire to have your gizzard
slit, and imagine every man has his knife up his sleeve for
you,’ Birkin said.
’How do you make that out?’ said Gerald.
’From you,’ said Birkin.
There was a pause of strange enmity between the two
men, that was very near to love. It was always the same
between them; always their talk brought them into a
deadly nearness of contact, a strange, perilous intimacy
which was either hate or love, or both. They parted with
apparent unconcern, as if their going apart were a trivial
occurrence. And they really kept it to the level of trivial
occurrence. Yet the heart of each burned from the other.
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They burned with each other, inwardly. This they would
never admit. They intended to keep their relationship a
casual free-and-easy friendship, they were not going to be
so unmanly and unnatural as to allow any heart-burning
between them. They had not the faintest belief in deep
relationship between men and men, and their disbelief
prevented any development of their powerful but
suppressed friendliness.