Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated), page 282
Johanna liked him. Women did like him as a rule, with his full, dark-blue eyes, his pouting lips, and his musician’s hands.
“Tell me about your home, in England,” she said.
He told her about his father, and Whetstone.
“Oh,” she cried, “I know those Midlands. They are a dark, dreary hole in the face of the earth. And did you never have a mother, then?”
“Not to remember.”
“Well I think you’re lucky. Mothers are awful things nowadays, don’t you think?”
Gilbert had not been accustomed to think so, therefore he inquired “why?”
“Don’t you think thev all want to swallow their children again, like the Greek myth? — who was the man? — There isn’t a man worth having, nowadays, who can get away from his mother. Their mothers are all in love with them, and they’re all in love with their mothers, and what are we poor women to do?”
“Do you do so badly?” asked Gilbert.
“Yes! Yes! You don’t believe it!” She made round solemnish eyes at him. “But it’s true. It’s true.”
“In what way,” said Gilbert.
“One wants a man to oneself, and one gets a mother’s darling. — You don’t know what it means. They’re all Hamlets, obsessed by their mothers, and we’re supposed to be all Ophelias, and go and drown ourselves.”
“But you’re not on the way to the water, are you?” asked Gilbert/
“No,” she cried, with a shout of laughter. “No, I’m not. Neither am I going to put rue and rosemary in my hair, though they’d all like to make me. — Ha — mother-love. It is the most awful self-swallowing thing.”
“You’ve got a mother-in-law, then?”
“Yes, but she’s a dear, really. She loves her husband. She’s quite beautiful, really. No, my husband isn’t like that. He wants to set me on a throne and kiss my feet. You don’t know how uncomfortable I feel.”
“I can believe it,” said Gilbert.
“Can you? Can you? Well I’m glad you can. I hate a throne, it’s so hard and uncomfortable. And I don’t think I’m a white snowflower, do you?”
He looked at her across the table.
“I shouldn’t say so,” he said.
“No by Jove! Anything but. Oh, if he knew. — Do you know, he is quite capable of killing me because I’m not a white snowflower. Don’t you think it’s absurd? When I’m a born dandelion. I was born to get the sun. I love love, and I hate worship. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes, quite,” said Gilbert, shaking his head solemnly.
“To sit and be worshipped all my life by one solemn ass — well, it’s not good enough. There are lots of men in the world — such lovely men, I think. There was a little Japanese in the train. Don’t you think they’re fascinating — so quick and on the spot.”
“Yes — !” said Gilbert doubtfully.
“I should love a little Japanese baby: brown and solemn and so different. I think they’re dears.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“Yes, haven’t you? The first I saw was when I was quite a girl — you know I’m thirty-two, and have a son of twelve. And it was the dearest little thing — a father and a mother Japanese in awful European clothes, carrying this dear little brown baby. It was in Florence, and the people ran after them in crowds, perfectly fascinated. So that they had to get a carriage and drive off. Oh I can remember them so well. And I always knew after that that I wanted a brown baby. Yet there I’ve got an honest English husband and two sweet boys, and I’m adored for being a white snowflower. Don’t you think it’s strange?”
“Very.”
“No you don’t! You think it’s quite right, I know you do, you Englishman. You all want a white snowflower in your button-hole. Say you do, now.”
“Well, I don’t know much about white snowflowers, so perhaps it’s no good my saying.”
“Oh you cautious Englander. And aren’t you in love with anybody now?”
“No, nobody in particular.”
“Nobody in particular! That sounds just like you. When you can’t have a snowflower you have some perfectly impossible horizontale. Oh, the English and the Americans, with their snowflowers and their saintly mothers and their unmentionable incidents in the background! It’s all such a lie.”
“Nay,” said Gilbert. “I never have anything to do with horizontales. No, I left England because of a girl.”
And he told the story of himself and Emmie.
“It does sound awful,” she said. “So common and unrelieved. I don’t like it.”
“No, neither do I,” said Gilbert.
“But you did it, and therefore you must have liked it. Oh, I can’t bear to think of love made so low.”
“You like love on a high plane?” said Gilbert.
“Yes! Yes! There must be something ideal about it.”
“Japanese?” said Gilbert ironically.
“Yes. I think they’re so wonderful.”
“Perhaps I think Emmie wonderful,” said Gilbert.
“Oh no! Oh no! How can you. Such a common little thing, and rather a minx, I’ll bet.”
“And what about a Japanese? Isn’t he common? Isn’t he an ugly toad?”
“No! No! It’s an ugliness that fascinates me. — No! No! I hate commonness. The commonest man I’ve ever had is my husband, really. — No, I had a wonderful lover — a doctor and a philosopher, here in Munich. Oh, I loved him so much — and I waited for his letters — ”
“When, before you were married?”
“Oh no. It is only two years ago. He was Louise’s lover first. It was he who freed me, really. I was just the conventional wife, simply getting crazy boxed up. But he was wonderful, Eberhard. Ah, I did love him.”
“And don’t you any more?”
“No — no! I knew it was no good. When I’d been with him — I was only with him two weeks — two separate weeks — here, and in Utrecht. He was a marvellous lover — but I knew it was no good. He never let one sleep. He talked and talked. Oh he was so marvellous. I once went with him to a zoo place. And you know he could work up the animals, by merely looking at them, till they nearly went mad.”
“A psychiatrist.”
“Perhaps! Perhaps! He took drugs. And he never slept. He just never slept. And he wouldn’t let you sleep either. And he talked to you while he was loving you. He was wonderful, but he was awful. — He would have sent me mad. Perhaps I am a bit mad now. — But he was my first lover — four years ago.”
“And where is he now?”
“I don’t know. In Berlin or somewhere. He simply lives on drugs. And he was so beautiful, like a white Dionysos. He never writes. But Louise will know. She was his wife’s best friend. But Wilhelmine never tried to keep him. You couldn’t try to keep a man like that. — The only thing I couldn’t quite stand, was that he would have two women, or more, going at the same time. And I couldn’t bear it.”
“No,” said Gilbert, who was becoming depressed. “But why did you think he was so wonderful.”
“Oh, he was a genius — a genius at love. He understood so much. And then he made one feel so free. He was almost the first psychoanalyst, you know — he was Viennese too, and far, far more brilliant than Freud. They were all friends. But Eberhard was spiritual — he may have been demoniacal, but he was spiritual. Which Freud isn’t, don’t you think.”
“I don’t think Freud is spiritual,” said Gilbert. “But what was it that Eberhard taught you, that made you feel so free?”
“He made me believe in love — in the sacredness of love. He made me see that marriage and all those things are based on fear. How can love be wrong? It is the jealousy and grudging that is wrong. Love is so much greater than the individual. Individuals are so poor and mean. — And then there can’t be love without sex. Eberhard taught me that. And it is so true. Love is sex. But you can have your sex all in your head, like the saints did. But that I call a sort of perversion. Don’t you? Sex is sex, and ought to find its expression in the proper way — don’t you think. And there is no strong feeling aroused in anybody that doesn’t have an element of sex in it — don’t you think?”
These theories were not new to Gilbert. How could they be, in the professor’s house? But he had never given them serious attention. Now, with the gleaming, distraught woman opposite him, he was troubled by the ideas. He was troubled, and depressed. It all saddened him, and he did not agree, but did not know what to say.
“I never know quite what you mean by sex,” he said.
“Just sex. It is the kind of magnetism that holds people together, and which is bigger than individuals.”
“But you don’t have sexual connection with everybody,” said Gilbert, in opposition.
“Not directly — but indirectly.”
“Nay,” he said. “I don’t see that. Sex is either direct sex, or it is something else which I don’t call sex.”
“But don’t you see,” she said, “sex is always being perverted into something else — all the time.”
“Ay,” said Gilbert. “And perhaps something else is always being perverted into sex.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
It was evident she was all distraught, bewildered, roused, and yet not having any direction.
“Of course,” she said, “I daren’t tell Everard. When I try to tell him, he sneers. I tried to tell him about Eberhard. But he wouldn’t let me. He didn’t want to know. And he would kill me rather than know. Isn’t it strange. — And yet the secrecy almost sends me mad. — Why can’t I tell him?”
“It isn’t a pretty thing for a man to hear — from his wife,” said Gilbert.
“But why? It isn’t unnatural. And he’s my husband. And he lets me do what I like. He lets me come to Germany for three months at a time, and he is quite happy there in Boston, with his work, and his love for me as a snowflower. Why won’t he let me tell him I’m not a snowflower? I do tell him that. But why won’t he let me tell him about Eberhard? He knows, at the bottom. He knows. In his unconscious, he knows I’m not faithful to him. But he would kill me rather than let me tell him. And that is what is so awful to me. I feel it is awful — I live in a lie, and it sends me mad. But what am I to do?”
“Write to him, and tell him.”
“Yes, but it seems cowardly. And one writes all the wrong things. And then he’s one of the people who make it just impossible. He would never face it — never. He would just make horrors for himself and me and the children, and it wouldn’t be faced at the end. He might commit murder, but he would funk facing what I’ve done and what I am. You see it’s what I am that he’s got to see, and which he never will see. Whatever Eberhard was, he was something which Everard, my husband, never could be: something wonderful, something beautiful, and something so much more intense and real. Well, I can’t help it that I needed that, can I? I did need it. I was just arrested without it. — And Everard would just either kill me or show off in some other way like a maniac, if I tried to tell him. Why will men never know their own limitation?”
“Will women?” said Gilbert.
“Oh much sooner. — You see I could always be friends with Everard: even be married to him. I am fond of him, really. But I did love Eberhard — and my husband would have to admit it. I loved Eberhard. And I rather love Freyling and Berry. I do, and so I do. It’s no use denying it. And I won’t deny it. Why should I deny them any more than Everard? Why should I?”
Gilbert sat with his head dropped, and did not answer. Johanna watched him.
“Ah!” she said, with a distraught, reckless sigh. “It is all so complicated, I feel sometimes I might go mad. Why is it all so complicated? Why can’t we admit love simply, and not go into paroxysms about it?”
“Perhaps it isn’t natural to be simple about it,” said Gilbert. “Perhaps it would be unnatural if Everard, your husband, let you do as you do and knew about it.”
“But why can it be any more natural, his just refusing to know? He only refuses to know. And if that is natural, well, better be educated beyond nature.”
“Probably,” said Gilbert.
“You know that’s what makes me hate him. I don’t hate him. I’m fond of him really. And it sends me mad to have to hate him, when I’m fond of him. But I shall go mad if I have to live with him. Because I’ve got to keep it all secret, and that just does for me.”
“Why don’t you tell him, then?”
“I’ve tried. Ha, haven’t I tried, God knows. But he’d expect me to be a weeping Magdalen, which I’m not: repenting at his feet, which would be just a lie. I loved Eberhard, God knows I loved him: and I’ll never go back on it. And I love Berry and Freyling, but not so much. And I’m fond of Everard. And they’re all true, so I shan’t deny any of them. But I hate Everard, really, for making me lie. I hate him for it, with a deep, deep hatred. He has made me lie, and I can’t do it any more. I can’t do it.”
“Then don’t,” said Gilbert. “Write and tell him.”
“I don’t know what he’d do to the children.”
“Nothing,” said Gilbert. “Be tragic over them.”
“But I don’t want him to be tragic over them. — It might all be so simple.”
“While you’ve got people, things never will be simple,” said Gilbert.
“No, I suppose they won’t. — But I’m not going to be self- sacrificing. Since Eberhard, I can’t even if I want to. I can’t, I really disbelieve in it.”
“So do I,” said Gilbert.
They relapsed into silence.
“Well — ” she sighed after a while, looking up with her bright, reckless, rather pathetic smile again. “There it is!”
“Yes,” said Gilbert. “There it is.”
“Goodness!” she cried, looking at the clock. “It’s nearly three.”
“It is,” said Gilbert.
She rose, letting her serviette drop on the floor, and turned towards the door.
“Well goodnight,” she said, holding out her hand.
“Goodnight,” said Gilbert, shaking hands.
“You wouldn’t like to come to me?” she said, looking direct at him.
“When?” he asked, looking back into her eyes.
“Tonight,” she said.
He was silent for a moment, looking unconsciously at her.
“Yes,” he said, and was surprised that his lungs had no breath.
“In about ten minutes,” she said, turning away.
Chapter XV.
Jupiter Tonans.
To say that Johanna and Gilbert found that famous first night of theirs a success would be false. It was not a success for either of them. The passion did not get free in either, and therefore neither of them felt satisfied or assuaged or fulfilled. And yet in the morning they were rather happy. They were happy just being together. The very fact that the attempt at passion had failed for the moment kindled a deeper gratification in companionship. They were delighted like two children at being together.
“What are you doing today?” cried Johanna at breakfast — which was at half-past ten.
“Alfred is coming back this afternoon,” said Gilbert.
“Oh dear! And tomorrow I must go to Frankfort. Isn’t it maddening! — Shall we go out?”
“Yes,” said Gilbert — though he should have gone to the university.
Therefore they wandered through the streets of the town till midday, then took the train to the mountains. They went to Kochel, to the Kochelsee. It is a little, deep, dark-watered lake. The day was sunny, with a vivid radiance enhanced by the not-far-off flashing of many snows and spear-heads of mountains. At the foot of the Alps, among the foot-hills, there are bogs where the peasants cut turf. The two walked across the bogs, picking blue gentian and delicate pink primulas and bog-flowers like violets. In the village they bought food and oranges — which Gilbert liked because the peasant woman who sold them called them Apfelsinen, applesses, feminine apples. By the side of a little white shrine they sat in the sun, listening to the Alpine gurgling of running waters, smelling the tang of ice and bog in the sunshine, and eating the black bread, which is so very good with mountain butter, and the slices of rare good sausage, and sipping the Schnapps from a tiny shilling bottle, and hearing the cow-bells tong-tong-tong, behind the fir-trees at the back, and seeing the mountains in heaven pale and radiant.
“If I were you,” said Gilbert, “I shouldn’t go back to America.”
He was holding her hand quietly in his.
“When, never? Oh, I must.”
“But I should write and tell Everard.”
“What?”
“That you won’t come back.”
“But he’d want to know why.”
“Because you are staying with me.”
She was quite still, whilst the cow-bells clonked from the slopes above, and a peasant far off yodelled in the spring air.
“But I must go back, mustn’t I?” she said wistfully. “I’d love not to. — But I must.”
“Write and tell him you are with me.”
“Must I?”
“Yes.”
“I am frightened.”
“What’s the good of being frightened. — It would be better if you told him to his face. But you can’t. So write. Write tonight.”
“And say what?”
“That you are with me.”
“But shall I?”
“Yes. Write openly. Then let things develop.”
“I’m afraid to.”
“But you must.”
“Are you sure.”
“Yes I am.”
“I’m frightened.”
And she clung to his fingers. He stared away into the marshes of the foot-hills, where clumps of birch-trees balanced magically in the air, on silver stems, radiant almost as the mountains are radiant, yet near, and alive.
“Are you sure I must?” she said. His face, so still, looking into the distance and seeming devoid of feeling, frightened her.
