Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence, page 355
“For the same reason. Love is mutual. Each attracts the other. But in natural love each tries at the same time to withhold the other, to keep the other true to its own beloved nature. To any true lover, it would be the greatest disaster if the beloved broke down from her own nature and self and began to identify herself with him, with his nature and self. I say, to any genuine lover this is the greatest disaster, and he tries by every means in his power to prevent this. The earth and sun, on their plane, have discovered a perfect equilibrium. But man has not yet begun. His lesson is so much harder. His consciousness is at once so complicated and so cruelly limited. This is the lesson before us. Man has loved the beloved for the sake of love, so far, but rarely, rarely has he CONSCIOUSLY known that he could only love her for her own separate, strange self: forever strange and a joyful mystery to him. Lovers henceforth have got to KNOW one another. A terrible mistake, and a self-delusion. True lovers only learn that as they know less, and less, and less of each other, the mystery of each grows more startling to the other. The tangible unknown: that is the magic, the mystery, and the grandeur of love, that it puts the tangible unknown in our arms, and against our breast: the beloved. We have made a fatal mistake. We have got to know so much ABOUT things, that we think we know the actuality, and contain it. The sun is as much outside us, and as eternally unknown, as ever it was. And the same with each man’s beloved: like the sun. What do the facts we know ABOUT a man amount to? Only two things we can know of him, and this by pure soul-intuition: we can know if he is true to the flame of life and love which is inside his heart, or if he is false to it. If he is true, he is friend. If he is wilfully false, and inimical to the fire of life and love in his own heart, then he is my enemy as well as his own.”
Somers listened. He seemed to see it all and hear it all with marvellous clarity. And he believed that it was all true.
“Yes,” he said, “I believe that is all true.”
“What is it then that you disbelieve?”
“I don’t quite believe that love is the one and only exclusive force or mystery of living inspiration. I don’t quite believe that. There is something else.”
Kangaroo looked at him for once overbearingly and with a sort of contempt.
“Tell me what it is,” he replied briefly.
“I am not very clear myself. And, you see, what I want to say, you don’t want to hear.”
“Yes, I do,” snapped Kangaroo.
“With your ears and your critical mind only.”
“Say it anyhow, say it.”
Richard sat feeling very stupid. The communicative soul is like the ass, you can lead him to the water, but you can’t make him drink.
“Why,” he said, “it means an end of us and what we are, in the first place. And then a re-entry into us of the great God, who enters us from below, not from above.”
Kangaroo sat bunched up like some creature watching round-eyed out of a darker corner.
“How do you mean, enters us from below?” he barked.
“Not through the spirit. Enters us from the lower self, the dark self, the phallic self, if you like.”
“Enters us from the phallic self?” snapped Kangaroo sharply.
“Sacredly. The god you can never see or visualise, who stands dark on the threshold of the phallic me.”
“The phallic you, my dear young friend, what is that but love?”
Richard shook his head in silence.
“No,” he said, in a slow, remote voice. “I know your love, Kangaroo. Working everything from the spirit, from the head. You work the lower self as an instrument of the spirit. Now it is time for the spirit to leave us again; it is time for the Son of Man to depart, and leave us dark, in front of the unspoken God: who is just beyond the dark threshold of the lower self, my lower self. There is a great God on the threshold of my lower self, whom I fear while he is my glory. And the spirit goes out like a spent candle.”
Kangaroo watched with a heavy face like a mask.
“It is time for the spirit to leave us,” he murmured in a somnambulist voice. “Time for the spirit to leave us.”
Somers, who had dropped his face, hiding it as he spoke, watched the other man from under his brows. Kangaroo, who still sat impassive, like a frozen, antagonised Buddha, gave himself a jerk of recovery.
“Ah well!” he sighed, with a weary, impatient, condescending sigh. “I was never able to follow mysticism and metaphysics. One of my many limitations. I don’t know what you mean.”
“But what is your ‘love’ but a mystical thing?” asked Richard indignantly.
“My love? Why, that is something I FEEL, as plain as toothache.”
“Well, so do I feel the other: and love has become like cardboard to me,” said Richard, still indignant.
“Like cardboard? Well, I don’t quite see love like cardboard, dear boy. For you ARE a dear boy, in spite of yourself. Oh yes, you are. There’s some demon inside you makes you perverse, and won’t let you be the dear, beautiful thing you are. But I’m going to exorcise that demon.”
Somers gave a short laugh, the very voice of the demon speaking.
“Oh yes I am,” said Kangaroo, in a steely voice. “I’m going to exorcise that demon, and release your beautiful Andromeda soul.”
“Try,” ejaculated Richard dryly, turning aside his face in distaste.
Kangaroo leapt to his feet and stood towering over the little enemy as if he would stoop over him and smother him in violent warmth and drive out the demon in that way. But Richard sat cold and withheld, and Kangaroo had not the power to touch him.
“I’m going to try,” shouted the lawyer, in his slightly husky roar. “You’ve made it my prerogative by telling me to try. I’m going to love you, and you won’t get away from that. I’m the hound of heaven after you, my boy, and I’m fatal to the hell hound that’s leading you. Do you know I love you? — that I loved you long before I met you?”
Richard, curled narrow in his chair like a snake, glanced up at the big man projecting over him. A sort of magnetic effusion seemed to come out of Kangaroo’s body, and Richard’s hand was almost drawn in spite of himself to touch the other man’s body. He had deliberately to refrain from laying his hand on the near, generous stomach of the Kangaroo, because automatically his hand would have lifted and sought that rest. But he prevented himself, and the eyes of the two men met. Kangaroo searched Lovat’s eyes: but they seemed to be of cloudy blue like hell-smoke, impenetrable and devilish. Kangaroo watched a long time: but the other man was the unchangeable. Kangaroo turned aside suddenly.
“Ah well,” he said. “I can see there is a beast in the way. There is a beast in your eyes, Lovat, and if I can’t conquer him then — then, woe betide you, my dear. But I love you, you see.”
“Sounds like a threat,” laughed Somers.
Kangaroo leaned and laid his hand gently on Lovat’s shoulder.
“Don’t say that,” his voice was small now, and very gentle. I loved you before I knew you. My soul cries for you. And you hurt me with the demon that is in you.”
Richard became very pale, and was silent for some moments. The hand sank heavier, nearer, on his shoulder.
“You see,” said Somers, trying hard to be fair, “what you call my demon is what I identify myself with. It’s my best me, and I stick to it. I think love, all this love of ours, is a devilish thing now: a slow poison. Really, I know the dark god at the lower threshold — even if I have to repeat it like a phrase. And in the sacred dark men meet and touch, and it is a great communion. But it isn’t this love. There’s no love in it. But something deeper. Love seems to me somehow trivial: and the spirit seems like something that belongs to paper. I can’t help it — I know another God.”
The pressure of the hand became inert.
“But aren’t you merely inventing other terms for the same thing that I mean, and that I call love?” said Kangaroo, in a strange, toneless voice, looking aside.
“Does it seem to you that I am?” asked Lovat, gently and dispassionately.
The strange, great passionate cloud of Kangaroo still hung there, hovering over the pale, sharp isolation of Somers, who lay looking up. And then it seemed as if the glow and vibration left Kangaroo’s body, the cloud became grey and heavy. He sighed, and removed his hand, and turned away.
“Ah well?” he said. “Ah well!”
Somers rose, trembling now, and feeling frail.
“I’ll go,” he said.
“Yes, do go,” said Kangaroo.
And without another word Somers went, leaving the other man sunk in a great heap in his chair, as if defeated. Somers did not even pity him. His heart felt queer and cave-like and devoid of emotion.
He was spending the night at the Callcotts. Harriet, too, was there. But he was in no hurry to get back there. It was a clear and very starry night. He took the tram-car away from the centre of the town, then walked. As was always the case with him, in this country, the land and the world disappeared as night fell, as if the day had been an illusion, and the sky came bending down. There was the Milky Way, in clouds of star-fume, bending down right in front of him, right down till it seemed as if he would walk on to it, if he kept going. The pale, fumy drift of the Milky Way drooped down and seemed so near, straight in front, that it seemed the obvious road to take. And one would avoid the strange dark gaps, gulfs, in the way overhead. And one would look across to the floating isles of star-fume, to the south, across the gulfs where the sharp stars flashed like lighthouses, and one would be in a new way denizen of a new plane, walking by oneself. There would be a real new way to take. And the mechanical earth quite obliterated, sunk out.
Only he saw, on the sea’s high black horizon, the various reddish sore-looking lights of a ship. There they were — the signs of the ways of men — hot-looking and weary. He turned quickly away from the marks of the far-off ship, to look again at the downward slope of the great hill of the Milky Way. He wanted so much to get out of this lit-up cloy of humanity, and the exhaust of love, and the fretfulness of desire. Why not swing away into cold separation? Why should desire always be fretting, fretting like a tugged chain? Why not break the bond and be single, take a fierce stoop and a swing back, as when a gannet plunges like a white, metallic arrow into the sea, raising a burst of spray, disappearing, completing the downward curve of the parabola in the invisible underwater where it seizes the object of desire, then away, away with success upwards, back flashing into the air and white space? Why not? Why want to urge, urge, urge oneself down the causeways of desirous love, hard pavements of love? Even like Kangaroo. Why shouldn’t meeting be a stoop as a gannet stoops into the sea, or a hawk, or a kite, in a swift rapacious parabola downwards, to touch at the lowermost turn of the curve, then up again?
It is a world of slaves: all love-professing. Why unite with them? Why pander to them? Why go with them at all? Why not strike at communion out of the unseen, as the gannet strikes into the unseen underwater, or the kite from above at a mouse? One seizure, and away again, back away into isolation. A touch, and away. Always back, away into isolation. Why be cloyed and clogged down like billions of fish in water, or billions of mice on land? It is a world of slaves. Then why not gannets in the upper air, having two worlds? Why only one element? If I am to have a meeting it shall be down, down in the invisible, and the moment I re-emerge it shall be alone. In the visible world I am alone, an isolate instance. My meeting is in the underworld, the dark. Beneath every gannet that jumps from the water ten thousand fish are swimming still. But they are swimming in a shudder of silver fear. That is the magic of the ocean. Let them shudder the huge ocean aglimmer.
He arrived at Wyewurk at last, and found a little party. William James was there, and Victoria had made, by coincidence, a Welsh rarebit. The beer was on the table.
“Just in time,” said Jack. “As well you’re not half an hour later, or there might a’ been no booze. How did you come — tram?”
“Yes — and walked part of the way.”
“What kind of an evening did you have?” said Harriet.
He looked at her. A chill fell upon the little gathering, from his presence.
“We didn’t agree,” he replied.
“I knew you wouldn’t — not for long, anyhow,” she replied. “I don’t see you agreeing and playing second fiddle for long.”
“Do you see me as a fiddler at all?”
“I’ve seen you fiddling away hard enough many times,” retorted Harriet. “Why, what else do you do, all your life, but fiddle some tune or other?”
He did not reply, and there was a pause. His face was pale and very definite, as if it were some curious seashell.
“What did you get the wind up about, between you?” said Jack soothingly, pouring Somers a glass of beer.
“No wind. We’re only not the same pair of shoes.”
“I could have told you that before you went,” said Jaz with quiet elation in his tones.
Victoria looked at Somers with dark, bright eyes. She was quite fascinated by him, as an Australian bird by some adder.
“Isn’t Mr. Somers queer?” she said. “He doesn’t seem to mind a bit.”
Somers looked at her quickly, a smile round his eyes, and a curious, smiling devil inside them, cold as ice.
“Oh yes, he minds. Don’t take any notice of his pretence. He’s only in a bad temper,” cried Harriet. “I know him by now. He’s been in a temper for days.”
“Oh why?” cried Victoria. “I thought he was lovely this afternoon when he was here.”
“Yes,” said Harriet grimly. “Lovely! You should live with him.”
But again Victoria looked at his clear, fixed face, with the false smile round the eyes, and her fascination did not diminish.
“What an excellent Welsh rarebit,” he said. “If there were a little red pepper.”
“Red pepper?” cried Victoria. “There is!” And she sprang up to get it for him. As she handed it to him he looked into her dilated, dark bright eyes, and thanked her courteously. When he was in this state his voice and tone in speaking were very melodious. Of course it set Harriet on edge. But Victoria stood fluttering with her hands over the table, bewildered.
“What are you feeling for?” asked Jack.
She only gave a little blind laugh, and remembered that she was going to sit down. So she sat down, and then wondered what it was she was going to do after that.
“So you don’t cotton on to Kangaroo either?” said Jack easily.
“I have the greatest admiration for him.”
“You’re not alone there. But you don’t fall over yourself, loving him.”
“I only trip, and recover my balance for the moment.”
Jaz gave a loud laugh, across his cheese.
“That’s good!” he said.
“You trip, and recover your balance,” said Jack. “You’re a wary one. The rest of us falls right in, flop, and are never heard of again. And how did you part then?”
“We parted in mutual esteem. I said I would go, and he asked me please to do so as quickly as possible.”
Jack made round eyes, and even Jaz left off eating.
Did you QUARREL?” cried Harriet.
“Oh yes, violently. But, of course, not vulgarly. We parted, as I said, in mutual esteem, bowing each other out.”
“You ARE awful. You only went on purpose to upset him. I knew that all along. Why must you be so spiteful?” said Harriet. “You’re never happy unless you’re upsetting somebody’s apple-cart.”
“Am I doomed to agree with everybody, then?”
“No. But you needn’t SET OUT to be disagreeable. And to Mr. Cooley especially, who likes you and is such a warm, big man. You ought to be flattered that he CARES what you think. No, you have to go and try and undermine him. Ah — why was I ever pestered with such a viperish husband as you!” said Harriet.
Victoria made alert, frightened eyes. But Somers sat on with the same little smile and courteous bearing.
“I am, of course, immensely flattered at his noticing me,” he replied. “Otherwise, naturally, I should have resented being told to leave. As it was I didn’t resent it a bit.”
“Didn’t you!” cried Harriet. “I know you and your pretences. That is what has put you in such a temper.”
“But you remember I’ve been in a temper for days,” he replied calmly and gravely. “Therefore there could be no putting.”
“Oh, it only made you worse. I’m tired of your temper, really.”
“But Mr. Somers isn’t in a temper at all!” cried Victoria. “He’s nicer than any of us, really. Jack would be as angry as anything if I said all those things to him. Shouldn’t you, Jack?” And she cuddled his arm.
“You’d be shut up in the coal-shed for the night before you got half way through with it, if ever you started trying it on,” he replied, with marital humour.
“No, I shouldn’t either: or it would be the last door you’d shut on ME, so there. But anyhow you’d be in a waxy old temper.”
And she smiled at Somers as she cuddled her husband’s arm.
“If my hostess says I’m nice,” said Somers, “I am not going to feel guilty whatever my WIFE may say.”
“Oh yes, you do feel guilty,” said Harriet.
“Your hostess doesn’t find any fault with you at all,” cried Victoria. She was looking very pretty, in a brown chiffon dress. “She thinks you’re the nicest of anybody here, there.”
“What?” cried Jack. “When I’m here as well?”
“Whether you’re here or not. You’re not very nice to me to-night, and William James never is. But Mr. Somers is AWFULLY nice.” She blushed suddenly quite vividly, looking under her long lashes at him. He smiled a little more intensely to himself.
“I tell you what, Mrs. Somers,” said Jack. “We’d better make a swap of it, till they alter their opinion. You and me had better strike up a match, and let them two elope with one another for a bit.”
“And what about William James?” cried Victoria, with hurried, vivid excitement.
“Oh nobody need trouble themselves about William James,” replied that individual. “It’s about time he was rolling home.”
