The Rainbow - D. H. Lawrence [219]
He watched her pensive, puzzled face.
"I don't think I want to marry you," she said, her brow clouded.
It piqued him rather.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Let's think about it afterwards, shall we?" she said.
He was crossed, yet he loved her violently.
"You've got a museau, not a face," he said.
"Have I?" she cried, her face lighting up like a pure flame. She thought she had escaped. Yet he returned—he was not satisfied.
"Why?" he asked, "why don't you want to marry me?"
"I don't want to be with other people," she said. "I want to be like this. I'll tell you if ever I want to marry you."
"All right," he said.
He would rather the thing was left indefinite, and that she took the responsibility.
They talked of the Easter vacation. She thought only of complete enjoyment.
They went to an hotel in Piccadilly. She was supposed to be his wife. They bought a wedding-ring for a shilling, from a shop in a poor quarter.
They had revoked altogether the ordinary mortal world. Their confidence was like a possession upon them. They were possessed. Perfectly and supremely free they felt, proud beyond all question, and surpassing mortal conditions.
They were perfect, therefore nothing else existed. The world was a world of servants whom one civilly ignored. Wherever they went, they were the sensuous aristocrats, warm, bright, glancing with pure pride of the senses.
The effect upon other people was extraordinary. The glamour was cast from the young couple upon all they came into contact with, waiters or chance acquaintances.
"Oui, Monsieur le baron," she would reply with a mocking courtesy to her husband.
So they came to be treated as titled people. He was an officer in the engineers. They were just married, going to India immediately.
Thus a tissue of romance was round them. She believed she was a young wife of a titled husband on the eve of departure for India. This, the social fact, was a delicious make-belief. The living fact was that he and she were man and woman, absolute and beyond all limitation.
The days went by—they were to have three weeks together—in perfect success. All the time, they themselves were reality, all outside was tribute to them. They were quite careless about money, but they did nothing very extravagant. He was rather surprised when he found that he had spent twenty pounds in a little under a week, but it was only the irritation of having to go to the bank. The machinery of the old system lasted for him, not the system. The money simply did not exist.
Neither did any of the old obligations. They came home from the theatre, had supper, then flitted about in their dressing-gowns. They had a large bedroom and a corner sitting-room high up, remote and very cosy. They ate all their meals in their own rooms, attended by a young German called Hans, who thought them both wonderful, and answered assiduously:
"Gewiss, Herr Baron—bitte sehr, Frau Baronin."
Often, they saw the pink of dawn away across the park. The tower of Westminster Cathedral was emerging, the lamps of Piccadilly, stringing away beside the trees of the park, were becoming pale and moth-like, the morning traffic was clock-clocking down the shadowy road, which had gleamed all night like metal, down below, running far ahead into the night, beneath the lamps, and which was now vague, as in a mist, because of the dawn.
Then, as the flush of dawn became stronger, they opened the glass doors and went on to the giddy balcony, feeling triumphant as two angels in bliss, looking down at the still sleeping world, which would wake to a dutiful, rumbling, sluggish turmoil of unreality.
[But the air was cold. They went into their bedroom, and bathed before going to bed, leaving the partition doors of the bathroom open, so that the vapour came into the bedroom and faintly dimmed the mirror. She was always in bed first. She watched him as he bathed, his quick, unconscious movements, the electric light glinting on his wet shoulders. He stood out of the bath, his hair all washed flat over his forehead, and pressed the water out of his eyes. He was slender, and, to her, perfect, a clean, straight-cut youth, without a grain of superfluous body. The brown hair on his body was soft and fine and adorable, he was all beautifully flushed, as he stood in the white bath-apartment.