Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics S - D. H. Lawrence [149]
“Is that it?” said Birkin. “I hadn’t heard it.”
There was a pause. Then Birkin said:
“Am I hindering you? I called to see Ursula, really. Is she at home?”
“I don’t believe she is. I believe she’s gone to the library. I’ll just see.”
Birkin could hear him enquiring in the dining-room.
“No,” he said, coming back. “But she won’t be long. You wanted to speak to her?”
Birkin looked across at the other man with curious calm, clear eyes.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I wanted to ask her to marry me.”
A point of light came on the golden-brown eyes of the elder man.
“O-oh?” he said, looking at Birkin, then dropping his eyes before the calm, steadily watching look of the other: “Was she expecting you then?”
“No,” said Birkin.
“No? I didn’t know anything of this sort was on foot—” Brangwen smiled awkwardly.
Birkin looked back at him, and said to himself: “I wonder why it should be ‘on foot’!” Aloud he said:
“No, it’s perhaps rather sudden.” At which, thinking of his relationship with Ursula, he added—“but I don’t know—”
“Quite sudden, is it? Oh!” said Brangwen, rather baffled and annoyed.
“In one way,” replied Birkin, “—not in another.”
There was a moment’s pause, after which Brangwen said:
“Well, she pleases herself—”
“Oh yes!” said Birkin, calmly.
A vibration came into Brangwen’s strong voice, as he replied:
“Though I shouldn’t want her to be in too big a hurry, either. It’s no good looking round afterwards, when it’s too late.”
“Oh, it need never be too late,” said Birkin, “as far as that goes.”
“How do you mean?” asked the father.
“If one repents being married, the marriage is at an end,” said Birkin.
“You think so?”
“Yes.”
“Ay, well, that may be your way of looking at it.”
Birkin, in silence, thought to himself: “So it may. As for your way of looking at it, William Brangwen, it needs a little explaining.”
“I suppose,” said Brangwen, “you know what sort of people we are? What sort of a bringing-up she’s had?”
“‘She, ” thought Birkin to himself, remembering his childhood’s corrections, “is the cat’s mother.”
“Do I know what sort of a bringing-up she’s had?” he said aloud.
He seemed to annoy Brangwen intentionally.
“Well,” he said, “she’s had everything that’s right for a girl to have—as far as possible, as far as we could give it her.”
“I’m sure she has,” said Birkin, which caused a perilous full-stop. The father was becoming exasperated. There was something naturally irritant to him in Birkin’s mere presence.
“And I don’t want to see her going back on it all,” he said, in a clanging voice.
“Why?” said Birkin.
This monosyllable exploded in Brangwen’s brain like a shot.
“Why! I don’t believe in your new-fangled ways and new-fangled ideas—in and out like a frog in a gallipot.bx It would never do for me.”
Birkin watched him with steady emotionless eyes. The radical antagonism in the two men was rousing.
“Yes, but are my ways and ideas new-fangled?” asked Birkin.
“Are they?” Brangwen caught himself up. “I’m not speaking of you in particular,” he said. “What I mean is that my children have been brought up to think and do according to the religion I was brought up in myself, and I don’t want to see them going away from that”.
There was a dangerous pause.
“And beyond that—?” asked Birkin.
The father hesitated, he was in a nasty position.
“Eh? What do you mean? All I want to say is that my daughter”—he tailed off into silence, overcome by futility. He knew that in some way he was off the track.
“Of course,” said Birkin, “I don’t want to hurt anybody or influence anybody. Ursula does exactly as she pleases.”
There was a complete silence, because of the utter failure in mutual understanding. Birkin felt bored. Her father was not a coherent human being, he was a roomful of old echoes. The eyes of the younger man rested on the face of the elder. Brangwen looked up, and saw Birkin looking at him. His face was covered with inarticulate anger and humiliation and sense of inferiority in strength.
“And as for beliefs, that’s one thing,” he said. “But I’d rather see my daughters dead to-morrow than that they should be at the beck and call of the first man that likes to come and whistle for them.