Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics S - D. H. Lawrence [225]
At the end, the Germans were all touched with admiring, delicious melancholy, they praised her in soft, reverent voices, they could not say too much.
“Wie schön, wie rührend! Ach, die Schottischen Lieder, sie haben so viel Stimmung! Aber die gnädige Frau hat eine wunderbare Stimme; die gnädige Frau ist wirklich eine Künstlerin, aber wirklich!”
She was dilated and brilliant, like a flower in the morning sun. She felt Birkin looking at her, as if he were jealous of her, and her breasts thrilled, her veins were all golden. She was as happy as the sun that has just opened above clouds. And everybody seemed so admiring and radiant, it was perfect.
After dinner she wanted to go out for a minute, to look at the world. The company tried to dissuade her—it was so terribly cold. But just to look, she said.
They all four wrapped up warmly, and found themselves in a vague, unsubstantial outdoors of dim snow and ghosts of an upper-world, that made strange shadows before the stars. It was indeed cold, bruisingly, frighteningly, unnaturally cold. Ursula could not believe the air in her nostrils. It seemed conscious, malevolent, purposive in its intense murderous coldness.
Yet it was wonderful, an intoxication, a silence of dim, unrealised snow, of the Invisible intervening between her and the visible, between her and the flashing stars. She could see Orion sloping up. How wonderful he was, wonderful enough to make one cry aloud.
And all around was this cradle of snow, and there was firm snow underfoot, that struck with heavy cold through her boot-soles. It was night, and silence. She imagined she could hear the stars. She imagined distinctly she could hear the celestial, musical motion of the stars, quite near at hand. She seemed like a bird flying amongst their harmonious motion.
And she clung close to Birkin. Suddenly she realised she did not know what he was thinking. She did not know where he was ranging.
“My love!” she said, stopping to look at him.
His face was pale, his eyes dark, there was a faint spark of starlight on them. And he saw her face soft and upturned to him, very near. He kissed her softly.
“What then?” he asked.
“Do you love me?” she asked.
“Too much,” he answered quietly.
She clung a little closer.
“Not too much,” she pleaded.
“Far too much,” he said, almost sadly.
“And does it make you sad, that I am everything to you?” she asked, wistful. He held her close to him, kissing her, and saying, scarcely audible:
“No, but I feel like a beggar—I feel poor.”
She was silent, looking at the stars now. Then she kissed him.
“Don’t be a beggar,” she pleaded, wistfully. “It isn’t ignominious that you love me.”
“It is ignominious to feel poor, isn’t it?” he replied.
“Why? Why should it be?” she asked. He only stood still, in the terribly cold air that moved invisibly over the mountain tops, folding her round with his arms.
“I couldn’t bear this cold, eternal place without you,” he said. “I couldn’t bear it, it would kill the quick of my life.”
She kissed him again, suddenly.
“Do you hate it?” she asked, puzzled, wondering.
“If I couldn’t come near to you, if you weren’t here, I should hate it. I couldn’t bear it,” he answered.
“But the people are nice,” she said.
“I mean the stillness, the cold, the frozen eternality,” he said.
She wondered. Then her spirit came home to him, nestling unconscious in him.
“Yes, it is good we are warm and together,” she said.
And they turned home again. They saw the golden lights of the hotel glowing out in the night of snow-silence, small in the hollow, like a cluster of yellow berries. It seemed like a bunch of sun-sparks, tiny and orange in the midst of the snow-darkness. Behind, was a high shadow of a peak, blotting out the stars, like a ghost.
They drew near to their home. They saw a man come from the dark building, with a lighted lantern which swung golden, and made that his dark feet walked in a halo of snow. He was a small, dark figure in the darkened snow. He unlatched the door of an outhouse. A smell of cows, hot, animal, almost like beef, came out on the heavily cold air. There was a glimpse of two cattle in their dark stalls, then the door was shut again, and not a chink of light showed. It had reminded Ursula again of home, of the Marsh, of her childhood, and of the journey to Brussels, and, strangely, of Anton Skrebensky.