Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics S - D. H. Lawrence [247]
One evening Gerald was arguing with Loerke about Italy and Tripoli.dg The Englishman was in a strange, inflammable state, the German was excited. It was a contest of words, but it meant a conflict of spirit between the two men. And all the while Gudrun could see in Gerald an arrogant English contempt for a foreigner. Although Gerald was quivering, his eyes flashing, his face flushed, in his argument there was a brusqueness, a savage contempt in his manner, that made Gudrun’s blood flare up, and made Loerke keen and mortified. For Gerald came down like a sledge-hammer with his assertions, anything the little German said was merely contemptible rubbish.
At last Loerke turned to Gudrun, raising his hands in helpless irony, a shrug of ironical dismissal, something appealing and childlike.
“Sehen sie, gnädige Frau—” he began.
“Bitte sagen Sie nicht immer, gnädige Frau,”dh cried Gudrun, her eyes flashing, her cheeks burning. She looked like a vivid Medusa. Her voice was loud and clamorous, the other people in the room were startled.
“Please don’t call me Mrs. Crich,” she cried aloud.
The name, in Loerke’s mouth particularly, had been an intolerable humiliation and constraint upon her, these many days.
The two men looked at her in amazement. Gerald went white at the cheek-bones.
“What shall I say, then?” asked Loerke, with soft, mocking insinuation.
“Sagen Sie nur nicht das,”di she muttered, her cheeks flushed crimson. “Not that, at least.”
She saw, by the dawning look on Loerke’s face, that he had understood. She was not Mrs. Crich! So-o, that explained a great deal.
“Soll ich Fräulein sagen?”dj he asked, malevolently.
“I am not married,” she said, with some hauteur.
Her heart was fluttering now, beating like a bewildered bird. She knew she had dealt a cruel wound, and she could not bear it.
Gerald sat erect, perfectly still, his face pale and calm, like the face of a statue. He was unaware of her, or of Loerke or anybody. He sat perfectly still, in an unalterable calm. Loerke, meanwhile, was crouching and glancing up from under his ducked head.
Gudrun was tortured for something to say, to relieve the suspense. She twisted her face in a smile, and glanced knowingly, almost sneering, at Gerald.
“Truth is best,” she said to him, with a grimace.
But now again she was under his domination; now, because she had dealt him this blow; because she had destroyed him, and she did not know how he had taken it. She watched him. He was interesting to her. She had lost her interest in Loerke.
Gerald rose at length, and went over in a leisurely still movement, to the professor. The two began a conversation on Goethe.
She was rather piqued by the simplicity of Gerald’s demeanour this evening. He did not seem angry or disgusted, only he looked curiously innocent and pure, really beautiful. Sometimes it came upon him, this look of clear distance, and it always fascinated her.
She waited, troubled, throughout the evening. She thought he would avoid her, or give some sign. But he spoke to her simply and unemotionally, as he would to anyone else in the room. A certain peace, an abstraction possessed his soul.
She went to his room, hotly, violently in love with him. He was so beautiful and inaccessible. He kissed her, he was a lover to her. And she had extreme pleasure of him. But he did not come to, he remained remote and candid, unconscious. She wanted to speak to him. But this innocent, beautiful state of unconsciousness that had come upon him prevented her. She felt tormented and dark.
In the morning, however, he looked at her with a little aversion, some horror and some hatred darkening into his eyes. She withdrew on to her old ground. But still he would not gather himself together, against her.