Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics S - D. H. Lawrence [261]
Gudrun sat on in her room, her face pale and impassive. What was she to do? She could not weep and make a scene. She could not alter herself. She sat motionless, hiding from people. Her one motive was to avoid actual contact with events. She only wrote out a long telegram to Ursula and Birkin.
In the afternoon, however, she rose suddenly to look for Loerke. She glanced with apprehension at the door of the room that had been Gerald’s. Not for worlds would she enter there.
She found Loerke sitting alone in the lounge. She went straight up to him.
“It isn’t true, is it?” she said.
He looked up at her. A small smile of misery twisted his face. He shrugged his shoulders.
“True?” he echoed.
“We haven’t killed him?” she asked.
He disliked her coming to him in such a manner. He raised his shoulders wearily
“It has happened,” he said.
She looked at him. He sat crushed and frustrated for the time being, quite as emotionless and barren as herself. My God! this was a barren tragedy, barren, barren.
She returned to her room to wait for Ursula and Birkin. She wanted to get away, only to get away. She could not think or feel until she had got away, till she was loosed from this position.
The day passed, the next day came. She heard the sledge, saw Ursula and Birkin alight, and she shrank from these also.
Ursula came straight up to her.
“Gudrun!” she cried, the tears running down her cheeks. And she took her sister in her arms. Gudrun hid her face on Ursula’s shoulder, but still she could not escape the cold devil of irony that froze her soul.
“Ha, ha!” she thought, “this is the right behaviour.”
But she could not weep, and the sight of her cold, pale, impassive face soon stopped the fountain of Ursula’s tears. In a few moments, the sisters had nothing to say to each other.
“Was it very vile to be dragged back here again?” Gudrun asked at length.
Ursula looked up in some bewilderment.
“I never thought of it,” she said.
“I felt a beast, fetching you,” said Gudrun. “But I simply couldn’t see people. That is too much for me.”
“Yes,” said Ursula, chilled.
Birkin tapped and entered. His face was white and expressionless. She knew he knew. He gave her his hand, saying:
“The end of this trip, at any rate.”
Gudrun glanced at him, afraid.
There was silence between the three of them, nothing to be said. At length Ursula asked in a small voice:
“Have you seen him?”
He looked back at Ursula with a hard, cold look, and did not trouble to answer.
“Have you seen him?” she repeated.
“I have,” he said, coldly.
Then he looked at Gudrun.
“Have you done anything?” he said.
“Nothing,” she replied, “nothing.”
She shrank in cold disgust from making any statement.
“Loerke says that Gerald came to you, when you were sitting on the sledge at the bottom of the Rudelbahn,dz that you had words, and Gerald walked away. What were the words about? I had better know, so that I can satisfy the authorities, if necessary.”
Gudrun looked up at him, white, childlike, mute with trouble.
“There weren’t even any words,” she said. “He knocked Loerke down and stunned him, he half strangled me, then he went away.”
To herself she was saying:
“A pretty little sample of the eternal triangle!” And she turned ironically away, because she knew that the fight had been between Gerald and herself and that the presence of the third party was a mere contingency—an inevitable contingency perhaps, but a contingency none the less. But let them have it as an example of the eternal triangle, the trinity of hate. It would be simpler for them.
Birkin went away, his manner cold and abstracted. But she knew he would do things for her, nevertheless, he would see her through. She smiled slightly to herself, with contempt. Let him do the work, since he was so extremely good at looking after other people.
Birkin went again to Gerald. He had loved him. And yet he felt chiefly disgust at the inert body lying there. It was so inert, so coldly dead, a carcass, Birkin’s bowels seemed to turn to ice. He had to stand and look at the frozen dead body that had been Gerald.