There was the other way, the remaining way. And he must run to follow
it. He thought of Ursula, how sensitive and delicate she really was,
her skin so over-fine, as if one skin were wanting. She was really so
marvellously gentle and sensitive. Why did he ever forget it? He must
go to her at once. He must ask her to marry him. They must marry at
once, and so make a definite pledge, enter into a definite communion.
He must set out at once and ask her, this moment. There was no moment
to spare.
He drifted on swiftly to Beldover, half-unconscious of his own
movement. He saw the town on the slope of the hill, not straggling, but
as if walled-in with the straight, final streets of miners' dwellings,
making a great square, and it looked like Jerusalem to his fancy. The
world was all strange and transcendent.
Rosalind opened the door to him. She started slightly, as a young girl
will, and said: 'Oh, I'll tell father.' With which she disappeared, leaving Birkin in the hall, looking at some
reproductions from Picasso, lately introduced by Gudrun. He was
admiring the almost wizard, sensuous apprehension of the earth, when
Will Brangwen appeared, rolling down his shirt sleeves.
'Well,' said Brangwen, 'I'll get a coat.' And he too disappeared for a
moment. Then he returned, and opened the door of the drawing-room,
saying: 'You must excuse me, I was just doing a bit of work in the shed. Come
inside, will you.' Birkin entered and sat down. He looked at the bright, reddish face of
the other man, at the narrow brow and the very bright eyes, and at the
rather sensual lips that unrolled wide and expansive under the black
cropped moustache. How curious it was that this was a human being! What
Brangwen thought himself to be, how meaningless it was, confronted with
the reality of him. Birkin could see only a strange, inexplicable,
almost patternless collection of passions and desires and suppressions
and traditions and mechanical ideas, all cast unfused and disunited
into this slender, bright-faced man of nearly fifty, who was as
unresolved now as he was at twenty, and as uncreated. How could he be
the parent of Ursula, when he was not created himself. He was not a
parent. A slip of living flesh had been transmitted through him, but
the spirit had not come from him. The spirit had not come from any
ancestor, it had come out of the unknown. A child is the child of the
mystery, or it is uncreated.
'The weather's not so bad as it has been,' said Brangwen, after waiting
a moment. There was no connection between the two men.