Birkin knew this. He knew that Gerald wanted to be FOND of him without
taking him seriously. And this made him go hard and cold. As the train
ran on, he sat looking at the land, and Gerald fell away, became as
nothing to him.
Birkin looked at the land, at the evening, and was thinking: 'Well, if
mankind is destroyed, if our race is destroyed like Sodom, and there is
this beautiful evening with the luminous land and trees, I am
satisfied. That which informs it all is there, and can never be lost.
After all, what is mankind but just one expression of the
incomprehensible. And if mankind passes away, it will only mean that
this particular expression is completed and done. That which is
expressed, and that which is to be expressed, cannot be diminished.
There it is, in the shining evening. Let mankind pass away--time it
did. The creative utterances will not cease, they will only be there.
Humanity doesn't embody the utterance of the incomprehensible any more.
Humanity is a dead letter. There will be a new embodiment, in a new
way. Let humanity disappear as quick as possible.' Gerald interrupted him by asking, 'Where are you staying in London?' Birkin looked up.
'With a man in Soho. I pay part of the rent of a flat, and stop there
when I like.' 'Good idea--have a place more or less your own,' said Gerald.
'Yes. But I don't care for it much. I'm tired of the people I am bound
to find there.' 'What kind of people?' 'Art--music--London Bohemia--the most pettifogging calculating Bohemia
that ever reckoned its pennies. But there are a few decent people,
decent in some respects. They are really very thorough rejecters of the
world--perhaps they live only in the gesture of rejection and
negation--but negatively something, at any rate.' 'What are they?--painters, musicians?' 'Painters, musicians, writers--hangers-on, models, advanced young
people, anybody who is openly at outs with the conventions, and belongs
to nowhere particularly. They are often young fellows down from the
University, and girls who are living their own lives, as they say.' 'All loose?' said Gerald.
Birkin could see his curiosity roused.
'In one way. Most bound, in another. For all their shockingness, all on
one note.' He looked at Gerald, and saw how his blue eyes were lit up with a
little flame of curious desire. He saw too how good-looking he was.
Gerald was attractive, his blood seemed fluid and electric. His blue
eyes burned with a keen, yet cold light, there was a certain beauty, a
beautiful passivity in all his body, his moulding.