Hermione loved to watch. She could see the Contessa's rapid, stoat-like
sensationalism, Gudrun's ultimate but treacherous cleaving to the woman
in her sister, Ursula's dangerous helplessness, as if she were
helplessly weighted, and unreleased.
'That was very beautiful,' everybody cried with one accord. But
Hermione writhed in her soul, knowing what she could not know. She
cried out for more dancing, and it was her will that set the Contessa
and Birkin moving mockingly in Malbrouk.
Gerald was excited by the desperate cleaving of Gudrun to Naomi. The
essence of that female, subterranean recklessness and mockery
penetrated his blood. He could not forget Gudrun's lifted, offered,
cleaving, reckless, yet withal mocking weight. And Birkin, watching
like a hermit crab from its hole, had seen the brilliant frustration
and helplessness of Ursula. She was rich, full of dangerous power. She
was like a strange unconscious bud of powerful womanhood. He was
unconsciously drawn to her. She was his future.
Alexander played some Hungarian music, and they all danced, seized by
the spirit. Gerald was marvellously exhilarated at finding himself in
motion, moving towards Gudrun, dancing with feet that could not yet
escape from the waltz and the two-step, but feeling his force stir
along his limbs and his body, out of captivity. He did not know yet how
to dance their convulsive, rag-time sort of dancing, but he knew how to
begin. Birkin, when he could get free from the weight of the people
present, whom he disliked, danced rapidly and with a real gaiety. And
how Hermione hated him for this irresponsible gaiety.
'Now I see,' cried the Contessa excitedly, watching his purely gay
motion, which he had all to himself. 'Mr Birkin, he is a changer.' Hermione looked at her slowly, and shuddered, knowing that only a
foreigner could have seen and have said this.
'Cosa vuol'dire, Palestra?' she asked, sing-song.
'Look,' said the Contessa, in Italian. 'He is not a man, he is a
chameleon, a creature of change.' 'He is not a man, he is treacherous, not one of us,' said itself over
in Hermione's consciousness. And her soul writhed in the black
subjugation to him, because of his power to escape, to exist, other
than she did, because he was not consistent, not a man, less than a
man. She hated him in a despair that shattered her and broke her down,
so that she suffered sheer dissolution like a corpse, and was
unconscious of everything save the horrible sickness of dissolution
that was taking place within her, body and soul.
The house being full, Gerald was given the smaller room, really the
dressing-room, communicating with Birkin's bedroom. When they all took
their candles and mounted the stairs, where the lamps were burning
subduedly, Hermione captured Ursula and brought her into her own
bedroom, to talk to her. A sort of constraint came over Ursula in the
big, strange bedroom. Hermione seemed to be bearing down on her, awful
and inchoate, making some appeal. They were looking at some Indian silk
shirts, gorgeous and sensual in themselves, their shape, their almost
corrupt gorgeousness. And Hermione came near, and her bosom writhed,
and Ursula was for a moment blank with panic. And for a moment
Hermione's haggard eyes saw the fear on the face of the other, there
was again a sort of crash, a crashing down. And Ursula picked up a
shirt of rich red and blue silk, made for a young princess of fourteen,
and was crying mechanically: 'Isn't it wonderful--who would dare to put those two strong colours
together--' Then Hermione's maid entered silently and Ursula, overcome with dread,
escaped, carried away by powerful impulse.