'I want you to hold me in your arms,'she said.'I want you to tell me you are glad we are having a child.'
She looked so lovely and warm and wistful,his bowels stirred towards her.
'I suppose we can go to my room,'he said.'Though it's scandalous again.'
But she saw the forgetfulness of the world coming over him again,his face taking the soft,pure look of tender passion.
They walked by the remoter streets to Coburg Square,where he had a room at the top of the house,an attic room where he cooked for himself on a gas ring.It was small,but decent and tidy.
She took off her things,and made him do the same.She was lovely in the soft first flush of her pregnancy.
'I ought to leave you alone,'he said.
'No!'she said.'Love me!Love me,and say you'll keep me.Say you'll keep me!Say you'll never let me go,to the world nor to anybody.'
She crept close against him,clinging fast to his thin,strong naked body,the only home she had ever known.
'Then I'll keep thee,'he said.'If tha wants it,then I'll keep thee.'
He held her round and fast.
'And say you're glad about the child,'she repeated.
'Kiss it!Kiss my womb and say you're glad it's there.'
But that was more difficult for him.
'I've a dread of puttin'children i'th'world,'he said.'I've such a dread o'th'future for 'em.'
'But you've put it into me.Be tender to it,and that will be its future already.Kiss it!'
He quivered,because it was true.'Be tender to it,and that will be its future.'--At that moment he felt a sheer love for the woman.He kissed her belly and her mound of Venus,to kiss close to the womb and the foetus within the womb.
'Oh,you love me!You love me!'she said,in a little cry like one of her blind,inarticulate love cries.And he went in to her softly,feeling the stream of tenderness flowing in release from his bowels to hers,the bowels of compassion kindled between them.
And he realized as he went into her that this was the thing he had to do,to e into tender touch,without losing his pride or his dignity or his integrity as a man.After all,if she had money and means,and he had none,he should be too proud and honourable to hold back his tenderness from her on that account.'I stand for the touch of bodily awareness between human beings,'he said to himself,'and the touch of tenderness.And she is my mate.And it is a battle against the money,and the machine,and the insentient ideal monkeyishness of the world.And she will stand behind me there.Thank God I've got a woman!Thank God I've got a woman who is with me,and tender and aware of me.Thank God she's not a bully,nor a fool.Thank God she's a tender,aware woman.'And as his seed sprang in her,his soul sprang towards her too,in the creative act that is far more than procreative.
She was quite determined now that there should be no parting between him and her.But the ways and means were still to settle.
'Did you hate Bertha Coutts?'she asked him.
'Don't talk to me about her.'
'Yes!You must let me.Because once you liked her.And once you were as intimate with her as you are with me.So you have to tell me.Isn't it rather terrible,when you've been intimate with her,to hate her so?
Why is it?'
'I don't know.She sort of kept her will ready against me,always,always:
her ghastly female will:her freedom!A woman's ghastly freedom that ends in the most beastly bullying!Oh,she always kept her freedom against me,like vitriol in my face.'
'But she's not free of you even now.Does she still love you?'
'No,no!If she's not free of me,it's because she's got that mad rage,she must try to bully me.'
'But she must have loved you.'
'No!Well,in specks she did.She was drawn to me.And I think even that she hated.She loved me in moments.But she always took it back,and started bullying.Her deepest desire was to bully me,and there was no altering her.Her will was wrong,from the first.'
'But perhaps she felt you didn't really love her,and she wanted to make you.'
'My God,it was bloody making.'
'But you didn't really love her,did you?You did her that wrong.'
'How could I?I began to.I began to love her.But somehow,she always ripped me up.No,don't let's talk of it.It was a doom,that was.And she was a doomed woman.This last time,I'd have shot her like I shoot a stoat,if I'd but been allowed:a raving,doomed thing in the shape of a woman!If only I could have shot her,and ended the whole misery!It ought to be allowed.When a woman gets absolutely possessed by her own will,her own will set against everything,then it's fearful,and she should be shot at last.'
'And shouldn't men be shot at last,if they get possessed by their own will?'
'Ay!--the same!But I must get free of her,or she'll be at me again.
I wanted to tell you.I must get a divorce if I possibly can.So we must be careful.We mustn't really be seen together,you and I.I never,never could stand it if she came down on me and you.'
Connie pondered this.
'Then we can't be together?'she said.
'Not for six months or so.But I think my divorce will go through in September;then till March.'
'But the baby will probably be born at the end of February,'she said.
He was silent.
'I could wish the Cliffords and Berthas all dead,'he said.
'It's not being very tender to them,'she said.
'Tender to them?Yea,even then the tenderest thing you could do for them,perhaps,would be to give them death.They can't live!They only frustrate life.Their souls are awful inside them.Death ought to be sweet to them.And I ought to be allowed to shoot them.'
'But you wouldn't do it,'she said.
'I would though!and with less qualms than I shoot a weasel.It anyhow has a prettiness and a loneliness.But they are legion.Oh,I'd shoot them.'
'Then perhaps it is just as well you daren't.'
'Well.'
