Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by D. H. Lawrence Page A

almost magical. Everybody came running, as if at a signal. And then the crowd in one impulse moved to the dining-room.
    Gerald waited a moment, for his sister to play hostess. He knew his mother would pay no attention to her duties. But his sister merely crowded to her seat. Therefore the young man, slightly too dictatorial, directed the guests to their places.
    There was a moment’s lull, as everybody looked at the hors d’oeuvres that were being handed round. And out of this lull, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, with her long hair down her back, said in a calm, self-possessed voice:
    “Gerald, you forget father, when you make that unearthly noise.”
    “Do I?” he answered. And then, to the company, “Father is lying down, he is not quite well.”
    “How is he, really?” called one of the married daughters, peeping round the immense wedding cake that towered up in the middle of the table shedding its artificial flowers.
    “He has no pain, but he feels tired,” replied Winifred, the girl with the hair down her back.
    The wine was filled, and everybody was talking boisterously. At the far end of the table sat the mother, with her loosely-looped hair. She had Birkin for a neighbor. Sometimes she glanced fiercely down the rows of faces, bending forwards and staring unceremoniously. And she would say in a low voice to Birkin:
    “Who is that young man?”
    “I don’t know,” Birkin answered discreetly.
    “Have I seen him before?” she asked.
    “I don’t think so. I haven’t,” he replied. And she was satisfied. Her eyes closed wearily, a peace came over her face, she looked like a queen in repose. Then she started, a little social smile came on her face, for a moment she looked the pleasant hostess. For a moment she bent graciously, as if everyone were welcome and delightful. And then immediately the shadow came back, a sullen, eagle look was on her face, she glanced from under her brows like a sinister creature at bay, hating them all.
    “Mother,” called Diana, a handsome girl a little older than Winifred, “I may have wine, mayn’t I?”
    “Yes, you may have wine,” replied the mother automatically, for she was perfectly indifferent to the question.
    And Diana beckoned to the footman to fill her glass.
    “Gerald shouldn’t forbid me,” she said calmly, to the company at large.
    “All right, Di,” said her brother amiably. And she glanced challenge at him as she drank from her glass.
    There was a strange freedom, that almost amounted to anarchy, in the house. It was rather a resistance to authority, than liberty. Gerald had some command, by mere force of personality, not because of any granted position. There was a quality in his voice, amiable but dominant, that cowed the others, who were all younger than he.
    Hermione was having a discussion with the bridegroom about nationality.
    “No,” she said, “I think that the appeal to patriotism is a mistake. It is like one house of business rivalling another house of business.”
    “Well you can hardly say that, can you?” exclaimed Gerald, who had a real passion for discussion. “You couldn’t call a race a business concern, could you?—and nationality roughly corresponds to race, I think. I think it is meant to.”
    There was a moment’s pause. Gerald and Hermione were always strangely but politely and evenly inimical.
    “Do you think race corresponds with nationality?” she asked musingly with expressionless indecision.
    Birkin knew she was waiting for him to participate. And dutifully he spoke up.
    “I think Gerald is right—race is the essential element in nationality in Europe at least,” he said.
    Again Hermione paused, as if to allow this statement to cool. Then she said with strange assumption of authority:
    “Yes, but even so, is the patriotic appeal an appeal to the racial instinct? Is it not rather an appeal to the proprietory instinct, the commercial instinct? And isn’t this what we mean by nationality?”
    “Probably,”