But Loerke was watching closely, with his uncanny, full, suspicious eyes.Something in Gudrun seemed to accord with him.He was really like one of the `little people' who have no soul, who has found his mate in a human being.But he suffered in his discovery.She too was fascinated by him, fascinated, as if some strange creature, a rabbit or a bat, or a brown seal, had begun to talk to her.But also, she knew what he was unconscious of, his tremendous power of understanding, of apprehending her living motion.He did not know his own power.He did not know how, with his full, submerged, watchful eyes, he could look into her and see her, what she was, see her secrets.He would only want her to be herself -- he knew her verily, with a subconscious, sinister knowledge, devoid of illusions and hopes.
To Gudrun, there was in Loerke the rock-bottom of all life.Everybody else had their illusion, must have their illusion, their before and after.
But he, with a perfect stoicism, did without any before and after, dispensed with all illusion.He did not deceive himself in the last issue.In the last issue he cared about nothing, he was troubled about nothing, he made not the slightest attempt to be at one with anything.He existed a pure, unconnected will, stoical and momentaneous.There was only his work.
It was curious too, how his poverty, the degradation of his earlier life, attracted her.There was something insipid and tasteless to her, in the idea of a gentleman, a man who had gone the usual course through school and university.A certain violent sympathy, however, came up in her for this mud-child.He seemed to be the very stuff of the underworld of life.There was no going beyond him.
Ursula too was attracted by Loerke.In both sisters he commanded a certain homage.But there were moments when to Ursula he seemed indescribably inferior, false, a vulgarism.
Both Birkin and Gerald disliked him, Gerald ignoring him with some contempt, Birkin exasperated.
`What do the women find so impressive in that little brat?' Gerald asked.
`God alone knows,' replied Birkin, `unless it's some sort of appeal he makes to them, which flatters them and has such a power over them.'
Gerald looked up in surprise.
` Does he make an appeal to them?' he asked.
`Oh yes,' replied Birkin.`He is the perfectly subjected being, existing almost like a criminal.And the women rush towards that, like a current of air towards a vacuum.'
`Funny they should rush to that,' said Gerald.
`Makes one mad, too,' said Birkin.`But he has the fascination of pity and repulsion for them, a little obscene monster of the darkness that he is.'
Gerald stood still, suspended in thought.
`What do women want, at the bottom?' he asked.
Birkin shrugged his shoulders.
`God knows,' he said.`Some satisfaction in basic repulsion, it seems to me.They seem to creep down some ghastly tunnel of darkness, and will never be satisfied till they've come to the end.'
Gerald looked out into the mist of fine snow that was blowing by.Everywhere was blind today, horribly blind.
`And what is the end?' he asked.
Birkin shook his head.
`I've not got there yet, so I don't know.Ask Loerke, he's pretty near.
He is a good many stages further than either you or I can go.'
`Yes, but stages further in what?' cried Gerald, irritated.
Birkin sighed, and gathered his brows into a knot of anger.
`Stages further in social hatred,' he said.`He lives like a rat, in the river of corruption, just where it falls over into the bottomless pit.
He's further on than we are.He hates the ideal more acutely.He hates the ideal utterly, yet it still dominates him.I expect he is a Jew --or part Jewish.'
`Probably,' said Gerald.
`He is a gnawing little negation, gnawing at the roots of life.'
`But why does anybody care about him?' cried Gerald.
`Because they hate the ideal also, in their souls.They want to explore the sewers, and he's the wizard rat that swims ahead.'
Still Gerald stood and stared at the blind haze of snow outside.
`I don't understand your terms, really,' he said, in a flat, doomed voice.`But it sounds a rum sort of desire.'
`I suppose we want the same,' said Birkin.`Only we want to take a quick jump downwards, in a sort of ecstasy -- and he ebbs with the stream, the sewer stream.'
Meanwhile Gudrun and Ursula waited for the next opportunity to talk to Loerke.It was no use beginning when the men were there.Then they could get into no touch with the isolated little sculptor.He had to be alone with them.And he preferred Ursula to be there, as a sort of transmitter to Gudrun.
`Do you do nothing but architectural sculpture?' Gudrun asked him one evening.
`Not now,' he replied.`I have done all sorts -- except portraits --I never did portraits.But other things --'
`What kind of things?' asked Gudrun.
He paused a moment, then rose, and went out of the room.He returned almost immediately with a little roll of paper, which he handed to her.
She unrolled it.It was a photogravure reproduction of a statuette, signed F.Loerke.
`That is quite an early thing -- not mechanical,' he said, `more popular.'
The statuette was of a naked girl, small, finely made, sitting on a great naked horse.The girl was young and tender, a mere bud.She was sitting sideways on the horse, her face in her hands, as if in shame and grief, in a little abandon.Her hair, which was short and must be flaxen, fell forward, divided, half covering her hands.
Her limbs were young and tender.Her legs, scarcely formed yet, the legs of a maiden just passing towards cruel womanhood, dangled childishly over the side of the powerful horse, pathetically, the small feet folded one over the other, as if to hide.But there was no hiding.There she was exposed naked on the naked flank of the horse.
The horse stood stock still, stretched in a kind of start.It was a massive, magnificent stallion, rigid with pent-up power.Its neck was arched and terrible, like a sickle, its flanks were pressed back, rigid with power.
