'Do let me go on! Oh, this is a perfectly wonderful piece! But do
listen to this. "And in the great retrogression, the reducing back of
the created body of life, we get knowledge, and beyond knowledge, the
phosphorescent ecstasy of acute sensation." Oh, I do think these
phrases are too absurdly wonderful. Oh but don't you think they
ARE--they're nearly as good as Jesus. "And if, Julius, you want this
ecstasy of reduction with the Pussum, you must go on till it is
fulfilled. But surely there is in you also, somewhere, the living
desire for positive creation, relationships in ultimate faith, when all
this process of active corruption, with all its flowers of mud, is
transcended, and more or less finished--" I do wonder what the flowers
of mud are. Pussum, you are a flower of mud.' 'Thank you--and what are you?' 'Oh, I'm another, surely, according to this letter! We're all flowers
of mud--FLEURS--HIC! DU MAL! It's perfectly wonderful, Birkin harrowing
Hell--harrowing the Pompadour--HIC!' 'Go on--go on,' said Maxim. 'What comes next? It's really very
interesting.' 'I think it's awful cheek to write like that,' said the Pussum.
'Yes--yes, so do I,' said the Russian. 'He is a megalomaniac, of
course, it is a form of religious mania. He thinks he is the Saviour of
man--go on reading.' 'Surely,' Halliday intoned, '"surely goodness and mercy hath followed
me all the days of my life--"' he broke off and giggled. Then he began
again, intoning like a clergyman. '"Surely there will come an end in
us to this desire--for the constant going apart,--this passion for
putting asunder--everything--ourselves, reducing ourselves part from
part--reacting in intimacy only for destruction,--using sex as a great
reducing agent, reducing the two great elements of male and female from
their highly complex unity--reducing the old ideas, going back to the
savages for our sensations,--always seeking to LOSE ourselves in some
ultimate black sensation, mindless and infinite--burning only with
destructive fires, raging on with the hope of being burnt out
utterly--"' 'I want to go,' said Gudrun to Gerald, as she signalled the waiter. Her
eyes were flashing, her cheeks were flushed. The strange effect of
Birkin's letter read aloud in a perfect clerical sing-song, clear and
resonant, phrase by phrase, made the blood mount into her head as if
she were mad.
She rose, whilst Gerald was paying the bill, and walked over to
Halliday's table. They all glanced up at her.
'Excuse me,' she said. 'Is that a genuine letter you are reading?' 'Oh yes,' said Halliday. 'Quite genuine.' 'May I see?' Smiling foolishly he handed it to her, as if hypnotised.