`I can't say,' he replied.`If I knew that --' He moved uneasily on his feet, and did not finish.
`You mean if you knew the alternative?' asked Birkin.`And since you don't know it, marriage is a pis aller.'
Gerald looked up at Birkin with the same hot, constrained eyes.
`One does have the feeling that marriage is a pis aller ,' he admitted.
`Then don't do it,' said Birkin.`I tell you,' he went on, `the same as I've said before, marriage in the old sense seems to me repulsive.Egoisme a deux is nothing to it.It's a sort of tacit hunting in couples: the world all in couples, each couple in its own little house, watching its own little interests, and stewing in its own little privacy -- it's the most repulsive thing on earth.'
`I quite agree,' said Gerald.`There's something inferior about it.
But as I say, what's the alternative.'
`One should avoid this home instinct.It's not an instinct, it's a habit of cowardliness.One should never have a home.'
`I agree really,' said Gerald.`But there's no alternative.'
`We've got to find one.I do believe in a permanent union between a man and a woman.Chopping about is merely an exhaustive process.But a permanent relation between a man and a woman isn't the last word -- it certainly isn't.'
`Quite,' said Gerald.
`In fact,' said Birkin, `because the relation between man and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that's where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in.'
`Yes, I believe you,' said Gerald.
`You've got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal.
We want something broader.I believe in the additional perfect relationship between man and man -- additional to marriage.'
`I can never see how they can be the same,' said Gerald.
`Not the same -- but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred, if you like.'
`I know,' said Gerald, `you believe something like that.Only I can't feel it, you see.' He put his hand on Birkin's arm, with a sort of deprecating affection.And he smiled as if triumphantly.
He was ready to be doomed.Marriage was like a doom to him.He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subterranean activity.He was willing to accept this.And marriage was the seal of his condemnation.He was willing to be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever in damnation.But he would not make any pure relationship with any other soul.He could not.Marriage was not the committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun.It was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the underworld for his life.This he would do.
The other way was to accept Rupert's offer of alliance, to enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then subsequently with the woman.If he pledged himself with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage.
Yet he could not accept the offer.There was a numbness upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy.Perhaps it was the absence of volition.For he was strangely elated at Rupert's offer.
Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed.
