Marriage or Not T HE B RANGWEN family was going to move from Beldover.It was necessary now for the father to be in town.
Birkin had taken out a marriage licence, yet Ursula deferred from day to day.She would not fix any definite time -- she still wavered.Her month's notice to leave the Grammar School was in its third week.Christmas was not far off.
Gerald waited for the Ursula-Birkin marriage.It was something crucial to him.
`Shall we make it a double-barrelled affair?' he said to Birkin one day.
`Who for the second shot?' asked Birkin.
`Gudrun and me,' said Gerald, the venturesome twinkle in his eyes.
Birkin looked at him steadily, as if somewhat taken aback.
`Serious -- or joking?' he asked.
`Oh, serious.Shall I? Shall Gudrun and I rush in along with you?'
`Do by all means,' said Birkin.`I didn't know you'd got that length.'
`What length?' said Gerald, looking at the other man, and laughing.
`Oh yes, we've gone all the lengths.'
`There remains to put it on a broad social basis, and to achieve a high moral purpose,' said Birkin.
`Something like that: the length and breadth and height of it,' replied Gerald, smiling.
`Oh well,' said Birkin,' it's a very admirable step to take, I should say.'
Gerald looked at him closely.
`Why aren't you enthusiastic?' he asked.`I thought you were such dead nuts on marriage.'
Birkin lifted his shoulders.
`One might as well be dead nuts on noses.There are all sorts of noses, snub and otherwise--'
Gerald laughed.
`And all sorts of marriage, also snub and otherwise?' he said.
`That's it.'
`And you think if I marry, it will be snub?' asked Gerald quizzically, his head a little on one side.
Birkin laughed quickly.
`How do I know what it will be!' he said.`Don't lambaste me with my own parallels--'
Gerald pondered a while.
`But I should like to know your opinion, exactly,' he said.
`On your marriage? -- or marrying? Why should you want my opinion? I've got no opinions.I'm not interested in legal marriage, one way or another.
It's a mere question of convenience.'
Still Gerald watched him closely.
`More than that, I think,' he said seriously.`However you may be bored by the ethics of marriage, yet really to marry, in one's own personal case, is something critical, final--'
`You mean there is something final in going to the registrar with a woman?'
`If you're coming back with her, I do,' said Gerald.`It is in some way irrevocable.'
`Yes, I agree,' said Birkin.
`No matter how one regards legal marriage, yet to enter into the married state, in one's own personal instance, is final--'
`I believe it is,' said Birkin, `somewhere.'
`The question remains then, should one do it,' said Gerald.
Birkin watched him narrowly, with amused eyes.
`You are like Lord Bacon, Gerald,' he said.`You argue it like a lawyer -- or like Hamlet's to-be-or-not-to-be.If I were you I would not marry: but ask Gudrun, not me.You're not marrying me, are you?'
Gerald did not heed the latter part of this speech.
`Yes,' he said, `one must consider it coldly.It is something critical.
One comes to the point where one must take a step in one direction or another.
And marriage is one direction--'
`And what is the other?' asked Birkin quickly.
Gerald looked up at him with hot, strangely-conscious eyes, that the other man could not understand.