Isn’t there? But let me see, will you?”
Gudrun reached out the sketch-book, Gerald stretched from the boat to take it. And as he did so, he remembered Gudrun’s last words to him, and her face lifted up to him as he sat on the swerving horse. An intensification of pride went over his nerves, because he felt, in some way she was compelled by him. The exchange of feeling between them was strong and apart from their consciousness.
And as if in a spell, Gudrun was aware of his body, stretching and surging like the marsh-fire, stretching towards her, his hand coming straight forward like a stem. Her voluptuous, acute apprehension of him made the blood faint in her veins, her mind went dim and unconscious. And he rocked on the water perfectly, like the rocking of phosphorescence. He looked round at the boat. It was drifting off a little. He lifted the oar to bring it back. And the exquisite pleasure of slowly arresting the boat, in the heavy-soft water, was complete as a swoon.
“That’s
what you have done,” said Hermione, looking searchingly at the plants on the shore, and comparing with Gudrun’s drawing. Gudrun looked round in the direction of Hermione’s long, pointing finger. “That is it, isn’t it?” repeated Hermione needing confirmation.
“Yes,” said Gudrun automatically, taking no real heed.
“Let me look,” said Gerald, reaching forward for the book. But Hermione ignored him, he must not presume, before she had finished. But he, his will as unthwarted and as unflinching as hers, stretched forward till he touched the book. A little shock, a storm of revulsion against him, shook Hermione unconsciously. She released the book when he had not properly got it, and it tumbled against the side of the boat and bounced into the water.
“There!” sang Hermione, with a strange ring of malevolent victory. “I’m so sorry, so awfully sorry. Can’t you get it, Gerald?”
This last was said in a note of anxious sneering that made Gerald’s veins tingle with fine hate for her. He leaned far out of the boat, reaching down into the water. He could feel his position was ridiculous, his loins exposed behind him.
“It is of no importance,” came the strong, clanging voice of Gudrun. She seemed to touch him. But he reached further, the boat swayed violently. Hermione, however, remained unperturbed. He grasped the book, under the water, and brought it up, dripping.
“I’m so dreadfully sorry—dreadfully sorry,” repeated Hermione. “I’m afraid it was all my fault.”
“It’s of no importance—really, I assure you—it doesn’t matter in the least,” said Gudrun loudly, with emphasis, her face flushed scarlet. And she held out her hand impatiently for the wet book, to have done with the scene. Gerald gave it to her. He was not quite himself.
“I’m so dreadfully sorry,” repeated Hermione, till both Gerald and Gudrun were exasperated. “Is there nothing that can be done?”
“In what way?” asked Gudrun, with cool irony.
“Can’t we save the drawings?”
There was a moment’s pause, wherein Gudrun made evident all her refutation of Hermione’s persistence.
“I assure you,” said Gudrun, with cutting distinctness, “the drawings are quite as good as ever they were, for my purpose. I want them only for reference.”
“But can’t I give you a new book? I wish you’d let me do that. I feel so truly sorry. I feel it was all my fault.”
“As far as I saw,” said Gudrun, “it wasn’t your fault at all. If there was
any fault,
it was Mr. Crich’s. But the whole thing is
entirely
trivial, and it really is ridiculous to take any notice of it.”
Gerald watched Gudrun closely, whilst she repulsed Hermione. There was a body of cold power in her. He watched her with an insight that amounted to clairvoyance. He saw her a dangerous, hostile spirit, that could stand undiminished and unabated. It was so finished, and of such perfect gesture, moreover.
“I’m awfully glad if it doesn’t matter,” he said; “if there’s no real harm done.”
She looked back at him, with her fine blue eyes, and signalled full into his spirit, as she said, her voice ringing with intimacy almost caressive now it was addressed to him:
“Of course, it doesn’t matter in the
least.”
The bond was established between them, in that look, in her tone. In her tone, she made the understanding clear—they were of the same kind, he and she, a sort of diabolic freemasonry subsisted between them. Henceforward, she knew, she had her power over him. Wherever they met, they would be secretly associated. And he would be helpless in the association with her. Her soul exulted.
“Good-bye! I’m so glad you forgive me. G-o-o-o-o-d-b-y-e!”
Hermione sang her farewell, and waved her hand. Gerald automatically took the oar and pushed off. But he was looking all the time, with a glimmering, subtly-smiling admiration in his eyes, at Gudrun, who stood on the shoal shaking the wet book in her hand. She turned away and ignored the receding boat. But Gerald looked back as he rowed, beholding her, forgetting what he was doing.
“Aren’t we going too much to the left?” sang Hermione, as she sat ignored under her coloured parasol.
Gerald looked round without replying, the oars balanced and glancing in the sun.
“I think it’s all right,” he said good-humouredly, beginning to row again without thinking of what he was doing. And Hermione disliked him extremely for his good-humoured obliviousness, she was nullified, she could not regain ascendancy.
CHAPTER XI
MEANWHILE URSULA HAD WANDERED on from Willey Water along the course of the bright little stream. The afternoon was full of larks’ singing. On the bright hill-sides was a subdued smoulder of gorse. A few forget-me-nots flowered by the water. There was a rousedness and a glancing everywhere.
She strayed absorbedly on, over the brooks. She wanted to go to the mill-pond above. The big mill-house was deserted, save for a labourer and his wife who lived in the kitchen. So she passed through the empty farm-yard and through the wilderness of a garden, and mounted the bank by the sluice. When she got to the top, to see the old, velvety surface of the pond before her, she noticed a man on the bank, tinkering with a punt. It was Birkin sawing and hammering away.
She stood at the head of the sluice looking at him. He was unaware of anybody’s presence. He looked very busy, like a wild animal, active and intent. She felt she ought to go away, he would not want her. He seemed to be so much occupied. But she did not want to go away. Therefore she moved along the bank till he would look up.
Which he soon did. The moment he saw her, he dropped his tools and came forward, saying:
“How do you do? I’m making the punt water-tight. Tell me if you think it is right.”
She went along with him.
“You are your father’s daughter, so you can tell me if it will do,” he said.
She bent to look at the patched punt.
“I am sure I am my father’s daughter,” she said, fearful of having to judge. “But I don’t know anything about carpentry. It looks right, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I think. I hope it won’t let me to the bottom, that’s all. Though even so, it isn’t a great matter, I should come up again. Help me to get it into the water, will you?”
With combined efforts they turned over the heavy punt and set it afloat.
“Now,” he said, “I’ll try it and you can watch what happens. Then if it carries, I’ll take you over to the island.”
“Do,” she cried, watching anxiously.
The pond was large, and had that perfect stillness and the dark lustre of very deep water. There were two small islands overgrown with bushes and a few trees, towards the middle. Birkin pushed himself off, and veered clumsily in the pond. Luckily the punt drifted so that he could catch hold of a willow bough, and pull it to the island.
“Rather overgrown,” he said, looking into the interior, “but very nice. I’ll come and fetch you. The boat leaks a little.”
In a moment he was with her again, and she stepped into the wet punt.
“It’ll float us all right,” he said, and manoeuvred again to the island.
They landed under a willow tree. She shrank from the little jungle of rank plants before her, evil-smelling fig-wort and hemlock. But he explored into it.
“I shall mow this down,” he said, “and then it will be romantic—like Paul et Virginie.”
aq
“Yes, one could have lovely Watteau
ar
picnics here,” cried Ursula with enthusiasm.
His face darkened.
“I don’t want Watteau picnics here,” he said.
“Only your Virginie,” she laughed.
“Virginie enough,” he smiled wryly. “No, I don’t want her either.”
Ursula looked at him closely. She had not seen him since Breadalby. He was very thin and hollow, with a ghastly look in his face.
“You have been ill, haven’t you?” she asked, rather repulsed.
“Yes,” he replied coldly.
They had sat down under the willow tree, and were looking at the pond, from their retreat on the island.
“Has it made you frightened?” she asked.
“What of?” he asked, turning his eyes to look at her. Something in him, inhuman and unmitigated, disturbed her, and shook her out of her ordinary self.
“It is frightening to be very ill, isn’t it?” she said.
“It isn’t pleasant,” he said. “Whether one is really afraid of death, or not, I have never decided. In one mood, not a bit, in another, very much.”
“But doesn’t it make you feel ashamed? I think it makes one so ashamed, to be ill—illness is so terribly humiliating, don’t you think?”
He considered for some minutes.
“May-be,” he said. “Though one knows all the time one’s life isn’t really right, at the source. That’s the humiliation. I don’t see that the illness counts so much, after that. One is ill because one doesn’t live properly—can’t. It’s the failure to live that makes one ill, and humiliates one.”
“But do you fail to live?” she asked, almost jeering.
“Why, yes—I don’t make much of a success of my days. One seems always to be bumping one’s nose against the blank wall ahead.”
Ursula laughed. She was frightened, and when she was frightened she always laughed and pretended to be jaunty.
“Your poor nose!” she said, looking at that feature of his face.
“No wonder it’s ugly,” he replied.
She was silent for some minutes, struggling with her own self-deception. It was an instinct in her, to deceive herself.
“But
I’m
happy—I think life is
awfully
jolly,” she said.
“Good,” he answered, with a certain cold indifference.
She reached for a bit of paper which had wrapped a small piece of chocolate she had found in her pocket, and began making a boat. He watched her without heeding her. There was something strangely pathetic and tender in her moving, unconscious finger-tips, that were agitated and hurt, really.
“I
do
enjoy things—don’t you?” she asked.
“Oh, yes! But it infuriates me that I can’t get right, at the really growing part of me. I feel all tangled and messed up, and I
can’t
get straight anyhow. I don’t know what really to
do.
One must do something somewhere.”
“Why should you always be
doing?”
she retorted. “It is so plebeian. I think it is much better to be really patrician, and to do nothing but just be oneself, like a walking flower.”
“I quite agree,” he said, “if one has burst into blossom. But I can’t get my flower to blossom anyhow. Either it is blighted in the bud, or has got the smother-fly, or it isn’t nourished. Curse it, it isn’t even a bud. It is a contravened knot.”
Again she laughed. He was so very fretful and exasperated. But she was anxious and puzzled. How was one to get out, anyhow. There must be a way out somewhere.
There was a silence, wherein she wanted to cry. She reached for another bit of chocolate paper, and began to fold another boat.
“And why is it,” she asked at length, “that there is no flowering, no dignity of human life now?”
“The whole idea is dead. Humanity itself is dry-rotten, really. There are myriads of human beings hanging on the bush—and they look very nice and rosy, your healthy young men and women. But they are apples of Sodom, as a matter of fact. Dead Sea Fruit, gall-apples.
as
It isn’t true that they have any significance—their insides are full of bitter, corrupt ash.”
“But there
are
good people,” protested Ursula.
“Good enough for the life of to-day. But mankind is a dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people.”
Ursula could not help stiffening herself against this, it was too picturesque and final. But neither could she help making him go on.
“And if it is so,
why
is it?” she asked hostile. They were rousing each other to a fine passion of opposition.
“Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because they won’t fall off the tree when they’re ripe. They hang on to their old positions when the position is overpast, till they become infested with little worms and dry-rot.”
There was a long pause. His voice had become hot and very sarcastic. Ursula was troubled and bewildered, they were both oblivious of everything but their own immersion.
“But even if everybody is wrong—where are you right?” she cried, “where are you any better?”
“I?—I’m not right,” he cried back. “At least my only rightness lies in the fact that I know it. I detest what I am, outwardly. I loathe myself as a human being. Humanity is a huge aggregate lie, and a huge lie is less than a small truth. Humanity is less, far less than the individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies. And they say that love is the greatest thing; they persist in
saying
this, the foul liars, and just look at what they do! Look at all the millions of people who repeat every minute that love is the greatest, and charity is the greatest—and see what they are doing all the time.
2
By their works ye shall know them,
at
for dirty liars and cowards, who daren’t stand by their own actions, much less by their own words.”