Women in Love - 19

“No,” he said, “it is the law of creation. One is committed. One must commit oneself to a conjunction with the other—for ever. But it is not selfless—it is a maintaining of the self in mystic balance and integrity—like a star balanced with another star.”

“I don’t trust you when you drag in the stars,” she said. “If you were quite true, it wouldn’t be necessary to be so far-fetched.”

“Don’t trust me then,” he said, angry. “It is enough that I trust myself.”

“And that is where you make another mistake,” she replied. “You don’t trust yourself. You don’t fully believe yourself what you are saying. You don’t really want this conjunction, otherwise you wouldn’t talk so much about it, you’d get it.”

He was suspended for a moment, arrested.

“How?” he said.

“By just loving,” she retorted in defiance.

He was still a moment, in anger. Then he said:

“I tell you, I don’t believe in love like that. I tell you, you want love to administer to your egoism, to subserve you. Love is a process of subservience with you—and with everybody. I hate it.”

“No,” she cried, pressing back her head like a cobra, her eyes flashing. “It is a process of pride—I want to be proud—”

“Proud and subservient, proud and subservient, I know you,” he retorted dryly. “Proud and subservient, then subservient to the proud—I know you and your love. It is a tick-tack, tick-tack, a dance of opposites.”

“Are you sure?” she mocked wickedly, “what my love is?”

“Yes, I am,” he retorted.

“So cocksure!” she said. “How can anybody ever be right, who is so cocksure? It shows you are wrong.”

He was silent in chagrin.

They had talked and struggled till they were both wearied out.

“Tell me about yourself and your people,” he said.

And she told him about the Brangwens, and about her mother, and about Skrebensky, her first love, and about her later experiences. He sat very still, watching her as she talked. And he seemed to listen with reverence. Her face was beautiful and full of baffled light as she told him all the things that had hurt her or perplexed her so deeply. He seemed to warm and comfort his soul at the beautiful light of her nature.

“If she really could pledge herself,” he thought to himself, with passionate insistence but hardly any hope. Yet a curious little irresponsible laughter appeared in his heart.

“We have all suffered so much,” he mocked, ironically.

She looked up at him, and a flash of wild gaiety went over her face, a strange flash of yellow light coming from her eyes.

“Haven’t we!” she cried, in a high, reckless cry. “It is almost absurd, isn’t it?”

“Quite absurd,” he said. “Suffering bores me, any more.”

“So it does me.”

He was almost afraid of the mocking recklessness of her splendid face. Here was one who would go to the whole lengths of heaven or hell, whichever she had to go. And he mistrusted her, he was afraid of a woman capable of such abandon, such dangerous thoroughness of destructivity. Yet he chuckled within himself also.

She came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, looking down at him with strange golden-lighted eyes, very tender, but with a curious devilish look lurking underneath.

“Say you love me, say ‘my love’ to me,” she pleaded.

He looked back into her eyes, and saw. His face flickered with sardonic comprehension.

“I love you right enough,” he said, grimly. “But I want it to be something else.”

“But why? But why?” she insisted, bending her wonderful luminous face to him. “Why isn’t it enough?”

“Because we can go one better,” he said, putting his arms round her.

“No, we can’t,” she said, in a strong, voluptuous voice of yielding. “We can only love each other. Say ‘my love’ to me, say it, say it.”

She put her arms round his neck. He enfolded her, and kissed her subtly, murmuring in a subtle voice of love, and irony, and submission:

“Yes,—my love, yes,—my love. Let love be enough then. I love you then—I love you. I’m bored by the rest.”

“Yes,” she murmured, nestling very sweet and close to him.

CHAPTER XIV.

WATER-PARTY

Every year Mr Crich gave a more or less public water-party on the lake. There was a little pleasure-launch on Willey Water and several rowing boats, and guests could take tea either in the marquee that was set up in the grounds of the house, or they could picnic in the shade of the great walnut tree at the boat-house by the lake. This year the staff of the Grammar-School was invited, along with the chief officials of the firm. Gerald and the younger Criches did not care for this party, but it had become customary now, and it pleased the father, as being the only occasion when he could gather some people of the district together in festivity with him. For he loved to give pleasures to his dependents and to those poorer than himself. But his children preferred the company of their own equals in wealth. They hated their inferiors’ humility or gratitude or awkwardness.

Nevertheless they were willing to attend at this festival, as they had done almost since they were children, the more so, as they all felt a little guilty now, and unwilling to thwart their father any more, since he was so ill in health. Therefore, quite cheerfully Laura prepared to take her mother’s place as hostess, and Gerald assumed responsibility for the amusements on the water.

Birkin had written to Ursula saying he expected to see her at the party, and Gudrun, although she scorned the patronage of the Criches, would nevertheless accompany her mother and father if the weather were fine.

The day came blue and full of sunshine, with little wafts of wind. The sisters both wore dresses of white crêpe, and hats of soft grass. But Gudrun had a sash of brilliant black and pink and yellow colour wound broadly round her waist, and she had pink silk stockings, and black and pink and yellow decoration on the brim of her hat, weighing it down a little. She carried also a yellow silk coat over her arm, so that she looked remarkable, like a painting from the Salon. Her appearance was a sore trial to her father, who said angrily:

“Don’t you think you might as well get yourself up for a Christmas cracker, an’ ha’ done with it?”

But Gudrun looked handsome and brilliant, and she wore her clothes in pure defiance. When people stared at her, and giggled after her, she made a point of saying loudly, to Ursula:

“Regarde, regarde ces gens-là! Ne sont-ils pas des hiboux incroyables?” And with the words of French in her mouth, she would look over her shoulder at the giggling party.

“No, really, it’s impossible!” Ursula would reply distinctly. And so the two girls took it out of their universal enemy. But their father became more and more enraged.

Ursula was all snowy white, save that her hat was pink, and entirely without trimming, and her shoes were dark red, and she carried an orange-coloured coat. And in this guise they were walking all the way to Shortlands, their father and mother going in front.

They were laughing at their mother, who, dressed in a summer material of black and purple stripes, and wearing a hat of purple straw, was setting forth with much more of the shyness and trepidation of a young girl than her daughters ever felt, walking demurely beside her husband, who, as usual, looked rather crumpled in his best suit, as if he were the father of a young family and had been holding the baby whilst his wife got dressed.

“Look at the young couple in front,” said Gudrun calmly. Ursula looked at her mother and father, and was suddenly seized with uncontrollable laughter. The two girls stood in the road and laughed till the tears ran down their faces, as they caught sight again of the shy, unworldly couple of their parents going on ahead.

“We are roaring at you, mother,” called Ursula, helplessly following after her parents.

Mrs Brangwen turned round with a slightly puzzled, exasperated look. “Oh indeed!” she said. “What is there so very funny about me, I should like to know?”

She could not understand that there could be anything amiss with her appearance. She had a perfect calm sufficiency, an easy indifference to any criticism whatsoever, as if she were beyond it. Her clothes were always rather odd, and as a rule slip-shod, yet she wore them with a perfect ease and satisfaction. Whatever she had on, so long as she was barely tidy, she was right, beyond remark; such an aristocrat she was by instinct.

“You look so stately, like a country Baroness,” said Ursula, laughing with a little tenderness at her mother’s naive puzzled air.

“Just like a country Baroness!” chimed in Gudrun. Now the mother’s natural hauteur became self-conscious, and the girls shrieked again.

“Go home, you pair of idiots, great giggling idiots!” cried the father inflamed with irritation.

“Mm-m-er!” booed Ursula, pulling a face at his crossness.

The yellow lights danced in his eyes, he leaned forward in real rage.

“Don’t be so silly as to take any notice of the great gabies,” said Mrs Brangwen, turning on her way.

“I’ll see if I’m going to be followed by a pair of giggling yelling jackanapes—” he cried vengefully.

The girls stood still, laughing helplessly at his fury, upon the path beside the hedge.

“Why you’re as silly as they are, to take any notice,” said Mrs Brangwen also becoming angry now he was really enraged.

“There are some people coming, father,” cried Ursula, with mocking warning. He glanced round quickly, and went on to join his wife, walking stiff with rage. And the girls followed, weak with laughter.

When the people had passed by, Brangwen cried in a loud, stupid voice:

“I’m going back home if there’s any more of this. I’m damned if I’m going to be made a fool of in this fashion, in the public road.”

He was really out of temper. At the sound of his blind, vindictive voice, the laughter suddenly left the girls, and their hearts contracted with contempt. They hated his words “in the public road.” What did they care for the public road? But Gudrun was conciliatory.

“But we weren’t laughing to hurt you,” she cried, with an uncouth gentleness which made her parents uncomfortable. “We were laughing because we’re fond of you.”

“We’ll walk on in front, if they are so touchy,” said Ursula, angry. And in this wise they arrived at Willey Water. The lake was blue and fair, the meadows sloped down in sunshine on one side, the thick dark woods dropped steeply on the other. The little pleasure-launch was fussing out from the shore, twanging its music, crowded with people, flapping its paddles. Near the boat-house was a throng of gaily-dressed persons, small in the distance. And on the high-road, some of the common people were standing along the hedge, looking at the festivity beyond, enviously, like souls not admitted to paradise.

“My eye!” said Gudrun, sotto voce, looking at the motley of guests, “there’s a pretty crowd if you like! Imagine yourself in the midst of that, my dear.”

Gudrun’s apprehensive horror of people in the mass unnerved Ursula. “It looks rather awful,” she said anxiously.

“And imagine what they’ll be like—imagine!” said Gudrun, still in that unnerving, subdued voice. Yet she advanced determinedly.

“I suppose we can get away from them,” said Ursula anxiously.

“We’re in a pretty fix if we can’t,” said Gudrun. Her extreme ironic loathing and apprehension was very trying to Ursula.

“We needn’t stay,” she said.

“I certainly shan’t stay five minutes among that little lot,” said Gudrun. They advanced nearer, till they saw policemen at the gates.

“Policemen to keep you in, too!” said Gudrun. “My word, this is a beautiful affair.”

“We’d better look after father and mother,” said Ursula anxiously.

“Mother’s perfectly capable of getting through this little celebration,” said Gudrun with some contempt.

But Ursula knew that her father felt uncouth and angry and unhappy, so she was far from her ease. They waited outside the gate till their parents came up. The tall, thin man in his crumpled clothes was unnerved and irritable as a boy, finding himself on the brink of this social function. He did not feel a gentleman, he did not feel anything except pure exasperation.

Ursula took her place at his side, they gave their tickets to the policeman, and passed in on to the grass, four abreast; the tall, hot, ruddy-dark man with his narrow boyish brow drawn with irritation, the fresh-faced, easy woman, perfectly collected though her hair was slipping on one side, then Gudrun, her eyes round and dark and staring, her full soft face impassive, almost sulky, so that she seemed to be backing away in antagonism even whilst she was advancing; and then Ursula, with the odd, brilliant, dazzled look on her face, that always came when she was in some false situation.

Birkin was the good angel. He came smiling to them with his affected social grace, that somehow was never quite right. But he took off his hat and smiled at them with a real smile in his eyes, so that Brangwen cried out heartily in relief:

“How do you do? You’re better, are you?”

“Yes, I’m better. How do you do, Mrs Brangwen? I know Gudrun and Ursula very well.”

His eyes smiled full of natural warmth. He had a soft, flattering manner with women, particularly with women who were not young.

“Yes,” said Mrs Brangwen, cool but yet gratified. “I have heard them speak of you often enough.”

He laughed. Gudrun looked aside, feeling she was being belittled. People were standing about in groups, some women were sitting in the shade of the walnut tree, with cups of tea in their hands, a waiter in evening dress was hurrying round, some girls were simpering with parasols, some young men, who had just come in from rowing, were sitting cross-legged on the grass, coatless, their shirt-sleeves rolled up in manly fashion, their hands resting on their white flannel trousers, their gaudy ties floating about, as they laughed and tried to be witty with the young damsels.

“Why,” thought Gudrun churlishly, “don’t they have the manners to put their coats on, and not to assume such intimacy in their appearance.”

She abhorred the ordinary young man, with his hair plastered back, and his easy-going chumminess.

Hermione Roddice came up, in a handsome gown of white lace, trailing an enormous silk shawl blotched with great embroidered flowers, and balancing an enormous plain hat on her head. She looked striking, astonishing, almost macabre, so tall, with the fringe of her great cream-coloured vividly-blotched shawl trailing on the ground after her, her thick hair coming low over her eyes, her face strange and long and pale, and the blotches of brilliant colour drawn round her.

“Doesn’t she look weird!” Gudrun heard some girls titter behind her. And she could have killed them.

“How do you do!” sang Hermione, coming up very kindly, and glancing slowly over Gudrun’s father and mother. It was a trying moment, exasperating for Gudrun. Hermione was really so strongly entrenched in her class superiority, she could come up and know people out of simple curiosity, as if they were creatures on exhibition. Gudrun would do the same herself. But she resented being in the position when somebody might do it to her.

Hermione, very remarkable, and distinguishing the Brangwens very much, led them along to where Laura Crich stood receiving the guests.

“This is Mrs Brangwen,” sang Hermione, and Laura, who wore a stiff embroidered linen dress, shook hands and said she was glad to see her. Then Gerald came up, dressed in white, with a black and brown blazer, and looking handsome. He too was introduced to the Brangwen parents, and immediately he spoke to Mrs Brangwen as if she were a lady, and to Brangwen as if he were not a gentleman. Gerald was so obvious in his demeanour. He had to shake hands with his left hand, because he had hurt his right, and carried it, bandaged up, in the pocket of his jacket. Gudrun was very thankful that none of her party asked him what was the matter with the hand.

The steam launch was fussing in, all its music jingling, people calling excitedly from on board. Gerald went to see to the debarkation, Birkin was getting tea for Mrs Brangwen, Brangwen had joined a Grammar-School group, Hermione was sitting down by their mother, the girls went to the landing-stage to watch the launch come in.

She hooted and tooted gaily, then her paddles were silent, the ropes were thrown ashore, she drifted in with a little bump. Immediately the passengers crowded excitedly to come ashore.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” shouted Gerald in sharp command.

They must wait till the boat was tight on the ropes, till the small gangway was put out. Then they streamed ashore, clamouring as if they had come from America.

“Oh it’s so nice!” the young girls were crying. “It’s quite lovely.”

The waiters from on board ran out to the boat-house with baskets, the captain lounged on the little bridge. Seeing all safe, Gerald came to Gudrun and Ursula.

“You wouldn’t care to go on board for the next trip, and have tea there?” he asked.

“No thanks,” said Gudrun coldly.

“You don’t care for the water?”

“For the water? Yes, I like it very much.”

He looked at her, his eyes searching.

“You don’t care for going on a launch, then?”

She was slow in answering, and then she spoke slowly.

“No,” she said. “I can’t say that I do.” Her colour was high, she seemed angry about something.

“Un peu trop de monde,” said Ursula, explaining.