Women in Love - 21

“Where are you going?” Gerald called after her. And he followed her up the hill-side. The sun had gone behind the hill, and shadows were clinging to the earth, the sky above was full of travelling light.

“A poor song for a dance,” said Birkin to Ursula, standing before her with a sardonic, flickering laugh on his face. And in another second, he was singing softly to himself, and dancing a grotesque step-dance in front of her, his limbs and body shaking loose, his face flickering palely, a constant thing, whilst his feet beat a rapid mocking tattoo, and his body seemed to hang all loose and quaking in between, like a shadow.

“I think we’ve all gone mad,” she said, laughing rather frightened.

“Pity we aren’t madder,” he answered, as he kept up the incessant shaking dance. Then suddenly he leaned up to her and kissed her fingers lightly, putting his face to hers and looking into her eyes with a pale grin. She stepped back, affronted.

“Offended—?” he asked ironically, suddenly going quite still and reserved again. “I thought you liked the light fantastic.”

“Not like that,” she said, confused and bewildered, almost affronted. Yet somewhere inside her she was fascinated by the sight of his loose, vibrating body, perfectly abandoned to its own dropping and swinging, and by the pallid, sardonic-smiling face above. Yet automatically she stiffened herself away, and disapproved. It seemed almost an obscenity, in a man who talked as a rule so very seriously.

“Why not like that?” he mocked. And immediately he dropped again into the incredibly rapid, slack-waggling dance, watching her malevolently. And moving in the rapid, stationary dance, he came a little nearer, and reached forward with an incredibly mocking, satiric gleam on his face, and would have kissed her again, had she not started back.

“No, don’t!” she cried, really afraid.

“Cordelia after all,” he said satirically. She was stung, as if this were an insult. She knew he intended it as such, and it bewildered her.

“And you,” she cried in retort, “why do you always take your soul in your mouth, so frightfully full?”

“So that I can spit it out the more readily,” he said, pleased by his own retort.

Gerald Crich, his face narrowing to an intent gleam, followed up the hill with quick strides, straight after Gudrun. The cattle stood with their noses together on the brow of a slope, watching the scene below, the men in white hovering about the white forms of the women, watching above all Gudrun, who was advancing slowly towards them. She stood a moment, glancing back at Gerald, and then at the cattle.

Then in a sudden motion, she lifted her arms and rushed sheer upon the long-horned bullocks, in shuddering irregular runs, pausing for a second and looking at them, then lifting her hands and running forward with a flash, till they ceased pawing the ground, and gave way, snorting with terror, lifting their heads from the ground and flinging themselves away, galloping off into the evening, becoming tiny in the distance, and still not stopping.

Gudrun remained staring after them, with a mask-like defiant face.

“Why do you want to drive them mad?” asked Gerald, coming up with her.

She took no notice of him, only averted her face from him. “It’s not safe, you know,” he persisted. “They’re nasty, when they do turn.”

“Turn where? Turn away?” she mocked loudly.

“No,” he said, “turn against you.”

“Turn against me?” she mocked.

He could make nothing of this.

“Anyway, they gored one of the farmer’s cows to death, the other day,” he said.

“What do I care?” she said.

“I cared though,” he replied, “seeing that they’re my cattle.”

“How are they yours! You haven’t swallowed them. Give me one of them now,” she said, holding out her hand.

“You know where they are,” he said, pointing over the hill. “You can have one if you’d like it sent to you later on.”

She looked at him inscrutably.

“You think I’m afraid of you and your cattle, don’t you?” she asked.

His eyes narrowed dangerously. There was a faint domineering smile on his face.

“Why should I think that?” he said.

She was watching him all the time with her dark, dilated, inchoate eyes. She leaned forward and swung round her arm, catching him a light blow on the face with the back of her hand.

“That’s why,” she said, mocking.

And she felt in her soul an unconquerable desire for deep violence against him. She shut off the fear and dismay that filled her conscious mind. She wanted to do as she did, she was not going to be afraid.

He recoiled from the slight blow on his face. He became deadly pale, and a dangerous flame darkened his eyes. For some seconds he could not speak, his lungs were so suffused with blood, his heart stretched almost to bursting with a great gush of ungovernable emotion. It was as if some reservoir of black emotion had burst within him, and swamped him.

“You have struck the first blow,” he said at last, forcing the words from his lungs, in a voice so soft and low, it sounded like a dream within her, not spoken in the outer air.

“And I shall strike the last,” she retorted involuntarily, with confident assurance. He was silent, he did not contradict her.

She stood negligently, staring away from him, into the distance. On the edge of her consciousness the question was asking itself, automatically:

“Why are you behaving in this impossible and ridiculous fashion.” But she was sullen, she half shoved the question out of herself. She could not get it clean away, so she felt self-conscious.

Gerald, very pale, was watching her closely. His eyes were lit up with intent lights, absorbed and gleaming. She turned suddenly on him.

“It’s you who make me behave like this, you know,” she said, almost suggestive.

“I? How?” he said.

But she turned away, and set off towards the lake. Below, on the water, lanterns were coming alight, faint ghosts of warm flame floating in the pallor of the first twilight. The earth was spread with darkness, like lacquer, overhead was a pale sky, all primrose, and the lake was pale as milk in one part. Away at the landing stage, tiniest points of coloured rays were stringing themselves in the dusk. The launch was being illuminated. All round, shadow was gathering from the trees.

Gerald, white like a presence in his summer clothes, was following down the open grassy slope. Gudrun waited for him to come up. Then she softly put out her hand and touched him, saying softly:

“Don’t be angry with me.”

A flame flew over him, and he was unconscious. Yet he stammered:

“I’m not angry with you. I’m in love with you.”

His mind was gone, he grasped for sufficient mechanical control, to save himself. She laughed a silvery little mockery, yet intolerably caressive.

“That’s one way of putting it,” she said.

The terrible swooning burden on his mind, the awful swooning, the loss of all his control, was too much for him. He grasped her arm in his one hand, as if his hand were iron.

“It’s all right, then, is it?” he said, holding her arrested.

She looked at the face with the fixed eyes, set before her, and her blood ran cold.

“Yes, it’s all right,” she said softly, as if drugged, her voice crooning and witch-like.

He walked on beside her, a striding, mindless body. But he recovered a little as he went. He suffered badly. He had killed his brother when a boy, and was set apart, like Cain.

They found Birkin and Ursula sitting together by the boats, talking and laughing. Birkin had been teasing Ursula.

“Do you smell this little marsh?” he said, sniffing the air. He was very sensitive to scents, and quick in understanding them.

“It’s rather nice,” she said.

“No,” he replied, “alarming.”

“Why alarming?” she laughed.

“It seethes and seethes, a river of darkness,” he said, “putting forth lilies and snakes, and the ignis fatuus, and rolling all the time onward. That’s what we never take into count—that it rolls onwards.”

“What does?”

“The other river, the black river. We always consider the silver river of life, rolling on and quickening all the world to a brightness, on and on to heaven, flowing into a bright eternal sea, a heaven of angels thronging. But the other is our real reality—”

“But what other? I don’t see any other,” said Ursula.

“It is your reality, nevertheless,” he said; “that dark river of dissolution. You see it rolls in us just as the other rolls—the black river of corruption. And our flowers are of this—our sea-born Aphrodite, all our white phosphorescent flowers of sensuous perfection, all our reality, nowadays.”

“You mean that Aphrodite is really deathly?” asked Ursula.

“I mean she is the flowering mystery of the death-process, yes,” he replied. “When the stream of synthetic creation lapses, we find ourselves part of the inverse process, the blood of destructive creation. Aphrodite is born in the first spasm of universal dissolution—then the snakes and swans and lotus—marsh-flowers—and Gudrun and Gerald—born in the process of destructive creation.”

“And you and me—?” she asked.

“Probably,” he replied. “In part, certainly. Whether we are that, in toto, I don’t yet know.”

“You mean we are flowers of dissolution—fleurs du mal? I don’t feel as if I were,” she protested.

He was silent for a time.

“I don’t feel as if we were, altogether,” he replied. “Some people are pure flowers of dark corruption—lilies. But there ought to be some roses, warm and flamy. You know Herakleitos says ‘a dry soul is best.’ I know so well what that means. Do you?”

“I’m not sure,” Ursula replied. “But what if people are all flowers of dissolution—when they’re flowers at all—what difference does it make?”

“No difference—and all the difference. Dissolution rolls on, just as production does,” he said. “It is a progressive process—and it ends in universal nothing—the end of the world, if you like. But why isn’t the end of the world as good as the beginning?”

“I suppose it isn’t,” said Ursula, rather angry.

“Oh yes, ultimately,” he said. “It means a new cycle of creation after—but not for us. If it is the end, then we are of the end—fleurs du mal if you like. If we are fleurs du mal, we are not roses of happiness, and there you are.”

“But I think I am,” said Ursula. “I think I am a rose of happiness.”

“Ready-made?” he asked ironically.

“No—real,” she said, hurt.

“If we are the end, we are not the beginning,” he said.

“Yes we are,” she said. “The beginning comes out of the end.”

“After it, not out of it. After us, not out of us.”

“You are a devil, you know, really,” she said. “You want to destroy our hope. You want us to be deathly.”

“No,” he said, “I only want us to know what we are.”

“Ha!” she cried in anger. “You only want us to know death.”

“You’re quite right,” said the soft voice of Gerald, out of the dusk behind.

Birkin rose. Gerald and Gudrun came up. They all began to smoke, in the moments of silence. One after another, Birkin lighted their cigarettes. The match flickered in the twilight, and they were all smoking peacefully by the water-side. The lake was dim, the light dying from off it, in the midst of the dark land. The air all round was intangible, neither here nor there, and there was an unreal noise of banjoes, or suchlike music.

As the golden swim of light overhead died out, the moon gained brightness, and seemed to begin to smile forth her ascendancy. The dark woods on the opposite shore melted into universal shadow. And amid this universal under-shadow, there was a scattered intrusion of lights. Far down the lake were fantastic pale strings of colour, like beads of wan fire, green and red and yellow. The music came out in a little puff, as the launch, all illuminated, veered into the great shadow, stirring her outlines of half-living lights, puffing out her music in little drifts.

All were lighting up. Here and there, close against the faint water, and at the far end of the lake, where the water lay milky in the last whiteness of the sky, and there was no shadow, solitary, frail flames of lanterns floated from the unseen boats. There was a sound of oars, and a boat passed from the pallor into the darkness under the wood, where her lanterns seemed to kindle into fire, hanging in ruddy lovely globes. And again, in the lake, shadowy red gleams hovered in reflection about the boat. Everywhere were these noiseless ruddy creatures of fire drifting near the surface of the water, caught at by the rarest, scarce visible reflections.

Birkin brought the lanterns from the bigger boat, and the four shadowy white figures gathered round, to light them. Ursula held up the first, Birkin lowered the light from the rosy, glowing cup of his hands, into the depths of the lantern. It was kindled, and they all stood back to look at the great blue moon of light that hung from Ursula’s hand, casting a strange gleam on her face. It flickered, and Birkin went bending over the well of light. His face shone out like an apparition, so unconscious, and again, something demoniacal. Ursula was dim and veiled, looming over him.

“That is all right,” said his voice softly.

She held up the lantern. It had a flight of storks streaming through a turquoise sky of light, over a dark earth.

“This is beautiful,” she said.

“Lovely,” echoed Gudrun, who wanted to hold one also, and lift it up full of beauty.

“Light one for me,” she said. Gerald stood by her, incapacitated. Birkin lit the lantern she held up. Her heart beat with anxiety, to see how beautiful it would be. It was primrose yellow, with tall straight flowers growing darkly from their dark leaves, lifting their heads into the primrose day, while butterflies hovered about them, in the pure clear light.

Gudrun gave a little cry of excitement, as if pierced with delight.

“Isn’t it beautiful, oh, isn’t it beautiful!”

Her soul was really pierced with beauty, she was translated beyond herself. Gerald leaned near to her, into her zone of light, as if to see. He came close to her, and stood touching her, looking with her at the primrose-shining globe. And she turned her face to his, that was faintly bright in the light of the lantern, and they stood together in one luminous union, close together and ringed round with light, all the rest excluded.

Birkin looked away, and went to light Ursula’s second lantern. It had a pale ruddy sea-bottom, with black crabs and sea-weed moving sinuously under a transparent sea, that passed into flamy ruddiness above.

“You’ve got the heavens above, and the waters under the earth,” said Birkin to her.

“Anything but the earth itself,” she laughed, watching his live hands that hovered to attend to the light.

“I’m dying to see what my second one is,” cried Gudrun, in a vibrating rather strident voice, that seemed to repel the others from her.

Birkin went and kindled it. It was of a lovely deep blue colour, with a red floor, and a great white cuttle-fish flowing in white soft streams all over it. The cuttle-fish had a face that stared straight from the heart of the light, very fixed and coldly intent.

“How truly terrifying!” exclaimed Gudrun, in a voice of horror. Gerald, at her side, gave a low laugh.

“But isn’t it really fearful!” she cried in dismay.

Again he laughed, and said:

“Change it with Ursula, for the crabs.”

Gudrun was silent for a moment.

“Ursula,” she said, “could you bear to have this fearful thing?”

“I think the colouring is lovely,” said Ursula.

“So do I,” said Gudrun. “But could you bear to have it swinging to your boat? Don’t you want to destroy it at once?”

“Oh no,” said Ursula. “I don’t want to destroy it.”

“Well do you mind having it instead of the crabs? Are you sure you don’t mind?”

Gudrun came forward to exchange lanterns.

“No,” said Ursula, yielding up the crabs and receiving the cuttle-fish.

Yet she could not help feeling rather resentful at the way in which Gudrun and Gerald should assume a right over her, a precedence.

“Come then,” said Birkin. “I’ll put them on the boats.”

He and Ursula were moving away to the big boat.

“I suppose you’ll row me back, Rupert,” said Gerald, out of the pale shadow of the evening.

“Won’t you go with Gudrun in the canoe?” said Birkin. “It’ll be more interesting.”

There was a moment’s pause. Birkin and Ursula stood dimly, with their swinging lanterns, by the water’s edge. The world was all illusive.

“Is that all right?” said Gudrun to him.

“It’ll suit me very well,” he said. “But what about you, and the rowing? I don’t see why you should pull me.”

“Why not?” she said. “I can pull you as well as I could pull Ursula.”

By her tone he could tell she wanted to have him in the boat to herself, and that she was subtly gratified that she should have power over them both. He gave himself, in a strange, electric submission.

She handed him the lanterns, whilst she went to fix the cane at the end of the canoe. He followed after her, and stood with the lanterns dangling against his white-flannelled thighs, emphasising the shadow around.

“Kiss me before we go,” came his voice softly from out of the shadow above.