She felt herself drawn out at evening into the main street of the town, that was uncreated and ugly, and yet surcharged with this same potent atmosphere of intense, dark callousness. There were always miners about. They moved with their strange, distorted dignity, a certain beauty, and unnatural stillness in their bearing, a look of abstraction and half resignation in their pale, often gaunt faces. They belonged to another world, they had a strange glamour, their voices were full of an intolerable deep resonance, like a machine’s burring, a music more maddening than the siren’s long ago.
She found herself, with the rest of the common women, drawn out on Friday evenings to the little market. Friday was pay-day for the colliers, and Friday night was market-night. Every woman was abroad, every man was out, shopping with his wife, or gathering with his pals. The pavements were dark for miles around with people coming in, the little market-place on the crown of the hill, and the main street of Beldover was black with thickly-crowded men and women.
It was dark, the market-place was hot with kerosene flares, which threw a ruddy light on the grave faces of the purchasing wives, and on the pale abstract faces of the men. The air was full of the sound of criers and of people talking, thick streams of people moved on the pavements towards the solid crowd of the market. The shops were blazing and packed with women, in the streets were men, mostly men, miners of all ages. Money was spent with almost lavish freedom.
The carts that came could not pass through. They had to wait, the driver calling and shouting, till the dense crowd would make way. Everywhere, young fellows from the outlying districts were making conversation with the girls, standing in the road and at the corners. The doors of the public-houses were open and full of light, men passed in and out in a continual stream, everywhere men were calling out to one another, or crossing to meet one another, or standing in little gangs and circles, discussing, endlessly discussing. The sense of talk, buzzing, jarring, half-secret, the endless mining and political wrangling, vibrated in the air like discordant machinery. And it was their voices which affected Gudrun almost to swooning. They aroused a strange, nostalgic ache of desire, something almost demoniacal, never to be fulfilled.
Like any other common girl of the district, Gudrun strolled up and down, up and down the length of the brilliant two-hundred paces of the pavement nearest the market-place. She knew it was a vulgar thing to do; her father and mother could not bear it; but the nostalgia came over her, she must be among the people. Sometimes she sat among the louts in the cinema: rakish-looking, unattractive louts they were. Yet she must be among them.
And, like any other common lass, she found her ‘boy.’ It was an electrician, one of the electricians introduced according to Gerald’s new scheme. He was an earnest, clever man, a scientist with a passion for sociology. He lived alone in a cottage, in lodgings, in Willey Green. He was a gentleman, and sufficiently well-to-do. His landlady spread the reports about him; he would have a large wooden tub in his bedroom, and every time he came in from work, he would have pails and pails of water brought up, to bathe in, then he put on clean shirt and under-clothing every day, and clean silk socks; fastidious and exacting he was in these respects, but in every other way, most ordinary and unassuming.
Gudrun knew all these things. The Brangwens’ house was one to which the gossip came naturally and inevitably. Palmer was in the first place a friend of Ursula’s. But in his pale, elegant, serious face there showed the same nostalgia that Gudrun felt. He too must walk up and down the street on Friday evening. So he walked with Gudrun, and a friendship was struck up between them. But he was not in love with Gudrun; he really wanted Ursula, but for some strange reason, nothing could happen between her and him. He liked to have Gudrun about, as a fellow-mind—but that was all. And she had no real feeling for him. He was a scientist, he had to have a woman to back him. But he was really impersonal, he had the fineness of an elegant piece of machinery. He was too cold, too destructive to care really for women, too great an egoist. He was polarised by the men. Individually he detested and despised them. In the mass they fascinated him, as machinery fascinated him. They were a new sort of machinery to him—but incalculable, incalculable.
So Gudrun strolled the streets with Palmer, or went to the cinema with him. And his long, pale, rather elegant face flickered as he made his sarcastic remarks. There they were, the two of them: two elegants in one sense: in the other sense, two units, absolutely adhering to the people, teeming with the distorted colliers. The same secret seemed to be working in the souls of all alike, Gudrun, Palmer, the rakish young bloods, the gaunt, middle-aged men. All had a secret sense of power, and of inexpressible destructiveness, and of fatal halfheartedness, a sort of rottenness in the will.
Sometimes Gudrun would start aside, see it all, see how she was sinking in. And then she was filled with a fury of contempt and anger. She felt she was sinking into one mass with the rest—all so close and intermingled and breathless. It was horrible. She stifled. She prepared for flight, feverishly she flew to her work. But soon she let go. She started off into the country—the darkish, glamorous country. The spell was beginning to work again.
CHAPTER X
Sketch-Book
ONE MORNING THE SISTERS were sketching by the side of Willey Water, at the remote end of the lake. Gudrun had waded out to a gravelly shoal, and was seated like a Buddhist, staring fixedly at the water-plants that rose succulent from the mud of the low shores. What she could see was mud, soft, oozy, watery mud, and from its festering chill, water-plants rose up, thick and cool and fleshy, very straight and turgid, thrusting out their leaves at right angles, and having dark lurid colours, dark green and blotches of black-purple and bronze. But she could feel their turgid fleshy structure as in a sensuous vision, she knew how they rose out of the mud, she knew how they thrust out from themselves, how they stood stiff and succulent against the air.
Ursula was watching the butterflies, of which there were dozens near the water, little blue ones suddenly snapping out of nothingness into a jewel-life, a large black-and-red one standing upon a flower and breathing with his soft wings, intoxicatingly, breathing pure, ethereal sunshine; two white ones wrestling in the low air, there was a halo round them; ah, when they came tumbling nearer they were orange-tips, and it was the orange that had made the halo. Ursula rose and drifted away, unconscious like the butterflies.
Gudrun, absorbed in a stupor of apprehension of surging water-plants, sat crouched on the shoal, drawing, not looking up for a long time, and then staring unconsciously, absorbedly at the rigid, naked, succulent stems. Her feet were bare, her hat lay on the bank opposite.
She started out of her trance, hearing the knocking of oars. She looked round. There was a boat with a gaudy Japanese parasol, and a man in white, rowing. The woman was Hermione, and the man was Gerald. She knew it instantly. And instantly she perished in the keen frisson of anticipation, an electric vibration in her veins, intense, much more intense than that which was always humming low in the atmosphere of Beldover.
Gerald was her escape from the heavy slough of the pale, underworld, automatic colliers. He started out of the mud. He was master. She saw his back, the movement of his white loins. But not that—it was the whiteness he seemed to enclose as he bent forwards, rowing. He seemed to stoop to something. His glistening, whitish hair seemed like the electricity of the sky.
“There’s Gudrun,” came Hermione’s voice floating distinct over the water. “We will go and speak to her. Do you mind?”
Gerald looked round and saw the girl standing by the water’s edge, looking at him. He pulled the boat towards her, magnetically, without thinking of her. In his world, his conscious world, she was still nobody. He knew that Hermione had a curious pleasure in treading down all the social differences, at least apparently, and he left it to her.
“How do you do, Gudrun?” sang Hermione, using the Christian name in the fashionable manner. “What are you doing?”
*How do you do, Hermione ? I was sketc
hing.”
“Were you?” The boat drifted nearer, till the keel. ground on the bank. “May we see? I should like to so much.”
It was no use resisting Hermione’s deliberate intention.
“Well—” said Gudrun reluctantly, for she always hated to have her unfinished work exposed—“There’s nothing in the least interesting.”
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
An Island1
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 Watteauar 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?”
Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 19