CHAPTER XI.
AN ISLAND
Meanwhile Ursula had wandered on from Willey Water along the course ofthe bright little stream. The afternoon was full of larks' singing. Onthe bright hill-sides was a subdued smoulder of gorse. A fewforget-me-nots flowered by the water. There was a rousedness and aglancing everywhere.
She strayed absorbedly on, over the brooks. She wanted to go to themill-pond above. The big mill-house was deserted, save for a labourerand his wife who lived in the kitchen. So she passed through the emptyfarm-yard and through the wilderness of a garden, and mounted the bankby the sluice. When she got to the top, to see the old, velvety surfaceof the pond before her, she noticed a man on the bank, tinkering with apunt. It was Birkin sawing and hammering away.
She stood at the head of the sluice, looking at him. He was unaware ofanybody's presence. He looked very busy, like a wild animal, active andintent. She felt she ought to go away, he would not want her. He seemedto be so much occupied. But she did not want to go away. Therefore shemoved along the bank till he would look up.
Which he soon did. The moment he saw her, he dropped his tools and cameforward, saying:
'How do you do? I'm making the punt water-tight. Tell me if you thinkit is right.'
She went along with him.
'You are your father's daughter, so you can tell me if it will do,' hesaid.
She bent to look at the patched punt.
'I am sure I am my father's daughter,' she said, fearful of having tojudge. '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. Thougheven so, it isn't a great matter, I should come up again. Help me toget it into the water, will you?'
With combined efforts they turned over the heavy punt and set itafloat.
'Now,' he said, 'I'll try it and you can watch what happens. Then if itcarries, 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 lustreof very deep water. There were two small islands overgrown with bushesand a few trees, towards the middle. Birkin pushed himself off, andveered clumsily in the pond. Luckily the punt drifted so that he couldcatch 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 theisland.
They landed under a willow tree. She shrank from the little jungle ofrank plants before her, evil-smelling figwort and hemlock. But heexplored into it.
'I shall mow this down,' he said, 'and then it will be romantic--likePaul et Virginie.'
'Yes, one could have lovely Watteau picnics here,' cried Ursula withenthusiasm.
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. Hewas 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 herordinary 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, verymuch.'
'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'treally right, at the source. That's the humiliation. I don't see thatthe illness counts so much, after that. One is ill because one doesn'tlive properly--can't. It's the failure to live that makes one ill, andhumiliates 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 alwaysto be bumping one's nose against the blank wall ahead.'
Ursula laughed. She was frightened, and when she was frightened shealways 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 ownself-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 ofchocolate she had found in her pocket, and began making a boat. Hewatched her without heeding her. There was something strangely patheticand tender in her moving, unconscious finger-tips, that were agitatedand 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 reallygrowing part of me. I feel all tangled and messed up, and I CAN'T getstraight anyhow. I don't know what really to DO. One must do somethingsomewhere.'
'Why should you always be DOING?' she retorted. 'It is so plebeian. Ithink it is much better to be really patrician, and to do nothing butjust be oneself, like a walking flower.'
'I quite agree,' he said, 'if one has burst into blossom. But I can'tget my flower to blossom anyhow. Either it is blighted in the bud, orhas got the smother-fly, or it isn't nourished. Curse it, it isn't evena bud. It is a contravened knot.'
Again she laughed. He was so very fretful and exasperated. But she wasanxious and puzzled. How was one to get out, anyhow. There must be away out somewhere.
There was a silence, wherein she wanted to cry. She reached for anotherbit of chocolate paper, and began to fold another boat.
'And why is it,' she asked at length, 'that there is no flowering, nodignity of human life now?'
'The whole idea is dead. Humanity itself is dry-rotten, really. Thereare myriads of human beings hanging on the bush--and they look verynice and rosy, your healthy young men and women. But they are apples ofSodom, as a matter of fact, Dead Sea Fruit, gall-apples. It isn't truethat 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 today. But mankind is a dead tree, coveredwith fine brilliant galls of people.'
Ursula could not help stiffening herself against this, it was toopicturesque and final. But neither could she help making him go on.
'And if it is so, WHY is it?' she asked, hostile. They were rousingeach other to a fine passion of opposition.
'Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because they won't falloff the tree when they're ripe. They hang on to their old positionswhen the position is over-past, till they become infested with littleworms 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 ofeverything 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 inthe fact that I know it. I detest what I am, outwardly. I loathe myselfas a human being. Humanity is a huge aggregate lie, and a huge lie isless than a small truth. Humanity is less, far less than theindividual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth,and humanity is a tree of lies. And they say
that love is the greatestthing; they persist in SAYING this, the foul liars, and just look atwhat they do! Look at all the millions of people who repeat everyminute that love is the greatest, and charity is the greatest--and seewhat they are doing all the time. By their works ye shall know them,for dirty liars and cowards, who daren't stand by their own actions,much less by their own words.'
'But,' said Ursula sadly, 'that doesn't alter the fact that love is thegreatest, does it? What they DO doesn't alter the truth of what theysay, does it?'
'Completely, because if what they say WERE true, then they couldn'thelp fulfilling it. But they maintain a lie, and so they run amok atlast. It's a lie to say that love is the greatest. You might as wellsay that hate is the greatest, since the opposite of everythingbalances. What people want is hate--hate and nothing but hate. And inthe name of righteousness and love, they get it. They distil themselveswith nitroglycerine, all the lot of them, out of very love. It's thelie that kills. If we want hate, let us have it--death, murder,torture, violent destruction--let us have it: but not in the name oflove. But I abhor humanity, I wish it was swept away. It could go, andthere would be no ABSOLUTE loss, if every human being perishedtomorrow. The reality would be untouched. Nay, it would be better. Thereal tree of life would then be rid of the most ghastly, heavy crop ofDead Sea Fruit, the intolerable burden of myriad simulacra of people,an infinite weight of mortal lies.'
'So you'd like everybody in the world destroyed?' said Ursula.
'I should indeed.'
'And the world empty of people?'
'Yes truly. You yourself, don't you find it a beautiful clean thought,a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sittingup?'
The pleasant sincerity of his voice made Ursula pause to consider herown proposition. And really it WAS attractive: a clean, lovely,humanless world. It was the REALLY desirable. Her heart hesitated, andexulted. But still, she was dissatisfied with HIM.
'But,' she objected, 'you'd be dead yourself, so what good would it doyou?'
'I would die like a shot, to know that the earth would really becleaned of all the people. It is the most beautiful and freeingthought. Then there would NEVER be another foul humanity created, for auniversal defilement.'
'No,' said Ursula, 'there would be nothing.'
'What! Nothing? Just because humanity was wiped out? You flatteryourself. There'd be everything.'
'But how, if there were no people?'
'Do you think that creation depends on MAN! It merely doesn't. Thereare the trees and the grass and birds. I much prefer to think of thelark rising up in the morning upon a human-less world. Man is amistake, he must go. There is the grass, and hares and adders, and theunseen hosts, actual angels that go about freely when a dirty humanitydoesn't interrupt them--and good pure-tissued demons: very nice.'
It pleased Ursula, what he said, pleased her very much, as a phantasy.Of course it was only a pleasant fancy. She herself knew too well theactuality of humanity, its hideous actuality. She knew it could notdisappear so cleanly and conveniently. It had a long way to go yet, along and hideous way. Her subtle, feminine, demoniacal soul knew itwell.
'If only man was swept off the face of the earth, creation would go onso marvellously, with a new start, non-human. Man is one of themistakes of creation--like the ichthyosauri. If only he were goneagain, think what lovely things would come out of the liberateddays;--things straight out of the fire.'
'But man will never be gone,' she said, with insidious, diabolicalknowledge of the horrors of persistence. 'The world will go with him.'
'Ah no,' he answered, 'not so. I believe in the proud angels and thedemons that are our fore-runners. They will destroy us, because we arenot proud enough. The ichthyosauri were not proud: they crawled andfloundered as we do. And besides, look at elder-flowers andbluebells--they are a sign that pure creation takes place--even thebutterfly. But humanity never gets beyond the caterpillar stage--itrots in the chrysalis, it never will have wings. It is anti-creation,like monkeys and baboons.'
Ursula watched him as he talked. There seemed a certain impatient furyin him, all the while, and at the same time a great amusement ineverything, and a final tolerance. And it was this tolerance shemistrusted, not the fury. She saw that, all the while, in spite ofhimself, he would have to be trying to save the world. And thisknowledge, whilst it comforted her heart somewhere with a littleself-satisfaction, stability, yet filled her with a certain sharpcontempt and hate of him. She wanted him to herself, she hated theSalvator Mundi touch. It was something diffuse and generalised abouthim, which she could not stand. He would behave in the same way, saythe same things, give himself as completely to anybody who came along,anybody and everybody who liked to appeal to him. It was despicable, avery insidious form of prostitution.
'But,' she said, 'you believe in individual love, even if you don'tbelieve in loving humanity--?'
'I don't believe in love at all--that is, any more than I believe inhate, or in grief. Love is one of the emotions like all the others--andso it is all right whilst you feel it But I can't see how it becomes anabsolute. It is just part of human relationships, no more. And it isonly part of ANY human relationship. And why one should be requiredALWAYS to feel it, any more than one always feels sorrow or distantjoy, I cannot conceive. Love isn't a desideratum--it is an emotion youfeel or you don't feel, according to circumstance.'
'Then why do you care about people at all?' she asked, 'if you don'tbelieve in love? Why do you bother about humanity?'
'Why do I? Because I can't get away from it.'
'Because you love it,' she persisted.
It irritated him.
'If I do love it,' he said, 'it is my disease.'
'But it is a disease you don't want to be cured of,' she said, withsome cold sneering.
He was silent now, feeling she wanted to insult him.
'And if you don't believe in love, what DO you believe in?' she askedmocking. 'Simply in the end of the world, and grass?'
He was beginning to feel a fool.
'I believe in the unseen hosts,' he said.
'And nothing else? You believe in nothing visible, except grass andbirds? Your world is a poor show.'
'Perhaps it is,' he said, cool and superior now he was offended,assuming a certain insufferable aloof superiority, and withdrawing intohis distance.
Ursula disliked him. But also she felt she had lost something. Shelooked at him as he sat crouched on the bank. There was a certainpriggish Sunday-school stiffness over him, priggish and detestable. Andyet, at the same time, the moulding of him was so quick and attractive,it gave such a great sense of freedom: the moulding of his brows, hischin, his whole physique, something so alive, somewhere, in spite ofthe look of sickness.
And it was this duality in feeling which he created in her, that made afine hate of him quicken in her bowels. There was his wonderful,desirable life-rapidity, the rare quality of an utterly desirable man:and there was at the same time this ridiculous, mean effacement into aSalvator Mundi and a Sunday-school teacher, a prig of the stiffesttype.
He looked up at her. He saw her face strangely enkindled, as ifsuffused from within by a powerful sweet fire. His soul was arrested inwonder. She was enkindled in her own living fire. Arrested in wonderand in pure, perfect attraction, he moved towards her. She sat like astrange queen, almost supernatural in her glowing smiling richness.
'The point about love,' he said, his consciousness quickly adjustingitself, 'is that we hate the word because we have vulgarised it. Itought to be prescribed, tabooed from utterance, for many years, till weget a new, better idea.'
There was a beam of understanding between them.
'But it always means the same thing,' she said.
'Ah God, no, let it not mean that any more,' he cried. 'Let the oldmeanings go.'
'But still it is love,' she persisted. A strange, wicked yellow lightshone at him in her eyes.
He hesitated, baffled, withdrawing.
'No,' he said,
'it isn't. Spoken like that, never in the world. You'veno business to utter the word.'
'I must leave it to you, to take it out of the Ark of the Covenant atthe right moment,' she mocked.
Again they looked at each other. She suddenly sprang up, turned herback to him, and walked away. He too rose slowly and went to thewater's edge, where, crouching, he began to amuse himselfunconsciously. Picking a daisy he dropped it on the pond, so that thestem was a keel, the flower floated like a little water lily, staringwith its open face up to the sky. It turned slowly round, in a slow,slow Dervish dance, as it veered away.
He watched it, then dropped another daisy into the water, and afterthat another, and sat watching them with bright, absolved eyes,crouching near on the bank. Ursula turned to look. A strange feelingpossessed her, as if something were taking place. But it was allintangible. And some sort of control was being put on her. She couldnot know. She could only watch the brilliant little discs of thedaisies veering slowly in travel on the dark, lustrous water. Thelittle flotilla was drifting into the light, a company of white specksin the distance.
'Do let us go to the shore, to follow them,' she said, afraid of beingany longer imprisoned on the island. And they pushed off in the punt.
She was glad to be on the free land again. She went along the banktowards the sluice. The daisies were scattered broadcast on the pond,tiny radiant things, like an exaltation, points of exaltation here andthere. Why did they move her so strongly and mystically?
'Look,' he said, 'your boat of purple paper is escorting them, and theyare a convoy of rafts.'
Some of the daisies came slowly towards her, hesitating, making a shybright little cotillion on the dark clear water. Their gay brightcandour moved her so much as they came near, that she was almost intears.
'Why are they so lovely,' she cried. 'Why do I think them so lovely?'
'They are nice flowers,' he said, her emotional tones putting aconstraint on him.
'You know that a daisy is a company of florets, a concourse, becomeindividual. Don't the botanists put it highest in the line ofdevelopment? I believe they do.'
'The compositae, yes, I think so,' said Ursula, who was never very sureof anything. Things she knew perfectly well, at one moment, seemed tobecome doubtful the next.
'Explain it so, then,' he said. 'The daisy is a perfect littledemocracy, so it's the highest of flowers, hence its charm.'
'No,' she cried, 'no--never. It isn't democratic.'
'No,' he admitted. 'It's the golden mob of the proletariat, surroundedby a showy white fence of the idle rich.'
'How hateful--your hateful social orders!' she cried.
'Quite! It's a daisy--we'll leave it alone.'
'Do. Let it be a dark horse for once,' she said: 'if anything can be adark horse to you,' she added satirically.
They stood aside, forgetful. As if a little stunned, they both weremotionless, barely conscious. The little conflict into which they hadfallen had torn their consciousness and left them like two impersonalforces, there in contact.
He became aware of the lapse. He wanted to say something, to get on toa new more ordinary footing.
'You know,' he said, 'that I am having rooms here at the mill? Don'tyou think we can have some good times?'
'Oh are you?' she said, ignoring all his implication of admittedintimacy.
He adjusted himself at once, became normally distant.
'If I find I can live sufficiently by myself,' he continued, 'I shallgive up my work altogether. It has become dead to me. I don't believein the humanity I pretend to be part of, I don't care a straw for thesocial ideals I live by, I hate the dying organic form of socialmankind--so it can't be anything but trumpery, to work at education. Ishall drop it as soon as I am clear enough--tomorrow perhaps--and be bymyself.'
'Have you enough to live on?' asked Ursula.
'Yes--I've about four hundred a year. That makes it easy for me.'
There was a pause.
'And what about Hermione?' asked Ursula.
'That's over, finally--a pure failure, and never could have beenanything else.'
'But you still know each other?'
'We could hardly pretend to be strangers, could we?'
There was a stubborn pause.
'But isn't that a half-measure?' asked Ursula at length.
'I don't think so,' he said. 'You'll be able to tell me if it is.'
Again there was a pause of some minutes' duration. He was thinking.
'One must throw everything away, everything--let everything go, to getthe one last thing one wants,' he said.
'What thing?' she asked in challenge.
'I don't know--freedom together,' he said.
She had wanted him to say 'love.'
There was heard a loud barking of the dogs below. He seemed disturbedby it. She did not notice. Only she thought he seemed uneasy.
'As a matter of fact,' he said, in rather a small voice, 'I believethat is Hermione come now, with Gerald Crich. She wanted to see therooms before they are furnished.'
'I know,' said Ursula. 'She will superintend the furnishing for you.'
'Probably. Does it matter?'
'Oh no, I should think not,' said Ursula. 'Though personally, I can'tbear her. I think she is a lie, if you like, you who are always talkingabout lies.' Then she ruminated for a moment, when she broke out: 'Yes,and I do mind if she furnishes your rooms--I do mind. I mind that youkeep her hanging on at all.'
He was silent now, frowning.
'Perhaps,' he said. 'I don't WANT her to furnish the rooms here--and Idon't keep her hanging on. Only, I needn't be churlish to her, need I?At any rate, I shall have to go down and see them now. You'll come,won't you?'
'I don't think so,' she said coldly and irresolutely.
'Won't you? Yes do. Come and see the rooms as well. Do come.'
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