“Oh, but — ” stammered Ursula, laughing, “it is. Why do you say it as if it weren’t?”
“‘Appen for them as is childt-nursin’ it’s none so rosy.”
“May I look inside your barge?” asked Ursula.
“There’s nobody’ll stop you; you come if you like.”
The barge lay at the opposite bank, at the wharf. It was the Annabel, belonging to J. Ruth of Loughborough. The man watched Ursula closely from his keen, twinkling eyes. His fair hair was wispy on his grimed forehead. Two dirty children appeared to see who was talking.
Ursula glanced at the great lock gates. They were shut, and the water was sounding, spurting and trickling down in the gloom beyond. On this side the bright water was almost to the top of the gate. She went boldly across, and round to the wharf.
Stooping from the bank, she peeped into the cabin, where was a red glow of fire and the shadowy figure of a woman. She did want to go down.
“You’ll mess your frock,” said the man, warningly.
“I’ll be careful,” she answered. “May I come?”
“Ay, come if you like.”
She gathered her skirts, lowered her foot to the side of the boat, and leapt down, laughing. Coal-dust flew up.
The woman came to the door. She was plump and sandy-haired, young, with an odd, stubby nose.
“Oh, you will make a mess of yourself,” she cried, surprised and laughing with a little wonder.
“I did want to see. Isn’t it lovely living on a barge?” asked Ursula.
“I don’t live on one altogether,” said the woman cheerfully.
“She’s got her parlour an’ her plush suite in Loughborough,” said her husband with just pride.
Ursula peeped into the cabin, where saucepans were boiling and some dishes were on the table. It was very hot. Then she came out again. The man was talking to the baby. It was a blue-eyed, fresh-faced thing with floss of red-gold hair.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked.
“It’s a girl-aren’t you a girl, eh?” he shouted at the infant, shaking his head. Its little face wrinkled up into the oddest, funniest smile.
“Oh!” cried Ursula. “Oh, the dear! Oh, how nice when she laughs!”
“She’ll laugh hard enough,” said the father.
“What is her name?” asked Ursula.
“She hasn’t got a name, she’s not worth one,” said the man. “Are you, you fag-end o’ nothing?” he shouted to the baby. The baby laughed.
“No we’ve been that busy, we’ve never took her to th’ registry office,” came the woman’s voice. “She was born on th’ boat here.”
“But you know what you’re going to call her?” asked Ursula.
“We did think of Gladys Em’ly,” said the mother.
“We thought of nowt o’ th’ sort,” said the father.
“Hark at him! What do you want?’ cried the mother in exasperation.
“She’ll be called Annabel after th’ boat she was born on.”
“She’s not, so there,” said the mother, viciously defiant
The father sat in humorous malice, grinning.
“Well, you’ll see,” he said.
And Ursula could tell, by the woman’s vibrating exasperation, that he would never give way.
“They’re all nice names,” she said. “Call her Gladys Annabel Emily.”
“Nay, that’s heavy-laden, if you like,” he answered.
“You see!” cried the woman. “He’s that pig-headed!”
“And she’s so nice, and she laughs, and she hasn’t even got a name,” crooned Ursula to the child.
“Let me hold her,” she added.
He yielded her the child, that smelt of babies. But it had such blue, wide, china blue eyes, and it laughed so oddly, with such a taking grimace, Ursula loved it. She cooed and talked to it. It was such an odd, exciting child.
“What’s your name?” the man suddenly asked of her.
“My name is Ursula-Ursula Brangwen,” she replied.
“Ursula!” he exclaimed, dumbfounded.
“There was a Saint Ursula. It’s a very old name,” she added hastily, in justification.
“Hey, mother!” he called.
There was no answer.
“Pem!” he called, “can’t y’hear?”
“What?” came the short answer.
“What about ‘Ursula’?” he grinned.
“What about what?” came the answer, and the woman appeared in the doorway, ready for combat.
“Ursula-it’s the lass’s name there,” he said, gently.
The woman looked the young girl up and down. Evidently she was attracted by her slim, graceful, new beauty, her effect of white elgegance, and her tender way of holding the child.
“Why, how do you write it?” the mother asked, awkward now she was touched. Ursula spelled out her name. The man looked at the woman. A bright, confused flush came over the mother’s face, a sort of luminous shyness.
“It’s not a common name, is it!” she exclaimed, excited as by an adventure.
“Are you goin’ to have it then?” he asked.
“I’d rather have it than Annabel,” she said, decisively.
“An’ I’d rather have it than Gladys Em’ler,” he replied.
There was a silence, Ursula looked up.
“Will you really call her Ursula?” she asked.
“Ursula Ruth,” replied the man, laughing vainly, as pleased as if he had found something.
It was now Ursula’s turn to be confused.
“It does sound awfully nice,” she said. “I must give her something. And I haven’t got anything at all.”
She stood in her white dress, wondering, down there in the barge. The lean man sitting near to her watched her as if she were a strange being, as if she lit up his face. His eyes smiled on her, boldly, and yet with exceeding admiration underneath.
“Could I give her my necklace?” she said.
It was the little necklace made of pieces of amethyst and topaz and pearl and crystal, strung at intervals on a little golden chain, which her Uncle Tom had given her. She was very fond of it. She looked at it lovingly, when she had taken it from her neck.
“Is it valuable?” the man asked her, curiously.
“I think so,” she replied.
“The stones and pearl are real; it is worth three or four pounds,” said Skrebensky from the wharf above. Ursula could tell he disapproved of her.
“I must give it to your baby-may I?” she said to the bargee.
He flushed, and looked away into the evening.
“Nay,” he said, “it’s not for me to say.”
“What would your father and mother say?” cried the woman curiously, from the door.
“It is my own,” said Ursula, and she dangled the little glittering string before the baby. The infant spread its little fingers. But it could not grasp. Ursula closed the tiny hand over the jewel. The baby waved the bright ends of the string. Ursula had given her necklace away. She felt sad. But she did not want it back.
The jewel swung from the baby’s hand and fell in a little heap on the coal-dusty bottom of the barge. The man groped for it, with a kind of careful reverence. Ursula noticed the coarsened, blunted fingers groping at the little jewelled heap. The skin was red on the back of the hand, the fair hairs glistened stiffly. It was a thin, sinewy, capable hand nevertheless, and Ursula liked it. He took up the necklace carefully, and blew the coal-dust from it, as it lay in the hollow of his hand. He seemed still and attentive. He held out his hand with the necklace shining small in its hard, black hollow.
“Take it back,” he said.
Ursula hardened with a kind of radiance.
“No,” she said. “It belongs to little Ursula.”
And she went to the infant and fastened the necklace round its warm, soft, weak little neck.
There was a moment of confusion, then the father bent over his child:
“What do you say?” he s
aid. “Do you say thank you? Do you say thank you, Ursula?”
“Her name’s Ursula now,” said the mother, smiling a little bit ingratiatingly from the door. And she came out to examine the jewel on the child’s neck.
“It is Ursula, isn’t it?” said Ursula Brangwen.
The father looked up at her, with an intimate, half-gallant, half-impudent, but wistful look. His captive soul loved her: but his soul was captive, he knew, always.
She wanted to go. He set a little ladder for her to climb up to the wharf. She kissed the child, which was in its mother’s arms, then she turned away. The mother was effusive. The man stood silent by the ladder.
Ursula joined Skrebensky. The two young figures crossed the lock, above the shining yellow water. The barge-man watched them go.
“I loved them,” she was saying. “He was so gentle-oh, so gentle! And the baby was such a dear!”
“Was he gentle?” said Skrebensky. “The woman had been a servant, I’m sure of that.”
Ursula winced.
“But I loved his impudence-it was so gentle underneath.”
She went hastening on, gladdened by having met the grimy, lean man with the ragged moustache. He gave her a pleasant warm feeling. He made her feel the richness of her own life. Skrebensky, somehow, had created a deadness round her, a sterility, as if the world were ashes.
They said very little as they hastened home to the big supper. He was envying the lean father of three children, for his impudent directness and his worship of the woman in Ursula, a worship of body and soul together, the man’s body and soul wistful and worshipping the body and spirit of the girl, with a desire that knew the inaccessibility of its object, but was only glad to know that the perfect thing existed, glad to have had a moment of communion.
Why could not he himself desire a woman so? Why did he never really want a woman, not with the whole of him: never loved, never worshipped, only just physically wanted her.
But he would want her with his body, let his soul do as it would. A kind of flame of physical desire was gradually beating up in the Marsh, kindled by Tom Brangwen, and by the fact of the wedding of Fred, the shy, fair, stiff-set farmer with the handsome, half-educated girl. Tom Brangwen, with all his secret power, seemed to fan the flame that was rising. The bride was strongly attracted by him, and he was exerting his influence on another beautiful, fair girl, chill and burning as the sea, who said witty things which he appreciated, making her glint with more, like phosphorescence. And her greenish eyes seemed to rock a secret, and her hands like mother-of-pearl seemed luminous, transparent, as if the secret were burning visible in them.
At the end of supper, during dessert, the music began to play, violins, and flutes. Everybody’s face was lit up. A glow of excitement prevailed. When the little speeches were over, and the port remained unreached for any more, those who wished were invited out to the open for coffee. The night was warm.
Bright stars were shining, the moon was not yet up. And under the stars burned two great, red, flameless fires, and round these lights and lanterns hung, the marquee stood open before a fire, with its lights inside.
The young people flocked out into the mysterious night. There was sound of laughter and voices, and a scent of coffee. The farm-buildings loomed dark in the background. Figures, pale and dark, flitted about, intermingling. The red fire glinted on a white or a silken skirt, the lanterns gleamed on the transient heads of the wedding guests.
To Ursula it was wonderful. She felt she was a new being. The darkness seemed to breathe like the sides of some great beast, the haystacks loomed half-revealed, a crowd of them, a dark, fecund lair just behind. Waves of delirious darkness ran through her soul. She wanted to let go. She wanted to reach and be amongst the flashing stars, she wanted to race with her feet and be beyond the confines of this earth. She was mad to be gone. It was as if a hound were straining on the leash, ready to hurl itself after a nameless quarry into the dark. And she was the quarry, and she was also the hound. The darkness was passionate and breathing with immense, unperceived heaving. It was waiting to receive her in her flight. And how could she start-and how could she let go? She must leap from the known into the unknown. Her feet and hands beat like a madness, her breast strained as if in bonds.
The music began, and the bonds began to slip. Tom Brangwen was dancing with the bride, quick and fluid and as if in another element, inaccessible as the creatures that move in the water. Fred Brangwen went in with another partner. The music came in waves. One couple after another was washed and absorbed into the deep underwater of the dance.
“Come,” said Ursula to Skrebensky, laying her hand on his arm.
At the touch of her hand on his arm, his consciousness melted away from him. He took her into his arms, as if into the sure, subtle power of his will, and they became one movement, one dual movement, dancing on the slippery grass. It would be endless, this movement, it would continue for ever. It was his will and her will locked in a trance of motion, two wills locked in one motion, yet never fusing, never yielding one to the other. It was a glaucous, intertwining, delicious flux and contest in flux.
They were both absorbed into a profound silence, into a deep, fluid underwater energy that gave them unlimited strength. All the dancers were waving intertwined in the flux of music. Shadowy couples passed and repassed before the fire, the dancing feet danced silently by into the darkness. It was a vision of the depths of the underworld, under the great flood.
There was a wonderful rocking of the darkness, slowly, a great, slow swinging of the whole night, with the music playing lightly on the surface, making the strange, ecstatic, rippling on the surface of the dance, but underneath only one great flood heaving slowly backwards to the verge of oblivion, slowly forward to the other verge, the heart sweeping along each time, and tightening with anguish as the limit was reached, and the movement, at crises, turned and swept back.
As the dance surged heavily on, Ursula was aware of some influence looking in upon her. Something was looking at her. Some powerful, glowing sight was looking right into her, not upon her, but right at her. Out of the great distance, and yet imminent, the powerful, overwhelming watch was kept upon her. And she danced on and on with Skrebensky, while the great, white watching continued, balancing all in its revelation.
“The moon has risen,” said Anton, as the music ceased, and they found themselves suddenly stranded, like bits of jetsam on a shore. She turned, and saw a great white moon looking at her over the hill. And her breast opened to it, she was cleaved like a transparent jewel to its light. She stood filled with the full moon, offering herself. Her two breasts opened to make way for it, her body opened wide like a quivering anemone, a soft, dilated invitation touched by the moon. She wanted the moon to fill in to her, she wanted more, more communion with the moon, consummation. But Skrebensky put his arm round her, and led her away. He put a big, dark cloak round her, and sat holding her hand, whilst the moonlight streamed above the glowing fires.
She was not there. Patiently she sat, under the cloak, with Skrebensky holding her hand. But her naked self was away there beating upon the moonlight, dashing the moonlight with her breasts and her knees, in meeting, in communion. She half started, to go in actuality, to fling away her clothing and flee away, away from this dark confusion and chaos of people to the hill and the moon. But the people stood round her like stones, like magnetic stones, and she could not go, in actuality. Skrebensky, like a load-stone weighed on her, the weight of his presence detained her. She felt the burden of him, the blind, persistent, inert burden. He was inert, and he weighed upon her. She sighed in pain. Oh, for the coolness and entire liberty and brightness of the moon. Oh, for the cold liberty to be herself, to do entirely as she liked. She wanted to get right away. She felt like bright metal weighted down by dark, impure magnetism. He was the dross, people were the dross. If she could but get away to the clean free moonlight.
“Don’t you like me to-night?” said his low voice, the voice of t
he shadow over her shoulder. She clenched her hands in the dewy brilliance of the moon, as if she were mad.
“Don’t you like me to-night?” repeated the soft voice.
And she knew that if she turned, she would die. A strange rage filled her, a rage to tear things asunder. Her hands felt destructive, like metal blades of destruction.
“Let me alone,” she said.
A darkness, an obstinacy settled on him too, in a kind of inertia. He sat inert beside her. She threw off her cloak and walked towards the moon, silver-white herself. He followed her closely.
The music began again and the dance. He appropriated her. There was a fierce, white, cold passion in her heart. But he held her close, and danced with her. Always present, like a soft weight upon her, bearing her down, was his body against her as they danced. He held her very close, so that she could feel his body, the weight of him sinking, settling upon her, overcoming her life and energy, making her inert along with him, she felt his hands pressing behind her, upon her. But still in her body was the subdued, cold, indomitable passion. She liked the dance: it eased her, put her into a sort of trance. But it was only a kind of waiting, of using up the time that intervened between her and her pure being. She left herself against him, she let him exert all his power over her, to bear her down. She received all the force of his power. She even wished he might overcome her. She was cold and unmoved as a pillar of salt.
His will was set and straining with all its tension to encompass him and compel her. If he could only compel her. He seemed to be annihilated. She was cold and hard and compact of brilliance as the moon itself, and beyond him as the moonlight was beyond him, never to be grasped or known. If he could only set a bond round her and compel her!
So they danced four or five dances, always together, always his will becoming more tense, his body more subtle, playing upon her. And still he had not got her, she was hard and bright as ever, intact. But he must weave himself round her, enclose her, enclose her in a net of shadow, of darkness, so she would be like a bright creature gleaming in a net of shadows, caught. Then he would have her, he would enjoy her. How he would enjoy her, when she was caught.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 147