Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (31 page)

“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,”
^bf
said Ursula, explaining.

“Eh? Trop de monde!” he laughed shortly. “Yes, there’s a fair number of ’em.”

Gudrun turned on him brilliantly.

“Have you ever been from Westminster Bridge to Richmond on one of the Thames steamers?” she cried.

“No,” he said, “I can’t say I have.”

“Well, it’s one of the most
vile
experiences I’ve ever had.” She spoke rapidly and excitedly, the colour high in her cheeks. “There was absolutely nowhere to sit down, nowhere, a man just above sang ‘Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep’ the
whole
way; he was blind and he had a small organ, one of those portable organs, and he expected money; so you can imagine what that was like; there came a constant smell of luncheon from below, and puffs of hot oily machinery; the journey took hours and hours and hours; and for miles, literally for miles, dreadful boys ran with us on the shore, in that
awful Thames
mud, going in
up to the waist
—they had their trousers turned back, and down they went up to their hips in that indescribable Thames mud, their faces always turned to us, and screaming, exactly like carrion creatures, screaming ’Ere y‘are sir, ’ere y‘are sir, ’ere y‘are sir,’ exactly like some foul carrion objects, perfectly obscene; and paterfamilias on board, laughing when the boys went right down in that awful mud, occasionally throwing them a ha’penny. And if you’d seen the intent look on the faces of these boys, and the way they darted in the filth when a coin was flung—really, no vulture or jackal could dream of approaching them, for foulness. I never would go on a pleasure boat again—never.”

Gerald watched her all the time she spoke, his eyes glittering with faint rousedness. It was not so much what she said; it was she herself who roused him, roused him with a small, vivid pricking.

“Of course,” he said, “every civilised body is bound to have its vermin.”

“Why?” cried Ursula. “
I
don’t have vermin.”

“And it’s not that—its the
quality
of the whole thing—paterfamilias laughing and thinking it sport, and throwing the ha’‘pennies, and materfamilias spreading her fat little knees and eating, continually eating—” replied Gudrun.

“Yes,” said Ursula. “It isn’t the boys so much who are vermin; it’s the people themselves, the whole body politic, as you call it.”

Gerald laughed.

“Never mind,” he said. “You shan’t go on the launch.”

Gudrun flushed quickly at his rebuke.

There were a few moments of silence. Gerald, like a sentinel, was watching the people who were going on to the boat. He was very good-looking and self-contained, but his air of soldierly alertness was rather irritating.

“Will you have tea here then, or go across to the house, where there’s a tent on the lawn?” he asked.

“Can’t we have a rowing boat, and get out?” asked Ursula, who was always rushing in too fast.

“To get out?” smiled Gerald.

“You see,” cried Gudrun, flushing at Ursula’s outspoken rudeness, “we don’t know the people, we are almost
complete
strangers here.”

“Oh, I can soon set you up with a few acquaintances,” he said easily.

Gudrun looked at him, to see if it were ill-meant. Then she smiled at him.

“Ah,” she said, “you know what we mean. Can’t we go up there, and explore that coast?” She pointed to a grove on the hillock of the meadow-side, near the shore, half-way down the lake. “That looks perfectly lovely. We might even bathe. Isn’t it beautiful in this light! Really, it’s like one of the reaches of the Nile—as one imagines the Nile.”

Gerald smiled at her factitious enthusiasm for the distant spot.

“You’re sure it’s far enough off?” he asked ironically, adding at once: “Yes, you might go there, if we could get a boat. They seem to be all out.”

He looked round the lake and counted the rowing boats on its surface.

“How lovely it would be!” cried Ursula wistfully.

“And don’t you want tea?” he said.

“Oh,” said Gudrun, “we could just drink a cup, and be off.”

He looked from one to the other, smiling. He was somewhat offended—yet sporting.

“Can you manage a boat pretty well?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Gudrun, coldly, “pretty well.”

“Oh yes,” cried Ursula. “We can both of us row like water-spiders.”

“You can? There’s a light little canoe of mine, that I didn’t take out for fear somebody should drown themselves. Do you think you’d be safe in that?”

“Oh perfectly,” said Gudrun.

“What an angel!” cried Ursula.

“Don’t, for
my
sake, have an accident—because I’m responsible for the water.”

“Sure,” pledged Gudrun.

“Besides, we can both swim quite well,” said Ursula.

“Well—then I’ll get them to put you up a tea-basket, and you can picnic all to yourselves,—that’s the idea, isn’t it?”

“How fearfully good! How frightfully nice if you could!” cried Gudrun warmly, her colour flushing up again. It made the blood stir in his veins, the subtle way she turned to him and infused her gratitude into his body.

“Where’s Birkin?” he said, his eyes twinkling. “He might help me to get it down.”

“But what about your hand? Isn’t it hurt?” asked Gudrun, rather muted, as if avoiding the intimacy. This was the first time the hurt had been mentioned. The curious way she skirted round the subject sent a new, subtle caress through his veins. He took his hand out of his pocket. It was bandaged. He looked at it, then put it in his pocket again. Gudrun quivered at the sight of the wrapped up paw.

“Oh, I can manage with one hand. The canoe is as light as a feather,” he said. “There’s Rupert!—Rupert!”

Birkin turned from his social duties and came towards them.

“What have you done to it?” asked Ursula, who had been aching to put the question for the last half hour.

“To my hand?” said Gerald. “I trapped it in some machinery.”

“Ugh!” said Ursula. “And did it hurt much?”

“Yes,” he said. “It did at the time. It’s getting better now. It crushed the fingers.”

“Oh,” cried Ursula, as if in pain, “I hate people who hurt themselves. I can
feel
it.” And she shook her hand.

“What do you want?” said Birkin.

The two men carried down the slim brown boat, and set it on the water.

“You’re quite sure you’ll be safe in it?” Gerald asked.

“Quite sure,” said Gudrun. “I wouldn’t be so mean as to take it, if there was the slightest doubt. But I’ve had a canoe at Arundel, and I assure you I’m perfectly safe.”

So saying, having given her word like a man, she and Ursula entered the frail craft, and pushed gently off.
¹
The two men stood watching them. Gudrun was paddling. She knew the men were watching her, and it made her slow and rather clumsy. The colour flew in her face like a flag.

“Thanks awfully,” she called back to him, from the water, as the boat slid away. “It’s lovely—like sitting in a leaf.”

He laughed at the fancy. Her voice was shrill and strange, calling from the distance. He watched her as she paddled away. There was something childlike about her, trustful and deferential, like a child. He watched her all the while, as she rowed. And to Gudrun it was a real delight, in make-belief, to be the childlike, clinging woman to the man who stood there on the quay, so good-looking and efficient in his white clothes, and moreover the most important man she knew at the moment. She did not take any notice of the wavering, indistinct, lambent Birkin, who stood at his side. One figure at a time occupied the field of her attention.

The boat rustled lightly along the water. They passed the bathers whose striped tents stood between the willows of the meadow’s edge, and drew along the open shore, past the meadows that sloped golden in the light of the already late afternoon. Other boats were stealing under the wooded shore opposite, they could hear people’s laughter and voices. But Gudrun rowed on towards the clump of trees that balanced perfect in the distance, in the golden light.

The sisters found a little place where a tiny stream flowed into the lake, with reeds and flowery marsh of pink willow herb, and a gravelly bank to the side. Here they ran delicately ashore, with their frail boat, the two girls took off their shoes and stockings and went through the water’s edge to the grass. The tiny ripples of the lake were warm and clear, they lifted their boat on to the bank, and looked round with joy. They were quite alone in a forsaken little stream-mouth, and on the knoll just behind was the clump of trees.

“We will bathe just for a moment,” said Ursula, “and then we’ll have tea.”

They looked round. Nobody could notice them, or could come up in time to see them. In less than a minute Ursula had thrown off her clothes and had slipped naked into the water, and was swimming out. Quickly, Gudrun joined her. They swam silently and blissfully for a few minutes, circling round their little stream-mouth. Then they slipped ashore and ran into the grove again, like nymphs.

“How lovely it is to be free,” said Ursula, running swiftly here and there between the tree trunks, quite naked, her hair blowing loose. The grove was of beech-trees, big and splendid, a steel-grey scaffolding of trunks and boughs, with level sprays of strong green here and there, whilst through the northern side the distance glimmered open as through a window.

When they had run and danced themselves dry, the girls quickly dressed and sat down to the fragrant tea. They sat on the northern side of the grove, in the yellow sunshine facing the slope of the grassy hill, alone in a little wild world of their own. The tea was hot and aromatic, there were delicious little sandwiches of cucumber and of caviare, and winy cakes.

“Are you happy, Prune?” cried Ursula in delight, looking at her sister.

“Ursula, I’m perfectly happy,” replied Gudrun gravely, looking at the westering sun.

“So am I.”

When they were together, doing the things they enjoyed, the two sisters were quite complete in a perfect world of their own. And this was one of the perfect moments of freedom and delight, such as children alone know, when all seems a perfect and blissful adventure.

When they had finished tea, the two girls sat on, silent and serene. Then Ursula, who had a beautiful strong voice, began to sing to herself, softly: “Ännchen von Tharau.”
^bg
Gudrun listened, as she sat beneath the trees, and the yearning came into her heart. Ursula seemed so peaceful and sufficient unto herself, sitting there unconsciously crooning her song, strong and unquestioned at the centre of her own universe. And Gudrun felt herself outside. Always this desolating, agonised feeling, that she was outside of life, an onlooker, whilst Ursula was a partaker, caused Gudrun to suffer from a sense of her own negation, and made her, that she must always demand the other to be aware of her, to be in connection with her.

“Do you mind if I do Dalcroze
^bh
to that tune, Hurtler?” she asked in a curious muted tone, scarce moving her lips.