Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (34 page)

“Shall I row to the landing-stage?” asked Gudrun wistfully.

“Anywhere,” he answered. “Let it drift.”

“Tell me then, if we are running into anything,” she replied, in that very quiet, toneless voice of sheer intimacy.

“The lights will show,” he said.

So they drifted almost motionless, in silence. He wanted silence, pure and whole. But she was uneasy yet for some word, for some assurance.

“Nobody will miss you?” she asked, anxious for some communication.

“Miss me?” he echoed. “No! Why?”

“I wondered if anybody would be looking for you.”

“Why should they look for me?” And then he remembered his manners. “But perhaps you want to get back,” he said, in a changed voice.

“No, I don’t want to get back,” she replied. “No, I assure you.”

“You’re quite sure it’s all right for you?”

“Perfectly all right.”

And again they were still. The launch twanged and hooted, somebody was singing. Then as if the night smashed, suddenly there was a great shout, a confusion of shouting, warring on the water, then the horrid noise of paddles reversed and churned violently.

Gerald sat up, and Gudrun looked at him in fear.

“Somebody in the water,” he said, angrily, and desperately, looking keenly across the dusk. “Can you row up?”

“Where, to the launch?” asked Gudrun, in nervous panic.

“Yes.”

“You’ll tell me if I don’t steer straight,” she said, in nervous apprehension.

“You keep pretty level,” he said, and the canoe hastened forward.

The shouting and the noise continued, sounding horrid through the dusk, over the surface of the water.

“Wasn’t this
bound
to happen?” said Gudrun, with heavy hateful irony. But he hardly heard, and she glanced over her shoulder to see her way. The half-dark waters were sprinkled with lovely bubbles of swaying lights, the launch did not look far off. She was rocking her lights in the early night. Gudrun rowed as hard as she could. But now that it was a serious matter, she seemed uncertain and clumsy in her stroke, it was difficult to paddle swiftly. She glanced at his face. He was looking fixedly into the darkness, very keen and alert and single in himself, instrumental. Her heart sank, she seemed to die a death. “Of course,” she said to herself, “nobody will be drowned. Of course they won’t. It would be too extravagant and sensational.” But her heart was cold, because of his sharp, impersonal face. It was as if he belonged naturally to dread and catastrophe, as if he were himself again.

Then there came a child’s voice, a girl’s high, piercing shriek:

“Di—Di—Di—Di—Oh Di—Oh Di—Oh Di!”

The blood ran cold in Gudrun’s veins.

“It’s Diana, is it,” muttered Gerald. “The young monkey, she’d have to be up to some of her tricks.”

And he glanced again at the paddle, the boat was not going quickly enough for him. It made Gudrun almost helpless at the rowing, this nervous stress. She kept up with all her might. Still the voices were calling and answering.

“Where, where? There you are—that’s it. Which? No—No-o-o. Damn it all here,
here
—” Boats were hurrying from all directions to the scene, coloured lanterns could be seen waving close to the surface of the lake, reflections swaying after them in uneven haste. The steamer hooted again, for some unknown reason. Gudrun’s boat was travelling quickly, the lanterns were swinging behind Gerald.

And then again came the child’s high, screaming voice, with a note of weeping and impatience in it now:

“Di—Oh Di—Oh Di—Di—!”

It was a terrible sound, coming through the obscure air of the evening.

“You’d be better if you were in bed, Winnie,” Gerald muttered to himself.

He was stooping unlacing his shoes, pushing them off with the foot. Then he threw his soft hat into the bottom of the boat.

“You can’t go into the water with your hurt hand,” said Gudrun, panting, in a low voice of horror.

“What? It won’t hurt.”

He had struggled out of his jacket, and had dropped it between his feet. He sat bare-headed, all in white now. He felt the belt at his waist. They were nearing the launch, which stood still big above them, her myriad lamps making lovely darts, and sinuous running tongues of ugly red and green and yellow light on the lustrous dark water, under the shadow.

“Oh get her out! Oh Di,
darling!
Oh get her out! Oh Daddy, Oh Daddy!” moaned the child’s voice, in distraction. Somebody was in the water, with a life belt. Two boats paddled near, their lanterns swinging ineffectually, the boats nosing round.

“Hi there—Rockley!—hi there!”

“Mr. Gerald!” came the captain’s terrified voice. “Miss Diana’s in the water.”

“Anybody gone in for her?” came Gerald’s sharp voice.

“Young Doctor Brindell, sir.”

“Where?”

“Can’t see no signs of them, sir. Everybody’s looking, but there’s nothing so far.”

There was a moment’s ominous pause.

“Where did she go in?”

“I think—about where that boat is,” came the uncertain answer, “that one with red and green lights.”

“Row there,” said Gerald quietly to Gudrun.

“Get her out, Gerald, oh get her out,” the child’s voice was crying anxiously. He took no heed.

“Lean back that way,” said Gerald to Gudrun, as he stood up in the frail boat. “She won’t upset.”

In another moment, he had dropped clean down, soft and plumb, into the water. Gudrun was swaying violently in her boat, the agitated water shook with transient lights, she realised that it was faintly moonlight, and that he was gone. So it was possible to be gone. A terrible sense of fatality robbed her of all feeling and thought. She felt he was gone out of the world, there was merely the same world, and absence, his absence. The night seemed large and vacuous. Lanterns swayed here and there, people were talking in an undertone on the launch and in the boats. She could hear Winifred moaning:
“Oh do find her, Gerald, do find her,”
and someone trying to comfort the child. Gudrun paddled aimlessly here and there. The terrible, massive, cold, boundless surface of the water terrified her beyond words. Would he never come back? She felt she must jump into the water too, to know the horror also.

She started, hearing someone say: “There he is.” She saw the movement of his swimming, like a water-rat. And she rowed involuntarily to him. But he was near another boat, a bigger one. Still she rowed towards him. She must be very near. She saw him—he looked like a seal. He looked like a seal as he took hold of the side of the boat. His fair hair was washed down on his round head, his face seemed to glisten suavely. She could hear him panting.

Then he clambered into the boat. Oh, and the beauty of the subjection of his loins, white and dimly luminous as he climbed over the side of the boat, made her want to die, to die. The beauty of his dim and luminous loins as he climbed into the boat, his back rounded and soft—ah, this was too much for her, too final a vision. She knew it, and it was fatal. The terrible hopelessness of fate, and of beauty, such beauty!

He was not like a man to her, he was an incarnation, a great phase of life. She saw him press the water out of his face, and look at the bandage on his hand. And she knew it was all no good, and that she would never go beyond him, he was the final approximation of life to her.

“Put the lights out, we shall see better,” came his voice, sudden and mechanical and belonging to the world of man. She could scarcely believe there was a world of man. She leaned round and blew out her lanterns. They were difficult to blow out. Everywhere the lights were gone save the coloured points on the sides of the launch. The blue-grey, early night spread level around, the moon was overhead, there were shadows of boats here and there.

Again there was a splash, and he was gone under. Gudrun sat, sick at heart, frightened of the great, level surface of the water, so heavy and deadly. She was so alone, with the level, unliving field of the water stretching beneath her. It was not a good isolation, it was a terrible, cold separation of suspense. She was suspended upon the surface of the insidious reality until such time as she also should disappear beneath it.

Then she knew, by a stirring of voices, that he had climbed out again, into a boat. She sat wanting connection with him. Strenuously she claimed her connection with him, across the invisible space of the water. But round her heart was an isolation unbearable, through which nothing would penetrate.

“Take the launch in. It’s no use keeping her there. Get lines for the dragging,” came the decisive, instrumental voice, that was full of the sound of the world.

The launch began gradually to beat the waters.

“Gerald! Gerald!” came the wild crying voice of Winifred. He did not answer. Slowly the launch drifted round in a pathetic, clumsy circle, and slunk away to the land, retreating into the dimness. The wash of her paddles grew duller. Gudrun rocked in her light boat, and dipped the paddle automatically to steady herself.

“Gudrun?” called Ursula’s voice.

“Ursula!”

The boats of the two sisters pulled together.

“Where is Gerald?” said Gudrun.

“He’s dived again,” said Ursula plaintively. “And I know he ought not, with his hurt hand and everything.”

“I’ll take him in home this time,” said Birkin.

The boats swayed again from the wash of steamer. Gudrun and Ursula kept a look-out for Gerald.

“There he is!” cried Ursula, who had the sharpest eyes. He had not been long under. Birkin pulled towards him, Gudrun following. He swam slowly, and caught hold of the boat with his wounded hand. It slipped, and he sank back.

“Why don’t you help him?” cried Ursula sharply.

He came again, and Birkin leaned to help him in to the boat. Gudrun again watched Gerald climb out of the water, but this time slowly, heavily, with the blind clambering motions of an amphibious beast, clumsy. Again the moon shone with faint luminosity on his white wet figure, on the stooping back and the rounded loins. But it looked defeated now, his body, it clambered and fell with slow clumsiness. He was breathing hoarsely too, like an animal that is suffering. He sat slack and motionless in the boat, his head blunt and blind like a seal’s, his whole appearance inhuman, unknowing. Gudrun shuddered as she mechanically followed his boat. Birkin rowed without speaking to the landing-stage.

“Where are you going?” Gerald asked suddenly, as if just waking up.

“Home,” said Birkin.

“Oh no!” said Gerald imperiously. “We can’t go home while they’re in the water. Turn back again, I’m going to find them.” The women were frightened, his voice was so imperative and dangerous, almost mad, not to be opposed.

“No,” said Birkin. “You can’t.” There was a strange fluid compulsion in his voice. Gerald was silent in a battle of wills. It was as if he would kill the other man. But Birkin rowed evenly and unswerving, with an inhuman inevitability.

“Why should you interfere?” said Gerald, in hate.

Birkin did not answer. He rowed towards the land. And Gerald sat mute, like a dumb beast, panting, his teeth chattering, his arms inert, his head like a seal’s head.

They came to the landing-stage. Wet and naked-looking, Gerald climbed up the few steps. There stood his father, in the night.

“Father!” he said.

“Yes my boy? Go home and get those things off.”

“We shan’t save them, father,” said Gerald.

“There’s hope yet, my boy.”

“I’m afraid not. There’s no knowing where they are. You can’t find them. And there’s a current, as cold as hell.”

“We’ll let the water out,” said the father. “Go home you and look to yourself See that he’s looked after, Rupert,” he added in a neutral voice.

“Well, father, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m afraid it’s my fault. But it can’t be helped; I’ve done what I could for the moment. I could go on diving, of course—not much, though—and not much use—”

He moved away barefoot, on the planks of the platform. Then he trod on something sharp.

“Of course, you’ve got no shoes on,” said Birkin.

“His shoes are here!” cried Gudrun from below. She was making fast her boat.

Gerald waited for them to be brought to him. Gudrun came with them. He pulled them on his feet.

“If you once die,” he said, “then when it’s over, it’s finished. Why come to life again? There’s room under that water there for thousands.”

“Two is enough,” she said murmuring.

He dragged on his second shoe. He was shivering violently, and his jaw shook as he spoke.

“That’s true,” he said, “maybe. But it’s curious how much room there seems, a whole universe under there; and as cold as hell, you’re as helpless as if your head was cut off.” He could scarcely speak, he shook so violently. “There’s one thing about our family, you know,” he continued. “Once anything goes wrong, it can never be put right again—not with us. I’ve noticed it all my life—you can’t put a thing right, once it has gone wrong.”

They were walking across the high-road to the house.

“And do you know, when you are down there, it is so cold, actually, and so endless, so different really from what it is on top, so endless—you wonder how it is so many are alive, why we’re up here. Are you going? I shall see you again, shan’t I? Good-night, and thank you. Thank you very much.”

The two girls waited a while, to see if there were any hope. The moon shone clearly overhead, with almost impertinent brightness, the small dark boats clustered on the water, there were voices and subdued shouts. But it was all to no purpose. Gudrun went home when Birkin returned.

He was commissioned to open the sluice that let out the water from the lake, which was pierced at one end, near the high-road, thus serving as a reservoir to supply with water the distant miles, in case of necessity. “Come with me,” he said to Ursula, “and then I will walk home with you, when I’ve done this.”