Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence, page 188
Birkin looked away, and went to light Ursula’s second lantern. It had a pale ruddy sea-bottom, with black crabs and sea-weed moving sinuously under a transparent sea, that passed into flamy ruddiness above.
‘You’ve got the heavens above, and the waters under the earth,’ said Birkin to her.
‘Anything but the earth itself,’ she laughed, watching his live hands that hovered to attend to the light.
‘I’m dying to see what my second one is,’ cried Gudrun, in a vibrating rather strident voice, that seemed to repel the others from her.
Birkin went and kindled it. It was of a lovely deep blue colour, with a red floor, and a great white cuttle-fish flowing in white soft streams all over it. The cuttle-fish had a face that stared straight from the heart of the light, very fixed and coldly intent.
‘How truly terrifying!’ exclaimed Gudrun, in a voice of horror. Gerald, at her side, gave a low laugh.
‘But isn’t it really fearful!’ she cried in dismay.
Again he laughed, and said:
‘Change it with Ursula, for the crabs.’
Gudrun was silent for a moment.
‘Ursula,’ she said, ‘could you bear to have this fearful thing?’
‘I think the colouring is LOVELY,’ said Ursula.
‘So do I,’ said Gudrun. ‘But could you BEAR to have it swinging to your boat? Don’t you want to destroy it at ONCE?’
‘Oh no,’ said Ursula. ‘I don’t want to destroy it.’
‘Well do you mind having it instead of the crabs? Are you sure you don’t mind?’
Gudrun came forward to exchange lanterns.
‘No,’ said Ursula, yielding up the crabs and receiving the cuttle-fish.
Yet she could not help feeling rather resentful at the way in which Gudrun and Gerald should assume a right over her, a precedence.
‘Come then,’ said Birkin. ‘I’ll put them on the boats.’
He and Ursula were moving away to the big boat.
‘I suppose you’ll row me back, Rupert,’ said Gerald, out of the pale shadow of the evening.
‘Won’t you go with Gudrun in the canoe?’ said Birkin. ‘It’ll be more interesting.’
There was a moment’s pause. Birkin and Ursula stood dimly, with their swinging lanterns, by the water’s edge. The world was all illusive.
‘Is that all right?’ said Gudrun to him.
‘It’ll suit ME very well,’ he said. ‘But what about you, and the rowing? I don’t see why you should pull me.’
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I can pull you as well as I could pull Ursula.’
By her tone he could tell she wanted to have him in the boat to herself, and that she was subtly gratified that she should have power over them both. He gave himself, in a strange, electric submission.
She handed him the lanterns, whilst she went to fix the cane at the end of the canoe. He followed after her, and stood with the lanterns dangling against his white-flannelled thighs, emphasising the shadow around.
‘Kiss me before we go,’ came his voice softly from out of the shadow above.
She stopped her work in real, momentary astonishment.
‘But why?’ she exclaimed, in pure surprise.
‘Why?’ he echoed, ironically.
And she looked at him fixedly for some moments. Then she leaned forward and kissed him, with a slow, luxurious kiss, lingering on the mouth. And then she took the lanterns from him, while he stood swooning with the perfect fire that burned in all his joints.
They lifted the canoe into the water, Gudrun took her place, and Gerald pushed off.
‘Are you sure you don’t hurt your hand, doing that?’ she asked, solicitous. ‘Because I could have done it PERFECTLY.’
‘I don’t hurt myself,’ he said in a low, soft voice, that caressed her with inexpressible beauty.
And she watched him as he sat near her, very near to her, in the stern of the canoe, his legs coming towards hers, his feet touching hers. And she paddled softly, lingeringly, longing for him to say something meaningful to her. But he remained silent.
‘You like this, do you?’ she said, in a gentle, solicitous voice.
He laughed shortly.
‘There is a space between us,’ he said, in the same low, unconscious voice, as if something were speaking out of him. And she was as if magically aware of their being balanced in separation, in the boat. She swooned with acute comprehension and pleasure.
‘But I’m very near,’ she said caressively, gaily.
‘Yet distant, distant,’ he said.
Again she was silent with pleasure, before she answered, speaking with a reedy, thrilled voice:
‘Yet we cannot very well change, whilst we are on the water.’ She caressed him subtly and strangely, having him completely at her mercy.
A dozen or more boats on the lake swung their rosy and moon-like lanterns low on the water, that reflected as from a fire. In the distance, the steamer twanged and thrummed and washed with her faintly-splashing paddles, trailing her strings of coloured lights, and occasionally lighting up the whole scene luridly with an effusion of fireworks, Roman candles and sheafs of stars and other simple effects, illuminating the surface of the water, and showing the boats creeping round, low down. Then the lovely darkness fell again, the lanterns and the little threaded lights glimmered softly, there was a muffled knocking of oars and a waving of music.
Gudrun paddled almost imperceptibly. Gerald could see, not far ahead, the rich blue and the rose globes of Ursula’s lanterns swaying softly cheek to cheek as Birkin rowed, and iridescent, evanescent gleams chasing in the wake. He was aware, too, of his own delicately coloured lights casting their softness behind him.
Gudrun rested her paddle and looked round. The canoe lifted with the lightest ebbing of the water. Gerald’s white knees were very near to her.
‘Isn’t it beautiful!’ she said softly, as if reverently.
She looked at him, as he leaned back against the faint crystal of the lantern-light. She could see his face, although it was a pure shadow. But it was a piece of twilight. And her breast was keen with passion for him, he was so beautiful in his male stillness and mystery. It was a certain pure effluence of maleness, like an aroma from his softly, firmly moulded contours, a certain rich perfection of his presence, that touched her with an ecstasy, a thrill of pure intoxication. She loved to look at him. For the present she did not want to touch him, to know the further, satisfying substance of his living body. He was purely intangible, yet so near. Her hands lay on the paddle like slumber, she only wanted to see him, like a crystal shadow, to feel his essential presence.
‘Yes,’ he said vaguely. ‘It is very beautiful.’
He was listening to the faint near sounds, the dropping of water-drops from the oar-blades, the slight drumming of the lanterns behind him, as they rubbed against one another, the occasional rustling of Gudrun’s full skirt, an alien land noise. His mind was almost submerged, he was almost transfused, lapsed out for the first time in his life, into the things about him. For he always kept such a keen attentiveness, concentrated and unyielding in himself. Now he had let go, imperceptibly he was melting into oneness with the whole. It was like pure, perfect sleep, his first great sleep of life. He had been so insistent, so guarded, all his life. But here was sleep, and peace, and perfect lapsing out.
‘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 knew 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 be climbed over the side of the boat, made her want to die, to die. The beauty of his dim and luminous loins as be 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 blueygrey, 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.
