CHAPTER IV.
DIVER
The week passed away. On the Saturday it rained, a soft drizzling rainthat held off at times. In one of the intervals Gudrun and Ursula setout for a walk, going towards Willey Water. The atmosphere was grey andtranslucent, the birds sang sharply on the young twigs, the earth wouldbe quickening and hastening in growth. The two girls walked swiftly,gladly, because of the soft, subtle rush of morning that filled the wethaze. By the road the black-thorn was in blossom, white and wet, itstiny amber grains burning faintly in the white smoke of blossom. Purpletwigs were darkly luminous in the grey air, high hedges glowed likeliving shadows, hovering nearer, coming into creation. The morning wasfull of a new creation.
When the sisters came to Willey Water, the lake lay all grey andvisionary, stretching into the moist, translucent vista of trees andmeadow. Fine electric activity in sound came from the dumbles below theroad, the birds piping one against the other, and water mysteriouslyplashing, issuing from the lake.
The two girls drifted swiftly along. In front of them, at the corner ofthe lake, near the road, was a mossy boat-house under a walnut tree,and a little landing-stage where a boat was moored, wavering like ashadow on the still grey water, below the green, decayed poles. All wasshadowy with coming summer.
Suddenly, from the boat-house, a white figure ran out, frightening inits swift sharp transit, across the old landing-stage. It launched in awhite arc through the air, there was a bursting of the water, and amongthe smooth ripples a swimmer was making out to space, in a centre offaintly heaving motion. The whole otherworld, wet and remote, he had tohimself. He could move into the pure translucency of the grey,uncreated water.
Gudrun stood by the stone wall, watching.
'How I envy him,' she said, in low, desirous tones.
'Ugh!' shivered Ursula. 'So cold!'
'Yes, but how good, how really fine, to swim out there!' The sistersstood watching the swimmer move further into the grey, moist, fullspace of the water, pulsing with his own small, invading motion, andarched over with mist and dim woods.
'Don't you wish it were you?' asked Gudrun, looking at Ursula.
'I do,' said Ursula. 'But I'm not sure--it's so wet.'
'No,' said Gudrun, reluctantly. She stood watching the motion on thebosom of the water, as if fascinated. He, having swum a certaindistance, turned round and was swimming on his back, looking along thewater at the two girls by the wall. In the faint wash of motion, theycould see his ruddy face, and could feel him watching them.
'It is Gerald Crich,' said Ursula.
'I know,' replied Gudrun.
And she stood motionless gazing over the water at the face which washedup and down on the flood, as he swam steadily. From his separateelement he saw them and he exulted to himself because of his ownadvantage, his possession of a world to himself. He was immune andperfect. He loved his own vigorous, thrusting motion, and the violentimpulse of the very cold water against his limbs, buoying him up. Hecould see the girls watching him a way off, outside, and that pleasedhim. He lifted his arm from the water, in a sign to them.
'He is waving,' said Ursula.
'Yes,' replied Gudrun. They watched him. He waved again, with a strangemovement of recognition across the difference.
'Like a Nibelung,' laughed Ursula. Gudrun said nothing, only stoodstill looking over the water.
Gerald suddenly turned, and was swimming away swiftly, with a sidestroke. He was alone now, alone and immune in the middle of the waters,which he had all to himself. He exulted in his isolation in the newelement, unquestioned and unconditioned. He was happy, thrusting withhis legs and all his body, without bond or connection anywhere, justhimself in the watery world.
Gudrun envied him almost painfully. Even this momentary possession ofpure isolation and fluidity seemed to her so terribly desirable thatshe felt herself as if damned, out there on the high-road.
'God, what it is to be a man!' she cried.
'What?' exclaimed Ursula in surprise.
'The freedom, the liberty, the mobility!' cried Gudrun, strangelyflushed and brilliant. 'You're a man, you want to do a thing, you doit. You haven't the THOUSAND obstacles a woman has in front of her.'
Ursula wondered what was in Gudrun's mind, to occasion this outburst.She could not understand.
'What do you want to do?' she asked.
'Nothing,' cried Gudrun, in swift refutation. 'But supposing I did.Supposing I want to swim up that water. It is impossible, it is one ofthe impossibilities of life, for me to take my clothes off now and jumpin. But isn't it RIDICULOUS, doesn't it simply prevent our living!'
She was so hot, so flushed, so furious, that Ursula was puzzled.
The two sisters went on, up the road. They were passing between thetrees just below Shortlands. They looked up at the long, low house, dimand glamorous in the wet morning, its cedar trees slanting before thewindows. Gudrun seemed to be studying it closely.
'Don't you think it's attractive, Ursula?' asked Gudrun.
'Very,' said Ursula. 'Very peaceful and charming.'
'It has form, too--it has a period.'
'What period?'
'Oh, eighteenth century, for certain; Dorothy Wordsworth and JaneAusten, don't you think?'
Ursula laughed.
'Don't you think so?' repeated Gudrun.
'Perhaps. But I don't think the Criches fit the period. I know Geraldis putting in a private electric plant, for lighting the house, and ismaking all kinds of latest improvements.'
Gudrun shrugged her shoulders swiftly.
'Of course,' she said, 'that's quite inevitable.'
'Quite,' laughed Ursula. 'He is several generations of youngness at onego. They hate him for it. He takes them all by the scruff of the neck,and fairly flings them along. He'll have to die soon, when he's madeevery possible improvement, and there will be nothing more to improve.He's got GO, anyhow.'
'Certainly, he's got go,' said Gudrun. 'In fact I've never seen a manthat showed signs of so much. The unfortunate thing is, where does hisGO go to, what becomes of it?'
'Oh I know,' said Ursula. 'It goes in applying the latest appliances!'
'Exactly,' said Gudrun.
'You know he shot his brother?' said Ursula.
'Shot his brother?' cried Gudrun, frowning as if in disapprobation.
'Didn't you know? Oh yes!--I thought you knew. He and his brother wereplaying together with a gun. He told his brother to look down the gun,and it was loaded, and blew the top of his head off. Isn't it ahorrible story?'
'How fearful!' cried Gudrun. 'But it is long ago?'
'Oh yes, they were quite boys,' said Ursula. 'I think it is one of themost horrible stories I know.'
'And he of course did not know that the gun was loaded?'
'Yes. You see it was an old thing that had been lying in the stable foryears. Nobody dreamed it would ever go off, and of course, no oneimagined it was loaded. But isn't it dreadful, that it should happen?'
'Frightful!' cried Gudrun. 'And isn't it horrible too to think of sucha thing happening to one, when one was a child, and having to carry theresponsibility of it all through one's life. Imagine it, two boysplaying together--then this comes upon them, for no reasonwhatever--out of the air. Ursula, it's very frightening! Oh, it's oneof the things I can't bear. Murder, that is thinkable, because there'sa will behind it. But a thing like that to HAPPEN to one--'
'Perhaps there WAS an unconscious will behind it,' said Ursula. 'Thisplaying at killing has some primitive DESIRE for killing in it, don'tyou think?'
'Desire!' said Gudrun, coldly, stiffening a little. 'I can't see thatthey were even playing at killing. I suppose one boy said to the other,”You look down the barrel while I pull the trigger, and see whathappens.” It seems to me the purest form of accident.'
'No,' said Ursula. 'I couldn't pull the trigger of the emptiest gun inthe world, not if some-one were looking down the barrel. Oneinstinctively doesn't do it--one can't.'
Gudrun was silent for some moments, in sharp disagreement.
'Of course,' she said coldly. 'If one is a woman, and grown up, one'sinstinct prevents one. But I cannot see how that applies to a couple ofboys playing together.'
Her voice was cold and angry.
'Yes,' persisted Ursula. At that moment they heard a woman's voice afew yards off say loudly:
'Oh damn the thing!' They went forward and saw Laura Crich and HermioneRoddice in the field on the other side of the hedge, and Laura Crichstruggling with the gate, to get out. Ursula at once hurried up andhelped to lift the gate.
'Thanks so much,' said Laura, looking up flushed and amazon-like, yetrather confused. 'It isn't right on the hinges.'
'No,' said Ursula. 'And they're so heavy.'
'Surprising!' cried Laura.
'How do you do,' sang Hermione, from out of the field, the moment shecould make her voice heard. 'It's nice now. Are you going for a walk?Yes. Isn't the young green beautiful? So beautiful--quite burning. Goodmorning--good morning--you'll come and see me?--thank you so much--nextweek--yes--good-bye, g-o-o-d b-y-e.'
Gudrun and Ursula stood and watched her slowly waving her head up anddown, and waving her hand slowly in dismissal, smiling a strangeaffected smile, making a tall queer, frightening figure, with her heavyfair hair slipping to her eyes. Then they moved off, as if they hadbeen dismissed like inferiors. The four women parted.
As soon as they had gone far enough, Ursula said, her cheeks burning,
'I do think she's impudent.'
'Who, Hermione Roddice?' asked Gudrun. 'Why?'
'The way she treats one--impudence!'
'Why, Ursula, what did you notice that was so impudent?' asked Gudrunrather coldly.
'Her whole manner. Oh, It's impossible, the way she tries to bully one.Pure bullying. She's an impudent woman. ”You'll come and see me,” as ifwe should be falling over ourselves for the privilege.'
'I can't understand, Ursula, what you are so much put out about,' saidGudrun, in some exasperation. 'One knows those women areimpudent--these free women who have emancipated themselves from thearistocracy.'
'But it is so UNNECESSARY--so vulgar,' cried Ursula.
'No, I don't see it. And if I did--pour moi, elle n'existe pas. I don'tgrant her the power to be impudent to me.'
'Do you think she likes you?' asked Ursula.
'Well, no, I shouldn't think she did.'
'Then why does she ask you to go to Breadalby and stay with her?'
Gudrun lifted her shoulders in a low shrug.
'After all, she's got the sense to know we're not just the ordinaryrun,' said Gudrun. 'Whatever she is, she's not a fool. And I'd ratherhave somebody I detested, than the ordinary woman who keeps to her ownset. Hermione Roddice does risk herself in some respects.'
Ursula pondered this for a time.
'I doubt it,' she replied. 'Really she risks nothing. I suppose weought to admire her for knowing she CAN invite us--school teachers--andrisk nothing.'
'Precisely!' said Gudrun. 'Think of the myriads of women that daren'tdo it. She makes the most of her privileges--that's something. Isuppose, really, we should do the same, in her place.'
'No,' said Ursula. 'No. It would bore me. I couldn't spend my timeplaying her games. It's infra dig.'
The two sisters were like a pair of scissors, snipping off everythingthat came athwart them; or like a knife and a whetstone, the onesharpened against the other.
'Of course,' cried Ursula suddenly, 'she ought to thank her stars if wewill go and see her. You are perfectly beautiful, a thousand times morebeautiful than ever she is or was, and to my thinking, a thousand timesmore beautifully dressed, for she never looks fresh and natural, like aflower, always old, thought-out; and we ARE more intelligent than mostpeople.'
'Undoubtedly!' said Gudrun.
'And it ought to be admitted, simply,' said Ursula.
'Certainly it ought,' said Gudrun. 'But you'll find that the reallychic thing is to be so absolutely ordinary, so perfectly commonplaceand like the person in the street, that you really are a masterpiece ofhumanity, not the person in the street actually, but the artisticcreation of her--'
'How awful!' cried Ursula.
'Yes, Ursula, it IS awful, in most respects. You daren't be anythingthat isn't amazingly A TERRE, SO much A TERRE that it is the artisticcreation of ordinariness.'
'It's very dull to create oneself into nothing better,' laughed Ursula.
'Very dull!' retorted Gudrun. 'Really Ursula, it is dull, that's justthe word. One longs to be high-flown, and make speeches like Corneille,after it.'
Gudrun was becoming flushed and excited over her own cleverness.
'Strut,' said Ursula. 'One wants to strut, to be a swan among geese.'
'Exactly,' cried Gudrun, 'a swan among geese.'
'They are all so busy playing the ugly duckling,' cried Ursula, withmocking laughter. 'And I don't feel a bit like a humble and patheticugly duckling. I do feel like a swan among geese--I can't help it. Theymake one feel so. And I don't care what THEY think of me. FE M'ENFICHE.'
Gudrun looked up at Ursula with a queer, uncertain envy and dislike.
'Of course, the only thing to do is to despise them all--just all,' shesaid.
The sisters went home again, to read and talk and work, and wait forMonday, for school. Ursula often wondered what else she waited for,besides the beginning and end of the school week, and the beginning andend of the holidays. This was a whole life! Sometimes she had periodsof tight horror, when it seemed to her that her life would pass away,and be gone, without having been more than this. But she never reallyaccepted it. Her spirit was active, her life like a shoot that isgrowing steadily, but which has not yet come above ground.