Women in Love. D. H. Lawrence

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СКАЧАТЬ out, the same figures, the Queen of chess, the knights, the pawns, the same now as they were hundreds of years ago, the same figures moving round in one of the innumerable permutations that make up the game. But the game is known, its going on is like a madness, it is so exhausted.

      There was Gerald, an amused look on his face; the game pleased him. There was Gudrun, watching with steady, large, hostile eyes; the game fascinated her, and she loathed it. There was Ursula, with a slightly startled look on her face, as if she were hurt, and the pain were just outside her consciousness.

      Suddenly Birkin got up and went out.

      “That’s enough,” he said to himself involuntarily.

      Hermione knew his motion, though not in her consciousness. She lifted her heavy eyes and saw him lapse suddenly away, on a sudden, unknown tide, and the waves broke over her. Only her indomitable will remained static and mechanical, she sat at the table making her musing, stray remarks. But the darkness had covered her, she was like a ship that has gone down. It was finished for her too, she was wrecked in the darkness. Yet the unfailing mechanism of her will worked on, she had that activity.

      “Shall we bathe this morning?” she said, suddenly looking at them all.

      “Splendid,” said Joshua. “It is a perfect morning.”

      “Oh, it is beautiful,” said Fräulein.

      “Yes, let us bathe,” said the Italian woman.

      “We have no bathing suits,” said Gerald.

      “Have mine,” said Alexander. “I must go to church and read the lessons. They expect me.”

      “Are you a Christian?” asked the Italian Countess, with sudden interest.

      “No,” said Alexander. “I’m not. But I believe in keeping up the old institutions.”

      “They are so beautiful,” said Fräulein daintily.

      “Oh, they are,” cried Miss Bradley.

      They all trailed out on to the lawn. It was a sunny, soft morning in early summer, when life ran in the world subtly, like a reminiscence. The church bells were ringing a little way off, not a cloud was in the sky, the swans were like lilies on the water below, the peacocks walked with long, prancing steps across the shadow and into the sunshine of the grass. One wanted to swoon into the by-gone perfection of it all.

      “Good-bye,” called Alexander, waving his gloves cheerily, and he disappeared behind the bushes, on his way to church.

      “Now,” said Hermione, “shall we all bathe?”

      “I won’t,” said Ursula.

      “You don’t want to?” said Hermione, looking at her slowly.

      “No. I don’t want to,” said Ursula.

      “Nor I,” said Gudrun.

      “What about my suit?” asked Gerald.

      “I don’t know,” laughed Hermione, with an odd, amused intonation. “Will a handkerchief do—a large handkerchief?”

      “That will do,” said Gerald.

      “Come along then,” sang Hermione.

      The first to run across the lawn was the little Italian, small and like a cat, her white legs twinkling as she went, ducking slightly her head, that was tied in a gold silk kerchief. She tripped through the gate and down the grass, and stood, like a tiny figure of ivory and bronze, at the water’s edge, having dropped off her towelling, watching the swans, which came up in surprise. Then out ran Miss Bradley, like a large, soft plum in her dark-blue suit. Then Gerald came, a scarlet silk kerchief round his loins, his towels over his arms. He seemed to flaunt himself a little in the sun, lingering and laughing, strolling easily, looking white but natural in his nakedness. Then came Sir Joshua, in an overcoat, and lastly Hermione, striding with stiff grace from out of a great mantle of purple silk, her head tied up in purple and gold. Handsome was her stiff, long body, her straight-stepping white legs, there was a static magnificence about her as she let the cloak float loosely away from her striding. She crossed the lawn like some strange memory, and passed slowly and statelily towards the water.

      There were three ponds, in terraces descending the valley, large and smooth and beautiful, lying in the sun. The water ran over a little stone wall, over small rocks, splashing down from one pond to the level below. The swans had gone out on to the opposite bank, the reeds smelled sweet, a faint breeze touched the skin.

      Gerald had dived in, after Sir Joshua, and had swum to the end of the pond. There he climbed out and sat on the wall. There was a dive, and the little Countess was swimming like a rat, to join him. They both sat in the sun, laughing and crossing their arms on their breasts. Sir Joshua swam up to them, and stood near them, up to his arm-pits in the water. Then Hermione and Miss Bradley swam over, and they sat in a row on the embankment.

      “Aren’t they terrifying? Aren’t they really terrifying?” said Gudrun. “Don’t they look saurian? They are just like great lizards. Did you ever see anything like Sir Joshua? But really, Ursula, he belongs to the primeval world, when great lizards crawled about.”

      Gudrun looked in dismay on Sir Joshua, who stood up to the breast in the water, his long, greyish hair washed down into his eyes, his neck set into thick, crude shoulders. He was talking to Miss Bradley, who, seated on the bank above, plump and big and wet, looked as if she might roll and slither in the water almost like one of the slithering sealions in the Zoo.

      Ursula watched in silence. Gerald was laughing happily, between Hermione and the Italian. He reminded her of Dionysos, because his hair was really yellow, his figure so full and laughing. Hermione, in her large, stiff, sinister grace, leaned near him, frightening, as if she were not responsible for what she might do. He knew a certain danger in her, a convulsive madness. But he only laughed the more, turning often to the little Countess, who was flashing up her face at him.

      They all dropped into the water, and were swimming together like a shoal of seals. Hermione was powerful and unconscious in the water, large and slow and powerful. Palestra was quick and silent as a water rat, Gerald wavered and flickered, a white natural shadow. Then, one after the other, they waded out, and went up to the house.

      But Gerald lingered a moment to speak to Gudrun.

      “You don’t like the water?” he said.

      She looked at him with a long, slow inscrutable look, as he stood before her negligently, the water standing in beads all over his skin.

      “I like it very much,” she replied.

      He paused, expecting some sort of explanation.

      “And you swim?”

      “Yes, I swim.”

      Still he would not ask her why she would not go in then. He could feel something ironic in her. He walked away, piqued for the first time.

      “Why wouldn’t you bathe?” he asked her again, later, when he was once more the properly-dressed young Englishman.

      She hesitated a moment before answering, opposing his persistence.

      “Because СКАЧАТЬ