Chapter XIV: Water-Party (2)

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 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 bluey-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 mines, in case of necessity. “Come with me,” he said to Ursula, “and then I will walk home with you, when I’ve done this.”

He called at the water-keeper’s cottage and took the key of the sluice. They went through a little gate from the high-road, to the head of the water, where was a great stone basin which received the overflow, and a flight of stone steps descended into the depths of the water itself. At the head of the steps was the lock of the sluice-gate.

The night was silver-grey and perfect, save for the scattered restless sound of voices. The grey sheen of the moonlight caught the stretch of water, dark boats plashed and moved. But Ursula’s mind ceased to be receptive, everything was unimportant and unreal.

Birkin fixed the iron handle of the sluice, and turned it with a wrench. The cogs began slowly to rise. He turned and turned, like a slave, his white figure became distinct. Ursula looked away. She could not bear to see him winding heavily and laboriously, bending and rising mechanically like a slave, turning the handle.

Then, a real shock to her, there came a loud splashing of water from out of the dark, tree-filled hollow beyond the road, a splashing that deepened rapidly to a harsh roar, and then became a heavy, booming noise of a great body of water falling solidly all the time. It occupied the whole of the night, this great steady booming of water, everything was drowned within it, drowned and lost. Ursula seemed to have to struggle for her life. She put her hands over her ears, and looked at the high bland moon.

“Can’t we go now?” she cried to Birkin, who was watching the water on the steps, to see if it would get any lower. It seemed to fascinate him. He looked at her and nodded.

The little dark boats had moved nearer, people were crowding curiously along the hedge by the high-road, to see what was to be seen. Birkin and Ursula went to the cottage with the key, then turned their backs on the lake. She was in great haste. She could not bear the terrible crushing boom of the escaping water.

“Do you think they are dead?” she cried in a high voice, to make herself heard.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Isn’t it horrible!”

He paid no heed. They walked up the hill, further and further away from the noise.

“Do you mind very much?” she asked him.

“I don’t mind about the dead,” he said, “once they are dead. The worst of it is, they cling on to the living, and won’t let go.”

She pondered for a time.

“Yes,” she said. “The _fact_ of death doesn’t really seem to matter much, does it?”

“No,” he said. “What does it matter if Diana Crich is alive or dead?”

“Doesn’t it?” she said, shocked.

“No, why should it? Better she were dead—she’ll be much more real. She’ll be positive in death. In life she was a fretting, negated thing.”

“You are rather horrible,” murmured Ursula.

“No! I’d rather Diana Crich were dead. Her living somehow, was all wrong. As for the young man, poor devil—he’ll find his way out quickly instead of slowly. Death is all right—nothing better.”

“Yet you don’t want to die,” she challenged him.

He was silent for a time. Then he said, in a voice that was frightening to her in its change:

“I should like to be through with it—I should like to be through with the death process.”

“And aren’t you?” asked Ursula nervously.

They walked on for some way in silence, under the trees. Then he said, slowly, as if afraid:

“There is life which belongs to death, and there is life which isn’t death. One is tired of the life that belongs to death—our kind of life. But whether it is finished, God knows. I want love that is like sleep, like being born again, vulnerable as a baby that just comes into the world.”

Ursula listened, half attentive, half avoiding what he said. She seemed to catch the drift of his statement, and then she drew away. She wanted to hear, but she did not want to be implicated. She was reluctant to yield there, where he wanted her, to yield as it were her very identity.

“Why should love be like sleep?” she asked sadly.

“I don’t know. So that it is like death—I _do_ want to die from this life—and yet it is more than life itself. One is delivered over like a naked infant from the womb, all the old defences and the old body gone, and new air around one, that has never been breathed before.”

She listened, making out what he said. She knew, as well as he knew, that words themselves do not convey meaning, that they are but a gesture we make, a dumb show like any other. And she seemed to feel his gesture through her blood, and she drew back, even though her desire sent her forward.

“But,” she said gravely, “didn’t you say you wanted something that was _not_ love—something beyond love?”

He turned in confusion. There was always confusion in speech. Yet it must be spoken. Whichever way one moved, if one were to move forwards, one must break a way through. And to know, to give utterance, was to break a way through the walls of the prison as the infant in labour strives through the walls of the womb. There is no new movement now, without the breaking through of the old body, deliberately, in knowledge, in the struggle to get out.

“I don’t want love,” he said. “I don’t want to know you. I want to be gone out of myself, and you to be lost to yourself, so we are found different. One shouldn’t talk when one is tired and wretched. One Hamletises, and it seems a lie. Only believe me when I show you a bit of healthy pride and insouciance. I hate myself serious.”

“Why shouldn’t you be serious?” she said.

He thought for a minute, then he said, sulkily:

“I don’t know.” Then they walked on in silence, at outs. He was vague and lost.

“Isn’t it strange,” she said, suddenly putting her hand on his arm, with a loving impulse, “how we always talk like this! I suppose we do love each other, in some way.”

“Oh yes,” he said; “too much.”

She laughed almost gaily.

“You’d have to have it your own way, wouldn’t you?” she teased. “You could never take it on trust.”

He changed, laughed softly, and turned and took her in his arms, in the middle of the road.

“Yes,” he said softly.

And he kissed her face and brow, slowly, gently, with a sort of delicate happiness which surprised her extremely, and to which she could not respond. They were soft, blind kisses, perfect in their stillness. Yet she held back from them. It was like strange moths, very soft and silent, settling on her from the darkness of her soul. She was uneasy. She drew away.

“Isn’t somebody coming?” she said.

So they looked down the dark road, then set off again walking towards Beldover. Then suddenly, to show him she was no shallow prude, she stopped and held him tight, hard against her, and covered his face with hard, fierce kisses of passion. In spite of his otherness, the old blood beat up in him.

“Not this, not this,” he whimpered to himself, as the first perfect mood of softness and sleep-loveliness ebbed back away from the rushing of passion that came up to his limbs and over his face as she drew him. And soon he was a perfect hard flame of passionate desire for her. Yet in the small core of the flame was an unyielding anguish of another thing. But this also was lost; he only wanted her, with an extreme desire that seemed inevitable as death, beyond question.

Then, satisfied and shattered, fulfilled and destroyed, he went home away from her, drifting vaguely through the darkness, lapsed into the old fire of burning passion. Far away, far away, there seemed to be a small lament in the darkness. But what did it matter? What did it matter, what did anything matter save this ultimate and triumphant experience of physical passion, that had blazed up anew like a new spell of life. “I was becoming quite dead-alive, nothing but a word-bag,” he said in triumph, scorning his other self. Yet somewhere far off and small, the other hovered.

The men were still dragging the lake when he got back. He stood on the bank and heard Gerald’s voice. The water was still booming in the night, the moon was fair, the hills beyond were elusive. The lake was sinking. There came the raw smell of the banks, in the night air.

Up at Shortlands there were lights in the windows, as if nobody had gone to bed. On the landing-stage was the old doctor, the father of the young man who was lost. He stood quite silent, waiting. Birkin also stood and watched, Gerald came up in a boat.

“You still here, Rupert?” he said. “We can’t get them. The bottom slopes, you know, very steep. The water lies between two very sharp slopes, with little branch valleys, and God knows where the drift will take you. It isn’t as if it was a level bottom. You never know where you are, with the dragging.”

“Is there any need for you to be working?” said Birkin. “Wouldn’t it be much better if you went to bed?”

“To bed! Good God, do you think I should sleep? We’ll find ’em, before I go away from here.”

“But the men would find them just the same without you—why should you insist?”

Gerald looked up at him. Then he put his hand affectionately on Birkin’s shoulder, saying:

“Don’t you bother about me, Rupert. If there’s anybody’s health to think about, it’s yours, not mine. How do you feel yourself?”

“Very well. But you, you spoil your own chance of life—you waste your best self.”

Gerald was silent for a moment. Then he said:

“Waste it? What else is there to do with it?”

“But leave this, won’t you? You force yourself into horrors, and put a mill-stone of beastly memories round your neck. Come away now.”

“A mill-stone of beastly memories!” Gerald repeated. Then he put his hand again affectionately on Birkin’s shoulder. “God, you’ve got such a telling way of putting things, Rupert, you have.”

Birkin’s heart sank. He was irritated and weary of having a telling way of putting things.

“Won’t you leave it? Come over to my place”—he urged as one urges a drunken man.

“No,” said Gerald coaxingly, his arm across the other man’s shoulder. “Thanks very much, Rupert—I shall be glad to come tomorrow, if that’ll do. You understand, don’t you? I want to see this job through. But I’ll come tomorrow, right enough. Oh, I’d rather come and have a chat with you than—than do anything else, I verily believe. Yes, I would. You mean a lot to me, Rupert, more than you know.”

“What do I mean, more than I know?” asked Birkin irritably. He was acutely aware of Gerald’s hand on his shoulder. And he did not want this altercation. He wanted the other man to come out of the ugly misery.

“I’ll tell you another time,” said Gerald coaxingly.

“Come along with me now—I want you to come,” said Birkin.

There was a pause, intense and real. Birkin wondered why his own heart beat so heavily. Then Gerald’s fingers gripped hard and communicative into Birkin’s shoulder, as he said:

“No, I’ll see this job through, Rupert. Thank you—I know what you mean. We’re all right, you know, you and me.”

“I may be all right, but I’m sure you’re not, mucking about here,” said Birkin. And he went away.

The bodies of the dead were not recovered till towards dawn. Diana had her arms tight round the neck of the young man, choking him.

“She killed him,” said Gerald.

The moon sloped down the sky and sank at last. The lake was sunk to quarter size, it had horrible raw banks of clay, that smelled of raw rottenish water. Dawn roused faintly behind the eastern hill. The water still boomed through the sluice.

As the birds were whistling for the first morning, and the hills at the back of the desolate lake stood radiant with the new mists, there was a straggling procession up to Shortlands, men bearing the bodies on a stretcher, Gerald going beside them, the two grey-bearded fathers following in silence. Indoors the family was all sitting up, waiting. Somebody must go to tell the mother, in her room. The doctor in secret struggled to bring back his son, till he himself was exhausted.

Over all the outlying district was a hush of dreadful excitement on that Sunday morning. The colliery people felt as if this catastrophe had happened directly to themselves, indeed they were more shocked and frightened than if their own men had been killed. Such a tragedy in Shortlands, the high home of the district! One of the young mistresses, persisting in dancing on the cabin roof of the launch, wilful young madam, drowned in the midst of the festival, with the young doctor! Everywhere on the Sunday morning, the colliers wandered about, discussing the calamity. At all the Sunday dinners of the people, there seemed a strange presence. It was as if the angel of death were very near, there was a sense of the supernatural in the air. The men had excited, startled faces, the women looked solemn, some of them had been crying. The children enjoyed the excitement at first. There was an intensity in the air, almost magical. Did all enjoy it? Did all enjoy the thrill?

Gudrun had wild ideas of rushing to comfort Gerald. She was thinking all the time of the perfect comforting, reassuring thing to say to him. She was shocked and frightened, but she put that away, thinking of how she should deport herself with Gerald: act her part. That was the real thrill: how she should act her part.

Ursula was deeply and passionately in love with Birkin, and she was capable of nothing. She was perfectly callous about all the talk of the accident, but her estranged air looked like trouble. She merely sat by herself, whenever she could, and longed to see him again. She wanted him to come to the house,—she would not have it otherwise, he must come at once. She was waiting for him. She stayed indoors all day, waiting for him to knock at the door. Every minute, she glanced automatically at the window. He would be there.