‘You know all about it, don’t you?’ she said, with slow, cold, cunning mockery.
‘Enough,’ he replied, his face fixing fine and clear like steel. A horrible despair, and at the same time a sense of release, liberation, came over Hermione. She turned with a pleasant intimacy to Ursula.
‘You are sure you will come to Breadalby?’ she said, urging.
‘Yes, I should like to very much,’ replied Ursula.
Hermione looked down at her, gratified, reflecting, and strangely absent, as if possessed, as if not quite there.
‘I’m so glad,’ she said, pulling herself together. ‘Some time in about a fortnight. Yes? I will write to you here, at the school, shall I? Yes. And you’ll be sure to come? Yes. I shall be so glad. Good-bye! Good-bye!’
Hermione held out her hand and looked into the eyes of the other woman. She knew Ursula as an immediate rival, and the knowledge strangely exhilarated her. Also she was taking leave. It always gave her a sense of strength, advantage, to be departing and leaving the other behind. Moreover she was taking the man with her, if only in hate.
Birkin stood aside, fixed and unreal. But now, when it was his turn to bid good-bye, he began to speak again.
‘There’s the whole difference in the world,’ he said, ‘between the actual sensual being, and the vicious mental-deliberate profligacy our lot goes in for. In our night-time, there’s always the electricity switched on, we watch ourselves, we get it all in the head, really. You’ve got to lapse out before you can know what sensual reality is, lapse into unknowingness, and give up your volition. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to learn not-to-be, before you can come into being.
‘But we have got such a conceit of ourselves—that’s where it is. We are so conceited, and so unproud. We’ve got no pride, we’re all conceit, so conceited in our own papier-mache realised selves. We’d rather die than give up our little self-righteous self-opinionated self-will.’
There was silence in the room. Both women were hostile and resentful. He sounded as if he were addressing a meeting. Hermione merely paid no attention, stood with her shoulders tight in a shrug of dislike.
Ursula was watching him as if furtively, not really aware of what she was seeing. There was a great physical attractiveness in him—a curious hidden richness, that came through his thinness and his pallor like another voice, conveying another knowledge of him. It was in the curves of his brows and his chin, rich, fine, exquisite curves, the powerful beauty of life itself. She could not say what it was. But there was a sense of richness and of liberty.
‘But we are sensual enough, without making ourselves so, aren’t we?’ she asked, turning to him with a certain golden laughter flickering under her greenish eyes, like a challenge. And immediately the queer, careless, terribly attractive smile came over his eyes and brows, though his mouth did not relax.
‘No,’ he said, ‘we aren’t. We’re too full of ourselves.’
‘Surely it isn’t a matter of conceit,’ she cried.
‘That and nothing else.’
She was frankly puzzled.
‘Don’t you think that people are most conceited of all about their sensual powers?’ she asked.
‘That’s why they aren’t sensual—only sensuous—which is another matter. They’re ALWAYS aware of themselves—and they’re so conceited, that rather than release themselves, and live in another world, from another centre, they’d—’
‘You want your tea, don’t you,’ said Hermione, turning to Ursula with a gracious kindliness. ‘You’ve worked all day—’
Birkin stopped short. A spasm of anger and chagrin went over Ursula. His face set. And he bade good-bye, as if he had ceased to notice her.
They were gone. Ursula stood looking at the door for some moments. Then she put out the lights. And having done so, she sat down again in her chair, absorbed and lost. And then she began to cry, bitterly, bitterly weeping: but whether for misery or joy, she never knew.
CHAPTER IV.
DIVER
The week passed away. On the Saturday it rained, a soft drizzling rain that held off at times. In one of the intervals Gudrun and Ursula set out for a walk, going towards Willey Water. The atmosphere was grey and translucent, the birds sang sharply on the young twigs, the earth would be quickening and hastening in growth. The two girls walked swiftly, gladly, because of the soft, subtle rush of morning that filled the wet haze. By the road the black-thorn was in blossom, white and wet, its tiny amber grains burning faintly in the white smoke of blossom. Purple twigs were darkly luminous in the grey air, high hedges glowed like living shadows, hovering nearer, coming into creation. The morning was full of a new creation.
When the sisters came to Willey Water, the lake lay all grey and visionary, stretching into the moist, translucent vista of trees and meadow. Fine electric activity in sound came from the dumbles below the road, the birds piping one against the other, and water mysteriously plashing, issuing from the lake.
The two girls drifted swiftly along. In front of them, at the corner of the 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 a shadow on the still grey water, below the green, decayed poles. All was shadowy with coming summer.
Suddenly, from the boat-house, a white figure ran out, frightening in its swift sharp transit, across the old landing-stage. It launched in a white arc through the air, there was a bursting of the water, and among the smooth ripples a swimmer was making out to space, in a centre of faintly heaving motion. The whole otherworld, wet and remote, he had to himself. 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 sisters stood watching the swimmer move further
