Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics S - D. H. Lawrence [87]
There was a beam of understanding between them.
“But it always means the same thing,” she said.
“Ah God, no, let it not mean that any more,” he cried. “Let the old meanings go.”
“But still it is love,” she persisted. A strange, wicked yellow light shone at him in her eyes.
He hesitated, baffled, withdrawing.
“No,” he said, “it isn’t. Spoken like that, never in the world. You’ve no business to utter the word.”
“I must leave it to you, to take it out of the Ark of the Covenantaw at the right moment,” she mocked.
Again they looked at each other. She suddenly sprang up, turned her back to him, and walked away. He too rose slowly and went to the water’s edge, where, crouching, he began to amuse himself unconsciously. Picking a daisy he dropped it on the pond, so that the stem was a keel, the flower floated like a little water lily, staring with its open face up to the sky. It turned slowly round, in a slow, slow Dervish dance, as it veered away.
He watched it, then dropped another daisy into the water, and after that another, and sat watching them with bright, absolved eyes, crouching near on the bank. Ursula turned to look. A strange feeling possessed her, as if something were taking place. But it was all intangible. And some sort of control was being put on her. She could not know. She could only watch the brilliant little discs of the daisies veering slowly in travel on the dark, lustrous water. The little flotilla was drifting into the light, a company of white specks in the distance.
“Do let us go to the shore, to follow them,” she said, afraid of being any longer imprisoned on the island. And they pushed off in the punt.
She was glad to be on the free land again. She went along the bank towards the sluice. The daisies were scattered broadcast on the pond, tiny radiant things, like an exaltation, points of exaltation here and there. Why did they move her so strongly and mystically?
“Look,” he said, “your boat of purple paper is escorting them, and they are a convoy of rafts.”
Some of the daisies came slowly towards her, hesitating, making a shy bright little cotillon on the dark clear water. Their gay bright candour moved her so much as they came near, that she was almost in tears.
“Why are they so lovely?” she cried. “Why do I think them so lovely?”
“They are nice flowers,” he said, her emotional tones putting a constraint on him.
“You know that a daisy is a company of florets, a concourse, become individual. Don’t the botanists put it highest in the line of development? I believe they do.”
“The compositæ, yes, I think so,” said Ursula, who was never very sure of anything. Things she knew perfectly well, at one moment, seemed to become doubtful the next.
“Explain it so, then,” he said. “The daisy is a perfect little democracy, so it’s the highest of flowers, hence its charm.”
“No,” she cried, “no—never. It isn’t democratic.”
“No,” he admitted. “It’s the golden mob of the proletariat, surrounded by a showy white fence of the idle rich.”
“How hateful—your hateful social orders!” she cried.
“Quite! It’s a daisy—we’ll leave it alone.”
“Do. Let it be a dark horse for once,” she said: “if anything can be a dark horse to you,” she added satirically.
They stood aside, forgetful. As if a little stunned, they both were motionless, barely conscious. The little conflict into which they had fallen had torn their consciousness and left them like two impersonal forces, there in contact.
He became aware of the lapse. He wanted to say something, to get on to a new more ordinary footing.
“You know,” he said, “that I am having rooms here at the mill? Don’t you think we can have some good times?”
“Oh are you?” she said, ignoring all his implication of admitted intimacy.
He adjusted himself at once, became normally distant.
“If I find I can live sufficiently by myself,” he continued, “I shall give up my work altogether. It has become dead to me. I don’t believe in the humanity I pretend to be