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 I didn’t like the crowd,” she replied.
He laughed, her phrase seemed to re-echo in his consciousness. The flavour of her slang was piquant to him. Whether he would or not, she signified the real world to him. He wanted to come up to her standards, fulfil her expectations. He knew that her criterion was the only one that mattered. The others were all outsiders, instinctively, whatever they might be socially. And Gerald could not help it, he was bound to strive to come up to her criterion, fulfil her idea of a man and a human-being.
After lunch, when all the others had withdrawn, Hermione and Gerald and Birkin lingered, finishing their talk. There had been some discussion, on the whole quite intellectual and artificial, about a new state, a new world of man. Supposing this old social state were broken and destroyed, then, out of the chaos, what then?
The great social idea, said Sir Joshua, was the social equality of man. No, said Gerald, the idea was, that every man was fit for his own little bit of a task—let him do that, and then please himself. The unifying principle was the work in hand. Only work, the business of production, held men together. It was mechanical, but then society was a mechanism. Apart from work they were isolated, free to do as they liked.
“Oh!” cried Gudrun. “Then we shan’t have names any more—we shall be like the Germans, nothing but Herr Obermeister and Herr Untermeister. I can imagine it—‘I am Mrs Colliery-Manager Crich—I am Mrs Member-of-Parliament Roddice. I am Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen.’ Very pretty that.”
“Things would work very much better, Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen,” said Gerald.
“What things, Mr Colliery-Manager Crich? The relation between you and me, par exemple?”
“Yes, for example,” cried the Italian. “That which is between men and women—!”
“That is non-social,” said Birkin, sarcastically.
“Exactly,”