It was Gerald and Birkin come to find them, and Gerald had cried out to frighten off the cattle.
`What do you think you're doing?' he now called, in a high, wondering vexed tone.
`Why have you come?' came back Gudrun's strident cry of anger.
`What do you think you were doing?' Gerald repeated, auto-matically.
`We were doing eurythmics,' laughed Ursula, in a shaken voice.
Gudrun stood aloof looking at them with large dark eyes of resentment, suspended for a few moments.Then she walked away up the hill, after the cattle, which had gathered in a little, spell-bound cluster higher up.
`Where are you going?' Gerald called after her.And he followed her up the hill-side.The sun had gone behind the hill, and shadows were clinging to the earth, the sky above was full of travelling light.
`A poor song for a dance,' said Birkin to Ursula, standing before her with a sardonic, flickering laugh on his face.And in another second, he was singing softly to himself, and dancing a grotesque step-dance in front of her, his limbs and body shaking loose, his face flickering palely, a constant thing, whilst his feet beat a rapid mocking tattoo, and his body seemed to hang all loose and quaking in between, like a shadow.
`I think we've all gone mad,' she said, laughing rather frightened.
`Pity we aren't madder,' he answered, as he kept up the incessant shaking dance.Then suddenly he leaned up to her and kissed her fingers lightly, putting his face to hers and looking into her eyes with a pale grin.She stepped back, affronted.
`Offended --?' he asked ironically, suddenly going quite still and reserved again.`I thought you liked the light fantastic.'
`Not like that,' she said, confused and bewildered, almost affronted.
Yet somewhere inside her she was fascinated by the sight of his loose, vibrating body, perfectly abandoned to its own dropping and swinging, and by the pallid, sardonic-smiling face above.Yet automatically she stiffened herself away, and disapproved.It seemed almost an obscenity, in a man who talked as a rule so very seriously.
`Why not like that?' he mocked.And immediately he dropped again into the incredibly rapid, slack-waggling dance, watching her malevolently.
And moving in the rapid, stationary dance, he came a little nearer, and reached forward with an incredibly mocking, satiric gleam on his face, and would have kissed her again, had she not started back.
`No, don't!' she cried, really afraid.
`Cordelia after all,' he said satirically.She was stung, as if this were an insult.She knew he intended it as such, and it bewildered her.
`And you,' she cried in retort, `why do you always take your soul in your mouth, so frightfully full?'
`So that I can spit it out the more readily,' he said, pleased by his own retort.
Gerald Crich, his face narrowing to an intent gleam, followed up the hill with quick strides, straight after Gudrun.The cattle stood with their noses together on the brow of a slope, watching the scene below, the men in white hovering about the white forms of the women, watching above all Gudrun, who was advancing slowly towards them.She stood a moment, glancing back at Gerald, and then at the cattle.
Then in a sudden motion, she lifted her arms and rushed sheer upon the long-horned bullocks, in shuddering irregular runs, pausing for a second and looking at them, then lifting her hands and running forward with a flash, till they ceased pawing the ground, and gave way, snorting with terror, lifting their heads from the ground and flinging themselves away, galloping off into the evening, becoming tiny in the distance, and still not stopping.
Gudrun remained staring after them, with a mask-like defiant face.
`Why do you want to drive them mad?' asked Gerald, coming up with her.
She took no notice of him, only averted her face from him.`It's not safe, you know,' he persisted.`They're nasty, when they do turn.'
`Turn where? Turn away?' she mocked loudly.
`No,' he said, `turn against you.'
`Turn against me? ' she mocked.
He could make nothing of this.
`Anyway, they gored one of the farmer's cows to death, the other day,'
he said.
`What do I care?' she said.
` I cared though,' he replied, `seeing that they're my cattle.'
`How are they yours! You haven't swallowed them.Give me one of them now,' she said, holding out her hand.
`You know where they are,' he said, pointing over the hill.`You can have one if you'd like it sent to you later on.'
She looked at him inscrutably.
`You think I'm afraid of you and your cattle, don't you?' she asked.
His eyes narrowed dangerously.There was a faint domineering smile on his face.
`Why should I think that?' he said.
She was watching him all the time with her dark, dilated, inchoate eyes.
She leaned forward and swung round her arm, catching him a light blow on the face with the back of her hand.
`That's why,' she said, mocking.
And she felt in her soul an unconquerable desire for deep violence against him.She shut off the fear and dismay that filled her conscious mind.She wanted to do as she did, she was not going to be afraid.
He recoiled from the slight blow on his face.He became deadly pale, and a dangerous flame darkened his eyes.For some seconds he could not speak, his lungs were so suffused with blood, his heart stretched almost to bursting with a great gush of ungovernable emotion.It was as if some reservoir of black emotion had burst within him, and swamped him.
`You have struck the first blow,' he said at last, forcing the words from his lungs, in a voice so soft and low, it sounded like a dream within her, not spoken in the outer air.
`And I shall strike the last,' she retorted involuntarily, with confident assurance.He was silent, he did not contradict her.
She stood negligently, staring away from him, into the distance.On the edge of her consciousness the question was asking itself, automatically:
`Why are you behaving in this impossible and ridiculous fashion.' But she was sullen, she half shoved the question out of herself.