Gudrun could hear the cattle breathing heavily with helpless fear and
fascination. Oh, they were brave little beasts, these wild Scotch
bullocks, wild and fleecy. Suddenly one of them snorted, ducked its
head, and backed.
'Hue! Hi-eee!' came a sudden loud shout from the edge of the grove. The
cattle broke and fell back quite spontaneously, went running up the
hill, their fleece waving like fire to their motion. Gudrun stood
suspended out on the grass, Ursula rose to her feet.
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.