Women in Love | Page 5

is this?' And then, a moment after, she was
saying assuredly, 'I shall know more of that man.' She was tortured
with desire to see him again, a nostalgia, a necessity to see him again,
to make sure it was not all a mistake, that she was not deluding herself,
that she really felt this strange and overwhelming sensation on his
account, this knowledge of him in her essence, this powerful
apprehension of him. 'Am I REALLY singled out for him in some way,
is there really some pale gold, arctic light that envelopes only us two?'
she asked herself. And she could not believe it, she remained in a muse,
scarcely conscious of what was going on around.
The bridesmaids were here, and yet the bridegroom had not come.
Ursula wondered if something was amiss, and if the wedding would yet
all go wrong. She felt troubled, as if it rested upon her. The chief
bridesmaids had arrived. Ursula watched them come up the steps. One
of them she knew, a tall, slow, reluctant woman with a weight of fair
hair and a pale, long face. This was Hermione Roddice, a friend of the
Criches. Now she came along, with her head held up, balancing an
enormous flat hat of pale yellow velvet, on which were streaks of
ostrich feathers, natural and grey. She drifted forward as if scarcely
conscious, her long blanched face lifted up, not to see the world. She
was rich. She wore a dress of silky, frail velvet, of pale yellow colour,
and she carried a lot of small rose-coloured cyclamens. Her shoes and
stockings were of brownish grey, like the feathers on her hat, her hair
was heavy, she drifted along with a peculiar fixity of the hips, a strange
unwilling motion. She was impressive, in her lovely pale-yellow and
brownish-rose, yet macabre, something repulsive. People were silent
when she passed, impressed, roused, wanting to jeer, yet for some
reason silenced. Her long, pale face, that she carried lifted up,
somewhat in the Rossetti fashion, seemed almost drugged, as if a
strange mass of thoughts coiled in the darkness within her, and she was
never allowed to escape.

Ursula watched her with fascination. She knew her a little. She was the
most remarkable woman in the Midlands. Her father was a Derbyshire
Baronet of the old school, she was a woman of the new school, full of
intellectuality, and heavy, nerve-worn with consciousness. She was
passionately interested in reform, her soul was given up to the public
cause. But she was a man's woman, it was the manly world that held
her.
She had various intimacies of mind and soul with various men of
capacity. Ursula knew, among these men, only Rupert Birkin, who was
one of the school-inspectors of the county. But Gudrun had met others,
in London. Moving with her artist friends in different kinds of society,
Gudrun had already come to know a good many people of repute and
standing. She had met Hermione twice, but they did not take to each
other. It would be queer to meet again down here in the Midlands,
where their social standing was so diverse, after they had known each
other on terms of equality in the houses of sundry acquaintances in
town. For Gudrun had been a social success, and had her friends among
the slack aristocracy that keeps touch with the arts.
Hermione knew herself to be well-dressed; she knew herself to be the
social equal, if not far the superior, of anyone she was likely to meet in
Willey Green. She knew she was accepted in the world of culture and
of intellect. She was a KULTURTRAGER, a medium for the culture of
ideas. With all that was highest, whether in society or in thought or in
public action, or even in art, she was at one, she moved among the
foremost, at home with them. No one could put her down, no one could
make mock of her, because she stood among the first, and those that
were against her were below her, either in rank, or in wealth, or in high
association of thought and progress and understanding. So, she was
invulnerable. All her life, she had sought to make herself invulnerable,
unassailable, beyond reach of the world's judgment.
And yet her soul was tortured, exposed. Even walking up the path to
the church, confident as she was that in every respect she stood beyond
all vulgar judgment, knowing perfectly that her appearance was
complete and perfect, according to the first standards, yet she suffered a

torture, under her confidence and her pride, feeling herself exposed to
wounds and to mockery and to despite. She always felt vulnerable,
vulnerable, there was always a secret chink in her armour. She did not