'Is there any need for you to be working?' said Birkin. 'Wouldn’t it be much better if you went to bed?'
'To bed! Good God, do you think I should sleep? We’ll find 'em, before I go away from here.'
'But the men would find them just the same without you—why should you insist?'
Gerald looked up at him. Then he put his hand affectionately on Birkin’s shoulder, saying:
'Don’t you bother about me, Rupert. If there’s anybody’s health to think about, it’s yours, not mine. How do you feel yourself?'
'Very well. But you, you spoil your own chance of life—you waste your best self.'
Gerald was silent for a moment. Then he said:
'Waste it? What else is there to do with it?'
'But leave this, won’t you? You force yourself into horrors, and put a mill–stone of beastly memories round your neck. Come away now.'
'A mill–stone of beastly memories!' Gerald repeated. Then he put his hand again affectionately on Birkin’s shoulder. 'God, you’ve got such a telling way of putting things, Rupert, you have.'
Birkin’s heart sank. He was irritated and weary of having a telling way of putting things.
'Won’t you leave it? Come over to my place'—he urged as one urges a drunken man.
'No,' said Gerald coaxingly, his arm across the other man’s shoulder. 'Thanks very much, Rupert—I shall be glad to come tomorrow, if that’ll do. You understand, don’t you? I want to see this job through. But I’ll come tomorrow, right enough. Oh, I’d rather come and have a chat with you than—than do anything else, I verily believe. Yes, I would. You mean a lot to me, Rupert, more than you know.'
'What do I mean, more than I know?' asked Birkin irritably. He was acutely aware of Gerald’s hand on his shoulder. And he did not want this altercation. He wanted the other man to come out of the ugly misery.
'I’ll tell you another time,' said Gerald coaxingly.
'Come along with me now—I want you to come,' said Birkin.
There was a pause, intense and real. Birkin wondered why his own heart beat so heavily. Then Gerald’s fingers gripped hard and communicative into Birkin’s shoulder, as he said:
'No, I’ll see this job through, Rupert. Thank you—I know what you mean. We’re all right, you know, you and me.'
'I may be all right, but I’m sure you’re not, mucking about here,' said Birkin. And he went away.
The bodies of the dead were not recovered till towards dawn. Diana had her arms tight round the neck of the young man, choking him.
'She killed him,' said Gerald.
The moon sloped down the sky and sank at last. The lake was sunk to quarter size, it had horrible raw banks of clay, that smelled of raw rottenish water. Dawn roused faintly behind the eastern hill. The water still boomed through the sluice.
As the birds were whistling for the first morning, and the hills at the back of the desolate lake stood radiant with the new mists, there was a straggling procession up to Shortlands, men bearing the bodies on a stretcher, Gerald going beside them, the two grey–bearded fathers following in silence. Indoors the family was all sitting up, waiting. Somebody must go to tell the mother, in her room. The doctor in secret struggled to bring back his son, till he himself was exhausted.
Over all the outlying district was a hush of dreadful excitement on that Sunday morning. The colliery people felt as if this catastrophe had happened directly to themselves, indeed they were more shocked and frightened than if their own men had been killed. Such a tragedy in Shortlands, the high home of the district! One of the young mistresses, persisting in dancing on the cabin roof of the launch, wilful young madam, drowned in the midst of the festival, with the young doctor! Everywhere on the Sunday morning, the colliers wandered about, discussing the calamity. At all the Sunday dinners of the people, there seemed a strange presence. It was as if the angel of death were very near, there was a sense of the supernatural in the air. The men had excited, startled faces, the women looked solemn, some of them had been crying. The children enjoyed the excitement at first. There was an intensity in the air, almost magical. Did all enjoy it? Did all enjoy the thrill?
