It was a very quiet place, some miles from the high-road, back from the Derwent Valley, outside the show scenery. Silent and forsaken, the golden stucco showed between the trees, the house-front looked down the park, unchanged and unchanging.
Of late, however, Hermione had lived a good deal at the house. She had turned away from London, away from Oxford, towards the silence of the country. Her father was mostly absent, abroad, she was either alone in the house, with her visitors, of whom there were always several, or she had with her her brother, a bachelor, and a Liberal member of Parliament.
2
He always came down when the House was not sitting, seemed always to be present in Breadalby, although he was most conscientious in his attendance to duty.
The summer was just coming in when Ursula and Gudrun went to stay the second time with Hermione. Coming along in the car, after they had entered the park, they looked across the dip, where the fish-ponds lay in silence, at the pillared front of the house, sunny and small like an English drawing of the old school, on the brow of the green hill, against the trees. There were small figures on the green lawn, women in lavender and yellow moving to the shade of the enormous, beautifully balanced cedar tree.
“Isn’t it complete!” said Gudrun. “It is as final as an old aquatint.” She spoke with some resentment in her voice, as if she were captivated unwillingly, as if she must admire against her will.
“Do you love it?” asked Ursula.
“I don’t
love
it, but in its way, I think it is quite complete.”
The motor-car ran down the hill and up again in one breath, and they were curving to the side door. A parlour-maid appeared, and then Hermione, coming forward with her pale face lifted, and her hands outstretched, advancing straight to the new-comers, her voice singing:
“Here you are—I’m so glad to see you—” she kissed Gudrun—“so glad to see you—” she kissed Ursula and remained with her arm round her. “Are you very tired?”
“Not at all tired,” said Ursula.
“Are you tired, Gudrun?”
“Not at all, thanks,” said Gudrun.
“No—” drawled Hermione. And she stood and looked at them. The two girls were embarrassed because she would not move into the house, but must have her little scene of welcome there on the path. The servants waited.
“Come in,” said Hermione at last, having fully taken in the pair of them. Gudrun was the more beautiful and attractive, she had decided again, Ursula was more physical, more womanly. She admired Gudrun’s dress more. It was of green poplin, with a loose coat above it, of broad, dark-green and dark-brown stripes. The hat was of a pale, greenish straw, the colour of new hay, and it had a plaited ribbon of black and orange, the stockings were dark green, the shoes black. It was a good get-up, at once fashionable and individual. Ursula, in dark blue, was more ordinary, though she also looked well.
Hermione herself wore a dress of prune-coloured silk, with coral beads and coral coloured stockings. But her dress was both shabby and soiled, even rather dirty.
“You would like to see your rooms now, wouldn’t you! Yes. We will go up now, shall we?”
Ursula was glad when she could be left alone in her room. Hermione lingered so long, made such a stress on one. She stood so near to one, pressing herself near upon one, in a way that was most embarrassing and oppressive. She seemed to hinder one’s workings.
Lunch was served on the lawn, under the great tree, whose thick, blackish boughs came down close to the grass. There were present a young Italian woman, slight and fashionable, a young, athletic-looking Miss Bradley, a learned, dry Baronet of fifty, who was always making witticisms and laughing at them heartily in a harsh, horse-laugh,
3
there was Rupert Birkin, and then a woman secretary, a Fräulein Marz, young and slim and pretty.
The food was very good, that was one thing. Gudrun, critical of everything, gave it her full approval. Ursula loved the situation, the white table by the cedar tree, the scent of new sunshine, the little vision of the leafy park, with far-off deer feeding peacefully. There seemed a magic circle drawn about the place, shutting out the present, enclosing the delightful, precious past, trees and deer and silence, like a dream.
But in spirit she was unhappy. The talk went on like a rattle of small artillery, always slightly sententious, with a sententiousness that was only emphasised by the continual cracking of a witticism, the continual spatter of verbal jest, designed to give a tone of flippancy to a stream of conversation that was all critical and general, a canal of conversation rather than a stream.
The attitude was mental and very wearying. Only the elderly sociologist, whose mental fibre was so tough as to be insentient, seemed to be thoroughly happy. Birkin was down in the mouth. Hermione appeared, with amazing persistence, to wish to ridicule him and make him look ignominious in the eyes of everybody. And it was surprising, how she seemed to succeed, how helpless he seemed against her. He looked completely insignificant. Ursula and Gudrun, both very unused, were mostly silent, listening to the slow, rhapsodic sing-song of Hermione, or the verbal sallies of Sir Joshua, or the prattle of Fräulein, or the responses of the other two women.
Luncheon was over, coffee was brought out on the grass, the party left the table and sat about in lounge chairs, in the shade or in the sunshine as they wished. Fräulein departed into the house, Hermione took up her embroidery, the little Contessa took a book, Miss Bradley was weaving a basket out of fine grass, and there they all were on the lawn in the early summer afternoon, working leisurely and spattering with half-intellectual, deliberate talk.
Suddenly there was the sound of the brakes and the shutting off of a motor-car.
“There’s Salsie!” sang Hermione, in her slow, amusing sing-song. And laying down her work, she rose slowly, and slowly passed over the lawn, round the bushes, out of sight.
“Who is it?” asked Gudrun.
“Mr. Roddice—Miss Roddice’s brother—at least, I suppose it’s he,” said Sir Joshua.
“Salsie, yes, it is her brother,” said the little Countess, lifting her head for a moment from her book, and speaking as if to give information, in her slightly deepened, guttural English.
They all waited. And then round the bushes came the tall form of Alexander Roddice, striding romantically like a Meredith
y
hero who remembers Disraeli.
z
He was cordial with everybody, he was at once a host, with an easy, off-hand hospitality that he had learned for Hermione’s friends. He had just come down from London, from the House. At once the atmosphere of the House of Commons made itself felt over the lawn: the Home Secretary had said such and such a thing, and he, Roddice, on the other hand, thought such and such a thing, and had said so-and-so to the P.M.
Now Hermione came round the bushes with Gerald Crich. He had come along with Alexander. Gerald was presented to everybody, was kept by Hermione for a few moments in full view, then he was led away, still by Hermione. He was evidently her guest of the moment.
There had been a split in the Cabinet; the Minister for Education had resigned owing to adverse criticism. This started a conversation on education.
“Of course,” said Hermione, lifting her face like a rhapsodist, “there
can
be no reason, no
excuse
for education, except the joy and beauty of knowledge in itself.” She seemed to rumble and ruminate with subterranean thoughts for a minute, then she proceeded: “Vocational education
isn’t
education, it is the close of education.”
Gerald, on the brink of discussion, sniffed the air with delight and prepared for action.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “But isn’t education really like gymnastics, isn’t the end of education the production of a well-trained, vigorous, energetic mind?”
“Just as athletics produce a healthy body, ready for anything,” cried Miss Bradley, in hearty accord.
Gudrun looked at her in silent loathing.
“Well—” rumbled Hermione, “I don’t know. To me the pleasure of knowing is
so
great, so
wonderful—
nothing has meant so much to me in all life, as certain knowledge—no, I am sure—nothing.”
“What knowledge, for example, Hermione?” asked Alexander.
Hermione lifted her face and rumbled—
“M—m—m—I don’t know..... But one thing was the stars, when I really understood something about the stars. One feels so
uplifted,
so
unbounded ......”
Birkin looked at her in a white fury.
“What do you want to feel unbounded for?” he said sarcastically. “You don’t want to
be
unbounded.”
Hermione recoiled in offence.
“Yes, but one does have that limitless feeling,” said Gerald. “It’s like getting on top of the mountain and seeing the Pacific.”
“Silent upon a peak in Dariayn,”
aa
murmured the Italian, lifting her face for a moment from her book.
“Not necessarily in Darien,” said Gerald, while Ursula began to laugh.
Hermione waited for the dust to settle, and then she said, untouched:
“Yes, it is the greatest thing in life—to
know.
It is really to be happy, to be
free.”
“Knowledge is, of course, liberty,” said Malleson.
“In compressed tabloids,” said Birkin, looking at the dry, stiff little body of the Baronet. Immediately Gudrun saw the famous sociologist as a flat bottle, containing tabloids of compressed liberty. That pleased her. Sir Joshua was labelled and placed forever in her mind.
“What does that mean, Rupert?” sang Hermione, in a calm snub.
“You can only have knowledge, strictly,” he replied, “of things concluded, in the past. It’s like bottling the liberty of last summer in the bottled gooseberries.”
“Can
one have knowledge only of the past?” asked the Baronet, pointedly. “Could we call our knowledge of the laws of gravitation for instance, knowledge of the past?”
“Yes,” said Birkin.
“There is a most beautiful thing in my book,” suddenly piped the little Italian woman. “It says the man came to the door and threw his eyes down the street.”
There was a general laugh in the company. Miss Bradley went and looked over the shoulder of the Contessa.
“See!” said the Contessa.
“Bazarov came to the door and threw his eyes hurriedly down the street,” she read.
Again there was a loud laugh, the most startling of which was the Baronet’s, which rattled out like a clatter of falling stones.
“What is the book?” asked Alexander, promptly.
“ ‘Fathers and Sons,’ by Turgenev,”
ab
said the little foreigner, pronouncing every syllable distinctly. She looked at the cover, to verify herself
“An old American edition,” said Birkin.
“Ha!—of course—translated from the French,” said Alexander, with a fine declamatory voice. “Bazarov ouvra la porte et jeta les yeux dans la rue.”
He looked brightly round the company.
“I wonder what the ‘hurriedly’ was,” said Ursula.
They all began to guess.
And then, to the amazement of everybody, the maid came hurrying with a large tea-tray. The afternoon had passed so swiftly.
After tea, they were all gathered for a walk.
“Would you like to come for a walk?” said Hermione to each of them, one by one. And they all said yes, feeling somehow like prisoners marshaled for exercise. Birkin only refused.
“Will you come for a walk, Rupert?”
“No, Hermione.”
“But are you
sure?”
“Quite sure.” There was a second’s hesitation.
“And why not?” sang Hermione’s question. It made her blood run sharp, to be thwarted in even so trifling a matter. She intended them all to walk with her in the park.
“Because I don’t like trooping off in a gang,” he said.
Her voice rumbled in her throat for a moment. Then she said, with a curious stray calm:
“Then we’ll leave a little boy behind, if he’s sulky.”
And she looked really gay, while she insulted him. But it merely made him stiff.
She trailed off to the rest of the company, only turning to wave her handkerchief to him, and to chuckle with laughter, singing out:
“Good-bye, good-bye, little boy.”
“Good-bye, impudent hag,” he said to himself.
They all went through the park. Hermione wanted to show them the wild daffodils on a little slope. “This way, this way,” sang her leisurely voice at intervals. And they had all to come this way. The daffodils were pretty, but who could see them? Ursula was stiff all over with resentment by this time, resentment of the whole atmosphere. Gudrun, mocking and objective, watched and registered everything.
They looked at the shy deer, and Hermione talked to the stag, as if he too were a boy she wanted to wheedle and fondle. He was male, so she must exert some kind of power over him. They trailed home by the fish-ponds, and Hermione told them about the quarrel of two male swans, who had striven for the love of the one lady. She chuckled and laughed as she told how the ousted lover had sat with his head buried under his wing, on the gravel.
When they arrived back at the house, Hermione stood on the lawn and sang out, in a strange, small, high voice that carried very far:
“Rupert! Rupert!” The first syllable was high and slow, the second dropped down. “Roo-o-opert.”
But there was no answer. A maid appeared.
“Where is Mr. Birkin, Alice?” asked the mild straying voice of Hermione. But under the straying voice, what a persistent, almost insane
will
!
“I think he’s in his room, madam.”
“Is he?”
Hermione went slowly up the stairs, along the corridor, singing out in her high, small call: