‘And does she like being back in Beldover?’
‘No,’ said Ursula.
‘No, I wonder she can bear it. It takes all my strength, to bear the ugliness of this district, when I stay here. Won’t you come and see me? Won’t you come with your sister to stay at Breadalby for a few days?—do—’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Ursula.
‘Then I will write to you,’ said Hermione. ‘You think your sister will come? I should be so glad. I think she is wonderful. I think some of her work is really wonderful. I have two water-wagtails, carved in wood, and painted— perhaps you have seen it?’
‘No,’ said Ursula.
‘I think it is perfectly wonderful—like a flash of instinct.’
‘Her little carvings ARE strange,’ said Ursula.
‘Perfectly beautiful—full of primitive passion—’
‘Isn’t it queer that she always likes little things?—she must always work small things, that one can put between one’s hands, birds and tiny animals. She likes to look through the wrong end of the opera glasses, and see the world that way—why is it, do you think?’
Hermione looked down at Ursula with that long, detached scrutinising gaze that excited the younger woman.
‘Yes,’ said Hermione at length. ‘It is curious. The little things seem to be more subtle to her—’
‘But they aren’t, are they? A mouse isn’t any more subtle than a lion, is it?’
Again Hermione looked down at Ursula with that long scrutiny, as if she were following some train of thought of her own, and barely attending to the other’s speech.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied.
‘Rupert, Rupert,’ she sang mildly, calling him to her. He approached in silence.
‘Are little things more subtle than big things?’ she asked, with the odd grunt of laughter in her voice, as if she were making game of him in the question.
‘Dunno,’ he said.
‘I hate subtleties,’ said Ursula.
Hermione looked at her slowly.
‘Do you?’ she said.
‘I always think they are a sign of weakness,’ said Ursula, up in arms, as if her prestige were threatened.
Hermione took no notice. Suddenly her face puckered, her brow was knit with thought, she seemed twisted in troublesome effort for utterance.
‘Do you really think, Rupert,’ she asked, as if Ursula were not present, ‘do you really think it is worth while? Do you really think the children are better for being roused to consciousness?’
A dark flash went over his face, a silent fury. He was hollow-cheeked and pale, almost unearthly. And the woman, with her serious, conscience-harrowing question tortured him on the quick.
‘They are not roused to consciousness,’ he said. ‘Consciousness comes to them, willy-nilly.’
‘But do you think they are better for having it quickened, stimulated? Isn’t it better that they should remain unconscious of the hazel, isn’t it better that they should see as a whole, without all this pulling to pieces, all this knowledge?’
‘Would you rather, for yourself, know or not know, that the little red flowers are there, putting out for the pollen?’ he asked harshly. His voice was brutal, scornful, cruel.
Hermione remained with her face lifted up, abstracted. He hung silent in irritation.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, balancing mildly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘But knowing is everything to you, it is all your life,’ he broke out. She slowly looked at him.
‘Is it?’ she said.
‘To know, that is your all, that is your life—you have only this, this knowledge,’ he cried. ‘There is only one tree, there is only one fruit, in your mouth.’
Again she was some time silent.
‘Is there?’ she said at last, with the same untouched calm. And then in a tone of whimsical inquisitiveness: ‘What fruit, Rupert?’
‘The eternal apple,’ he replied in exasperation, hating his own metaphors.
‘Yes,’ she said. There was a look of exhaustion about her. For some moments there was silence. Then, pulling herself together with a convulsed movement, Hermione resumed, in a sing-song, casual voice:
‘But leaving me apart, Rupert; do you think the children are better, richer, happier, for all this knowledge; do you really think they are? Or is it better to leave them untouched, spontaneous. Hadn’t they better be animals, simple animals, crude, violent, ANYTHING, rather than this selfconsciousness, this incapacity to be spontaneous.’
They thought she had finished. But with a queer rumbling in her throat she resumed, ‘Hadn’t they better be anything than grow up crippled, crippled in their souls, crippled in their feelings—so thrown back—so turned back on
