‘And he of course did not know that the gun was loaded?’
‘Yes. You see it was an old thing that had been lying in the stable for years. Nobody dreamed it would ever go off, and of course, no one imagined it was loaded. But isn’t it dreadful, that it should happen?’
‘Frightful!’ cried Gudrun. ‘And isn’t it horrible too to think of such a thing happening to one, when one was a child, and having to carry the responsibility of it all through one’s life. Imagine it, two boys playing together—then this comes upon them, for no reason whatever—out of the air. Ursula, it’s very frightening! Oh, it’s one of the things I can’t bear. Murder, that is thinkable, because there’s a will behind it. But a thing like that to HAPPEN to one —’
‘Perhaps there WAS an unconscious will behind it,’ said Ursula. ‘This playing at killing has some primitive DESIRE for killing in it, don’t you think?’
‘Desire!’ said Gudrun, coldly, stiffening a little. ‘I can’t see that they were even playing at killing. I suppose one boy said to the other, “You look down the barrel while I pull the trigger, and see what happens.” It seems to me the purest form of accident.’
‘No,’ said Ursula. ‘I couldn’t pull the trigger of the emptiest gun in the world, not if someone were looking down the barrel. One instinctively doesn’t do it—one can’t.’
Gudrun was silent for some moments, in sharp disagreement.
‘Of course,’ she said coldly. ‘If one is a woman, and grown up, one’s instinct prevents one. But I cannot see how that applies to a couple of boys playing together.’
Her voice was cold and angry.
‘Yes,’ persisted Ursula. At that moment they heard a woman’s voice a few yards off say loudly:
‘Oh damn the thing!’ They went forward and saw Laura Crich and Hermione Roddice in the field on the other side of the hedge, and Laura Crich struggling with the gate, to get out. Ursula at once hurried up and helped to lift the gate.
‘Thanks so much,’ said Laura, looking up flushed and amazon-like, yet rather confused. ‘It isn’t right on the hinges.’
‘No,’ said Ursula. ‘And they’re so heavy.’
‘Surprising!’ cried Laura.
‘How do you do,’ sang Hermione, from out of the field, the moment she could make her voice heard. ‘It’s nice now. Are you going for a walk? Yes. Isn’t the young green beautiful? So beautiful—quite burning. Good morning— good morning—you’ll come and see me?—thank you so much—next week—yes—good-bye, g-o-o-d b-y-e.’
Gudrun and Ursula stood and watched her slowly waving her head up and down, and waving her hand slowly in dismissal, smiling a strange affected smile, making a tall queer, frightening figure, with her heavy fair hair slipping to her eyes. Then they moved off, as if they had been dismissed like inferiors. The four women parted.
As soon as they had gone far enough, Ursula said, her cheeks burning,
‘I do think she’s impudent.’
‘Who, Hermione Roddice?’ asked Gudrun. ‘Why?’
‘The way she treats one—impudence!’
‘Why, Ursula, what did you notice that was so impudent?’ asked Gudrun rather coldly.
‘Her whole manner. Oh, It’s impossible, the way she tries to bully one. Pure bullying. She’s an impudent woman. “You’ll come and see me,” as if we should be falling over ourselves for the privilege.’
‘I can’t understand, Ursula, what you are so much put out about,’ said Gudrun, in some exasperation. ‘One knows those women are impudent—these free women who have emancipated themselves from the aristocracy.’
‘But it is so UNNECESSARY—so vulgar,’ cried Ursula.
‘No, I don’t see it. And if I did—pour moi, elle n’existe pas. I don’t grant her the power to be impudent to me.’
‘Do you think she likes you?’ asked Ursula.
‘Well, no, I shouldn’t think she did.’
‘Then why does she ask you to go to Breadalby and stay with her?’
Gudrun lifted her shoulders in a low shrug.
‘After all, she’s got the sense to know we’re not just the ordinary run,’ said Gudrun. ‘Whatever she is, she’s not a fool. And I’d rather have somebody I detested, than the ordinary woman who keeps to her own set. Hermione Roddice does risk herself in some respects.’
Ursula pondered this for a time.
‘I doubt it,’ she replied. ‘Really she risks nothing. I suppose we ought to admire her for knowing she CAN invite us—school teachers—and risk nothing.’
‘Precisely!’ said Gudrun. ‘Think of the myriads of women that daren’t do it. She makes the most of her privileges—that’s something. I suppose, really, we should do the same, in her place.’
‘No,’ said Ursula. ‘No. It would bore me. I couldn’t spend my time playing her games. It’s infra dig.’
The two sisters were like a pair of scissors, snipping off everything that came athwart them; or like a knife and a whetstone, the one sharpened against the other.
‘Of course,’ cried Ursula suddenly, ‘she ought to thank her stars if we will go and see her. You are perfectly beautiful, a thousand times more beautiful than ever she is or was, and to my thinking, a thousand times more
