“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 singsong, 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 self-consciousness, 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 themselves—incapable—” Hermione clenched her fist like one in a trance—“of any spontaneous action, always deliberate, always burdened with choice, never carried away.”
Again they thought she had finished. But just as he was going to reply, she resumed her queer rhapsody—“never carried away, out of themselves, always conscious, always self-conscious, always aware of themselves. Isn’t anything better than this? Better be animals, mere animals with no mind at all, than this, this nothingness—”
“But do you think it is knowledge that makes us unliving and self-conscious?” he asked irritably.
She opened her eyes and looked at him slowly.
“Yes,” she said. She paused, watching him all the while, her eyes vague. Then she wiped her fingers across her brow, with a vague weariness. It irritated him bitterly. “It is the mind,” she said, “and that is death.” She raised her eyes slowly to him: “Isn’t the mind—” she said, with the convulsed movement of her body, “isn’t it our death? Doesn’t it destroy all our spontaneity, all our instincts? Are not the young people growing up today, really dead before they have a chance to live?”
“Not because they have too much mind, but too little,” he said brutally.
“Are you sure?” she cried. “It seems to me the reverse. They are over-conscious, burdened to death with consciousness.”
“Imprisoned within a limited, false set of concepts,” he cried.
But she took no notice of this, only went on with her own rhapsodic interrogation.
“When we have knowledge, don’t we lose everything but knowledge?” she asked pathetically. “If I know about the flower, don’t I lose the flower and have only the knowledge? Aren’t we exchanging the substance for the shadow, aren’t we forfeiting life for this dead quality of knowledge? And what does it mean to me, after all? What does all this knowing mean to me? It means nothing.”
“You are merely making words,” he said; “knowledge means everything to you. Even your animalism, you want it in your head. You don’t want to be an animal, you want to observe your own animal functions, to get a mental thrill out of them. It is all purely secondary—and more decadent than the most hidebound intellectualism. What is it but the worst and last form of intellectualism, this love of yours for passion and the animal instincts? Passion and the instincts—you want them hard enough, but through your head, in your consciousness. It all takes place in your head, under that skull of yours. Only you won’t be conscious of what actually is: you want the lie that will match the rest of your furniture.”
Hermione set hard and poisonous against this attack. Ursula stood covered with wonder and shame. It frightened her, to see how they hated each other.
“It’s all that Lady of Shalott business,” he said, in his strong abstract voice. He seemed to be charging her before the unseeing air. “You’ve got that mirror, your own fixed will, your immortal understanding, your own tight conscious
