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, there was Rupert Birkin, and then a woman secretary, a Fraulein 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 crackling 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 Fraulein, 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. Fraulein 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 Contessa, 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 hero who remembers Disraeli. He was cordial with everybody, he was at once a host, with an easy, offhand 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 PM.
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,’ murmured the Italian, lifting her face for a moment from her book.
‘Not necessarily in Dariayn,’ 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 Mattheson.
‘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,’ 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 w
onder 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 marshalled 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:
‘Ru-oo-pert! Ru-oo pert!’
She came to his door, and tapped, still crying: ‘Roo-pert.’
‘Yes,’ sounded his voice at last.
‘What are you doing?’
The question was mild and curious.
There was no answer. Then he opened the door.
‘We’ve come back,’ said Hermione. ‘The daffodils are SO beautiful.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen them.’
She looked at him with her long, slow, impassive look, along her cheeks.
‘Have you?’ she echoed. And she remained looking at him. She was stimulated above all things by this conflict with him, when he was like a sulky boy, helpless, and she had him safe at Breadalby. But underneath she knew the split was coming, and her hatred of him was subconscious and intense.
‘What were you doing?’ she reiterated, in her mild, indifferent tone. He did not answer, and she made her way, almost unconsciously into his room. He had taken a Chinese drawing of geese from the boudoir, and was copying it, with much skill and vividness.
‘You are copying the drawing,’ she said, standing near the table, and looking down at his work. ‘Yes. How beautifully you do it! You like it very much, don’t you?’
‘It’s a marvellous drawing,’ he said.
‘Is it? I’m so glad you like it, because I’ve always been fond of it. The Chinese Ambassador gave it me.’
‘I know,’ he said.
‘But why do you copy it?’ she asked, casual and sing-song. ‘Why not do something original?’
‘I want to know it,’ he replied. ‘One gets more of China, copying this picture, than reading all the books.’
‘And what do you get?’
She was at once roused, she laid as it were violent hands on him, to extract his secrets from him. She MUST know. It was a dreadful tyranny, an obsession in her, to know all he knew. For some time he was silent, hating to answer her. Then, compelled, he began:
‘I know what centres they live from — what they perceive and feel — the hot, stinging centrality of a goose in the flux of cold water and mud — the curious bitter stinging heat of a goose’s blood, entering their own blood like an inoculation of corruptive fire — fire of the cold-burning mud — the lotus mystery.’
Hermione looked at him along her narrow, pallid cheeks. Her eyes were strange and drugged, heavy under their heavy, drooping lids. Her thin bosom shrugged convulsively. He stared back at her, devilish and unchanging. With another strange, sick convulsion, she turned away, as if she were sick, could feel dissolution setting-in in her body. For with her mind she was unable to attend to his words, he caught her, as it were, beneath all her defences, and destroyed her with some insidious occult potency.
‘Yes,’ she said, as if she did not know what she were saying. ‘Yes,’ and she swallowed, and tried to regain her mind. But she could not, she was witless, decentralised. Use all her will as she might, she could not recover. She suffered the ghastliness of dissolution, broken and gone in a horrible corruption. And he stood and looked at her unmoved. She strayed out, pallid and preyed-upon like a ghost, like one attacked by the tomb-influences which dog us. And she was gone like a corpse, that has no presence, no connection. He remained hard and vindictive.
Hermione came down to dinner strange and sepulchral, her eyes heavy and full of sepulchral darkness, strength. She had put on a dress of stiff old greenish brocade, that fitted tight and made her look tall and rather terrible, ghastly. In the gay light of the drawing-room she was uncanny and oppressive. But seated in the half-light of the diningroom, sitting stiffly before the shaded candles on the table, she seemed a power, a presence. She listened and attended with a drugged attention.
The party was gay and extravagant in appearance, everybody had put on evening dress except Birkin and Joshua Mattheson. The little Italian Contessa wore a dress of tissue, of orange and gold and black velvet in soft wide stripes, Gudrun was emerald green with strange net-work, Ursula was in yellow with dull silver veiling, Miss Bradley was of grey, crimson and jet, Fraulein Marz wore pale blue. It gave Hermione a sudden convulsive sensation of pleasure, to see these rich colours under the candle-light. She was aware of the talk going on, ceaselessly, Joshua’s voice dominating; of the ceaseless pitter-patter of women’s light laughter and responses; of the brilliant colours and the white table and the shadow above and below; and she seemed in a swoon of gratification, convulsed with pleasure and yet sick, like a REVENANT. She took very little part in the conversation, yet she heard it all, it was all hers.
They all went together into the drawing-room, as if they were one family, easily, without any attention to ceremony. Fraulein handed the coffee, everybody smoked cigarettes, or else long warden pipes of white clay, of which a sheaf was provided.
‘Will you smoke? — cigarettes or pipe?’ asked Fraulein prettily. There was a circle of people, Sir Joshua with his eighteenth-century appearance, Gerald the amused, handsome young Englishman, Alexander tall and the handsome politician, democratic and lucid, Hermione strange like a long Cassandra, and the women lurid with colour, all dutifully smoking their long white pipes, and sitting in a half-moon in the comfortable, soft-ligh
ted drawing-room, round the logs that flickered on the marble hearth.
The talk was very often political or sociological, and interesting, curiously anarchistic. There was an accumulation of powerful force in the room, powerful and destructive. Everything seemed to be thrown into the melting pot, and it seemed to Ursula they were all witches, helping the pot to bubble. There was an elation and a satisfaction in it all, but it was cruelly exhausting for the new-comers, this ruthless mental pressure, this powerful, consuming, destructive mentality that emanated from Joshua and Hermione and Birkin and dominated the rest.
But a sickness, a fearful nausea gathered possession of Hermione. There was a lull in the talk, as it was arrested by her unconscious but all-powerful will.
‘Salsie, won’t you play something?’ said Hermione, breaking off completely. ‘Won’t somebody dance? Gudrun, you will dance, won’t you? I wish you would. Anche tu, Palestra, ballerai? — si, per piacere. You too, Ursula.’
Hermione rose and slowly pulled the gold-embroidered band that hung by the mantel, clinging to it for a moment, then releasing it suddenly. Like a priestess she looked, unconscious, sunk in a heavy half-trance.
A servant came, and soon reappeared with armfuls of silk robes and shawls and scarves, mostly oriental, things that Hermione, with her love for beautiful extravagant dress, had collected gradually.
‘The three women will dance together,’ she said.
‘What shall it be?’ asked Alexander, rising briskly.
‘Vergini Delle Rocchette,’ said the Contessa at once.
‘They are so languid,’ said Ursula.
‘The three witches from Macbeth,’ suggested Fraulein usefully. It was finally decided to do Naomi and Ruth and Orpah. Ursula was Naomi, Gudrun was Ruth, the Contessa was Orpah. The idea was to make a little ballet, in the style of the Russian Ballet of Pavlova and Nijinsky.
The Contessa was ready first, Alexander went to the piano, a space was cleared. Orpah, in beautiful oriental clothes, began slowly to dance the death of her husband. Then Ruth came, and they wept together, and lamented, then Naomi came to comfort them. It was all done in dumb show, the women danced their emotion in gesture and motion. The little drama went on for a quarter of an hour.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 177
