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 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 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
