suddenly turned, and was swimming away swiftly, with a side stroke. He was alone now, alone and immune in the middle of the waters, which he had all to himself. He exulted in his isolation in the new element, unquestioned and unconditioned. He was happy, thrusting with his legs and all his body, without bond or connection anywhere, just himself in the watery world.
Gudrun envied him almost painfully. Even this momentary possession of pure isolation and fluidity seemed to her so terribly desirable that she felt herself as if damned, out there on the high-road.
‘God, what it is to be a man!’ she cried.
‘What?’ exclaimed Ursula in surprise.
‘The freedom, the liberty, the mobility!’ cried Gudrun, strangely flushed and brilliant. ‘You’re a man, you want to do a thing, you do it. You haven’t the THOUSAND obstacles a woman has in front of her.’
Ursula wondered what was in Gudrun’s mind, to occasion this outburst. She could not understand.
‘What do you want to do?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ cried Gudrun, in swift refutation. ‘But supposing I did. Supposing I want to swim up that water. It is impossible, it is one of the impossibilities of life, for me to take my clothes off now and jump in. But isn’t it RIDICULOUS, doesn’t it simply prevent our living!’
She was so hot, so flushed, so furious, that Ursula was puzzled.
The two sisters went on, up the road. They were passing between the trees just below Shortlands. They looked up at the long, low house, dim and glamorous in the wet morning, its cedar trees slanting before the windows. Gudrun seemed to be studying it closely.
‘Don’t you think it’s attractive, Ursula?’ asked Gudrun.
‘Very,’ said Ursula. ‘Very peaceful and charming.’
‘It has form, too — it has a period.’
‘What period?’
‘Oh, eighteenth century, for certain; Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Austen, don’t you think?’
Ursula laughed.
‘Don’t you think so?’ repeated Gudrun.
‘Perhaps. But I don’t think the Criches fit the period. I know Gerald is putting in a private electric plant, for lighting the house, and is making all kinds of latest improvements.’
Gudrun shrugged her shoulders swiftly.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘that’s quite inevitable.’
‘Quite,’ laughed Ursula. ‘He is several generations of youngness at one go. They hate him for it. He takes them all by the scruff of the neck, and fairly flings them along. He’ll have to die soon, when he’s made every possible improvement, and there will be nothing more to improve. He’s got GO, anyhow.’
‘Certainly, he’s got go,’ said Gudrun. ‘In fact I’ve never seen a man that showed signs of so much. The unfortunate thing is, where does his GO go to, what becomes of it?’
‘Oh I know,’ said Ursula. ‘It goes in applying the latest appliances!’
‘Exactly,’ said Gudrun.
‘You know he shot his brother?’ said Ursula.
‘Shot his brother?’ cried Gudrun, frowning as if in disapprobation.
‘Didn’t you know? Oh yes! — I thought you knew. He and his brother were playing together with a gun. He told his brother to look down the gun, and it was loaded, and blew the top of his head off. Isn’t it a horrible story?’
‘How fearful!’ cried Gudrun. ‘But it is long ago?’
‘Oh yes, they were quite boys,’ said Ursula. ‘I think it is one of the most horrible stories I know.’
‘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 some-one 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.’
