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 Fräulein, 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. Fräulein 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 wonder what the ‘hurriedly’ was,” said Ursula.
They all began