Women in Love

'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.