Gerald listened with a faint, fine smile on his face, all the time, as if, somewhere, he knew so much better than Birkin, all about this: as if his own knowledge were direct and personal, whereas Birkin’s was a matter of observation and inference, not quite hitting the nail on the head:—though aiming near enough at it. But he was not going to give himself away. If Birkin could get at the secrets, let him. Gerald would never help him. Gerald would be a dark horse to the end.
“Of course,” he said, with a startling change of conversation, “it is father who really feels it. It will finish him. For him the world collapses. All his care now is for Winnie—he must save Winnie. He says she ought to be sent away to school, but she won’t hear of it, and he’ll never do it. Of course she is in rather a queer way. We’re all of us curiously bad at living. We can do things—but we can’t get on with life at all. It’s curious—a family failing.”
“She oughtn’t to be sent away to school,” said Birkin, who was considering a new proposition.
“She oughtn’t. Why?”
“She’s a queer child—a special child, more special even than you. And in my opinion special children should never be sent away to school. Only moderately ordinary children should be sent to school—so it seems to me.”
“I’m inclined to think just the opposite. I think it would probably make her more normal if she went away and mixed with other children.”
“She wouldn’t mix, you see. You never really mixed, did you? And she wouldn’t be willing even to pretend to. She’s proud, and solitary, and naturally apart. If she has a single nature, why do you want to make her gregarious?”
“No, I don’t want to make her anything. But I think school would be good for her.”
“Was it good for you?”
Gerald’s eyes narrowed uglily. School had been torture to him. Yet he had not questioned whether one should go through this torture. He seemed to believe in education through subjection and torment.