“I don’t like porter, Maxim,” she replied.
“You must ask for champagne,” came the whispering, gentlemanly voice of the other.
Gerald suddenly realised that this was a hint to him.
“Shall we have champagne?” he asked, laughing.
“Yes please, dwy,” she lisped childishly.
Gerald watched her eating the oysters. She was delicate and finicking in her eating, her fingers were fine and seemed very sensitive in the tips, so she put her food apart with fine, small motions, she ate carefully, delicately. It pleased him very much to see her, and it irritated Birkin. They were all drinking champagne. Maxim, the prim young Russian with the smooth, warm-coloured face and black, oiled hair was the only one who seemed to be perfectly calm and sober. Birkin was white and abstract, unnatural, Gerald was smiling with a constant bright, amused, cold light in his eyes, leaning a little protectively towards the Pussum, who was very handsome, and soft, unfolded like some red lotus in dreadful flowering nakedness, vainglorious now, flushed with wine and with the excitement of men. Halliday looked foolish. One glass of wine was enough to make him drunk and giggling. Yet there was always a pleasant, warm naivete about him, that made him attractive.
“I’m not afwaid of anything except black-beetles,” said the Pussum, looking up suddenly and staring with her black eyes, on which there seemed an unseeing film of flame, fully upon Gerald. He laughed dangerously, from the blood. Her childish speech caressed his nerves, and her burning, filmed eyes, turned now full upon him, oblivious of all her antecedents, gave him a sort of licence.
“I’m not,” she protested. “I’m not afraid of other things. But black-beetles—ugh!” she shuddered convulsively, as if the very thought were too much to bear.
“Do you mean,” said Gerald, with the punctiliousness of a man who has been drinking, “that you are afraid of the sight of a black-beetle, or you are afraid of a black-beetle biting you, or doing you some harm?”
“Do they bite?” cried the girl.
“How perfectly loathsome!” exclaimed Halliday.
“I don’t know,” replied Gerald, looking round the table. “Do black-beetles bite? But that isn’t the point. Are you afraid of their biting, or is it a metaphysical antipathy?”
The girl was looking full upon him all the time with inchoate eyes.
“Oh, I think they’re beastly, they’re horrid,” she cried. “If I see one, it gives me the creeps all over. If one were to crawl on me, I’m sure I should die—I’m sure I should.”
“I hope not,” whispered the young Russian.
“I’m sure I should, Maxim,” she asseverated.
“Then one won’t crawl on you,” said Gerald, smiling and knowing. In some strange way he understood her.
“It’s metaphysical, as Gerald says,” Birkin stated.
There was a little pause of uneasiness.
“And are you afraid of nothing else, Pussum?” asked the young Russian, in his quick, hushed, elegant manner.
“Not weally,” she said. “I am afwaid of some things, but not weally the same. I’m not afwaid of blood.”
“Not afwaid of blood!” exclaimed a young man with a thick, pale, jeering face, who had just come to the table and was drinking whisky.
The Pussum turned on him a sulky look of dislike, low and ugly.
“Aren’t you really afraid of blood?” the other persisted, a sneer all over his face.
“No, I’m not,” she retorted.
“Why, have you ever seen blood, except in a dentist’s spittoon?” jeered the young man.
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” she replied rather superbly.
“You can answer me, can’t you?” he said.
For reply, she suddenly jabbed a knife across his thick, pale hand. He started up with a vulgar curse.
“Show’s what you are,” said the Pussum in contempt.
“Curse you,” said the young man, standing by the table and looking down at her with acrid malevolence.
“Stop that,” said Gerald, in quick, instinctive command.
The young man stood looking down at her with sardonic contempt, a cowed, self-conscious look on his thick, pale face. The blood began to flow from his hand.
“Oh, how horrible, take it away!” squealed Halliday, turning green and averting his face.
“D’you feel ill?” asked the sardonic young man, in some concern. “Do you feel ill, Julius? Garn, it’s nothing, man, don’t give her the pleasure of letting her think she’s performed a feat—don’t give her the satisfaction, man—it’s just what she wants.”
“Oh!” squealed Halliday.
“He’s going to cat, Maxim,” said the Pussum warningly. The suave young Russian rose and took Halliday by the arm, leading him away. Birkin, white and diminished, looked on as if he were displeased. The wounded, sardonic young man moved away, ignoring his bleeding hand in the most conspicuous fashion.
“He’s an awful coward, really,” said the Pussum to Gerald. “He’s got such an influence over Julius.”
“Who is he?” asked Gerald.
“He’s a Jew, really. I can’t bear him.”
“Well, he’s quite unimportant. But what’s wrong with Halliday?”
“Julius’s the most awful coward you’ve ever seen,” she cried. “He always faints if I lift a knife—he’s tewwified of me.”
“H’m!” said Gerald.
“They’re all afwaid of me,” she said. “Only the Jew thinks he’s going to show his courage. But he’s the biggest coward of them all, really, because he’s afwaid what people will think about him—and Julius doesn’t care about that.”
“They’ve a lot of valour between them,” said Gerald good-humouredly.
The Pussum looked at him with a slow, slow smile. She was very handsome, flushed, and confident in dreadful knowledge. Two little points of light glinted on Gerald’s eyes.
“Why do they call you Pussum, because you’re like a cat?” he asked her.
“I expect so,” she said.
The smile grew more intense on his face.
“You are, rather;—or a young, female panther.”
“Oh God, Gerald!” said Birkin, in some disgust.
They both looked uneasily at Birkin.
“You’re silent to-night, Wupert,” she said to him, with a slight insolence, being safe with the other man.
Halliday was coming back, looking forlorn and sick.
“Pussum,” he said, “I wish you wouldn’t do these things—Oh!” He sank in his chair with a groan.
“You’d better go home,” she said to him.
“I
will
go home,” he said. “But won’t you all come along. Won’t you come round to the flat?” he said to Gerald. “I should be so glad if you would. Do—that’ll be splendid. I say?” He looked round for a waiter. “Get me a taxi.” Then he groaned again. “Oh I do feel—perfectly ghastly! Pussum, you see what you do to me.”
“Then why are you such an idiot?” she said with sullen calm.
“But I’m not an idiot! Oh, how awful! Do come, everybody, it will be
so
splendid. Pussum, you are coming. What? Oh but you
must
come, yes, you must. What? Oh, my dear girl, don’t make a fuss now, I feel perfectly—Oh, it’s so ghastly—Ho!—er! Oh!”
“You know you can’t drink,” she said to him, coldly.
“I tell you it isn’t drink—it’s your disgusting behaviour, Pussum, it’s nothing else. Oh, how awful! Libidnikov, do let us go.”
“He’s only drunk one glass—only one glass,” came the rapid, hushed voice of the young Russian.
They all moved off to the door. The girl kept near to Gerald, and seemed to be at one in her motion with him. He was aware of this, and filled with demon-satisfaction that this motion held good for two. He held her in the hollow of his will, and she was soft, secret, invisible in her stirring there.
They crowded five of them into the taxi-cab. Halliday lurched in first, and dropped into his seat against the other window. Then the Pussum took her place, and Gerald sat next to her. They heard the young Russian giving orders to the driver, then they were all seated in the dark, crowded close together, Halliday groaning and leaning out of the window. They felt the swift, muffled motion of the car.
The Pussum sat near to Gerald, and she seemed to become soft, subtly to infuse herself into his bones, as if she were passing into him in a black, electric flow. Her being suffused into his veins like a magnetic darkness, and concentrated at the base of his spine like a fearful source of power. Meanwhile her voice sounded out reedy and nonchalant, as she talked indifferently with Birkin and with Maxim. Between her and Gerald was this silence and this black, electric comprehension in the darkness. Then she found his hand, and grasped it in her own firm, small clasp. It was so utterly dark, and yet such a naked statement, that rapid vibrations ran through his blood and over his brain, he was no longer responsible. Still her voice rang on like a bell, tinged with a tone of mockery. And as she swung her head, her fine mane of hair just swept his face, and all his nerves were on fire, as with a subtle friction of electricity. But the great centre of his force held steady, a magnificent pride to him, at the base of his spine.
They arrived at a large block of buildings, went up in a lift, and presently a door was being opened for them by a Hindu. Gerald looked in surprise, wondering if he were a gentleman, one of the Hindus down from Oxford, perhaps. But no, he was the man-servant.
“Make tea, Hasan,” said Halliday.
“There is a room for me?” said Birkin.
To both of which questions the man grinned, and murmured.
He made Gerald uncertain, because, being tall and slender and reticent, he looked like a gentleman.
“Who is your servant?” he asked of Halliday. “He looks a swell.”
“Oh yes—that’s because he’s dressed in another man’s clothes. He’s anything but a swell, really. We found him in the road, starving. So I took him here, and another man gave him clothes. He’s anything but what he seems to be—his only advantage is that he can’t speak English and can’t understand it, so he’s perfectly safe.”
“He’s very dirty,” said the young Russian swiftly and silently.
Directly, the man appeared in the doorway.
“What is it?” said Halliday.
The Hindu grinned, and murmured shyly:
“Want to speak to master.”
Gerald watched curiously. The fellow in the doorway was good-looking and clean-limbed, his bearing was calm, he looked elegant, aristocratic. Yet he was half a savage, grinning foolishly. Halliday went out into the corridor to speak with him.
“What?” they heard his voice. “What? What do you say? Tell me again. What? Want money? Want
more
money? But what do you want money for?” There was the confused sound of the Hindu’s talking, then Halliday appeared in the room, smiling also foolishly, and saying:
“He says he wants money to buy underclothing. Can anybody lend me a shilling? Oh thanks, a shilling will do to buy all the underclothes he wants.” He took the money from Gerald and went out into the passage again, where they heard him saying, “You can’t want more money, you had three and six yesterday. You mustn’t ask for any more. Bring the tea in quickly.”
Gerald looked round the room. It was an ordinary London sitting-room in a flat, evidently taken furnished, rather common and ugly. But there were several negro statues, wood-carvings from West Africa, strange and disturbing,
3
the carved negroes looked almost like the foetus of a human being. One was a woman sitting naked in a strange posture, and looking tortured, her abdomen stuck out. The young Russian explained that she was sitting in child-birth, clutching the ends of the band that hung from her neck, one in each hand, so that she could bear down, and help labour. The strange, transfixed, rudimentary face of the woman again reminded Gerald of a foetus, it was also rather wonderful, conveying the suggestion of the extreme of physical sensation, beyond the limits of mental consciousness.
“Aren’t they rather obscene?” he asked, disapproving.
“I don’t know,” murmured the other rapidly. “I have never defined the obscene. I think they are very good.”
Gerald turned away. There were one or two new pictures in the room, in the Futurist
x
manner; there was a large piano. And these, with some ordinary London lodging-house furniture of the better sort, completed the whole.
The Pussum had taken off her hat and coat, and was seated on the sofa. She was evidently quite at home in the house, but uncertain, suspended. She did not quite know her position. Her alliance for the time being was with Gerald, and she did not know how far this was admitted by any of the men. She was considering how she should carry off the situation. She was determined to have her experience. Now, at this eleventh hour, she was not to be baulked. Her face was flushed as with battle, her eye was brooding but inevitable.
The man came in with tea and a bottle of Kümmel. He set the tray on a little table before the couch.
“Pussum,” said Halliday, “pour out the tea.”
She did not move.
“Won’t you do it?” Halliday repeated, in a state of nervous apprehension.
“I’ve not come back here as it was before,” she said. “I only came because the others wanted me to, not for your sake.”
“My dear Pussum, you know you are your own mistress. I don’t want you to do anything but use the flat for your own convenience—you know it, I’ve told you so many times.”
She did not reply, but silently, reservedly reached for the tea-pot. They all sat round and drank tea. Gerald could feel the electric connection between him and her so strongly, as she sat there quiet and withheld, that another set of conditions altogether had come to pass. Her silence and her immutability perplexed him. How was he going to come to her? And yet he felt it quite inevitable. He trusted completely to the current that held them. His perplexity was only superficial, new conditions reigned, the old were surpassed; here one did as one was possessed to do, no matter what it was.
Birkin rose. It was nearly one o.’clock.