“Except in herds,” interrupted Birkin.
“Aren’t there really?” she said. “Oh, I thought savages were all so dangerous, they’d have your life before you could look round.”
“Did you?” he laughed. “They are over-rated, savages. They’re too much like other people, not exciting, after the first acquaintance.”
“Oh, it’s not so very wonderfully brave then, to be an explorer?”
“No. It’s more a question of hardships than of terrors.”
“Oh! And weren’t you ever afraid?”
“In my life? I don’t know. Yes, I’m afraid of some things—of being shut up, locked up anywhere—or being fastened. I’m afraid of being bound hand and foot.”
She looked at him steadily with her dark eyes, that rested on him and roused him so deeply, that it left his upper self quite calm. It was rather delicious, to feel her drawing his self-revelations from him, as from the very innermost dark marrow of his body. She wanted to know. And her dark eyes seemed to be looking through into his naked organism. He felt, she was compelled to him, she was fated to come into contact with him, must have the seeing him and knowing him. And this roused a curious exultance. Also he felt, she must relinquish herself into his hands, and be subject to him. She was so profane, slave-like, watching him, absorbed by him. It was not that she was interested in what he said; she was absorbed by his self-revelation, by him, she wanted the secret of him, the experience of his male being.
Gerald’s face was lit up with an uncanny smile, full of light and rousedness, yet unconscious. He sat with his arms on the table, his sunbrowned, rather sinister hands, that were animal and yet very shapely and attractive, pushed forward towards her. And they fascinated her. And she knew, she watched her own fascination.
Other men had come to the table, to talk with Birkin and Halliday. Gerald said in a low voice, apart, to Pussum:
“Where have you come back from?”
“From the country,” replied Pussum, in a very low, yet fully resonant voice. Her face closed hard. Continually she glanced at Halliday, and then a black flare came over her eyes. The heavy, fair young man ignored her completely; he was really afraid of her. For some moments she would be unaware of Gerald. He had not conquered her yet.
“And what has Halliday to do with it?” he asked, his voice still muted.
She would not answer for some seconds. Then she said, unwillingly:
“He made me go and live with him, and now he wants to throw me over. And yet he won’t let me go to anybody else. He wants me to live hidden in the country. And then he says I persecute him, that he can’t get rid of me.”
“Doesn’t know his own mind,” said Gerald.
“He hasn’t any mind, so he can’t know it,” she said. “He waits for what somebody tells him to do. He never does anything he wants to do himself—because he doesn’t know what he wants. He’s a perfect baby.”
Gerald looked at Halliday for some moments, watching the soft, rather degenerate face of the young man. Its very softness was an attraction; it was a soft, warm, corrupt nature, into which one might plunge with gratification.
“But he has no hold over you, has he?” Gerald asked.
“You see he made me go and live with him, when I didn’t want to,” she replied. “He came and cried to me, tears, you never saw so many, saying he couldn’t bear it unless I went back to him. And he wouldn’t go away, he would have stayed for ever. He made me go back. Then every time he behaves in this fashion. And now I’m going to have a baby, he wants to give me a hundred pounds and send me into the country, so that he would never see me nor hear of me again. But I’m not going to do it, after—”
A queer look came over Gerald’s face.
“Are you going to have a child?” he asked incredulous. It seemed, to look at her, impossible, she was so young and so far in spirit from any childbearing.
She looked full into his face, and her dark, inchoate eyes had now a furtive look, and a look of a knowledge of evil, dark and indomitable. A flame ran secretly to his heart.
“Yes,” she said. “Isn’t it beastly?”
“Don’t you want it?” he asked.
“I don’t,” she replied emphatically.
“But—” he said, “how long have you known?”
“Ten weeks,” she said.
All the time she kept her dark, inchoate eyes full upon him. He remained silent, thinking. Then, switching off and becoming cold, he asked, in a voice full of considerate kindness:
“Is there anything we can eat here? Is there anything you would like?”
“Yes,” she said, “I should adore some oysters.”
“All right,” he said. “We’ll have oysters.” And he beckoned to the waiter.
Halliday took no notice, until the little plate was set before her. Then suddenly he cried:
“Pussum, you can’t eat oysters when you’re drinking brandy.”
“What has it go to do with you?” she asked.
“Nothing, nothing,” he cried. “But you can’t eat oysters when you’re drinking brandy.”
“I’m not drinking brandy,” she replied, and she sprinkled the last drops of her liqueur over his face. He gave an odd squeal. She sat looking at him, as if indifferent.
“Pussum, why do you do that?” he cried in panic. He gave Gerald the impression that he was terrified of her, and that he loved his terror. He seemed to relish his own horror and hatred of her, turn it over and extract every flavour from it, in real panic. Gerald thought him a strange fool, and yet piquant.
“But Pussum,” said another man, in a very small, quick Eton voice, “you promised not to hurt him.”
“I haven’t hurt him,” she answered.
“What will you drink?” the young man asked. He was dark, and smooth-skinned, and full of a stealthy vigour.
“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 naïveté 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.