“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 blud?” 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 tonight, 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 his 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