“It’s bad for him, teaching him to eat at table,” said Birkin.
“Yes,” said Hermione, easily assenting.
Then, looking down at the cat, she resumed her old, mocking, humorous singsong.
“Ti imparano fare brutte cose, brutte cose—”
She lifted the Mino’s white chin on her forefinger, slowly. The young cat looked round with a supremely forbearing air, avoided seeing anything, withdrew his chin, and began to wash his face with his paw. Hermione grunted her laughter, pleased.
“Bel giovanotto—” she said.
The cat reached forward again and put his fine white paw on the edge of the saucer. Hermione lifted it down with delicate slowness. This deliberate, delicate carefulness of movement reminded Ursula of Gudrun.
“No! Non è permesso di mettere il zampino nel tondinetto. Non piace al babbo. Un signor gatto così selvatico—!”
And she kept her finger on the softly planted paw of the cat, and her voice had the same whimsical, humorous note of bullying.
Ursula had her nose out of joint. She wanted to go away now. It all seemed no good. Hermione was established forever, she herself was ephemeral and had not yet even arrived.
“I will go now,” she said suddenly.
Birkin looked at her almost in fear—he so dreaded her anger. “But there is no need for such hurry,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered. “I will go.” And turning to Hermione, before there was time to say any more, she held out her hand and said “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye—” sang Hermione, detaining the hand. “Must you really go now?”
“Yes, I think I’ll go,” said Ursula, her face set, and averted from Hermione’s eyes.
“You think you will—”
But Ursula had got her hand free. She turned to Birkin with a quick, almost jeering: “Goodbye,” and she was opening the door before he had time to do it for her.
When she got outside the house she ran down the road in fury and agitation. It was strange, the unreasoning rage and violence Hermione roused in her, by her very presence. Ursula knew she gave herself away to the other woman, she knew she looked ill-bred, uncouth, exaggerated. But she did not care. She only ran up the road, lest she should go back and jeer in the faces of the two she had left behind. For they outraged her.
XXIII
Excurse
Next day Birkin sought Ursula out. It happened to be the half-day at the Grammar School. He appeared towards the end of the morning, and asked her, would she drive with him in the afternoon. She consented. But her face was closed and unresponding, and his heart sank.
The afternoon was fine and dim. He was driving the motorcar, and she sat beside him. But still her face was closed against him, unresponding. When she became like this, like a wall against him, his heart contracted.
His life now seemed so reduced, that he hardly cared any more. At moments it seemed to him he did not care a straw whether Ursula or Hermione or anybody else existed or did not exist. Why bother! Why strive for a coherent, satisfied life? Why not drift on in a series of accidents—like a picaresque novel? Why not? Why bother about human relationships? Why take them seriously-male or female? Why form any serious connections at all? Why not be casual, drifting along, taking all for what it was worth?
And yet, still, he was damned and doomed to the old effort at serious living.
“Look,” he said, “what I bought.” The car was running along a broad white road, between autumn trees.
He gave her a little bit of screwed-up paper. She took it and opened it.
“How lovely,” she cried.
She examined the gift.
“How perfectly lovely!” she cried again. “But why do you give them me?” She put the question offensively.
His face flickered with bored irritation. He shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“I wanted to,” he said, coolly.
“But why? Why should you?”
“Am I called on to find reasons?” he asked.
There was a silence, whilst she examined the rings that had been screwed up in the paper.
“I think they are beautiful,” she said, “especially this. This is wonderful—”
It was a round opal, red and fiery, set in a circle of tiny rubies.
“You like that best?” he said.
“I think I do.”
“I like the sapphire,” he said.
“This?”
It was a rose-shaped, beautiful sapphire, with small brilliants.
“Yes,” she said, “it is lovely.” She held it in the light. “Yes, perhaps it is the best—”
“The blue—” he said.
“Yes, wonderful—”
He suddenly swung the car out of the way of a farm-cart. It tilted on the bank. He was a careless driver, yet very quick. But Ursula was frightened. There was always that something regardless in him which terrified her. She suddenly felt he might kill her, by making some dreadful accident with the motorcar. For a moment she was stony with fear.
“Isn’t it rather dangerous, the way you drive?” she asked him.
“No, it isn’t dangerous,” he said. And then, after a pause: “Don’t you like the yellow ring at all?”
It was a squarish topaz set in a frame of steel, or some other similar mineral, finely wrought.
“Yes,” she said, “I do like it. But why did you buy these rings?”
“I wanted them. They are secondhand.”
“You bought them for yourself?”
“No. Rings look wrong on my hands.”
“Why did you buy them then?”
“I bought them to give to you.”
“But why? Surely you ought to give them to Hermione! You belong to her.”
He did not answer. She remained with the jewels shut in her hand. She wanted to try them on her fingers, but something in her would not let her. And moreover, she was afraid her hands were too large, she shrank from the mortification of a failure to put them on any but her little finger. They travelled in silence through the empty lanes.
Driving in a motorcar excited her, she forgot his presence even.
“Where are we?” she asked suddenly.
“Not far from Worksop.”
“And where are we going?”
“Anywhere.”
It was the answer she liked.
She opened her hand to look at
