Excurse N EXT 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 motor-car, 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 motor-car.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 second-hand.'
`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 motor-car 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 the rings.They gave her such pleasure, as they lay, the three circles, with their knotted jewels, entangled in her palm.She would have to try them on.She did so secretly, unwilling to let him see, so that he should not know her finger was too large for them.But he saw nevertheless.He always saw, if she wanted him not to.
It was another of his hateful, watchful characteristics.
Only the opal, with its thin wire loop, would go on her ring finger.
And she was superstitious.No, there was ill-portent enough, she would not accept this ring from him in pledge.
`Look,' she said, putting forward her hand, that was half-closed and shrinking.`The others don't fit me.'
He looked at the red-glinting, soft stone, on her over-sensitive skin.
`Yes,' he said.
`But opals are unlucky, aren't they?' she said wistfully.
`No.I prefer unlucky things.Luck is vulgar.Who wants what luck would bring? I don't.'
`But why?' she laughed.
And, consumed with a desire to see how the other rings would look on her hand, she put them on her little finger.
`They can be made a little bigger,' he said.
`Yes,' she replied, doubtfully.And she sighed.She knew that, in accepting the rings, she was accepting a pledge.Yet fate seemed more than herself.
She looked again at the jewels.They were very beautiful to her eyes--not as ornament, or wealth, but as tiny fragments of loveliness.
`I'm glad you bought them,' she said, putting her hand, half unwillingly, gently on his arm.
He smiled, slightly.He wanted her to come to him.But he was angry at the bottom of his soul, and indifferent.He knew she had a passion for him, really.But it was not finally interesting.There were depths of passion when one became impersonal and indifferent, unemotional.Whereas Ursula was still at the emotional personal level--always so abominably personal.
He had taken her as he had never been taken himself.He had taken her at the roots of her darkness and shame--like a demon, laughing over the fountain of mystic corruption which was one of the sources of her being, laughing, shrugging, accepting, accepting finally.As for her, when would she so much go beyond herself as to accept him at the quick of death?
