There was a strange chuckle in her tone, a dangerous and convincing humour in her bearing.
'Of course,' said Gerald, 'I can see Rupert's point.
It is a question to him whether his hat or his peace of mind is more important.'
'Peace of body,' said Birkin.
'Well, as you like there,' replied Gerald. 'But how are you going to decide this for a nation?'
'Heaven preserve me,' laughed Birkin.
'Yes, but suppose you have to?' Gerald persisted.
'Then it is the same.
If the national crown-piece is an old hat, then the thieving gent may have it.'
'But CAN the national or racial hat be an old hat?' insisted Gerald.
'Pretty well bound to be, I believe,' said Birkin.
'I'm not so sure,' said Gerald.
'I don't agree, Rupert,' said Hermione.
'All right,' said Birkin.
'I'm all for the old national hat,' laughed Gerald.
'And a fool you look in it,' cried Diana, his pert sister who was just in her teens.
'Oh, we're quite out of our depths with these old hats,' cried Laura Crich. 'Dry up now, Gerald.
We're going to drink toasts.
Let us drink toasts.
Toasts—glasses, glasses—now then, toasts!
Speech!
Speech!'
Birkin, thinking about race or national death, watched his glass being filled with champagne.
The bubbles broke at the rim, the man withdrew, and feeling a sudden thirst at the sight of the fresh wine, Birkin drank up his glass.
A queer little tension in the room roused him.
He felt a sharp constraint.
'Did I do it by accident, or on purpose?' he asked himself.
And he decided that, according to the vulgar phrase, he had done it 'accidentally on purpose.'
He looked round at the hired footman.
And the hired footman came, with a silent step of cold servant-like disapprobation.
Birkin decided that he detested toasts, and footmen, and assemblies, and mankind altogether, in most of its aspects.
Then he rose to make a speech.
But he was somehow disgusted.
At length it was over, the meal.
Several men strolled out into the garden.
There was a lawn, and flower-beds, and at the boundary an iron fence shutting off the little field or park.
The view was pleasant; a highroad curving round the edge of a low lake, under the trees.
In the spring air, the water gleamed and the opposite woods were purplish with new life.
Charming Jersey cattle came to the fence, breathing hoarsely from their velvet muzzles at the human beings, expecting perhaps a crust.
Birkin leaned on the fence.
A cow was breathing wet hotness on his hand.
'Pretty cattle, very pretty,' said Marshall, one of the brothers-in-law. 'They give the best milk you can have.'
'Yes,' said Birkin.
'Eh, my little beauty, eh, my beauty!' said Marshall, in a queer high falsetto voice, that caused the other man to have convulsions of laughter in his stomach.
'Who won the race, Lupton?' he called to the bridegroom, to hide the fact that he was laughing.
The bridegroom took his cigar from his mouth.
'The race?' he exclaimed.
Then a rather thin smile came over his face.
He did not want to say anything about the flight to the church door. 'We got there together.
At least she touched first, but I had my hand on her shoulder.'