“Oui, c’est un grand lapin blanc et noir. Vous ne l’avez pas vu?” said Gudrun in her good, but rather heavy French.
“Non, mademoiselle, Winifred n’a jamais voulu me le faire voir. Tant de fois je le lui ai demandé, ‘Qu’est ce donc que ce Bismarck, Winifred?’ Mais elle n’a pas voulu me le dire. Son Bismarck, c’était un mystère.”
“Oui, c’est un mystère, vraiment un mystère! Miss Brangwen, say that Bismarck is a mystery,” cried Winifred.
“Bismarck, is a mystery, Bismarck, c’est un mystère, der Bismarck, er ist ein Wunder,” said Gudrun, in mocking incantation.
“Ja, er ist ein Wunder,” repeated Winifred, with odd seriousness, under which lay a wicked chuckle.
“Ist er auch ein Wunder?” came the slightly insolent sneering of Mademoiselle.
“Doch!” said Winifred briefly, indifferent.
“Doch ist er nicht ein König. Beesmarck, he was not a king, Winifred, as you have said. He was only—il n’était que chancelier.”
“Qu’est ce qu’un chancelier?” said Winifred, with slightly contemptuous indifference.
“A chancelier is a chancellor, and a chancellor is, I believe, a sort of judge,” said Gerald coming up and shaking hands with Gudrun. “You’ll have made a song of Bismarck soon,” said he.
Mademoiselle waited, and discreetly made her inclination, and her greeting.
“So they wouldn’t let you see Bismarck, Mademoiselle?” he said.
“Non, Monsieur.”
“Ay, very mean of them. What are you going to do to him, Miss Brangwen? I want him sent to the kitchen and cooked.”
“Oh no,” cried Winifred.
“We’re going to draw him,” said Gudrun.
“Draw him and quarter him and dish him up,” he said, being purposely fatuous.
“Oh no,” cried Winifred with emphasis, chuckling.
Gudrun detected the tang of mockery in him, and she looked up and smiled into his face. He felt his nerves caressed. Their eyes met in knowledge.
“How do you like Shortlands?” he asked.
“Oh, very much,” she said, with nonchalance.
“Glad you do. Have you noticed these flowers?”
He led her along the path. She followed intently. Winifred came, and the governess lingered in the rear. They stopped before some veined salpiglossis flowers.
“Aren’t they wonderful?” she cried, looking at them absorbedly. Strange how her reverential, almost ecstatic admiration of the flowers caressed his nerves. She stooped down, and touched the trumpets, with infinitely fine and delicate-touching fingertips. It filled him with ease to see her. When she rose, her eyes, hot with the beauty of the flowers, looked into his.
“What are they?” she asked.
“Sort of petunia, I suppose,” he answered. “I don’t really know them.”
“They are quite strangers to me,” she said.
They stood together in a false intimacy, a nervous contact. And he was in love with her.
She was aware of Mademoiselle standing near, like a little French beetle, observant and calculating. She moved away with Winifred, saying they would go to find Bismarck.
Gerald watched them go, looking all the while at the soft, full, still body of Gudrun, in its silky cashmere. How silky and rich and soft her body must be. An excess of appreciation came over his mind, she was the all-desirable, the all-beautiful. He wanted only to come to her, nothing more. He was only this, this being that should come to her, and be given to her.
At the same time he was finely and acutely aware of Mademoiselle’s neat, brittle finality of form. She was like some elegant beetle with thin ankles, perched on her high heels, her glossy black dress perfectly correct, her dark hair done high and admirably. How repulsive her completeness and her finality was! He loathed her.
Yet he did admire her. She was perfectly correct. And it did rather annoy him, that Gudrun came dressed in startling colours, like a macaw, when the family was in mourning. Like a macaw she was! He watched the lingering way she took her feet from the ground. And her ankles were pale yellow, and her dress a deep blue. Yet it pleased him. It pleased him very much. He felt the challenge in her very attire—she challenged the whole world. And he smiled as to the note of a trumpet.
Gudrun and Winifred went through the house to the back, where were the stables and the outbuildings. Everywhere was still and deserted. Mr. Crich had gone out for a short drive, the stableman had just led round Gerald’s horse. The two girls went to the hutch that stood in a corner, and looked at the great black-and-white rabbit.
“Isn’t he beautiful! Oh, do look at him listening! Doesn’t he look silly!” she laughed quickly, then added “Oh, do let’s do him listening, do let us, he listens with so much of himself;—don’t you darling Bismarck?”
“Can we take him out?” said Gudrun.
“He’s very strong. He really is extremely strong.” She looked at Gudrun, her head on one side, in odd calculating mistrust.
“But we’ll try, shall we?”
“Yes, if you like. But he’s a fearful kicker!”
They took the key to unlock the door. The rabbit exploded in a wild rush round the hutch.
“He scratches most awfully sometimes,” cried Winifred in excitement. “Oh do look at him, isn’t he wonderful!” The rabbit tore round the hutch in a hurry. “Bismarck!” cried the child, in rousing excitement. “How dreadful you are! You are beastly.” Winifred looked up at Gudrun with some misgiving in her wild excitement. Gudrun smiled sardonically with her mouth. Winifred made a strange crooning noise of unaccountable excitement. “Now he’s still!” she cried, seeing the rabbit settled down in a far corner of the hutch. “Shall we take him now?” she whispered excitedly, mysteriously, looking up at Gudrun and edging very close. “Shall we get him now?—” she chuckled wickedly to herself.
They unlocked the door of the hutch. Gudrun thrust in her arm and seized the great, lusty rabbit as it crouched still, she grasped its long ears. It set its four feet flat, and thrust back. There was a long scraping sound as
