“Bismarck, Bismarck, you are behaving terribly,” said Winifred in a rather frightened voice, “Oh, do put him down, he’s beastly.”
Gudrun stood for a moment astounded by the thunderstorm that had sprung into being in her grip. Then her colour came up, a heavy rage came over her like a cloud. She stood shaken as a house in a storm, and utterly overcome. Her heart was arrested with fury at the mindlessness and the bestial stupidity of this struggle, her wrists were badly scored by the claws of the beast, a heavy cruelty welled up in her.
Gerald came round as she was trying to capture the flying rabbit under her arm. He saw, with subtle recognition, her sullen passion of cruelty.
“You should let one of the men do that for you,” he said hurrying up.
“Oh, he’s so horrid!” cried Winifred, almost frantic.
He held out his nervous, sinewy hand and took the rabbit by the ears, from Gudrun.
“It’s most fearfully strong,” she cried, in a high voice, like the crying a seagull, strange and vindictive.
The rabbit made itself into a ball in the air, and lashed out, flinging itself into a bow. It really seemed demoniacal. Gudrun saw Gerald’s body tighten, saw a sharp blindness come into his eyes.
“I know these beggars of old,” he said.
The long, demon-like beast lashed out again, spread on the air as if it were flying, looking something like a dragon, then closing up again, inconceivably powerful and explosive. The man’s body, strung to its efforts, vibrated strongly. Then a sudden sharp, white-edged wrath came up in him. Swift as lightning he drew back and brought his free hand down like a hawk on the neck of the rabbit. Simultaneously, there came the unearthly abhorrent scream of a rabbit in the fear of death. It made one immense writhe, tore his wrists and his sleeves in a final convulsion, all its belly flashed white in a whirlwind of paws, and then he had slung it round and had it under his arm, fast. It cowered and skulked. His face was gleaming with a smile.
“You wouldn’t think there was all that force in a rabbit,” he said, looking at Gudrun. And he saw her eyes black as night in her pallid face, she looked almost unearthly. The scream of the rabbit, after the violent tussle, seemed to have torn the veil of her consciousness. He looked at her, and the whitish, electric gleam in his face intensified.
“I don’t really like him,” Winifred was crooning. “I don’t care for him as I do for Loozie. He’s hateful really.”
A smile twisted Gudrun’s face, as she recovered. She knew she was revealed. “Don’t they make the most fearful noise when they scream?” she cried, the high note in her voice, like a seagull’s cry.
“Abominable,” he said.
“He shouldn’t be so silly when he has to be taken out,” Winifred was saying, putting out her hand and touching the rabbit tentatively, as it skulked under his arm, motionless as if it were dead.
“He’s not dead, is he Gerald?” she asked.
“No, he ought to be,” he said.
“Yes, he ought!” cried the child, with a sudden flush of amusement. And she touched the rabbit with more confidence. “His heart is beating so fast. Isn’t he funny? He really is.”
“Where do you want him?” asked Gerald.
“In the little green court,” she said.
Gudrun looked at Gerald with strange, darkened eyes, strained with underworld knowledge, almost supplicating, like those of a creature which is at his mercy, yet which is his ultimate victor. He did not know what to say to her. He felt the mutual hellish recognition. And he felt he ought to say something, to cover it. He had the power of lightning in his nerves, she seemed like a soft recipient of his magical, hideous white fire. He was unconfident, he had qualms of fear.
“Did he hurt you?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“He’s an insensible beast,” he said, turning his face away.
They came to the little court, which was shut in by old red walls in whose crevices wallflowers were growing. The grass was soft and fine and old, a level floor carpeting the court, the sky was blue overhead. Gerald tossed the rabbit down. It crouched still and would not move. Gudrun watched it with faint horror.
“Why doesn’t it move?” she cried.
“It’s skulking,” he said.
She looked up at him, and a slight sinister smile contracted her white face.
“Isn’t it a fool!” she cried. “Isn’t it a sickening fool?” The vindictive mockery in her voice made his brain quiver. Glancing up at him, into his eyes, she revealed again the mocking, white-cruel recognition. There was a league between them, abhorrent to them both. They were implicated with each other in abhorrent mysteries.
“How many scratches have you?” he asked, showing his hard forearm, white and hard and torn in red gashes.
“How really vile!” she cried, flushing with a sinister vision. “Mine is nothing.”
She lifted her arm and showed a deep red score down the silken white flesh.
“What a devil!” he exclaimed. But it was as if he had had knowledge of her in the long red rent of her forearm, so silken and soft. He did not want to touch her. He would have to make himself touch her, deliberately. The long, shallow red rip seemed torn across his own brain, tearing the surface of his ultimate consciousness, letting through the forever unconscious, unthinkable red ether of the beyond, the obscene beyond.
“It doesn’t hurt you very much, does it?” he asked, solicitous.
“Not at all,” she cried.
And suddenly the rabbit, which had been crouching as if it were a flower, so still and soft,
