`Why that's Looloo!' he exclaimed.And he looked down in surprise, hearing the almost inhuman chuckle of the child at his side.
Gerald was away from home when Gudrun first came to Shortlands.But the first morning he came back he watched for her.It was a sunny, soft morning, and he lingered in the garden paths, looking at the flowers that had come out during his absence.He was clean and fit as ever, shaven, his fair hair scrupulously parted at the side, bright in the sunshine, his short, fair moustache closely clipped, his eyes with their humorous kind twinkle, which was so deceptive.He was dressed in black, his clothes sat well on his well-nourished body.Yet as he lingered before the flower-beds in the morning sunshine, there was a certain isolation, a fear about him, as of something wanting.
Gudrun came up quickly, unseen.She was dressed in blue, with woollen yellow stockings, like the Bluecoat boys.He glanced up in surprise.Her stockings always disconcerted him, the pale-yellow stockings and the heavy heavy black shoes.Winifred, who had been playing about the garden with Mademoiselle and the dogs, came flitting towards Gudrun.The child wore a dress of black-and-white stripes.Her hair was rather short, cut round and hanging level in her neck.
`We're going to do Bismarck, aren't we?' she said, linking her hand through Gudrun's arm.
`Yes, we're going to do Bismarck.Do you want to?'
`Oh yes--oh I do! I want most awfully to do Bismarck.He looks so splendid this morning, so fierce.He's almost as big as a lion.'
And the child chuckled sardonically at her own hyperbole.`He's a real king, he really is.'
`Bon jour, Mademoiselle,' said the little French governess, wavering up with a slight bow, a bow of the sort that Gudrun loathed, insolent.
`Winifred veut tant faire le portrait de Bismarck--! Oh, mais toute la matinee--"We will do Bismarck this morning!"--Bismarck, Bismarck, toujours Bismarck! C'est un lapin, n'est-ce pas, mademoiselle?'
`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 demande, "Qu'est ce donc que ce Bismarck, Winifred?"Mais elle n'a pas voulu me le dire.Son Bismarck, c'etait un mystere.'
`Oui, c'est un mystere, vraiment un mystere! Miss Brangwen, say that Bismarck is a mystery,' cried Winifred.
`Bismarck, is a mystery, Bismarck, c'est un mystere, 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 Konig.Beesmarck, he was not a king, Winifred, as you have said.He was only--il n'etait 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 finger-tips.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.