`Don't they make the most fearful noise when they scream?' she cried, the high note in her voice, like a sea-gull'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 wall-flowers 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, suddenly burst into life.Round and round the court it went, as if shot from a gun, round and round like a furry meteorite, in a tense hard circle that seemed to bind their brains.They all stood in amazement, smiling uncannily, as if the rabbit were obeying some unknown incantation.Round and round it flew, on the grass under the old red walls like a storm.
And then quite suddenly it settled down, hobbled among the grass, and sat considering, its nose twitching like a bit of fluff in the wind.After having considered for a few minutes, a soft bunch with a black, open eye, which perhaps was looking at them, perhaps was not, it hobbled calmly forward and began to nibble the grass with that mean motion of a rabbit's quick eating.
`It's mad,' said Gudrun.`It is most decidedly mad.'
He laughed.
`The question is,' he said, `what is madness? I don't suppose it is rabbit-mad.'
`Don't you think it is?' she asked.
`No.That's what it is to be a rabbit.'
There was a queer, faint, obscene smile over his face.She looked at him and saw him, and knew that he was initiate as she was initiate.This thwarted her, and contravened her, for the moment.
`God be praised we aren't rabbits,' she said, in a high, shrill voice.
The smile intensified a little, on his face.
`Not rabbits?' he said, looking at her fixedly.
Slowly her face relaxed into a smile of obscene recognition.
`Ah Gerald,' she said, in a strong, slow, almost man-like way.`--All that, and more.' Her eyes looked up at him with shocking nonchalance.
He felt again as if she had torn him across the breast, dully, finally.
He turned aside.
`Eat, eat my darling!' Winifred was softly conjuring the rabbit, and creeping forward to touch it.It hobbled away from her.`Let its mother stroke its fur then, darling, because it is so mysterious--'