And again chuckling, she rushed to embrace the dog, in penitence, as if she were doing him some subtle injury. He sat all the time with the resignation and fretfulness of ages on his dark velvety face. She drew slowly, with a wicked concentration in her eyes, her head on one side, an intense stillness over her. She was as if working the spell of some enchantment. Suddenly she had finished. She looked at the dog, and then at her drawing, and then cried, with real grief for the dog, and at the same time with a wicked exultation:
'My beautiful, why did they?'
She took her paper to the dog, and held it under his nose. He turned his head aside as in chagrin and mortification, and she impulsively kissed his velvety bulging forehead.
''s a Loolie, 's a little Loozie! Look at his portrait, darling, look at his portrait, that his mother has done of him.' She looked at her paper and chuckled. Then, kissing the dog once more, she rose and came gravely to Gudrun, offering her the paper.
It was a grotesque little diagram of a grotesque little animal, so wicked and so comical, a slow smile came over Gudrun’s face, unconsciously. And at her side Winifred chuckled with glee, and said:
'It isn’t like him, is it? He’s much lovelier than that. He’s so beautiful–mmm, Looloo, my sweet darling.' And she flew off to embrace the chagrined little dog. He looked up at her with reproachful, saturnine eyes, vanquished in his extreme agedness of being. Then she flew back to her drawing, and chuckled with satisfaction.
'It isn’t like him, is it?' she said to Gudrun.
'Yes, it’s very like him,' Gudrun replied.
The child treasured her drawing, carried it about with her, and showed it, with a silent embarrassment, to everybody.
'Look,' she said, thrusting the paper into her father’s hand.
'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.
