Lore of Proserpine | Page 9

It was pushed from his forehead sideways in
a thick, in a solid fold, as if it had been the corner of a frieze cape
thrown back. It was dark hair, but not black; his neck was very thin. I
don't know how he was dressed--I never noticed such things; but in
colour he must have been inconspicuous, since I had been looking at
him for a good time without seeing him at all. A sleeveless tunic, I
think, which may have been brown, or grey, or silver-white. I don't
know. But his knees were bare--that I remember; and his arms were
bare from the shoulder.
I standing, he squatting on his heels, the pair of us looked full at one
another. I was not frightened, no more was he. I was excited, and full of
interest; so, I think, was he. My heart beat double time. Then I saw,
with a curious excitement, that between his knees he held a rabbit, and
that with his left hand he had it by the throat. Now, what is
extraordinary to me about this discovery is that there was nothing
shocking in it.

I saw the rabbit's wild and panic-blown eye, I saw the bright white rim
of it, and recognised its little added terror of me even in the midst of its
anguish. That must have been the conventional fright of a beast of
chase, an instinct to fear rather than an emotion; for of emotions the
poor thing must have been having its fill. It was not till I saw its mouth
horribly open, its lips curled back to show its shelving teeth that I could
have guessed at what it was suffering. But gradually I apprehended
what was being done. Its captor was squeezing its throat. I saw what I
had never seen before, and have never seen since, I saw its tongue like
a pale pink petal of a flower dart out as the pressure drove it. Revolting
sight as that would have been to me, witnessed in the world, here, in
this dark wood, in this outland presence, it was nothing but curious.
Now, as I watched and wondered, the being, following my eyes'
direction, looked down at the huddled thing between his thighs, and
just as children squeeze a snap-dragon flower to make it open and shut
its mouth, so precisely did he, pressing or releasing the windpipe, cause
that poor beast to throw back its lips and dart its dry tongue. He did this
many times while he watched it; and when he looked up at me again,
and while he continued to look at me, I saw that his cruel fingers, as by
habit, continued the torture, and that in some way he derived pleasure
from the performance--as if it gratified him to be sure that effect was
following on cause inevitably.
I have never, I believe, been cruel to an animal in my life. I hated
cruelty then as I hate it now. I have always shirked the sight of
anything in pain from my childhood onwards. Yet the fact is that not
only did I nothing to interfere in what I saw going on, but that I was
deeply interested and absorbed in it. I can only explain that to myself
now, by supposing that I knew then, that the creature in front of me was
not of my own kind, and was not, in fact, outraging any law of its own
being. Is not that possible? May I not have collected unawares so much
out of created nature? I am unable to say: all I am clear about is that
here was a thing in the semblance of a boy doing what I had never
observed a boy do, and what if I ever had observed a boy do, would
have flung me into a transport of rage and grief. Here, therefore, was a
thing in the semblance of a boy who was no boy at all. So much must
have been as certain to me then as it is indisputable now.

One doesn't, at that age, reason things out; one knows them, and is
dumb, though unconvinced, before powerful syllogisms to the contrary.
All children are so, confronted by strange phenomena. And yet I had
facts to go upon if, child as I was, I had been capable of inference. I
need only mention one. If this creature had been human, upon seeing
that I was conscious of its behaviour to the rabbit, it would either have
stopped the moment it perceived that I did not approve or was not
amused, or it would have continued deliberately out of bravado. But it
neither stopped nor hardily continued. It watched its experiment with
interest for a little, then, finding me more interesting, did