Lappin and Lapinova

They were married. The wedding march pealed out. The pigeons fluttered. Small boys in Eton jackets threw rice; a fox terrier sauntered across the path; and Ernest Thorburn led his bride to the car through that small inquisitive crowd of complete strangers which always collects in London to enjoy other people’s happiness or unhappiness. More rice was thrown, and the car moved off.

Now it was Saturday

That was on Tuesday. Rosalind had still to get used to the fact that she was Mrs. Ernest Thorburn. Perhaps she never would get used to the fact that she was Mrs. Ernest Anybody, she thought, as she sat in the bow window of the hotel looking over the lake to the mountains, and waited for her husband to come down to breakfast. Ernest was a difficult name to get used to. It was not the name she would have chosen. She would have preferred Timothy, Antony, or Peter. He did not look like Ernest either. The name suggested the Albert Memorial, mahogany sideboards, steel engravings of the Prince Consort with his family-her mother-in-law’s dining-room in Porchester Terrace in short.

But here he was. Thank goodness he did not look like Ernest-no. But what did he look like? She glanced at him sideways. Well, when he was eating toast he looked like a rabbit. Not that anyone else would have seen a likeness to a creature so diminutive and timid in this spruce, muscular young man with the straight nose, the blue eyes, and the very firm mouth. But that made it all the more amusing. His nose twitched very slightly when he ate. So did her pet rabbit’s. She kept watching his nose twitch; and then she had to explain, when he caught her looking at him, why she laughed.

“It’s because you’re like a rabbit, Ernest,” she said. “Like a wild rabbit,” she added, looking at him. “A hunting rabbit; a King Rabbit; a rabbit that makes laws for all the other rabbits.”

Ernest had no objection to being that kind of rabbit, and since it amused her to see him twitch his nose-he had never known that his nose twitched-he twitched it on purpose. And she laughed and laughed; and he laughed too, so that the maiden ladies and the fishing man and the Swiss waiter in his greasy black jacket all guessed right; they were very happy. But how long does such happiness last? they asked themselves; and each answered according to his own circumstances.

At lunch time, seated on a clump of heather beside the lake, “Lettuce, rabbit?” said Rosalind, holding out the lettuce that had been provided to eat with the hardboiled eggs. “Come and take it out of my hand,” she added, and he stretched out and nibbled the lettuce and twitched his nose.

“Good rabbit, nice rabbit,” she said, patting him, as she used to pat her tame rabbit at home. But that was absurd. He was not a tame rabbit, whatever he was. She turned it into French. “Lapin,” she called him. But whatever he was, he was not a French rabbit. He was simply and solely English-born at Porchester Terrace, educated at Rugby; now a clerk in http://www.loansolution.com/installment-loans-mn/ His Majesty’s Civil Service. So she tried “Bunny” next; but that was worse. “Bunny” was someone plump and soft and comic; he was thin and hard and serious. Still, his nose twitched. “Lappin,” she exclaimed suddenly; and gave a little cry as if she had found the very word she looked for.

“Lappin, Lappin, King Lappin,” she repeated. It seemed to suit him exactly; he was not Ernest, he was King Lappin. Why? She did not know.