The White Peacock (26 page)

"Tha likest me, doesna ta?" he asked softly.

"What do you want to know for?" she replied, with a tender archness.

"But tha does—say now, tha does."

"I should a' thought you'd a' known, without telling."

"Nay, but I want to hear thee."

"Go on," she said, and she kissed him.

"But what should you do if I went to Canada and left you?"

"Ah—you wouldn't do that."

"But I might—and what then?"

"Oh, I don't know what I should do. But you wouldn't do it, I know you
wouldn't—you couldn't." He quickly put his arms round her and kissed
her, moved by the trembling surety of her tone:

"No, I wouldna—I'd niver leave thee—tha'd be as miserable as sin,
shouldna ta, my duck?"

"Yes," she murmured.

"Ah," he said, "tha'rt a warm little thing—tha loves me, eh?"

"Yes," she murmured, and he pressed her to him, and kissed her, and held
her close.

"We'll be married soon, my bird—are ter glad?—in a bit—tha'rt glad,
aren't ta?"

She looked up at him as if he were noble. Her love for him was so
generous that it beautified him.

He had to walk his bicycle home, being unable to ride; his shins, I
know, were a good deal barked by the pedals.

On the first Sunday in June, when Lettie knew she would keep her
engagement with Leslie, and when she was having a day at home from
Highclose, she got ready to go down to the mill. We were in mourning for
an aunt, so she wore a dress of fine black voile, and a black hat with
long feathers. Then, when I looked at her fair hands, and her arms
closely covered in the long black cuffs of her sleeves, I felt keenly my
old brother–love shielding, indulgent.

It was a windy, sunny day. In shelter the heat was passionate, but in
the open the wind scattered its fire. Every now and then a white cloud
broad based, blue shadowed, travelled slowly along the sky–road after
the forerunner small in the distance, and trailing over us a chill
shade, a gloom which we watched creep on over the water, over the wood
and the hill. These royal, rounded clouds had sailed all day along the
same route, from the harbour of the South to the wastes in the Northern
sky, following the swift wild geese. The brook hurried along singing,
only here and there lingering to whisper to the secret bushes, then
setting off afresh with a new snatch of song.

The fowls pecked staidly in the farmyard, with Sabbath decorum.
Occasionally a lost, sportive wind–puff would wander across the yard and
ruffle them, and they resented it. The pigs were asleep in the sun,
giving faint grunts now and then from sheer luxury. I saw a squirrel go
darting down the mossy garden wall, up into the laburnum tree, where he
lay flat along the bough, and listened. Suddenly away he went, chuckling
to himself. Gyp all at once set off barking, but I soothed her down; it
was the unusual sight of Lettie's dark dress that startled her, I
suppose.

We went quietly into the kitchen. Mrs. Saxton was just putting a
chicken, wrapped in a piece of flannel, on the warm hob to coax it into
life; it looked very feeble. George was asleep, with his head in his
arms on the table; the father was asleep on the sofa, very comfortable
and admirable; I heard Emily fleeing up stairs, presumably to dress.

"He stays out so late—up at the Ram Inn," whispered the mother in a
high whisper, looking at George, "and then he's up at five—he doesn't
get his proper rest." She turned to the chicks, and continued in her
whisper—"the mother left them just before they hatched out, so we've
been bringing them on here. This one's a bit weak—I thought I'd hot him
up a bit" she laughed with a quaint little frown of deprecation. Eight
or nine yellow, fluffy little mites were cheeping and scuffling in the
fender. Lettie bent over them to touch them; they were tame, and ran
among her fingers.

Suddenly George's mother gave a loud cry, and rushed to the fire. There
was a smell of singed down. The chicken had toddled into the fire, and
gasped its faint gasp among the red–hot cokes. The father jumped from
the sofa; George sat up with wide eyes; Lettie gave a little cry and a
shudder; Trip rushed round and began to bark. There was a smell of
cooked meat.

"There goes number one!" said the mother, with her queer little laugh.
It made me laugh too.

"What's a matter—what's a matter?" asked the father excitedly.

"It's a chicken been and walked into the fire—I put it on the hob to
warm," explained his wife.

"Goodness—I couldn't think what was up!" he said, and dropped his head
to trace gradually the border between sleeping and waking.

George sat and smiled at us faintly, he was too dazed to speak. His
chest still leaned against the table, and his arms were spread out
thereon, but he lifted his face, and looked at Lettie with his dazed,
dark eyes, and smiled faintly at her. His hair was all ruffled, and his
shirt collar unbuttoned. Then he got up slowly, pushing his chair back
with a loud noise, and stretched himself, pressing his arms upwards with
a long, heavy stretch.

"Oh—h—h!" he said, bending his arms and then letting them drop to his
sides. "I never thought you'd come to–day."

"I wanted to come and see you—I shan't have many more chances," said
Lettie, turning from him and yet looking at him again.

"
No
, I suppose not," he said, subsiding into quiet. Then there was
silence for some time. The mother began to enquire after Leslie, and
kept the conversation up till Emily came down, blushing and smiling and
glad.

"Are you coming out?" said she, "there are two or three robins' nests,
and a spinkie's——"

"I think I'll leave my hat," said Lettie, unpinning it as she spoke, and
shaking her hair when she was free. Mrs. Saxton insisted on her taking a
long white silk scarf; Emily also wrapped her hair in a gauze scarf, and
looked beautiful.

George came out with us, coatless, hatless, his waistcoat all
unbuttoned, as he was. We crossed the orchard, over the old bridge, and
went to where the slopes ran down to the lower pond, a bank all covered
with nettles, and scattered with a hazel bush or two. Among the nettles
old pans were rusting, and old coarse pottery cropped up.

We came upon a kettle heavily coated with lime. Emily bent down and
looked, and then we peeped in. There were the robin birds with their
yellow beaks stretched so wide apart I feared they would never close
them again. Among the naked little mites, that begged from us so blindly
and confidently, were huddled three eggs.

"They are like Irish children peeping out of a cottage," said Emily,
with the family fondness for romantic similes.

We went on to where a tin lay with the lid pressed back, and inside it,
snug and neat, was another nest, with six eggs, cheek to cheek.

"How warm they are," said Lettie, touching them, "you can fairly feel
the mother's breast."

He tried to put his hand into the tin, but the space was too small, and
they looked into each other's eyes and smiled. "You'd think the father's
breast had marked them with red," said Emily.

As we went up the orchard side we saw three wide displays of coloured
pieces of pots arranged at the foot of three trees.

"Look," said Emily, "those are the children's houses. You don't know how
our Mollie gets all Sam's pretty bits—she is a cajoling hussy!"

The two looked at each other again, smiling. Up on the pond–side, in the
full glitter of light, we looked round where the blades of clustering
corn were softly healing the red bosom of the hill. The larks were
overhead among the sunbeams. We straggled away across the grass. The
field was all afroth with cowslips, a yellow, glittering, shaking froth
on the still green of the grass. We trailed our shadows across the
fields, extinguishing the sunshine on the flowers as we went. The air
was tingling with the scent of blossoms.

"Look at the cowslips, all shaking with laughter," said Emily, and she
tossed back her head, and her dark eyes sparkled among the flow of
gauze. Lettie was on in front, flitting darkly across the field, bending
over the flowers, stooping to the earth like a sable Persephone come
into freedom. George had left her at a little distance, hunting for
something in the grass. He stopped, and remained standing in one place.

Gradually, as if unconsciously, she drew near to him, and when she
lifted her head, after stooping to pick some chimney–sweeps, little
grass flowers, she laughed with a slight surprise to see him so near.

"Ah!" she said. "I thought I was all alone in the world—such a splendid
world—it was so nice."

"Like Eve in a meadow in Eden—and Adam's shadow somewhere on the
grass," said I.

"No—no Adam," she asserted, frowning slightly, and laughing.

"Who ever would want streets of gold," Emily was saying to me, "when you
can have a field of cowslips! Look at that hedgebottom that gets the
South sun—one stream and glitter of buttercups."

"Those Jews always had an eye to the filthy lucre—they even made Heaven
out of it," laughed Lettie, and, turning to him, she said, "Don't you
wish we were wild—hark, like wood–pigeons—or larks—or, look, like
peewits? Shouldn't you love flying and wheeling and sparkling
and—courting in the wind?" She lifted her eyelids, and vibrated the
question. He flushed, bending over the ground.

"Look," he said, "here's a larkie's."

Once a horse had left a hoofprint in the soft meadow; now the larks had
rounded, softened the cup, and had laid there three dark–brown eggs.
Lettie sat down and leaned over the nest; he leaned above her. The wind
running over the flower heads, peeped in at the little brown buds, and
bounded off again gladly. The big clouds sent messages to them down the
shadows, and ran in raindrops to touch them.

"I wish," she said, "I wish we were free like that. If we could put
everything safely in a little place in the earth—couldn't we have a
good time as well as the larks?"

"I don't see," said he, "why we can't."

"Oh—but I can't—you know we can't"—and she looked at him fiercely.

"Why can't you?" he asked.

"You know we can't—you know as well as I do," she replied, and her
whole soul challenged him. "We have to consider things" she added. He
dropped his head. He was afraid to make the struggle, to rouse himself
to decide the question for her. She turned away, and went kicking
through the flowers. He picked up the blossoms she had left by the
nest—they were still warm from her hands—and followed her. She walked
on towards the end of the field, the long strands of her white scarf
running before her. Then she leaned back to the wind, while he caught
her up.

"Don't you want your flowers?" he asked humbly.

"No, thanks—they'd be dead before I got home—throw them away, you look
absurd with a posy."

He did as he was bidden. They came near the hedge. A crab–apple tree
blossomed up among the blue.

"You may get me a bit of that blossom," said she, and suddenly
added—"no, I can reach it myself," whereupon she stretched upward and
pulled several sprigs of the pink and white, and put it in her dress.

"Isn't it pretty?" she said, and she began to laugh ironically, pointing
to the flowers—"pretty, pink–cheeked petals, and stamens like yellow
hair, and buds like lips promising something nice"—she stopped and
looked at him, flickering with a smile. Then she pointed to the ovary
beneath the flower, and said: "Result: Crab–apples!"

She continued to look at him, and to smile. He said nothing. So they
went on to where they could climb the fence into the spinney. She
climbed to the top rail, holding by an oak bough. Then she let him lift
her down bodily.

"Ah!" she said, "you like to show me how strong you are—a veritable
Samson!"—she mocked, although she had invited him with her eyes to take
her in his arms.

We were entering the spinney of black poplar. In the hedge was an elm
tree, with myriads of dark dots pointed against the bright sky, myriads
of clusters of flaky green fruit.

"Look at that elm," she said, "you'd think it was in full leaf, wouldn't
you? Do you know why it's so prolific?"

"No," he said, with a curious questioning drawl of the monosyllable.

"It's casting its bread upon the winds—no, it is dying, so it puts out
all its strength and loads its boughs with the last fruit. It'll be dead
next year. If you're here then, come and see. Look at the ivy, the suave
smooth ivy, with its fingers in the trees' throat. Trees know how to
die, you see—we don't."

With her whimsical moods she tormented him. She was at the bottom a
seething confusion of emotion, and she wanted to make him likewise.

"If we were trees with ivy—instead of being fine humans with free
active life—we should hug our thinning lives, shouldn't we?"

"I suppose we should."

"You, for instance—fancy
your
sacrificing yourself—for the next
generation—that reminds you of Schopenhauer, doesn't it?—for the next
generation, or love, or anything!"

He did not answer her; she was too swift for him. They passed on under
the poplars, which were hanging strings of green beads above them. There
was a little open space, with tufts of bluebells. Lettie stooped over a
wood–pigeon that lay on the ground on its breast, its wings half spread.
She took it up—its eyes were bursten and bloody; she felt its breast,
ruffling the dimming iris on its throat.

"It's been fighting," he said.

"What for—a mate?" she asked, looking at him.

"I don't know," he answered.

"Cold—he's quite cold, under the feathers! I think a wood–pigeon must
enjoy being fought for—and being won especially if the right one won.
It would be a fine pleasure to see them fighting—don't you think?" she
said, torturing him.

"The claws are spread—it fell dead off the perch," he replied.

"Ah, poor thing—it was wounded—and sat and waited for death—when the
other had won. Don't you think life is very cruel, George—and love the
cruellest of all?"

He laughed bitterly under the pain of her soft, sad tones.

"Let me bury him—and have done with the beaten lover. But we'll make
him a pretty grave."

She scooped a hole in the dark soil, and snatching a handful of
bluebells, threw them in on top of the dead bird. Then she smoothed the
soil over all, and pressed her white hands on the black loam.

"There," she said, knocking her hands one against the other to shake off
the soil, "he's done with. Come on."

He followed her, speechless with his emotion.

The spinney opened out; the ferns were serenely uncoiling, the bluebells
stood grouped with blue curls mingled. In the freer spaces
forget–me–nots flowered in nebulæ, and dog–violets gave an undertone of
dark purple, with primroses for planets in the night. There was a slight
drift of woodruff, sweet new–mown hay, scenting the air under the
boughs. On a wet bank was the design of golden saxifrage, glistening
unholily as if varnished by its minister, the snail. George and Lettie
crushed the veined belles of wood–sorrel and broke the silken mosses.
What did it matter to them what they broke or crushed.