The White Peacock (33 page)

"When you have made the fortune you talked about," she replied.

He was uplifted by her remembering the things he had said.

"But when I have made it—when!"—he said sceptically,—"even
then—well, I shall only be, or have been, landlord of 'Ye Ramme Inne.'"
He looked at her, waiting for her to lift up his hopes with her gay
balloons.

"Oh, that doesn't matter! Leslie might be landlord of some Ram Inn when
he's at home, for all anybody would know—mightn't you, hubby, dear?"

"Thanks!" replied Leslie, with good humoured sarcasm.

"You can't tell a publican from a peer, if he's a rich publican," she
continued. "Money maketh the man, you know."

"Plus manners," added George, laughing.

"Oh they are always there—where I am. I give you ten years. At the end
of that time you must invite us to your swell place—say the Hall at
Eberwich—and we will come—' with all our numerous array.'"

She sat among her cushions smiling upon him. She was half ironical, half
sincere. He smiled back at her, his dark eyes full of trembling hope,
and pleasure, and pride.

"How is Meg?" she asked. "Is she as charming as ever—or have you
spoiled her?"

"Oh, she is as charming as ever," he replied. "And we are tremendously
fond of one another."

"That is right!—I do think men are delightful," she added, smiling.

"I am glad you think so," he laughed.

They talked on brightly about a thousand things. She touched on Paris,
and pictures, and new music, with her quick chatter, sounding to George
wonderful in her culture and facility. And at last he said he must go.

"Not until you have eaten a biscuit and drunk good luck with me," she
cried, catching her dress about her like a dim flame and running out of
the room. We all drank to the New Year in the cold champagne.

"To the
Vita Nuova
!" said Lettie, and we drank smiling:

"Hark!" said George, "the hooters."

We stood still and listened. There was a faint booing noise far away
outside. It was midnight. Lettie caught up a wrap and we went to the
door. The wood, the ice, the grey dim hills lay frozen in the light of
the moon. But outside the valley, far away in Derbyshire, away towards
Nottingham, on every hand the distant hooters and buzzers of mines and
ironworks crowed small on the borders of the night, like so many
strange, low voices of cockerels bursting forth at different pitch, with
different tone, warning us of the dawn of the New Year.

I found a good deal of difference in Leslie since his marriage. He had
lost his assertive self–confidence. He no longer pronounced emphatically
and ultimately on every subject, nor did he seek to dominate, as he had
always done, the company in which he found himself. I was surprised to
see him so courteous and attentive to George. He moved unobtrusively
about the room while Lettie was chattering, and in his demeanour there
was a new reserve, a gentleness and grace. It was charming to see him
offering the cigarettes to George, or, with beautiful tact, asking with
his eyes only whether he should refill the glass of his guest, and
afterward replacing it softly close to the other's hand.

To Lettie he was unfailingly attentive, courteous, and undemonstrative.

Towards the end of my holiday he had to go to London on business, and we
agreed to take the journey together. We must leave Woodside soon after
eight o'clock in the morning. Lettie and he had separate rooms. I
thought she would not have risen to take breakfast with us, but at a
quarter–past seven, just as Rebecca was bringing in the coffee, she came
downstairs. She wore a blue morning gown, and her hair was as
beautifully dressed as usual.

"Why, my darling, you shouldn't have troubled to come down so early,"
said Leslie, as he kissed her.

"Of course, I should come down," she replied, lifting back the heavy
curtains and looking out on the snow where the darkness was wilting into
daylight. "I should not let you go away into the cold without having
seen you take a good breakfast. I think it is thawing. The snow on the
rhododendrons looks sodden and drooping. Ah, well, we can keep out the
dismal of the morning for another hour." She glanced at the clock—"just
an hour!" she added. He turned to her with a swift tenderness. She
smiled to him, and sat down at the coffee–maker. We took our places at
table.

"I think I shall come back to–night," he said quietly, almost
appealingly.

She watched the flow of the coffee before she answered. Then the brass
urn swung back, and she lifted her face to hand him the cup.

"You will not do anything so foolish, Leslie," she said calmly.

He took his cup, thanking her, and bent his face over the fragrant
steam.

"I can easily catch the 7:15 from St. Pancras," he replied, without
looking up.

"Have I sweetened to your liking Cyril?" she asked, and then, as she
stirred her coffee she added, "It is ridiculous Leslie! You catch the
7.15 and very probably miss the connection at Nottingham. You can't have
the motor–car there, because of the roads. Besides, it is absurd to come
toiling home in the cold slushy night when you may just as well stay in
London and be comfortable."

"At any rate I should get the 10.30 down to Lawton Hill," he urged.

"But there is no need," she replied, "there is not the faintest need for
you to come home to–night. It is really absurd of you. Think of all the
discomfort! Indeed I should not want to come trailing dismally home at
midnight, I should not indeed. You would be simply wretched. Stay and
have a jolly evening with Cyril."

He kept his head bent over his plate and did not reply. His persistence
irritated her slightly.

"That is what you can do!" she said. "Go to the pantomime. Or wait—go
to Maeterlinck's 'Blue Bird.' I am sure that is on somewhere. I wonder
if Rebecca has destroyed yesterday's paper. Do you mind touching the
bell, Cyril?" Rebecca came, and the paper was discovered. Lettie
carefully read the notices, and planned for us with zest a delightful
programme for the evening. Leslie listened to it all in silence.

When the time had come for our departure Lettie came with us into the
hall to see that we were well wrapped up. Leslie had spoken very few
words. She was conscious that he was deeply offended, but her manner was
quite calm, and she petted us both brightly.

"Good–bye dear!" she said to him, when he came mutely to kiss her. "You
know it would have been miserable for you to sit all those hours in the
train at night. You will have ever such a jolly time. I know you will. I
shall look for you to–morrow. Good–bye, then, Good–bye!"

He went down the steps and into the car without looking at her. She
waited in the doorway as we moved round. In the black–grey morning she
seemed to harbour the glittering blue sky and the sunshine of March in
her dress and her luxuriant hair. He did not look at her till we were
curving to the great, snow–cumbered rhododendrons, when, at the last
moment he stood up in a sudden panic to wave to her. Almost as he saw
her the bushes came between them and he dropped dejectedly into his
seat.

"Good–bye!" we heard her call cheerfully and tenderly like a blackbird.

"Good–bye!" I answered, and: "Good–bye Darling, Good–bye!" he cried,
suddenly starting up in a passion of forgiveness and tenderness.

The car went cautiously down the soddened white path, under the trees.

I suffered acutely the sickness of exile in Norwood. For weeks I
wandered the streets of the suburb, haunted by the spirit of some part
of Nethermere. As I went along the quiet roads where the lamps in yellow
loneliness stood among the leafless trees of the night I would feel the
feeling of the dark, wet bit of path between the wood meadow and the
brooks. The spirit of that wild little slope to the Mill would come upon
me, and there in the suburb of London I would walk wrapt in the sense of
a small wet place in the valley of Nethermere. A strange voice within me
rose and called for the hill path; again I could feel the wood waiting
for me, calling and calling, and I crying for the wood, yet the space of
many miles was between us. Since I left the valley of home I have not
much feared any other loss. The hills of Nethermere had been my walls,
and the sky of Nethermere my roof overhead. It seemed almost as if, at
home, I might lift my hand to the ceiling of the valley, and touch my
own beloved sky, whose familiar clouds came again and again to visit me,
whose stars were constant to me, born when I was born, whose sun had
been all my father to me. But now the skies were strange over my head,
and Orion walked past me unnoticing, he who night after night had stood
over the woods to spend with me a wonderful hour. When does day now lift
up the confines of my dwelling place, when does the night throw open her
vastness for me, and send me the stars for company? There is no night in
a city. How can I lose myself in the magnificent forest of darkness when
night is only a thin scattering of the trees of shadow with barrenness
of lights between!

I could never lift my eyes save to the Crystal Palace, crouching,
cowering wretchedly among the yellow–grey clouds, pricking up its two
round towers like pillars of anxious misery. No landmark could have been
more foreign to me, more depressing, than the great dilapidated palace
which lay forever prostrate above us, fretting because of its own
degradation and ruin.

I watched the buds coming on the brown almond trees; I heard the
blackbirds, and I saw the restless starlings; in the streets were many
heaps of violets, and men held forward to me snowdrops whose white mute
lips were pushed upwards in a bunch: but these things had no meaning for
me, and little interest.

Most eagerly I waited for my letters. Emily wrote to me very constantly:

"Don't you find it quite exhilarating, almost intoxicating, to be so
free? I think it is quite wonderful. At home you cannot live your own
life. You have to struggle to keep even a little apart for yourself. It
is so hard to stand aloof from our mothers, and yet they are only hurt
and insulted if you tell them what is in your heart. It is such a relief
not to have to be anything to anybody, but just to please yourself. I am
sure mother and I have suffered a great deal from trying to keep up our
old relations. Yet she would not let me go. When I come home in the
evening and think that I needn't say anything to anybody, nor do
anything for anybody, but just have the evening for myself, I am
overjoyed.

"I have begun to write a story——"

Again, a little later, she wrote:

"As I go to school by Old Brayford village in the morning the birds are
thrilling wonderfully and everything seems stirring. Very likely there
will be a set–back, and after that spring will come in truth.

"When shall you come and see me? I cannot think of a spring without you.
The railways are the only fine exciting things here—one is only a few
yards away from school. All day long I am watching the great Midland
trains go south. They are very lucky to be able to rush southward
through the sunshine.

"The crows are very interesting. They flap past all the time we're out
in the yard. The railways and the crows make the charm of my life in
Brayford. The other day I saw no end of pairs of crows. Do you remember
what they say at home?—'One for sorrow.' Very often one solitary
creature sits on the telegraph wires. I almost hate him when I look at
him. I think my badge for life ought to be—one crow——."

Again, a little later:

"I have been home for the week–end. Isn't it nice to be made much of, to
be an important cherished person for a little time? It is quite a new
experience for me.

"The snowdrops are full out among the grass in the front garden—and
such a lot. I imagined you must come in the sunshine of the Sunday
afternoon to see them. It did not seem possible you should not. The
winter aconites are out along the hedge. I knelt and kissed them. I have
been so glad to go away, to breathe the free air of life, but I felt as
if I could not come away from the aconites. I have sent you some—are
they much withered?

"Now I am in my lodgings, I have the quite unusual feeling of being
contented to stay here a little while—not long—not above a year, I am
sure. But even to be contented for a little while is enough for me——."

In the beginning of March I had a letter from the father:

"You'll not see us again in the old place. We shall be gone in a
fortnight. The things are most of them gone already. George has got Bob
and Flower. I have sold three of the cows, Stafford, and Julia and
Hannah. The place looks very empty. I don't like going past the
cowsheds, and we miss hearing the horses stamp at night. But I shall not
be sorry when we have really gone. I begin to feel as if we'd stagnated
here. I begin to feel as if I was settling and getting narrow and dull.
It will be a new lease of life to get away.

"But I'm wondering how we shall be over there. Mrs. Saxton feels very
nervous about going. But at the worst we can but come back. I feel as if
I must go somewhere, it's stagnation and starvation for us here. I wish
George would come with me. I never thought he would have taken to
public–house keeping, but he seems to like it all right. He was down
with Meg on Sunday. Mrs. Saxton says he's getting a public–house tone.
He is certainly much livelier, more full of talk than he was. Meg and he
seem very comfortable, I'm glad to say. He's got a good milk–round, and
I've no doubt but what he'll do well. He is very cautious at the bottom;
he'll never lose much if he never makes much.

"Sam and David are very great friends. I'm glad I've got the boy. We
often talk of you. It would be very lonely if it wasn't for the
excitement of selling things and so on. Mrs. Saxton hopes you will stick
by George. She worries a bit about him, thinking he may go wrong. I
don't think he will ever go far. But I should be glad to know you were
keeping friends. Mrs. Saxton says she will write to you about it——."

George was a very poor correspondent. I soon ceased to expect a letter
from him. I received one directly after the father's.

"My Dear Cyril,

"Forgive me for not having written you before, but you see, I cannot sit
down and write to you any time. If I cannot do it just when I am in the
mood, I cannot do it at all. And it so often happens that the mood comes
upon me when I am in the fields at work, when it is impossible to write.
Last night I sat by myself in the kitchen on purpose to write to you,
and then I could not. All day, at Greymede, when I was drilling in the
fallow at the back of the church, I had been thinking of you, and I
could have written there if I had had materials, but I had not, and at
night I could not.

"I am sorry to say that in my last letter I did not thank you for the
books. I have not read them both, but I have nearly finished Evelyn
Innes. I get a bit tired of it towards the end. I do not do much reading
now. There seems to be hardly any chance for me, either somebody is
crying for me in the smoke room, or there is some business, or else Meg
won't let me. She doesn't like me to read at night, she says I ought to
talk to her, so I have to.

"It is half–past seven, and I am sitting ready dressed to go and talk to
Harry Jackson about a young horse he wants to sell to me. He is in
pretty low water, and it will make a pretty good horse. But I don't care
much whether I have it or not. The mood seized me to write to you.
Somehow at the bottom I feel miserable and heavy, yet there is no need.
I am making pretty good money, and I've got all I want. But when I've
been ploughing and getting the oats in those fields on the hillside at
the back of Greymede church, I've felt as if I didn't care whether I got
on or not. It's very funny. Last week I made over five pounds clear, one
way and another, and yet now I'm as restless, and discontented as I can
be, and I seem eager for something, but I don't know what it is.
Sometimes I wonder where I am going. Yesterday I watched broken white
masses of cloud sailing across the sky in a fresh strong wind. They all
seemed to be going somewhere. I wondered where the wind was blowing
them. I don't seem to have hold on anything, do I? Can you tell me what
I want at the bottom of my heart? I wish you were here, then I think I
should not feel like this. But generally I don't, generally I am quite
jolly, and busy.