The White Peacock (40 page)

He did not answer, but drained his cup of tea and pushed it away with
the back of his hand. Meg rang the bell, and having taken off her
gloves, began to put the things on the tray, tipping the fragments of
fish and bones from the edge of his plate to the middle with short,
disgusted jerks of the fork. Her attitude and expression were of
resentment and disgust. The maid came in.

"Clear the table Kate, and open the window. Have you opened the bedroom
windows?"

"No'm—not yet,"—she glanced at George as if to say he had only been
down a few minutes.

"Then do it when you have taken the tray," said Meg.

"You don't open this window," said George churlishly. "It's cold enough
as it is."

"You should put a coat on then if you're starved," replied Meg
contemptuously. "It's warm enough for those that have got any life in
their blood. You do not find it cold, do you Cyril?"

"It is fresh this morning," I replied.

"Of course it is, not cold at all. And I'm sure this room needs airing."

The maid, however, folded the cloth and went out without approaching the
windows.

Meg had grown stouter, and there was a certain immovable confidence in
her. She was authoritative, amiable, calm. She wore a handsome dress of
dark green, and a toque with opulent ostrich feathers. As she moved
about the room she seemed to dominate everything, particularly her
husband, who sat ruffled and dejected, his waistcoat hanging loose over
his shirt.

A girl entered. She was proud and mincing in her deportment. Her face
was handsome, but too haughty for a child. She wore a white coat, with
ermine tippet, muff, and hat. Her long brown hair hung twining down her
back.

"Has dad only just had his breakfast?" she exclaimed in high censorious
tones as she came in.

"He has!" replied Meg.

The girl looked at her father in calm, childish censure.

"And we have been to church, and come home to dinner," she said, as she
drew off her little white gloves. George watched her with ironical
amusement.

"Hello!" said Meg, glancing at the opened letter which lay near his
elbow. "Who is that from?"

He glanced round, having forgotten it. He took the envelope, doubled it
and pushed it in his waistcoat pocket.

"It's from William Housley," he replied.

"Oh! And what has he to say?" she asked.

George turned his dark eyes at her.

"Nothing!" he said.

"Hm–Hm!" sneered Meg. "Funny letter, about nothing!"

"I suppose," said the child, with her insolent, high–pitched
superiority, "It's some money that he doesn't want us to know about."

"That's about it!" said Meg, giving a small laugh at the child's
perspicuity.

"So's he can keep it for himself, that's what it is," continued the
child, nodding her head in rebuke at him.

"I've no right to any money, have I?" asked the father sarcastically.

"No, you haven't," the child nodded her head at him dictatorially, "you
haven't, because you only put it in the fire."

"You've got it wrong," he sneered. "You mean it's like giving a child
fire to play with."

"Um!—and it is, isn't it Mam?"—the small woman turned to her mother
for corroboration. Meg had flushed at his sneer, when he quoted for the
child its mother's dictum.

"And you're very naughty!" preached Gertie, turning her back
disdainfully on her father.

"Is that what the parson's been telling you?" he asked, a grain of
amusement still in his bitterness.

"No it isn't!" retorted the youngster. "If you want to know you should
go and listen for yourself. Everybody that goes to church looks
nice——" she glanced at her mother and at herself, pruning herself
proudly, "—and God loves them," she added. She assumed a sanctified
expression, and continued after a little thought: "Because they look
nice and are meek."

"What!" exclaimed Meg, laughing, glancing with secret pride at me.

"Because they're meek!" repeated Gertie, with a superior little smile of
knowledge.

"You're off the mark this time," said George.

"No, I'm not, am I Mam? Isn't it right Mam? 'The meek shall inevit the
erf'?"

Meg was too much amused to answer.

"The meek shall have herrings on earth," mocked the father, also amused.
His daughter looked dubiously at him. She smelled impropriety.

"It's not, Mam, is it?" she asked, turning to her mother. Meg laughed.

"The meek shall have herrings on earth," repeated George with soft
banter.

"No it's not Mam, is it?" cried the child in real distress.

"Tell your father he's always teaching you something wrong," answered
Meg.

Then I said I must go. They pressed me to stay.

"Oh, yes—do stop to dinner," suddenly pleaded the child, smoothing her
wild ravels of curls after having drawn off her hat. She asked me again
and again, with much earnestness.

"But why?" I asked.

"So's you can talk to us this afternoon—an' so's Dad won't be so
dis'greeable," she replied plaintively, poking the black spots on her
muff.

Meg moved nearer to her daughter with a little gesture of compassion.

"But," said I, "I promised a lady I would be back for lunch, so I must.
You have some more visitors, you know."

"Oh, well!" she complained, "They go in another room, and Dad doesn't
care about them."

"But come!" said I.

"Well, he's just as dis'greeable when Auntie Emily's here—he is with
her an' all."

"You
are
having your character given away," said Meg brutally, turning
to him.

I bade them good–bye. He did me the honour of coming with me to the
door. We could neither of us find a word to say, though we were both
moved. When at last I held his hand and was looking at him as I said
"Good–bye", he looked back at me for the first time during our meeting.
His eyes were heavy and as he lifted them to me, seemed to recoil in an
agony of shame.

George steadily declined from this time. I went to see him two years
later. He was not at home. Meg wept to me as she told me of him, how he
let the business slip, how he drank, what a brute he was in drink, and
how unbearable afterwards. He was ruining his constitution, he was
ruining her life and the children's. I felt very sorry for her as she
sat, large and ruddy, brimming over with bitter tears. She asked me if I
did not think I might influence him. He was, she said, at the "Ram."
When he had an extra bad bout on he went up there, and stayed sometimes
for a week at a time, with Oswald, coming back to the "Hollies" when he
had recovered—"though," said Meg, "he's sick every morning and almost
after every meal."

All the time Meg was telling me this, sat curled up in a large chair
their youngest boy, a pale, sensitive, rather spoiled lad of seven or
eight years, with a petulant mouth and nervous dark eyes. He sat
watching his mother as she told her tale, heaving his shoulders and
settling himself in a new position when his feelings were nearly too
much for him. He was full of wild, childish pity for his mother, and
furious, childish hate of his father, the author of all their trouble. I
called at the "Ram" and saw George. He was half drunk.

I went up to Highclose with a heavy heart. Lettie's last child had been
born, much to the surprise of everybody, some few months before I came
down. There was a space of seven years between her youngest girl and
this baby. Lettie was much absorbed in motherhood.

When I went up to talk to her about George I found her in the bedroom
nursing the baby, who was very good and quiet on her knee. She listened
to me sadly, but her attention was caught away by each movement made by
the child. As I was telling her of the attitude of George's children
towards their father and mother, she glanced from the baby to me, and
exclaimed:

"See how he watches the light flash across your spectacles when you turn
suddenly—Look!"

But I was weary of babies. My friends had all grown up and married and
inflicted them on me. There were storms of babies. I longed for a place
where they would be obsolete, and young, arrogant, impervious mothers
might be a forgotten tradition. Lettie's heart would quicken in answer
to only one pulse, the easy, light ticking of the baby's blood.

I remembered, one day as I sat in the train hastening to Charing Cross
on my way from France, that that was George's birthday. I had the
feeling of him upon me, heavily, and I could not rid myself of the
depression. I put it down to travel fatigue, and tried to dismiss it. As
I watched the evening sun glitter along the new corn–stubble in the
fields we passed, trying to describe the effect to myself, I found
myself asking: "But—what's the matter? I've not had bad news, have I,
to make my chest feel so weighted?"

I was surprised when I reached my lodging in New Maiden to find no
letters for me, save one fat budget from Alice. I knew her squat,
saturnine handwriting on the envelope, and I thought I knew what
contents to expect from the letter.

She had married an old acquaintance who had been her particular
aversion. This young man had got himself into trouble, so that the
condemnations of the righteous pursued him like clouds of gnats on a
summer evening. Alice immediately rose to sting back his vulgar enemies,
and having rendered him a service, felt she could only wipe out the
score by marrying him. They were fairly comfortable. Occasionally, as
she said, there were displays of small fireworks in the back yard. He
worked in the offices of some iron foundries just over the Erewash in
Derbyshire. Alice lived in a dirty little place in the valley a mile and
a half from Eberwich, not far from his work. She had no children, and
practically no friends; a few young matrons for acquaintances. As wife
of a superior clerk, she had to preserve her dignity among the
work–people. So all her little crackling fires were sodded down with the
sods of British respectability. Occasionally she smouldered a fierce
smoke that made one's eyes water. Occasionally, perhaps once a year, she
wrote me a whole venomous budget, much to my amusement.

I was not in any haste to open this fat letter until, after supper, I
turned to it as a resource from my depression.

"Oh dear Cyril, I'm in a bubbling state, I want to yell, not write. Oh,
Cyril, why didn't
you
marry me, or why didn't our Georgie Saxton, or
somebody. I'm deadly sick. Percival Charles is enough to stop a clock.
Oh, Cyril, he lives in an eternal Sunday suit, holy broadcloth and
righteous three inches of cuffs! He goes to bed in it. Nay, he wallows
in Bibles when he goes to bed. I can feel the brass covers of all his
family Bibles sticking in my ribs as I lie by his side. I could weep
with wrath, yet I put on my black hat and trot to chapel with him like a
lamb.

"Oh, Cyril, nothing's happened. Nothing has happened to me all these
years. I shall die of it. When I see Percival Charles at dinner, after
having asked a blessing, I feel as if I should never touch a bit at his
table again. In about an hour I shall hear him hurrying up the
entry—prayers always make him hungry—and his first look will be on the
table. But I'm not fair to him—he's really a good fellow—I only wish
he wasn't.

"It's George Saxton who's put this seidlitz powder in my marital cup of
cocoa. Cyril, I must a tale unfold. It is fifteen years since our George
married Meg. When I count up, and think of the future, it nearly makes
me scream. But my tale, my tale!

"Can you remember his faithful–dog, wounded–stag, gentle–gazelle eyes?
Cyril, you can see the whisky or the brandy combusting in them. He's got
d—t's, blue–devils—and I've seen him, and I'm swarming myself with
little red devils after it. I went up to Eberwich on Wednesday afternoon
for a pound of fry for Percival Charles' Thursday dinner. I walked by
that little path which you know goes round the back of the
'Hollies'—it's as near as any way for me. I thought I heard a row in
the paddock at the back of the stables, so I said I might as well see
the fun. I went to the gate, basket in one hand, ninepence in coppers in
the other, a demure deacon's wife. I didn't take in the scene at first.

"There was our Georgie, in leggings and breeches as of yore, and a whip.
He was flourishing, and striding, and yelling. 'Go it old boy,' I said,
'you'll want your stocking round your throat to–night.' But Cyril, I had
spoken too soon. Oh, lum! There came raking up the croft that long,
wire–springy racehorse of his, ears flat, and, clinging to its neck, the
pale–faced lad, Wilfred. The kid was white as death, and squealing 'Mam!
mam!' I thought it was a bit rotten of Georgie trying to teach the kid
to jockey. The race–horse, Bonny–Boy—Boney Boy I call him—came
bouncing round like a spiral egg–whish. Then I saw our Georgie rush up
screaming, nearly spitting the moustache off his face, and fetch the
horse a cut with the whip. It went off like a flame along hot paraffin.
The kid shrieked and clung. Georgie went rushing after him, running
staggery, and swearing, fairly screaming,—awful—'a lily–livered little
swine!' The high lanky race–horse went larroping round as if it was
going mad. I was dazed. Then Meg came rushing, and the other two lads,
all screaming. She went for George, but he lifted his whip like the
devil. She daren't go near him—she rushed at him, and stopped, rushed
at him, and stopped, striking at him with her two fists. He waved his
whip and kept her off, and the race–horse kept tearing along. Meg flew
to stop it, he ran with his drunken totter–step, brandishing his whip. I
flew as well. I hit him with my basket. The kid fell off, and Meg rushed
to him. Some men came running. George stood fairly shuddering. You would
never have known his face, Cyril. He was mad, demoniacal. I feel
sometimes as if I should burst and shatter to bits like a sky–rocket
when I think of it. I've got such a weal on my arm.

"I lost Percival Charles' ninepence and my nice white cloth out of the
basket, and everything, besides having black looks on Thursday because
it was mutton chops, which he hates. Oh, Cyril, 'I wish I was a
cassowary, on the banks of the Timbuctoo.' When I saw Meg sobbing over
that lad—thank goodness he wasn't hurt—! I wished our Georgie was
dead; I do now, also; I wish we only had to remember him. I haven't been
to see them lately—can't stand Meg's ikeyness. I wonder how it all will
end.

"There's P. C. bidding 'Good night and God Bless You' to Brother Jakes,
and no supper ready——"

As soon as I could, after reading Alice's letter, I went down to
Eberwich to see how things were. Memories of the old days came over me
again till my heart hungered for its old people.

They told me at the "Hollies" that, after a bad attack of delirium
tremens, George had been sent to Papplewick in the lonely country to
stay with Emily. I borrowed a bicycle to ride the nine miles. The summer
had been wet, and everything was late. At the end of September the
foliage was heavy green, and the wheat stood dejectedly in stook. I rode
through the still sweetness of an autumn morning. The mist was folded
blue along the hedges; the elm trees loomed up along the dim walls of
the morning, the horse–chestnut trees at hand flickered with a few
yellow leaves like bright blossoms. As I rode through the tree tunnel by
the church where, on his last night, the keeper had told me his story, I
smelled the cold rotting of the leaves of the cloudy summer.

I passed silently through the lanes, where the chill grass was weighed
down with grey–blue seed–pearls of dew in the shadow, where the wet
woollen spider–cloths of autumn were spread as on a loom. Brown birds
rustled in flocks like driven leaves before me. I heard the far–off
hooting of the "loose–all" at the pits, telling me it was half–past
eleven, that the men and boys would be sitting in the narrow darkness of
the mines eating their "snap," while shadowy mice darted for the crumbs,
and the boys laughed with red mouths rimmed with grime, as the bold
little creatures peeped at them in the dim light of the lamps. The
dogwood berries stood jauntily scarlet on the hedge–tops, the bunched
scarlet and green berries of the convolvulus and bryony hung amid golden
trails, the blackberries dropped ungathered. I rode slowly on, the
plants dying around me, the berries leaning their heavy ruddy mouths,
and languishing for the birds, the men imprisoned underground below me,
the brown birds dashing in haste along the hedges.

Swineshed Farm, where the Renshaws lived, stood quite alone among its
fields, hidden from the highway and from everything. The lane leading up
to it was deep and unsunned. On my right, I caught glimpses through the
hedge of the corn–fields, where the shocks of wheat stood like small
yellow–sailed ships in a widespread flotilla. The upper part of the
field was cleared. I heard the clank of a wagon and the voices of men,
and I saw the high load of sheaves go lurching, rocking up the incline
to the stackyard.

The lane debouched into a close–bitten field, and out of this empty land
the farm rose up with its buildings like a huddle of old, painted
vessels floating in still water. White fowls went stepping discreetly
through the mild sunshine and the shadow. I leaned my bicycle against
the grey, silken doors of the old coach–house. The place was breathing
with silence. I hesitated to knock at the open door. Emily came. She was
rich as always with her large beauty, and stately now with the
stateliness of a strong woman six months gone with child.

She exclaimed with surprise, and I followed her into the kitchen,
catching a glimpse of the glistening pans and the white wood baths as I
passed through the scullery. The kitchen was a good–sized, low room that
through long course of years had become absolutely a home. The great
beams of the ceiling bowed easily, the chimney–seat had a bit of
dark–green curtain, and under the high mantel–piece was another low
shelf that the men could reach with their hands as they sat in the
ingle–nook. There the pipes lay. Many generations of peaceful men and
fruitful women had passed through the room, and not one but had added a
new small comfort; a chair in the right place, a hook, a stool, a
cushion, a certain pleasing cloth for the sofa covers, a shelf of books.
The room, that looked so quiet and crude, was a home evolved through
generations to fit the large bodies of the men who dwelled in it, and
the placid fancy of the women. At last, it had an individuality. It was
the home of the Renshaws, warm, lovable, serene. Emily was in perfect
accord with its brownness, its shadows, its ease. I, as I sat on the
sofa under the window, felt rejected by the kind room. I was distressed
with a sense of ephemerality, of pale, erratic fragility.

Emily, in her full–blooded beauty, was at home. It is rare now to feel a
kinship between a room and the one who inhabits it, a close bond of
blood relation. Emily had at last found her place, and had escaped from
the torture of strange, complex modern life. She was making a pie, and
the flour was white on her brown arms. She pushed the tickling hair from
her face with her arm, and looked at me with tranquil pleasure, as she
worked the paste in the yellow bowl. I was quiet, subdued before her.

"You are very happy?" I said.

"Ah very!" she replied. "And you?—you are not, you look worn."

"Yes," I replied. "I am happy enough. I am living my life."

"Don't you find it wearisome?" she asked pityingly.

She made me tell her all my doings, and she marvelled, but all the time
her eyes were dubious and pitiful.

"You have George here," I said.

"Yes. He's in a poor state, but he's not as sick as he was."

"What about the delirium tremens?"

"Oh, he was better of that—very nearly—before he came here. He
sometimes fancies they're coming on again, and he's terrified. Isn't it
awful! And he's brought it all on himself. Tom's very good to him."