The White Peacock (8 page)

"Am I," he said, "covered with clay and stuff?"

"Not much," I replied, troubled by the shame and confusion with which he
spoke.

"Get it off," he said, standing still to be cleaned.

I did my best. Then we walked about the fields for a time, gloomy,
silent, and sore.

Suddenly, as we went by the pond–side, we were startled by great,
swishing black shadows that swept just above our heads. The swans were
flying up for shelter, now that a cold wind had begun to fret
Nethermere. They swung down on to the glassy mill–pond, shaking the
moonlight in flecks across the deep shadows; the night rang with the
clacking of their wings on the water; the stillness and calm were
broken; the moonlight was furrowed and scattered, and broken. The swans,
as they sailed into shadow, were dim, haunting spectres; the wind found
us shivering.

"Don't—you won't say anything?" he asked as I was leaving him.

"No."

"Nothing at all—not to anybody?"

"No."

"Good–night."

About the end of September, our countryside was alarmed by the harrying
of sheep by strange dogs. One morning, the squire, going the round of
his fields as was his custom, to his grief and horror found two of his
sheep torn and dead in the hedge–bottom, and the rest huddled in a
corner swaying about in terror, smeared with blood. The squire did not
recover his spirits for days.

There was a report of two grey wolvish dogs. The squire's keeper had
heard yelping in the fields of Dr. Collins of the Abbey, about dawn.
Three sheep lay soaked in blood when the labourer went to tend the
flocks.

Then the farmers took alarm. Lord, of the White House farm, intended to
put his sheep in pen, with his dogs in charge. It was Saturday, however,
and the lads ran off to the little travelling theatre that had halted at
Westwold. While they sat open–mouthed in the theatre, gloriously
nicknamed the "Blood–Tub," watching heroes die with much writhing and
heaving, and struggling up to say a word, and collapsing without having
said it, six of their silly sheep were slaughtered in the field. At
every house it was enquired of the dog; nowhere had one been loose.

Mr. Saxton had some thirty sheep on the Common. George determined that
the easiest thing was for him to sleep out with them. He built a shelter
of hurdles interlaced with brushwood, and in the sunny afternoon we
collected piles of bracken, browning to the ruddy winter–brown now. He
slept there for a week, but that week aged his mother like a year. She
was out in the cold morning twilight watching, with her apron over her
head, for his approach. She did not rest with the thought of him out on
the Common.

Therefore, on Saturday night he brought down his rugs, and took up Gyp
to watch in his stead. For some time we sat looking at the stars over
the dark hills. Now and then a sheep coughed, or a rabbit rustled
beneath the brambles, and Gyp whined. The mist crept over the
gorse–bushes, and the webs on the brambles were white;—the devil throws
his net over the blackberries as soon as September's back is turned,
they say.

"I saw two fellows go by with bags and nets," said George, as we sat
looking out of his little shelter.

"Poachers," said I. "Did you speak to them?"

"No—they didn't see me. I was dropping asleep when a rabbit rushed
under the blanket, all of a shiver, and a whippet dog after it. I gave
the whippet a punch in the neck, and he yelped off. The rabbit stopped
with me quite a long time—then it went."

"How did you feel?"

"I didn't care. I don't care much what happens just now. Father could
get along without me, and mother has the children. I think I shall
emigrate."

"Why didn't you before?"

"Oh, I don't know. There are a lot of little comforts and interests at
home that one would miss. Besides, you feel somebody in your own
countryside, and you're nothing in a foreign part, I expect."

"But you're going?"

"What is there to stop here for? The valley is all running wild and
unprofitable. You've no freedom for thinking of what the other folks
think of you, and everything round you keeps the same, and so you can't
change yourself—because everything you look at brings up the same old
feeling, and stops you from feeling fresh things. And what is there
that's worth anything?—What's worth having in my life?"

"I thought," said I, "your comfort was worth having."

He sat still and did not answer.

"What's shaken you out of your nest?" I asked.

"I don't know. I've not felt the same since that row with Annable. And
Lettie said to me: 'Here, you can't live as you like—in any way or
circumstance. You're like a bit out of those coloured marble mosaics in
the hall, you have to fit in your own set, fit into your own pattern,
because you're put there from the first. But you don't want to be like a
fixed bit of a mosaic—you want to fuse into life, and melt and mix with
the rest of folk, to have some things burned out of you——' She was
downright serious."

"Well, you need not believe her. When did you see her?"

"She came down on Wednesday, when I was getting the apples in the
morning. She climbed a tree with me, and there was a wind, that was why
I was getting all the apples, and it rocked us, me right up at the top,
she sitting half way down holding the basket. I asked her didn't she
think that free kind of life was the best, and that was how she answered
me."

"You should have contradicted her."

"It seemed true. I never thought of it being wrong, in fact."

"Come—that sounds bad."

"No—I thought she looked down on us—on our way of life. I thought she
meant I was like a toad in a hole."

"You should have shown her different."

"How could I when I could see no different?"

"It strikes me you're in love."

He laughed at the idea, saying, "No, but it is rotten to find that there
isn't a single thing you have to be proud of."

"This is a new tune for you."

He pulled the grass moodily.

"And when do you think of going?"

"Oh—I don't know—I've said nothing to mother. Not yet,—at any rate
not till spring."

"Not till something has happened," said I.

"What?" he asked.

"Something decisive."

"I don't know what can happen—unless the Squire turns us out."

"No?" I said.

He did not speak.

"You should make things happen," said I.

"Don't make me feel a worse fool, Cyril," he replied despairingly.

Gyp whined and jumped, tugging her chain to follow us. The grey blurs
among the blackness of the bushes were resting sheep. A chill, dim mist
crept along the ground.

"But, for all that, Cyril," he said, "to have her laugh at you across
the table; to hear her sing as she moved about, before you are washed at
night, when the fire's warm, and you're tired; to have her sit by you on
the hearth seat, close and soft…."

"In Spain," I said. "In Spain."

He took no notice, but turned suddenly, laughing.

"Do you know, when I was stooking up, lifting the sheaves, it felt like
having your arm round a girl. It was quite a sudden sensation."

"You'd better take care," said I, "you'll mesh yourself in the silk of
dreams, and then——"

He laughed, not having heard my words.

"The time seems to go like lightning—thinking" he confessed—"I seem to
sweep the mornings up in a handful."

"Oh, Lord!" said I. "Why don't you scheme forgetting what you want,
instead of dreaming fulfilments?"

"Well," he replied. "If it was a fine dream, wouldn't you want to go on
dreaming?" and with that he finished, and I went home.

I sat at my window looking out, trying to get things straight. Mist
rose, and wreathed round Nethermere, like ghosts meeting and embracing
sadly. I thought of the time when my friend should not follow the harrow
on our own snug valley side, and when Lettie's room next mine should be
closed to hide its emptiness, not its joy. My heart clung passionately
to the hollow which held us all; how could I bear that it should be
desolate! I wondered what Lettie would do.

In the morning I was up early, when daybreak came with a shiver through
the woods. I went out, while the moon still shone sickly in the west.
The world shrank from the morning. It was then that the last of the
summer things died. The wood was dark,—and smelt damp and heavy with
autumn. On the paths the leaves lay clogged.

As I came near the farm I heard the yelling of dogs. Running, I reached
the Common, and saw the sheep huddled and scattered in groups, something
leaped round them. George burst into sight pursuing. Directly, there was
the bang, bang of a gun. I picked up a heavy piece of sandstone and ran
forwards. Three sheep scattered wildly before me. In the dim light I saw
their grey shadows move among the gorse bushes. Then a dog leaped, and I
flung my stone with all my might. I hit. There came a high–pitched
howling yelp of pain; I saw the brute make off, and went after him,
dodging the prickly bushes, leaping the trailing brambles. The gunshots
rang out again, and I heard the men shouting with excitement. My dog was
out of sight, but I followed still, slanting down the hill. In a field
ahead I saw someone running. Leaping the low hedge, I pursued, and
overtook Emily, who was hurrying as fast as she could through the wet
grass. There was another gunshot and great shouting. Emily glanced
round, saw me, and started.

"It's gone to the quarries," she panted. We walked on, without saying a
word. Skirting the spinney, we followed the brook course, and came at
last to the quarry fence. The old excavations were filled now with
trees. The steep walls, twenty feet deep in places, were packed with
loose stones, and trailed with hanging brambles. We climbed down the
steep bank of the brook, and entered the quarries by the bed of the
stream. Under the groves of ash and oak a pale primrose still lingered,
glimmering wanly beside the hidden water. Emily found a smear of blood
on a beautiful trail of yellow convolvulus. We followed the tracks on to
the open, where the brook flowed on the hard rock bed, and the stony
floor of the quarry was only a tangle of gorse and bramble and
honeysuckle.

"Take a good stone," said I, and we pressed on, where the grove in the
great excavation darkened again, and the brook slid secretly under the
arms of the bushes and the hair of the long grass. We beat the cover
almost to the road. I thought the brute had escaped, and I pulled a
bunch of mountain–ash berries, and stood tapping them against my knee. I
was startled by a snarl and a little scream. Running forward, I came
upon one of the old, horse–shoe lime kilns that stood at the head of the
quarry. There, in the mouth of one of the kilns, Emily was kneeling on
the dog, her hands buried in the hair of its throat, pushing back its
head. The little jerks of the brute's body were the spasms of death;
already the eyes were turning inward, and the upper lip was drawn from
the teeth by pain.

"Good Lord, Emily! But he is dead!" exclaimed.

"Has he hurt you?" I drew her away. She shuddered violently, and seemed
to feel a horror of herself.

"No—no," she said, looking at herself, with blood all on her skirt,
where she had knelt on the wound which I had given the dog, and pressed
the broken rib into the chest. There was a trickle of blood on her arm.

"Did he bite you?" I asked, anxious.

"No—oh, no—I just peeped in, and he jumped. But he had no strength,
and I hit him back with my stone, and I lost my balance, and fell on
him."

"Let me wash your arm."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "isn't it horrible! Oh, I think it is so awful."

"What?" said I, busy bathing her arm in the cold water of the brook.

"This—this whole brutal affair."

"It ought to be cauterised," said I, looking at a score on her arm from
the dog's tooth.

"That scratch—that's nothing! Can you get that off my skirt—I feel
hateful to myself."

I washed her skirt with my handkerchief as well as I could, saying:

"Let me just sear it for you; we can go to the Kennels. Do—you ought—I
don't feel safe otherwise."

"Really," she said, glancing up at me, a smile coming into her fine dark
eyes.

"Yes—come along."

"Ha, ha!" she laughed. "You look so serious."

I took her arm and drew her away. She linked her arm in mine and leaned
on me.

"It is just like Lorna Doone," she said as if she enjoyed it.

"But you will let me do it," said I, referring to the cauterising.

"You make me; but I shall feel—ugh, I daren't think of it. Get me some
of those berries."

I plucked a few bunches of guelder–rose fruits, transparent, ruby
berries. She stroked them softly against her lips and cheek, caressing
them. Then she murmured to herself:

"I have always wanted to put red berries in my hair."

The shawl she had been wearing was thrown across her shoulders, and her
head was bare, and her black hair, soft and short and ecstatic, tumbled
wildly into loose light curls. She thrust the stalks of the berries
under her combs. Her hair was not heavy or long enough to have held
them. Then, with the ruby bunches glowing through the black mist of
curls, she looked up at me, brightly, with wide eyes. I looked at her,
and felt the smile winning into her eyes. Then I turned and dragged a
trail of golden–leaved convolvulus from the hedge, and I twisted it into
a coronet for her.

"There!" said I, "you're crowned."

She put back her head, and the low laughter shook in her throat.

"What!" she asked, putting all the courage and recklessness she had into
the question, and in her soul trembling.

"Not Chloë, not Bacchante. You have always got your soul in your eyes,
such an earnest, troublesome soul."