The White Peacock

  Meg came into the room when all the men had gone.

  "Come on, my duck," he said, waving his arm with the generous flourish of a tipsy man. "Come an' sit 'ere."

  "Shan't you come in th' kitchen?" she asked, looking round on the tables where pots and glasses stood in little pools of liquor, and where spent match and tobacco-ash littered the white wood.

  "No--what for?--come an' sit 'ere!"--he was reluctant to get on his feet; I knew it and laughed inwardly; I also laughed to hear his thick speech, and his words which seemed to slur against his cheeks.

  She went and sat by him, having moved the little table with its spilled liquor.

  "They've been tellin' me how to get rich," he said, nodding his head and laughing, showing his teeth, "An' I'm goin' ter show 'em. You see, Meg, you see--I'm goin' ter show 'em I can be as good as them, you see."

  "Why," said she, indulgent, "what are you going to do?"

  "You wait a bit an' see--they don't know yet what I can do--they don't know--you don't know--none of you know."

  "An' what shall you do when we're rich, George?"

  "Do?--I shall do what I like. I can make as good a show as anybody else, can't I?"--he put his face very near to hers, and nodded at her, but she did not turn away. "Yes--I'll see what it's like to have my fling. We've been too cautious, our family has--an' I have; we're frightened of ourselves, to do anything. I'm goin' to do what I like, my duck, now--I don't care--I don't care--that!"--he brought his hand down heavily on the table nearest him, and broke a glass. Bill looked in to see what was happening.

  "But you won't do anything that's not right, George!"

  "No--I don't want to hurt nobody--but I don't care--that!"

  "You're too good-hearted to do anybody any harm."

  "I believe I am. You know me a bit, you do, Meg--you don't think I'm a fool now, do you?"

  "I'm sure I don't--who does?"

  "No--you don't--I know you don't. Gi'e me a kiss--thou'rt a little beauty, thou art--like a ripe plum! I could set my teeth in thee, thou'rt that nice--full o' red juice"--he playfully pretended to bite her. She laughed, and gently pushed him away.

  "Tha likest me, doesna to?" 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 bittha'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.

  CHAPTER VII - THE FASCINATION OF THE FORBIDDEN APPLE

  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 upstairs, 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 today."

  "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 wants 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 woodpigeons--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 hoof-print 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 crabapple 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 area 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. T
hen 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 nebulae, 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?

  Over the fence of the spinney was the hill-side, scattered with old thorn trees. There the little grey lichens held up ruby balls to us unnoticed. What did it matter, when all the great red apples were being shaken from the Tree to be left to rot.

  "If I were a man," said Lettie, "I would go out west and be free. I should love it."

  She took the scarf from her head and let it wave out on the wind; the colour was warm in her face with climbing, and her curls were freed by the wind, sparkling and rippling.

  "Well--you're not a man," he said, looking at her, and speaking with timid bitterness.

  "No," she laughed, "if I were, I would shape things--oh, wouldn't I have my own way!"

  "And don't you now?"

  "Oh--I don't want it particularly--when I've got it. When I've had my way, I do want somebody to take it back from me."

  She put her head back and looked at him sideways, laughing through the glitter of her hair.