The White Peacock

by D. H. Lawrence

  I ran and took the wicket-gate off its hinges and laid him on that. His legs trailed down, but we carried him thus, she at the feet, I at the head. She made me stop and put him down. I thought the weight was too much for her, but it was not that.

  "I can't bear to see his hand hanging, knocking against the bushes and things."

  It was not many yards to the house. A maidservant saw us, came running out, and went running back, like the frightened lapwing from the wounded cat.

  We waited until the doctor came. There was a deep graze down the side of the head--serious, but not dangerous; there was a cut across the cheek-bone that would leave a scar; and the collar-bone was broken. I stayed until he had recovered consciousness. "Lettie." He wanted Lettie, so she had to remain at Highclose all night. I went home to tell my mother.

  When I went to bed I looked across at the lighted windows of Highclose, and the lights trailed mistily towards me across the water. The cedar stood dark guard against the house; bright the windows were, like the stars, covering their torment in brightness. The sky was glittering with sharp lights--they are too far off to take trouble for us, so little, little almost to nothingness. All the great hollow vastness roars overhead, and the stars are only sparks that whirl and spin in the restless space. The earth must listen to us; she covers her face with a thin veil of mist, and is sad; she soaks up our blood tenderly, in the darkness, grieving, and in the light she soothes and reassures us. Here on our earth is sympathy and hope, the heavens have nothing but distances.

  A corn-crake talked to me across the valley, talked and talked endlessly, asking and answering in hoarse tones from the sleeping, mist-hidden meadows. The monotonous voice, that on past summer evenings had had pleasant notes of romance, now was intolerable to me. Its inflexible harshness and cacophony seemed like the voice of fate speaking out its tuneless perseverance in the night.

  In the morning Lettie came home wan, sad-eyed, and self-reproachful. After a short time they came for her, as he wanted her again.

  When in the evening I went to see George, he too was very despondent.

  "It's no good now," said I. "You should have insisted and made your own destiny."

  "Yes--perhaps so," he drawled in his best reflective manner.

  "I would have had her--she'd have been glad if you'd done as you wanted with her. She won't leave him till he's strong, and he'll marry her before then. You should have had the courage to risk yourself--you're always too careful of yourself and your own poor feelings--you never could brace yourself up to a shower-bath of contempt and hard usage, so you've saved your feelings and lost--not much, I suppose--you couldn't."

  "But--" he began, not looking up; and I laughed at him.

  "Go on," I said.

  "Well--she was engaged to him--

  "Pah--you thought you were too good to be rejected."

  He was very pale, and when he was pale, the tan on his skin looked sickly. He regarded me with his dark eyes, which were now full of misery and a child's big despair.

  "And nothing else," I completed, with which the little, exhausted gunboat of my anger wrecked and sank utterly. Yet no thoughts would spread sail on the sea of my pity: I was like water that heaves with yearning, and is still.

  Leslie was very ill for some time. He had a slight brain fever, and was delirious, insisting that Lettie was leaving him. She stayed most of her days at Highclose.

  One day in June he lay resting on a deck-chair in the shade of the cedar, and she was sitting by him. It was a yellow, sultry day, when all the atmosphere seemed inert, and all things were languid.

  "Don't you think, dear," she said, "it would be better for us not to marry?"

  He lifted his head nervously from the cushions; his face was emblazoned with a livid red bar on a field of white, and he looked worn, wistful.

  "Do you mean not yet?" he asked.

  "Yes--and, perhaps--perhaps never."

  "Ha," he laughed, sinking down again. "I must be getting like myself again, if you begin to tease me."

  "But," she said, struggling valiantly, "I'm not sure I ought to marry you."

  He laughed again, though a little apprehensively.

  "Are you afraid I shall always be weak in my noddle?" he asked. "But you wait a month."

  "No, that doesn't bother me--"

  "Oh, doesn't it!"

  "Silly boy--no, it's myself."

  "I'm sure I've made no complaint about you."

  "Not likely--but I wish you'd let me go."

  "I'm a strong man to hold you, aren't I? Look at my muscular paw!"--he held out his hands, frail and white with sickness.

  "You know you hold me--and I want you to let me go. I don't want to

  "To what?"

  "To get married at all--let me be, let me go."

  "What for?"

  "Oh--for my sake."

  "You mean you don't love me?"

  "Love--love--I don't know anything about it. But I can't--we can't be--don't you see--oh, what do they say--flesh of one flesh."

  "Why?" he whispered, like a child that is told some tale of mystery.

  She looked at him, as he lay propped upon his elbow, turning towards hers his white face of fear and perplexity, like a child that cannot understand, and is afraid, and wants to cry. Then slowly tears gathered full in her eyes, and she wept from pity and despair.

  This excited him terribly. He got up from his chair, and the cushions fell on to the grass.

  "What's the matter, what's the matter!--Oh, Lettie,--is it me?--don't you want me now?--is that it?--tell me, tell me now, tell me,"--he grasped her wrists, and tried to pull her hands from her face. The tears were running down his cheeks. She felt him trembling, and the sound of his voice alarmed her from herself. She hastily smeared the tears from her eyes, got up, and put her arms round him. He hid his head on her shoulder and sobbed, while she bent over him, and so they cried out their cries, till they were ashamed, looking round to see if anyone were near. Then she hurried about, picking up the cushions, making him lie down, and arranging him comfortably, so that she might be busy. He was querulous, like a sick, indulged child. He would have her arm under his shoulders, and her face near his.

  "Well," he said, smiling faintly again after a time. "You are naughty to give us such rough times--is it for the pleasure of making up, bad little Schnucke--aren't you?"

  She kept close to him, and he did not see the wince and quiver of her lips.

  "I wish I was strong again--couldn't we go boating--or ride on horseback--and you'd have to behave then. Do you think I shall be strong in a month? Stronger than you?"

  "I hope so," she said.

  "Why, I don't believe you do, I believe you like me like this--so that you can lay me down and smooth me--don't you, quiet girl?"

  "When you're good."

  "Ah, well, in a month I shall be strong, and we'll be married and go to Switzerland--do you hear, Schnucke--you won't be able to be naughty any more then. Oh--do you want to go away from me again?"

  "No--only my arm is dead," she drew it from beneath him, standing up, swinging it, smiling because it hurt her.

  "Oh, my darling--what a shame! Oh, I am a brute, a kiddish brute. I wish I was strong again, Lettie, and didn't do these things."

  "You boy--it's nothing." She smiled at him again.

  CHAPTER VI - THE COURTING

  During Leslie's illness I strolled down to the mill one Saturday evening. I met George tramping across the yard with a couple of buckets of swill, and eleven young pigs rushing squealing about his legs, shrieking in an agony of suspense. He poured the stuff into a trough with luscious gurgle, and instantly ten noses were dipped in, and ten little mouths began to slobber. Though there was plenty of room for ten, yet they shouldered and shoved and struggled to capture a larger space, and many little trotters dabbled and spilled the stuff, and the ten sucking, clapping snouts twitched fiercely, and twenty little eyes glared askance, like so many points of wrath. They gave uneasy, gasping grunts in their
haste. The unhappy eleventh rushed from point to point trying to push in his snout, but for his pains he got rough squeezing, and sharp grabs on the ears. Then he lifted up his face and screamed screams of grief and wrath unto the evening sky.

  But the ten little gluttons only twitched their ears to make sure there was no danger in the noise, and they sucked harder, with much spilling and slobbing. George laughed like a sardonic Jove, but at last he gave ear, and kicked the ten gluttons from the trough, and allowed the residue to the eleventh. This one, poor wretch, almost wept with relief as he sucked and swallowed in sobs, casting his little eyes apprehensively upwards, though he did not lift his nose from the trough, as he heard the vindictive shrieks of ten little fiends kept at bay by George. The solitary feeder, shivering with apprehension, rubbed the wood bare with his snout, then, turning up to heaven his eyes of gratitude, he reluctantly left the trough. I expected to see the ten fall upon him and devour him, but they did not; they rushed upon the empty trough, and rubbed the wood still drier, shrieking with misery.

  "How like life," I laughed.

  "Fine litter," said George; "there were fourteen, only that damned she-devil, Circe, went and ate three of 'em before we got at her."

  The great ugly sow came leering up as he spoke.

  "Why don't you fatten her up, and devour her, the old gargoyle? She's an offence to the universe."

  "Nay--she's a fine sow."

  I snorted, and he laughed, and the old sow grunted with contempt, and her little eyes twisted towards us with a demoniac leer as she rolled past.

  "What are you going to do tonight!" I asked. "Going out?"

  "I'm going courting," he replied, grinning.

  "Oh!--wish I were!"

  "You can come if you like--and tell me where I make mistakes, since you're an expert on such matters."

  "Don't you get on very well then?" I asked.

  "Oh, all right--it's easy enough when you don't care a damn. Besides, you can always have a Johnny Walker. That's the best of courting at the Ram Inn. I'll go and get ready."

  In the kitchen Emily sat grinding out some stitching from a big old hand machine that stood on the table before her: she was making shirts for Sam, I presumed. That little fellow, who was installed at the farm, was seated by her side firing off words from a reading book. The machine rumbled and rattled on, like a whole factory at work, for an inch or two, during which time Sam shouted in shrill explosions like irregular pistol shots: "Do--not--pot--"

  "Put!" cried Emily from the machine; "put--" shrilled the child, "the soot--on--my--boot--," there the machine broke down, and, frightened by the sound of his own voice, the boy stopped in bewilderment and looked round.

  "Go on!" said Emily, as she poked in the teeth of the old machine with the scissors, then pulled and prodded again. He began, "--boot--but--you----" here he died off again, made nervous by the sound of his voice in the stillness. Emily sucked a piece of cotton and pushed it through the needle.

  "Now go on," she said, "--'but you may'."

  "But--you--may--shoot":--he shouted away, reassured by the rumble of the machine: "Shoot--the--fox. I--I--It--is--at--the--rot--"

  "Root," shrieked Emily, as she guided the stuff through the doddering jaws of the machine.

  "Root," echoed the boy, and he went off with these crackers: "Root--of--the--tree."

  "Next one!" cried Emily.

  "Put--the--ol--" began the boy.

  "What?" cried Emily.

  "Ole--on--"

  "Wait a bit!" cried Emily, and then the machine broke down.

  "Hang!" she ejaculated.

  "Hang!" shouted the child.

  She laughed, and leaned over to him:

  "Put the oil in the pan to boil, while I toil in the soil'--Oh, Cyril, I never knew you were there! Go along now, Sam: David '11 be at the back somewhere."

  "He's in the bottom garden," said I, and the child ran out.

  Directly George came in from the scullery, drying himself. He stood on the hearth-rug as he rubbed himself, and surveyed his reflection in the mirror above the high mantlepiece; he looked at himself and smiled. I wondered that he found such satisfaction in his image, seeing that there was a gap in his chin, and an uncertain moth-eaten appearance in one cheek. Mrs Saxton still held this mirror an object of dignity; it was fairly large, and had a well-carven frame; but it left gaps and spots and scratches in one's countenance, and even where it was brightest, it gave one's reflection a far-away dim aspect. Notwithstanding, George smiled at himself as he combed his hair, and twisted his moustache.

  "You seem to make a good impression on yourself," said I.

  "I was thinking I looked all right--sort of face to go courting with," he replied, laughing: "You just arrange a patch of black to come and hide your faults--and you're all right."

  "I always used to think," said Emily, "that the black spots had swallowed so many faces they were full up, and couldn't take any more--and the rest was misty because there were so many faces lapped one over the other--reflected."

  "You do see yourself a bit ghostish--" said he, "on a background of your ancestors. I always think when you stop in an old place like this you sort of keep company with your ancestors too much; I sometimes feel like a bit of the old building walking about; the old feelings of the old folks stick to you like the lichens on the walls; you sort of get hoary."

  "That's it--it's true," asserted the father, "people whose families have shifted about much don't know how it feels. That's why I'm going to Canada."

  "And I'm going in a pub," said George, "where it's quite different--plenty of life."

  "Life!" echoed Emily with contempt.

  "That's the word, my wench," replied her brother, lapsing into the dialect. "That's what I'm after. We know such a lot, an' we know nowt."

  "You do--" said the father, turning to me, "you stay in one place, generation after generation, and you seem to get proud, an' look on things outside as foolishness. There's many a thing as any common man knows, as we haven't a glimpse of. We keep on thinking and feeling the same, year after year, till we've only got one side; an' I suppose they've done it before us."

  "It's 'Good night an' God bless you,' to th' owd place, granfeythers an' grammothers," laughed George as he ran upstairs--"an' off we go on the gallivant," he shouted from the landing.

  His father shook his head, saying:

  "I can't make out how it is, he's so different. I suppose it's being in love--"

  We went into the barn to get the bicycles to cycle over to Greymede. George struck a match to look for his pump, and he noticed a great spider scuttle off into the corner of the wall, and sit peeping out at him like a hoary little ghoul.

  "How are you, old chap?" said George, nodding to him--"Thought he looked like an old grandfather of mine," he said to me, laughing, as he pumped up the tyres of the old bicycle for me.

  It was Saturday night, so the bar parlour of the Ram Inn was fairly full.

  "Hello, George--come co'tin'?" was the cry, followed by a nod and a "Good evenin'," to me, who was a stranger in the parlour.

  "It's raïght for thaïgh," said a fat young fellow with an unwilling white moustache, "--tha can co'te as much as ter likes ter 'a'e, as well as th' lass, an' it cost thee nöwt--" at which the room laughed, taking pipes from mouths to do so. George sat down, looking round.

  "'Owd on a bit," said a black-whiskered man, "tha mun 'a 'e patience when to 't co'tin' a lass. Ow's puttin' th' öwd lady ter bed--'ark thee--can t' 'ear--that wor th' bed latts goin' bang. Ow'll be dern in a minnit now, gie 'er time ter tuck th' öwd lady up. Can' ter 'ear 'er say 'er prayers."

  "Strike!" cried the fat young man, exploding:

  "Fancy th' öwd lady sayin' 'er prayers!--it 'ud be enough ter ma'e 'er false teeth drop out."

  The room laughed.

  They began to tell tales about the old landlady. She had practised bone-setting, in which she was very skilful. People come to her from long distances that she might divine their trouble
and make right their limbs. She would accept no fee.

  Once she had gone up to Dr Fullwood to give him a piece of her mind, inasmuch as he had let a child go for three weeks with a broken collar-bone, whilst treating him for dislocation. The doctor had tried the high hand with her, since when, wherever he went, the miners placed their hands on their shoulders, and groaned: "Oh my collar-bone!"

  Here Meg came in. She gave a bright, quick, bird-like look at George, and flushed a brighter red.

  "I thought you wasn't cummin'," she said.

  "Dunna thee bother--'e'd none stop away," said the black-whiskered man.

  She brought us glasses of whisky, and moved about supplying the men, who chaffed with her honestly and good-naturedly. Then she went out, but we remained in our corner. The men talked on the most peculiar subjects: there was a bitter discussion as to whether London is or is not a seaport--the matter was thrashed out with heat; then an embryo artist set the room ablaze by declaring there were only three colours, red, yellow. and blue, and the rest were not colours, they were mixtures: this amounted almost to atheism and one man asked the artist to dare to declare that his brown breeches were not a colour, which the artist did, and almost had to fight for it; next they came to strength, and George won a bet of five shillings, by lifting a piano; then they settled down, and talked sex, sotto voce, one man giving startling accounts of Japanese and Chinese prostitutes in Liverpool. After this the talk split up: a farmer began to counsel George how to manage the farm attached to the inn, another bargained with him about horses, and argued about cattle, a tailor advised him thickly to speculate, and unfolded a fine secret by which a man might make money, if he had the go to do it--so on, till eleven o'clock. Then Bill came and called "time!" and the place was empty, and the room shivered as a little fresh air came in between the foul tobacco smoke, and the smell of drink, and foul breath.

  We were both affected by the whisky we had drunk. I was ashamed to find that when I put out my hand to take my glass, or to strike a match, I missed my mark, and fumbled; my hands seemed hardly to belong to me, and my feet were not much more sure. Yet I was acutely conscious of every change in myself and in him; it seemed as if I could make my body drunk, but could never intoxicate my mind, which roused itself and kept the sharpest guard. George was frankly half drunk: his eyelids sloped over his eyes and his speech was thick; when he put out his hand he knocked over his glass, and the stuff was spilled all over the table; he only laughed. I, too, felt a great prompting to giggle on every occasion, and I marvelled at myself.