The White Peacock

by D. H. Lawrence

  "I'll show you some," she said, rising and going out of the room. He felt he was nearer her. She returned, carrying a pile of great books.

  "Jove--you're pretty strong!" said he.

  "You are charming in your compliment," she said. He glanced at her to see if she were mocking.

  "That's the highest you could say of me, isn't it?" she insisted.

  "Is it?" he asked, unwilling to compromise himself.

  "For sure," she answered--and then, laying the books on the table, "I know how a man will compliment me by the way he looks at me"--she kneeled before the fire. "Some look at my hair, some watch the rise and fall of my breathing, some look at my neck, and a few--not you among them--look me in the eyes for my thoughts. To you, I'm a fine specimen, strong! Pretty strong! You primitive man!"

  He sat twisting his fingers; she was very contrary.

  "Bring your chair up," she said, sitting down at the table and opening a book. She talked to him of each picture, insisting on hearing his opinion. Sometimes he disagreed with her and would not be persuaded. At such times she was piqued.

  "If," said she, "an ancient Briton in his skins came and contradicted me as you do, wouldn't you tell him not to make an ass of himself?"

  "I don't know," said he.

  "Then you ought to," she replied. "You know nothing."

  "How is it you ask me then?" he said.

  She began to laugh.

  "Why--that's a pertinent question. I think you might be rather nice, you know."

  "Thank you," he said, smiling ironically.

  "Oh!" she said. "I know, you think you're perfect, but you're not, you're very annoying."

  "Yes," exclaimed Alice, who had entered the room again, dressed ready to depart. "He's so blooming slow! Great whizz! Who wants fellows to carry cold dinners? Shouldn't you like to shake him, Lettie?"

  "I don't feel concerned enough," replied the other calmly. "Did you ever carry a boiled pudding, Georgie?" asked Alice with innocent interest, punching me slyly.

  "Me!--why?--what makes you ask?" he replied, quite at a loss.

  "Oh, I only wondered if your people needed any indigestion mixture--Pa mixes it--1/1½ a bottle."

  "I don't see--" he began.

  "Ta--ta, old boy, I'll give you time to think about it. Good night, Lettie. Absence makes the heart grow fonder--Georgie--of someone else. Farewell. Come along, Sybil love, the moon is shining--Good night all, good night!"

  I escorted her home, while they continued to look at the pictures. He was a romanticist. He liked Copley, Fielding, Cattermole and Birket Foster; he could see nothing whatsoever in Girtin or David Cox. They fell out decidedly over George Clausen.

  "But," said Lettie, "he is a real realist, he makes common things beautiful, he sees the mystery and magnificence that envelops us even when we work menially. I do know and I can speak. If I hoed in the fields beside you--" This was a very new idea for him, almost a shock to his imagination, and she talked unheeded. The picture under discussion was a water-colour--"Hoeing" by Clausen.

  "You'd be just that colour in the sunset," she said, thus bringing him back to the subject, "and if you looked at the ground you'd find there was a sense of warm gold fire in it, and once you'd perceived the colour, it would strengthen till you'd see nothing else. You are blind; you are only half-born; you are gross with good living and heavy sleeping. You are a piano which will only play a dozen common notes. Sunset is nothing to you--it merely happens anywhere. Oh, but you make me feel as if I'd like to make you suffer. If you'd ever been sick; if you'd ever been born into a home where there was something oppressed you, and you couldn't understand; if ever you'd believed, or even doubted, you might have been a man by now. You never grow up, like bulbs which spend all summer getting fat and fleshy, but never wakening the germ of a flower. As for me, the flower is born in me, but it wants bringing forth. Things don't flower if they're overfed. You have to suffer before you blossom in this life. When death is just touching a plant, it forces it into a passion of flowering. You wonder how I have touched death. You don't know. There's always a sense of death in this home. I believe my mother hated my father before I was born. That was death in her veins for me before I was born. It makes a difference--"

  As he sat listening, his eyes grew wide and his lips were parted, like a child who feels the tale but does not understand the words. She, looking away from herself at last, saw him, began to laugh gently, and patted his hand, saying:

  "Oh! my dear heart, are you bewildered? How amiable of you to listen to me--there isn't any meaning in it all--there isn't really!"

  "But," said he, "why do you say it?"

  "Oh, the question!" she laughed. "Let us go back to our muttons, we're gazing at each other like two dazed images." They turned on, chatting casually, till George suddenly exclaimed, "There!"

  It was Maurice Griffinhagen's "Idyll".

  "What of it?" she asked, gradually flushing. She remembered her own enthusiasm over the picture.

  "Wouldn't it be fine?" he exclaimed, looking at her with glowing eyes, his teeth showing white in a smile that was not amusement.

  "What?" she asked, dropping her head in confusion. "That--a girl like that--half afraid--and passion!" He lit up curiously.

  "She may well be half afraid, when the barbarian comes out in his glory, skins and all."

  "But don't you like it?" he asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders, saying, "Make love to the next girl you meet, and by the time the poppies redden the field, she'll hang in your arms. She'll have need to be more than half afraid, won't she?"

  She played with the leaves of the book, and did not look at him.

  "But," he faltered, his eyes glowing, "it would be--rather--"

  "Don't, sweet lad, don't!" she cried, laughing.

  "But I shouldn't--" he insisted. "I don't know whether I should like any girl I know to--"

  "Precious Sir Galahad," she said in a mock caressing voice, and stroking his cheek with her finger, "you ought to have been a monk--a martyr, a Carthusian."

  He laughed, taking no notice. He was breathlessly quivering under the new sensation of heavy, unappeased fire in his breast, and in the muscles of his arms. He glanced at her bosom and shivered.

  "Are you studying just how to play the part?" she asked.

  "No--but--" he tried to look at her, but failed. He shrank, laughing, and dropped his head.

  "What?" she asked with vibrant curiosity.

  Having become a few degrees calmer, he looked up at her now, his eyes wide and vivid with a declaration that made her shrink back as if flame had leaped towards her face. She bent down her head and picked at her dress.

  "Didn't you know the picture before?" she said, in a low, toneless voice.

  He shut his eyes and shrank with shame.

  "No, I've never seen it before," he said.

  "I'm surprised," she said. "It is a very common one."

  "Is it?" he answered, and this make-belief conversation fell. She looked up, and found his eyes. They gazed at each other for a moment before they hid their faces again. It was a torture to each of them to look thus nakedly at the other, a dazzled, shrinking pain that they forced themselves to undergo for a moment, that they might the moment after tremble with a fierce sensation that filled their veins with fluid, fiery electricity. She sought, almost in panic, for something to say.

  "I believe it's in Liverpool, the picture," she contrived to say.

  He dared not kill this conversation, he was too self-conscious. He forced himself to reply, "I didn't know there was a gallery in Liverpool."

  "Oh yes, a very good one," she said.

  Their eyes met in the briefest flash of a glance, then both turned their faces aside. Thus averted, one from the other, they made talk. At last she rose, gathered the books together, and carried them off. At the door she turned. She must steal another keen moment: "Are you admiring my strength?" she asked. Her pose was fine. With her head thrown back, the roundness of her throat
ran finely down to the bosom, which swelled above the pile of books held by her straight arms. He looked at her. Their lips smiled curiously. She put back her throat as if she were drinking. They felt the blood beating madly in their necks. Then, suddenly breaking into a slight trembling, she turned round and left the room.

  While she was out, he sat twisting his moustache. She came back along the hall talking madly to herself in French. Having been much impressed by Sarah Bernhardt's "Dame aux Camélias" and "Adrienne Lecouvreur", Lettie had caught something of the weird tone of this great actress, and her raillery and mockery came out in little wild waves. She laughed at him, and at herself, and at men in general, and at love in particular. Whatever he said to her, she answered in the same mad clatter of French, speaking high and harshly. The sound was strange and uncomfortable. There was a painful perplexity in his brow, such as I often perceived afterwards, a sense of something hurting, something he could not understand.

  "Well, well, well, well!" she exclaimed at last. "We must be mad sometimes, or we should be getting aged, hein?"

  "I wish I could understand," he said plaintively.

  "Poor dear!" she laughed. "How sober he is! And will you really go? They will think we've given you no supper, you look so sad."

  "I have supped--full--" he began, his eyes dancing with a smile as he ventured upon a quotation. He was very much excited.

  "Of horrors!" she cried, completing it. "Now that is worse than anything I have given you."

  "Is it?" he replied, and they smiled at each other.

  "Far worse," she answered. They waited in suspense for some moments. He looked at her.

  "Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand. Her voice was full of insurgent tenderness. He looked at her again, his eyes flickering. Then he took her hand. She pressed his fingers, holding them a little while. Then ashamed of her display of feeling, she looked down. He had a deep cut across his thumb.

  "What a gash!" she exclaimed, shivering, and clinging a little tighter to his fingers before she released them. He gave a little laugh.

  "Does it hurt you?" she asked very gently.

  He laughed again--"No!" he said softly, as if his thumb were not worthy of consideration.

  They smiled again at each other, and, with a blind movement, he broke the spell and was gone.

  CHAPTER IV - THE FATHER

  Autumn set in, and the red dahlias which kept the warm light alive in their bosoms so late into the evening died in the night, and the morning had nothing but brown balls of rottenness to show.

  They called me as I passed the post office door in Eberwich one evening, and they gave me a letter for my mother. The distorted, sprawling handwriting perplexed me with a dim uneasiness; I put the letter away, and forgot it. I remembered it later in the evening, when I wished to recall something to interest my mother. She looked at the handwriting, and began hastily and nervously to tear open the envelope; she held it away from her in the light of the lamp, and with eyes drawn half closed, tried to scan it. So I found her spectacles, but she did not speak her thanks, and her hand trembled. She read the short letter quickly; then she sat down, and read it again, and continued to look at it.

  "What is it, Mother?" I asked.

  She did not answer, but continued staring at the letter. I went up to her, and put my hand on her shoulder, feeling very uncomfortable. She took no notice of me, beginning to murmur, "Poor Frank--Poor Frank." That was my father's name.

  "But what is it, Mother?--tell me what's the matter!"

  She turned and looked at me as if I were a stranger; she got up, and began to walk about the room; then she left the room, and I heard her go out of the house.

  The letter had fallen on to the floor. I picked it up. The handwriting was very broken. The address gave a village some few miles away; the date was three days before.

  "My Dear Lettice:

  "You will want to know I am gone. I can hardly last a day or two--my kidneys are nearly gone.

  "I came over one day. I didn't see you, but I saw the girl by the window, and I had a few words with the lad. He never knew, and he felt nothing. I think the girl might have done. If you knew how awfully lonely I am, Lettice--how awfully I have been, you might feel sorry.

  "I have saved what I could, to pay you back. I have had the worst of it, Lettice, and I'm glad the end has come. I have had the worst of it.

  "Good-bye--for ever--your husband,

  "FRANK BEARDSALL."

  I was numbed by this letter of my father's. With almost agonised effort I strove to recall him, But I knew that my image of a tall, handsome, dark man with pale grey eyes was made up from my mother's few words, and from a portrait I had once seen.

  The marriage had been unhappy. My father was of frivolous, rather vulgar character, but plausible, having a good deal of charm. He was a liar, without notion of honesty, and he had deceived my mother thoroughly. One after another she discovered his mean dishonesties and deceits, and her soul revolted from him, and because the illusion of him had broken into a thousand vulgar fragments, she turned away with the scorn of a woman who finds her romance has been a trumpery tale. When he left her for other pleasures--Lettie being a baby of three years, while I was five--she rejoiced bitterly. She had heard of him indirectly--and of him nothing good, although he prospered--but he had never come to see her or written to her in all the eighteen years.

  In a while my mother came in. She sat down, pleating up the hem of her black apron, and smoothing it out again. "You know," she said, "he had a right to the children, and I've kept them all the time."

  "He could have come," said I.

  "I set them against him, I have kept them from him, and he wanted them. I ought to be by him now--I ought to have taken you to him long ago."

  "But how could you, when you knew nothing of him?"

  "He would have come--he wanted to come--I have felt it for years. But I kept him away. I know I have kept him away. I have felt it, and he has. Poor Frank--he'll see his mistakes now. He would not have been as cruel as I have been--"

  "Nay, Mother, it is only the shock that makes you say so."

  "This makes me know. I have felt in myself a long time that he was suffering; I have had the feeling of him in me. I knew, yes, I did know he wanted me, and you, I felt it. I have had the feeling of him upon me this last three months especially...I have been cruel to him."

  "Well--we'll go to him now, shall we?" I said. "Tomorrow--tomorrow," she replied, noticing me really for the first time. "I go in the morning."

  "And I'll go with you."

  "Yes--in the morning. Lettie has her party to Chatsworth--don't tell her--we won't tell her."

  "No," said I.

  Shortly after, my mother went upstairs. Lettie came in rather late from Highclose; Leslie did not come in. In the morning they were going with a motor party into Matloch and Chatsworth, and she was excited, and did not observe anything.

  After all, Mother and I could not set out until the warm tempered afternoon. The air was full of a soft yellowness when we stepped down from the train at Cossethay. My mother insisted on walking the long two miles to the village. We went slowly along the road, lingering over the little red flowers in the high hedge-bottom up the hillside. We were reluctant to come to our destination. As we came in sight of the little grey tower of the church, we heard the sound of braying, brassy music. Before us, filling a little croft, the Wakes was in full swing.

  Some wooden horses careered gaily round, and the swingboats leaped into the mild blue sky. We sat upon the stile, my mother and I, and watched. There were booths, and coconut shies and roundabouts scattered in the small field. Groups of children moved quietly from attraction to attraction. A deeply tanned man came across the field swinging two dripping buckets of water. Women looked from the doors of their brilliant caravans, and lean dogs rose lazily and settled down again under the steps. The fair moved slowly, for all its noise. A stout lady, with a husky masculine voice, invited the excited children into her pee
p-show. A swarthy man stood with his thin legs astride on the platform of the roundabouts, and sloping backwards, his mouth distended with a row of fingers, he whistled astonishingly to the coarse row of the organ, and his whistling sounded clear, like the flight of a wild goose high over the chimney tops, as he was carried round and round. A little fat man with an ugly swelling on his chest stood screaming from a filthy booth to a crowd of urchins, bidding them challenge a big, stolid young man who stood with folded arms, his fists pushing out his biceps. On being asked if he would undertake any of these prospective challenges, this young man nodded, not having yet attained a talking stage:--yes he would take two at a time, screamed the little fat man with the big excrescence on his chest, pointing at the cowering lads and girls. Farther off, Punch's quaint voice could be heard when the coconut man ceased grinding out screeches from his rattle. The coconut man was wroth, for these youngsters would not risk a penny shy, and the rattle yelled like a fiend. A little girl came along to look at us, daintily licking an ice-cream sandwich. We were uninteresting, however, so she passed on to stare at the caravans.

  We had almost gathered courage to cross the wakes, when the cracked bell of the church sent its note falling over the babble.

  "One--two--three"--had it really sounded three! Then it rang on a lower bell--"One--two--three." A passing bell for a man! I looked at my mother--she turned away from me.

  The organ flared on--the husky woman came forward to make another appeal. Then there was a lull. The man with the lump on his chest had gone inside the rag to spar with the solid fellow. The coconut man had gone to the "Three Tunns" in fury, and a brazen girl of seventeen or so was in charge of the nuts. The horses careered round, carrying two frightened boys.

  Suddenly the quick, throbbing note of the low bell struck again through the din. I listened--but could not keep count. One, two, three, four--for the third time that great lad had determined to go on the horses, and they had started while his foot was on the step, and he had been foiled--eight, nine, ten--no wonder that whistling man had such a big Adam's apple--I wondered if it hurt his neck when he talked, being so pointed--nineteen, twenty--the girl was licking more ice-cream, with precious, tiny licks--twenty-five, twenty-six--I wondered if I did count to twenty-six mechanically. At this point I gave it up, and watched for Lord Tennyson's bald head to come spinning round on the painted rim of the roundabouts, followed by a red-faced Lord Roberts, and a villainous-looking Disraeli.