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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“Shonna,” grunted Sam.
“Go on, there’s a duckie; an’ I’ll ma’ ‘e a treacle-puddin’.”
“Today?” asked S’r Ann eagerly.
“Go on, Sam, my duck,” persisted the mother.
“Tha’ ‘as na got no treacle,” said Sam conclusively.
The needle was in the fi re; the children stood about watching. “Will you do it yourself?” I asked Emily.
“I!” she exclaimed, with wide eyes of astonishment, and she
shook her head emphatically.
“Then I must.” I took out the needle, holding it in my handkerchief. I took her hand and examined the wound. But when
she saw the hot glow of the needle, she snatched away her
hand, and looked into my eyes, laughing in a half-hysterical
fear and shame. I was very serious, very insistent. She yielded
me her hand again, biting her lips in imagination of the pain,
and looking at me. While my eyes were looking into hers she
had courage; when I was forced to pay attention to my cauterising, she glanced down, and with a sharp “Ah!” ending in a little
laugh, she put her hands behind her, and looked again up at
me with wide brown eyes, all quivering with apprehension, and
a little shame, and a laughter that held much pleading.
One of the children began to cry.
“It is no good,” said I, throwing the fast cooling needle on
to the hearth.
I gave the girls all the pennies I had – then I offered Sam,
who had crept out of the shelter of the table, a sixpence.
“Shonna a’e that,” he said, turning from the small coin.
“Well – I have no more pennies, so nothing will be your
share.”
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
I gave the other boy a rickety knife I had in my pocket. Sam
looked fi ercely at me. Eager for revenge, he picked up the “porkypine quill” by the hot end. He dropped it with a shout of
rage, and, seizing a cup off the table, fl ung it at the fortunate
Jack. It smashed against the fi replace. The mother grabbed at
Sam, but he was gone. A girl, a little girl, wailed, “Oh, that’s my
rosey mug – my rosey mug.” We fl ed from the scene of confusion. Emily had already noticed it. Her thoughts were of herself,
and of me.
“I am an awful coward,” said she humbly.
“But I can’t help it –” She looked beseechingly. “Never
mind,” said I.
“All my fl esh seems to jump from it. You don’t know how
I feel.”
“Well – never mind.”
“I couldn’t help it, not for my life.”
“I wonder,” said I, “if anything could possibly disturb that
young bacon-sucker? He didn’t even look round at the smash.”
“No,” said she, biting the tip of her fi nger moodily.
Further conversation was interrupted by howls from the
rear. Looking round we saw Sam careering after us over the
close-bitten turf, howling scorn and derision at us. “Rabbit-tail,
rabbit-tail,” he cried, his bare little legs twinkling, and his Hittle shirt fl uttering in the cold morning air. Fortunately, at Hast
he trod on a thistle or a thorn, for when we looked round again
to see why he was silent, he was capering on one leg, holding
his wounded foot in his hands.
CHAPTER VII
LETTIE PULLS DOWN
THE SMALL GOLD GRAPES
During the falling of the leaves Lettie was very wilful. She
uttered many banalities concerning men, and love, and marriage; she taunted Leslie and thwarted his wishes. At Hast he
stayed away from her. She had been several times down to the
mill, but because she fancied they were very familiar, receiving
her on to their rough plane like one of themselves, she stayed
away. Since the death of our father she had been restless; since
inheriting her little fortune she had become proud, scornful,
diffi cult to please. Diffi cult to please in every circumstance;
she, who had always been so rippling in thoughtless life, sat
down in the window-sill to think, and her strong teeth bit at
her handkerchief till it was torn in holes. She would say nothing to me; she read all things that dealt with modern women.
One afternoon Lettie walked over to Eberwich. Leslie had
not been to see us for a fortnight. It was a grey, dree afternoon.
The wind drifted a clammy fog across the hills, and the roads
were black and deep with mud. The trees in the wood slouched
sulkily. It was a day to be shut out and ignored if possible.
I heaped up the fi re, and went to draw the curtains and make
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
perfect the room. Then I saw Lettie coming along the path
quickly, very erect. When she came in her colour was high.
“Tea not laid?” she said briefl y.
“Rebecca has just brought in the lamp,” said I.
Lettie took off her coat and furs, and fl ung them on the
couch. She went to the mirror, lifted her hair, all curled by the
fog, and stared haughtily at herself. Then she swung round,
looked at the bare table, and rang the bell.
It was so rare a thing for us to ring the bell from the dining-room, that Rebecca went fi rst to the outer door. Then she
came in the room saying:
“Did you ring?”
“I thought tea would have been ready,” said Lettie coldly.
Rebecca looked at me, and at her, and replied:
“It is but half-past four. I can bring it in.”
Mother came down hearing the clink of the tea-cups.
“Well,” she said to Lettie, who was unlacing her boots, “and
did you fi nd it a pleasant walk?”
“Except for the mud,” was the reply.
“Ah, I guess you wished you had stayed at home. What
a state for your boots! – and your skirts too, I know. Here, let
me take them into the kitchen.”
“Let Rebecca take them,” said Lettie – but Mother was out
of the room.
When Mother had poured out the tea, we sat silently at
table. It was on the tip of our tongues to ask Lettie what ailed
her, but we were experienced and we refrained, After a while
she said:
“Do you know, I met Leslie Tempest.”
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“Oh,” said Mother tentatively. “Did he come along with
you?”
“He did not look at me.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Mother, and it was speaking volumes;
then, after a moment, she resumed:
“Perhaps he did not see you.”
“Or was it a stony Britisher?” I asked.
“He saw me,” declared Lettie, “or he wouldn’t have made
such a babyish show of being delighted with Margaret Raymond.”
“It may have been no show – he still may not have seen
you.”
“I felt at once that he had; I could see his animation was
extravagant. He need not have troubled himself. I was not going to run after him.”
“You seem very cross,” said I.
“Indeed I am not. But he knew I had to walk all this way
home, and he could take up Margaret, who has only half the
distance.”
“Was he driving?”
“In the dog-cart.” She cut her toast into strips viciously. We
waited patiently.
“It was mean of him, wasn’t it, Mother?”
“Well, my girl, you have treated him badly.”
“What a baby! What a mean, manly baby! Men are great
infants.”
“And girls,” said Mother, “do not know what they want.”
“A grown-up quality,” I added.
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“Nevertheless,” said Lettie, “he is a mean fop, and I detest
him.”
She rose and sorted out some stitchery. Lettie never stitched
unless she was in a bad humour. Mother smiled at me, sighed,
and proceeded to Mr Gladstone for comfort; her breviary and
missal were Morley’s Life of Gladstone.
I had to take a letter to Highclose to Mrs Tempest – from
my mother, concerning a bazaar in process at the church.
“I will bring Leslie back with me,” said I to myself.
The night was black and hateful. The lamps by the road
from Eberwich ended at Nethermere; their yellow blur on the
water made the cold, wet inferno of the night more ugly.
Leslie and Marie were both in the library – half a library, half a business offi ce; used also as a lounge room, being cosy. Leslie lay in a great arm-chair by the fi re, immune
among clouds of blue smoke. Marie was perched on the steps,
a great volume on her knee. Leslie got up in his cloud, shook
hands, greeted me curtly, and vanished again. Marie smiled me
a quaint, vexed smile, saying:
“Oh, Cyril, I’m so glad you’ve come. I’m so worried, and Leslie says he’s not a pastry-cook, though I’m sure I don’t want
him to be one, only he need not be a bear.”
“What’s the matter?”
She frowned, gave the big volume a little smack and said:
“Why, I do so much want to make some of those Spanish
tartlets of your mother’s that are so delicious, and of course
Mabel knows nothing of them, and they’re not in my cookery
book, and I’ve looked through page upon page of the encyclopaedia, right through ‘Spain’, and there’s nothing yet, and
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
there are fi fty pages more, and Leslie won’t help me, though
I’ve got a headache, because he’s frabous about something.”
She looked at me in comical despair.
“Do you want them for the bazaar?”
“Yes – for tomorrow. Cook has done the rest, but I had
fairly set my heart on these. Don’t you think they are lovely?”
“Exquisitely lovely. Suppose I go and ask Mother.”
“If you would. But no, oh no, you can’t make all that journey this terrible night. We are simply besieged by mud. The
men are both out – William has gone to meet Father – and
Mother has sent George to carry some things to the vicarage.
I can’t ask one of the girls on a night like this. I shall have to
let it go – and the cranberry tarts too – it cannot be helped.
I am so miserable.”
“Ask Leslie,” said I.
“He is too cross,” she replied, looking at him.
He did not deign a remark.
“Will you, Leslie?”
“What?”
“Go across to Woodside for me?”
“What for?”
“A recipe. Do, there’s a dear boy.”
“Where are the men?”
“They are both engaged – they are out.”
“Send a girl, then.”
“At night like this? Who would go?”
“Cissy.”
“I shall not ask her. Isn’t he mean, Cyril? Men are mean.”
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“I will come back,” said I. “There is nothing at home to do.
Mother is reading, and Lettie is stitching. The weather disagrees with her, as it does with Leslie.”
“But it is not fair –” she said, looking at me softly. Then she
put away the great book and climbed down.
“Won’t you go, Leslie?” she said, laying her hand on his
shoulder.
“Women!” he said, rising as if reluctantly. “There’s no end
to their wants and their caprices.”
“I thought he would go,” said she warmly. She ran to fetch
his overcoat. He put one arm slowly in the sleeve, and then the
other, but he would not lift the coat on to his shoulders.
“Well!” she said, struggling on tiptoe, “you are a great creature. Can’t you get it on, naughty child?”
“Give her a chair to stand on,” he said.
She shook the collar of the coat sharply, but he stood like
a sheep, impassive.
“Leslie, you are too bad. I can’t get it on, you stupid boy.”
I took the coat and jerked it on.
“There,” she said, giving him his cap. “Now don’t be long.”
“What a damned dirty night!” said he, when we were out.
“It is,” said I.
“The town, anywhere’s better than this hell of a country.”
“Ha! How did you enjoy yourself?”
He began a long history of three days in the metropolis.
I listened, and heard little. I heard more plainly the cry of some
night birds over Nethermere, and the peevish, wailing, yarling
cry of some beast in the wood. I was thankful to slam the door
behind me, to stand in the light of the hall.
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“Leslie!” exclaimed Mother, “I am glad to see you.”
“Thank you,” he said, turning to Lettie, who sat with her
lap full of work, her head busily bent.
“You see I can’t get up,” she said, giving him her hand,
adorned as it was by the thimble. “How nice of you to come!
We did not know you were back.”
“But . . .!” he exclaimed, then he stopped.
“I suppose you enjoyed yourself,” she went on calmly. “Immensely, thanks.”
Snap, snap, snap went her needle through the new stuff.
Then, without looking up, she said:
“Yes, no doubt. You have the air of a man who has been
enjoying himself.”
“How do you mean?”
“A kind of guilty – or shall I say embarrassed – look. Don’t
you notice it, Mother?”
“I do!” said my mother.
“I suppose it means we may not ask him questions,” Lettie
concluded, always very busily sewing.
He laughed. She had broken her cotton, and was trying to
thread the needle again.
“What have you been doing this miserable weather?” he
enquired awkwardly.
“Oh, we have sat at home desolate. ‘Ever of thee I’m fo-oondly dreaming’ – and so on. Haven’t we, Mother?”
“Well,” said Mother, “I don’t know. We imagined him all
sorts of lions up there.”
“What a shame we may not ask him to roar his old roars
over for us,” said Lettie.
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“What are they like?” he asked.
“How should I know? Like a sucking dove, to judge from
your present voice. ‘A monstrous little voice.’”
He laughed uncomfortably.
She went on sewing, suddenly beginning to sing to herself:
“Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been? I’ve been up to
London to see the fi ne queen: Pussy cat, Pussy cat, what did you
there – I frightened a little mouse under a stair.”
“I suppose,” she added, “that may be so. Poor mouse! –
but I guess she’s none the worse. You did not see the queen,
though?”
“She was not in London,” he replied sarcastically.
“You don’t –” she said, taking two pins from between her
teeth. “I suppose you don’t mean by that, she was in Eberwich – your queen?”
“I don’t know where she was,” he answered angrily.
“Oh!” she said, very sweetly, “I thought perhaps you had
met her in Eberwich. When did you come back?”
“Last night,” he replied.
“Oh – why didn’t you come and see us before?”
“I’ve been at the offi ces all day.”
“I’ve been up to Eberwich,” she said innocently.
“Have you?”
“Yes. And I feel so cross because of it. I thought I might see
you. I felt as if you were at home.”
She stitched a little, and glanced up secretly to watch his
face redden, then she continued innocently, “Yes – I felt you
had come back. It is funny how one has a feeling occasionally
that someone is near; when it is someone one has a sympathy
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