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THE WHITE PEACOCK
with.” She continued to stitch, then she took a pin from her bosom, and fi xed her work, all without the least suspicion of guile.
“I thought I might meet you when I was out –” another
pause, another fi xing, a pin to be taken from her lips – “but
I didn’t.”
“I was at the offi ce till rather late,” he said quickly. She
stitched away calmly, provokingly.
She took the pin from her mouth again, fi xed down a fold
of stuff, and said softly:
“You little liar.”
Mother had gone out of the room for her recipe book.
He sat on his chair dumb with mortifi cation. She stitched
swiftly and unerringly. There was silence for some moments.
Then he spoke:
“I did not know you wanted me for the pleasure of plucking this crow,” he said.
“I wanted you!” she exclaimed, looking up for the fi rst time.
“Who said I wanted you?”
“No one. If you didn’t want me I may as well go.”
The sound of stitching alone broke the silence for some
moments, then she said deliberately:
“What made you think I wanted you?”
“I don’t care a damn whether you wanted me or whether
you didn’t.”
“It seems to upset you! And don’t use bad language. It is the
privilege of those near and dear to one.”
“That’s why you begin it, I suppose.”
“I cannot remember –” she said loftily.
He laughed sarcastically.
121
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“Well – if you’re so beastly cut up about it –” He put this
tentatively, expecting the soft answer. But she refused to speak,
and went on stitching. He fi dgeted about, twisted his cap uncomfortably, and sighed. At last he said:
“Well – you – have we done then?”
She had the vast superiority, in that she was engaged in
ostentatious work. She could fi x the cloth, regard it quizzically,
rearrange it, settle down and begin to sew before she replied.
This humbled him. At last she said:
“I thought so this afternoon.”
“But, good God, Lettie, can’t you drop it?”
“And then?” – the question startled him.
“Why! – forget it,” he replied.
“Well?” – she spoke softly, gently. He answered to the call
like an eager hound. He crossed quickly to her side as she sat
sewing, and said, in a low voice:
“You do care something for me, don’t you, Lettie?”
“Well” – it was modulated kindly, a sort of promise of assent.
“You have treated me rottenly, you know, haven’t you?
You know I – well, I care a good bit.”
“It is a queer way of showing it.” Her voice was now a gentle
reproof, the sweetest of surrenders and forgiveness. He leaned
forward, took her face in his hands, and kissed her, murmuring:
“You are a little tease.”
She laid her sewing in her lap, and looked up.
122
THE WHITE PEACOCK
The next day, Sunday, broke wet and dreary. Breakfast was
late, and about ten o’clock we stood at the window looking
upon the impossibility of our going to church.
There was a driving drizzle of rain, like a dirty curtain before the landscape. The nasturtium leaves by the garden walk
had gone rotten in a frost, and the gay green discs had given
place to the fi rst black fl ags of winter, hung on fl accid stalks,
pinched at the neck. The grass plot was strewn with fallen
leaves, wet and brilliant: scarlet splashes of Virginia creeper,
golden drift from the limes, ruddy brown shawls under the
beeches, and away back in the corner, the black mat of maple
leaves, heavy soddened; they ought to have been a vivid lemon colour. Occasionally one of these great black leaves would
loose its hold, and zigzag down, staggering in the dance of
death.
“There now!” said Lettie suddenly.
I looked up in time to see a crow close his wings and clutch
the topmost bough of an old grey holly tree on the edge of the
clearing. He fl apped again, recovered his balance, and folded
himself up in black resignation to the detestable weather.
“Why has the old wretch settled just over our noses,” said
Lettie petulantly. “Just to blot the promise of a sorrow.”
“Yours or mine?” I asked.
“He is looking at me, I declare.”
“You can see the wicked pupil of his eye at this distance,”
I insinuated.
“Well,” she replied, determined to take this omen unto
herself, “I saw him fi rst.”
123
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“‘One for sorrow, two for joy, Three for a letter, four for
a boy, Five for silver, six for gold, And seven for a secret never
told.’
“ – You may bet he’s only a messenger in advance. There’ll
be three more shortly, and you’ll have your four,” said I, comforting.
“Do you know,” she said, “it is very funny, but whenever
I’ve particularly noticed one crow, I’ve had some sorrow or
other.”
“And when you notice four?” I asked.
“You should have heard old Mrs Wagstaffe,” was her reply.
“She declares an old crow croaked in their apple tree every day
for a week before Jerry got drowned.”
“Great sorrow for her,” I remarked.
“Oh, but she wept abundantly. I felt like weeping too, but
somehow I laughed. She hoped he had gone to heaven – but I’m
sick of that word ‘but’ – it is always tangling one’s thoughts.”
“But, Jerry!” I insisted.
“Oh, she lifted up her forehead, and the tears dripped off
her nose. He must have been an old nuisance, Syb. I can’t understand why women marry such men. I felt downright glad to
think of the drunken old wretch toppling into the canal out
of the way.”
She pulled the thick curtain across the window, and nestled down in it, resting her cheek against the edge, protecting
herself from the cold window-pane. The wet, grey wind shook
the half-naked trees, whose leaves dripped and shone sullenly.
Even the trunks were blackened, trickling with the rain which
drove persistently.
124
THE WHITE PEACOCK
Whirled down the sky like black maple leaves caught up
aloft, came two more crows. They swept down and clung hold
of the trees in front of the house, staying near the old forerunner. Lettie watched them, half amused, half melancholy. One
bird was carried past. He swerved round and began to battle
up the wind, rising higher, and rowing laboriously against the
driving wet current.
“Here comes your fourth,” said I.
She did not answer, but continued to watch. The bird wrestled heroically, but the wind pushed him aside, tilted him,
caught under his broad wings and bore him down. He swept
in level fl ight down the stream, outspread and still, as if fi xed
in despair. I grieved for him. Sadly two of his fellows rose and
were carried away after him, like souls hunting for a body to
inhabit, and despairing. Only the fi rst ghoul was left on the
withered, silver-grey skeleton of the holly.
“He won’t even say ‘Nevermore’,” I remarked.
“He has more sense,” replied Lettie. She looked a trifl e lugubrious. Then she continued: “Better say ‘Nevermore’ than
‘Evermore’.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Fancy this ‘Evermore’.”
She had been sure in her own soul that Leslie would come –
now she began to doubt: – things were very perplexing.
The bell in the kitchen jangled, she jumped up. I went and
opened the door. He came in. She gave him one bright look of
satisfaction. He saw it, and understood.
“Helen has got some people over – I have been awfully
rude to leave them now,” he said quietly.
125
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“What a dreadful day!” said Mother.
“Oh, fearful! Your face is red, Lettie! What have you been
doing?”
“Looking into the fi re.”
“What did you see?”
“The pictures wouldn’t come plain – nothing.”
He laughed. We were silent for some time.
“You were expecting me?” he murmured.
“Yes – I knew you’d come.”
They were left alone. He came up to her and put his arms
round her, as she stood with her elbow on the mantelpiece.
“You do want me,” he pleaded softly.
“Yes,” she murmured.
He held her in his arms and kissed her repeatedly, again
and again, till she was out of breath, and put up her hand, and
gently pushed her face away.
“You are a cold little lover – you are a shy bird,” he said,
laughing into her eyes. He saw her tears rise, swimming on her
lids, but not falling.
“Why, my love, my darling – why!” – he put his face to
her’s and took the tear on his cheek:
“I know you love me,” he said, gently, all tenderness.
“Do you know,” he murmured. “I can positively feel the
tears rising up from my heart and throat. They are quite painful gathering, my love. There – you can do anything with me.”
They were silent for some time. After a while, a rather long
while, she came upstairs and found Mother – and at the end
of some minutes I heard my mother go to him.
126
THE WHITE PEACOCK
I sat by my window and watched the low clouds reel and
stagger past. It seemed as if everything were being swept
along – I myself seemed to have lost my substance, to have
become detached from concrete things and the fi rm trodden
pavement of everyday life. Onward, always onward, not knowing where, nor why, the wind, the clouds, the rain and the
birds and the leaves, everything whirling along – why?
All this time the old crow sat motionless, though the clouds
tumbled, and were rent and piled, though the trees bent, and
the window-pane shivered with running water. Then I found
it had ceased to rain; that there was a sickly yellow sunlight,
brightening on some great elm leaves near at hand till they
looked like ripe lemons hanging. The crow looked at me –
I was certain he looked at me.
“What do you think of it all?” I asked him.
He eyed me with contempt: great featherless, half-winged
bird as I was, incomprehensible, contemptible, but awful. I believe he hated me.
“But,” said I, “if a raven could answer, why won’t you?” He
looked wearily away. Nevertheless my gaze disquieted him.
He turned uneasily; he rose, waved his wings as if for fl ight,
poised, then settled defi antly down again.
“You are no good,” said I, “you won’t help even with
a word.”
He sat stolidly unconcerned. Then I heard the lapwings
in the meadow crying, crying. They seemed to seek the storm,
yet to rail at it. They wheeled in the wind, yet never ceased
to complain of it. They enjoyed the struggle, and lamented it
in wild lament, through which came a sound of exultation.
127
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
All the lapwings cried, cried the same tale, “Bitter, bitter, the
struggle – for nothing, nothing, nothing” – and all the time
they swung about on their broad wings, revelling.
“There,” said I to the crow, “they try it, and fi nd it bitter,
but they wouldn’t like to miss it, to sit still like you, you old
corpse.”
He could not endure this. He rose in defi ance, fl apped his
wings, and launched off, uttering one “Caw” of sinister foreboding. He was soon whirled away.
I discovered that I was very cold, so I went downstairs.
Twisting a curl round his fi nger, one of those loose curls
that always dance free from the captured hair, Leslie said:
“Look how fond your hair is of me; look how it twines
round my fi nger. Do you know, your hair – the light in it is
like – oh – buttercups in the sun.”
“It is like me – it won’t be kept in bounds,” she replied.
“Shame if it were – like this, it brushes my face – so – and sets
me tingling like music.”
“Behave! Now be still, and I’ll tell you what sort of music
you make.”
“Oh – well – tell me.”
“Like the calling of throstles and blackies, in the evening,
frightening the pale little wood-anemones, till they run panting and swaying right up to our wall. Like the ringing of bluebells when the bees are at them; like Hippomenes, out-ofbreath, laughing because he’d won.”
He kissed her with rapturous admiration.
“Marriage music, sir,” she added.
128
THE WHITE PEACOCK
“What golden apples did I throw?” he asked lightly. “What!”
she exclaimed, half mocking.
“This Atalanta,” he replied, looking lovingly upon her,
“this Atalanta – I believe she just lagged at last on purpose.”
“You have it,” she cried, laughing, submitting to his caresses. “It was you – the apples of your fi rm heels – the apples of
your eyes – the apples Eve bit – that won me – hein!”
“That was it – you are clever, you are rare. And I’ve won,
won the ripe apples of your cheeks, and your breasts, and your
very fi sts – they can’t stop me – and – and – all your roundness and warmness and softness – I’ve won you, Lettie.”
She nodded wickedly, saying:
“All those – those – yes.”
“All – she admits it – everything!”
“Oh! – but let me breathe. Did you claim everything?”
“Yes, and you gave it me.”
“Not yet. Everything though?”
“Every atom.”
“But – now you look –”
“Did I look aside?”
“With the inward eye. Suppose now we were two angels –”
“Oh, dear – a sloppy angel!”
“Well – don’t interrupt now – suppose I were one – like
the ‘Blessed Damosel’.”
“With a warm bosom – !”
“Don’t be foolish, now – I a ‘Blessed Damosel’ and you
kicking the brown beech leaves below thinking –”
“What are you driving at?”
“Would you be thinking – thoughts like prayers?”
129
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“What on earth do you ask that for? Oh – I think I’d be
cursing – eh?”
“No – saying fragrant prayers – that your thin soul might
mount up –”
“Hang thin souls, Lettie! I’m not one of your souly sort.
I can’t stand Pre-Raphaelities. You – You’re not a BurneJonesess – you’re an Albert Moore. I think there’s more in
the warm touch of a soft body than in a prayer. I’ll pray with
kisses.”
“And when you can’t?”
“I’ll wait till prayer-time again. By. Jove, I’d rather feel my
arms full of you; I’d rather touch that red mouth – you grudger! – than sing hymns with you in any heaven.”
“I’m afraid you’ll never sing hymns with me in heaven.”
“Well – I have you here – yes, I have you now.”
“Our life is but a fading dawn?”
“Liar! – Well, you called me! Besides, I don’t care; ‘Carpe
diem’, my rosebud, my fawn. There’s a nice Carmen about
a fawn. ‘Time to leave its mother, and venture into a warm embrace.’ Poor old Horace – I’ve forgotten him.”
“Then poor old Horace.”
“Ha! Ha! – Well, I shan’t forget you. What’s that queer look
in your eyes?”
“What is it?”
“Nay – you tell me. You are such a tease, there’s no getting
to the bottom of you.”
“You can fathom the depth of a kiss –”
“I will – I will –”
After a while he asked:
130
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