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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“Am I?” he replied – “It’s because things are altered too.
They’re settled one way now – for the present at least.”
“Don’t forget the two steps this time,” said she, smiling, and
adding seriously, “You see, I couldn’t help it.”
“No, why not?”
“Things! I have been brought up to expect it – everybody
expected it – and you’re bound to do what people expect you
to do – you can’t help it. We can’t help ourselves, we’re all
chess-men,” she said.
“Ay,” he agreed, but doubtfully.
“I wonder where it will end,” she said.
“Lettie!” he cried, and his hand closed in a grip on hers.
“Don’t – don’t say anything – it’s no good now, it’s too late.
It’s done; and what is done, is done. If you talk any more, I shall
say I’m tired and stop the dance. Don’t say another word.”
He did not – at least to her. Their dance came to an end.
Then he took Marie, who talked winsomely to him. As he
waltzed with Marie he regained his animated spirits. He was
very lively the rest of the evening, quite astonishing and reckless. At supper he ate everything, and drank much wine.
“Have some more turkey, Mr Saxton.”
“Thanks – but give me some of that stuff in brown jelly,
will you? It’s new to me.”
“Have some of this trifl e, Georgie?”
“I will – you are a jewel.”
“So will you be-a yellow topaz tomorrow!”
“Ah! tomorrow’s tomorrow!”
After supper was over, Alice cried:
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“Georgie, dear – have you fi nished? – don’t die the death
of a king – King John – I can’t spare you, pet.”
“Are you so fond of me?”
“I am – Aw! I’d throw my best Sunday hat under a milkcart for you, I would!”
“No; throw yourself into the milk-cart – some Sunday,
when I’m driving.”
“Yes – come and see us,” said Emily.
“How nice! Tomorrow you won’t want me, Georgie dear,
so I’ll come. Don’t you wish Pa would make Tono-Bungay?
Wouldn’t you marry me then?”
“I would,” said he.
When the cart came, and Alice, Madie, Tom and Will departed, Alice bade Lettie a long farewell – blew Georgie many
kisses – promised to love him faithful and true – and was
gone.
George and Emily lingered a short time.
Now the room seemed empty and quiet, and all the laughter seemed to have gone. The conversation dribbled away;
there was an awkwardness.
“Well,” said George heavily, at last. “Today is nearly gone –
it will soon be tomorrow. I feel a bit drunk! We had a good
time tonight.”
“I am glad,” said Lettie.
They put on their clogs and leggings, and wrapped themselves up, and stood in the hall.
“We must go,” said George, “before the clock strikes –
like Cinderella – look at my glass slippers –” he pointed to
his clogs. “Midnight, and rags, and fl eeing. Very appropriate.
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
I shall call myself Cinderella who wouldn’t fi t. I believe I’m
a bit drunk – the world looks funny.”
We looked out at the haunting wanness of the hills beyond
Nethermere. “Good-bye, Lettie; good-bye.”
They were out in the snow, which peered pale and eerily
from the depths of the black wood.
“Good-bye,” he called out of the darkness. Leslie slammed
the door, and drew Lettie away into the drawing-room. The
sound of his low, vibrating satisfaction reached us, as he murmured to her, and laughed now. Then he kicked the door of
the room shut. Lettie began to laugh and mock and talk in
a high strained voice. The sound of their laughter mingled was
strange and incongruous. Then her voice died down.
Marie sat at the little piano – which was put in the dining-room – strumming and tinkling the false, quavering old
notes. It was a depressing jingling in the deserted remains of
the feast, but she felt sentimental, and enjoyed it.
This was a gap between today and tomorrow, a dreary gap,
where one sat and looked at the dreary comedy of yesterdays,
and the grey tragedies of dawning tomorrows, vacantly, missing the poignancy of an actual today.
The cart returned.
“Leslie, Leslie, John is here, come along!” called Marie.
There was no answer.
“Leslie – John is waiting in the snow.”
“All right.”
“But you must come at once.” She went to the door and
spoke to him. Then he came out looking rather sheepish, and
rather angry at the interruption. Lettie followed, tidying her
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
hair. She did not laugh and look confused, as most girls do on
similar occasions; she seemed very tired.
At last Leslie tore himself away, and after more returns for
a farewell kiss, mounted the carriage, which stood in a pool of
yellow light, blurred and splotched with shadows, and drove
away, calling something about tomorrow.
PART TWO
CHAPTER I
STRANGE BLOSSOMS
AND STRANGE NEW BUDDING
Winter lay a long time prostrate on the earth. The men in
the mines of Tempest, Warrall and Co. came out on strike on
a question of the rearranging of the working system down below. The distress was not awful, for the men were on the whole
wise and well-conditioned, but there was a dejection over the
face of the country-side, and some suffered keenly. Everywhere,
along the lanes and in the streets, loitered gangs of men, unoccupied and spiritless. Week after week went on, and the agents
of the Miners’ Union held great meetings, and the ministers
held prayer-meetings, but the strike continued. There was no
rest. Always the crier’s bell was ringing in the street; always
the servants of the company were delivering handbills, stating
the case clearly, and always the people talked and fi lled the
months with bitter, and then hopeless, resenting. Schools gave
breakfasts, chapels gave soup, well-to-do people gave teas –
the children enjoyed it. But we, who knew the faces of the old
men and the privations of the women, breathed a cold, disheartening atmosphere of sorrow and trouble.
Determined poaching was carried on in the squire’s woods
and warrens. Annable defended his game heroically. One man
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
was at home with a leg supposed to be wounded by a fall on
the slippery roads – but really, by a man-trap in the woods.
Then Annable caught two men, and they were sentenced to
two months’ imprisonment.
On both the lodge gates of Highclose – on our side and on
the far Eberwich side – were posted notices that trespassers
on the drive or in the grounds would be liable to punishment.
These posters were soon mudded over, and fresh ones fi xed.
The men loitering on the road by Nethermere looked angrily at Lettie as she passed, in her black furs which Leslie had
given her, and their remarks were pungent. She heard them,
and they burned in her heart. From my mother she inherited
democratic views, which she now proceeded to debate warmly
with her lover.
Then she tried to talk to Leslie about the strike. He heard
her with mild superiority, smiled, and said she did not know.
Women jumped to conclusions at the fi rst touch of feeling; men
must look at a thing all round, then make a decision – nothing hasty and impetuous – careful, long-thought-out, correct
decisions. Women could not be expected to understand these
things, business was not for them; in fact, their mission was
above business – etc. etc. Unfortunately Lettie was the wrong
woman to treat thus.
“So!” said she, with a quiet, hopeless tone of fi nality.
“There now, you understand, don’t you, Minnehaha, my
Laughing Water. – So laugh again, darling, and don’t worry
about these things. We will not talk about them any more, eh?”
“No more.”
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“No more – that’s right – you are as wise as an angel. Come
here – pooh, the wood is thick and lonely! Look, there is nobody in the world but us, and you are my heaven and earth!”
“And hell?”
“Ah – if you are so cold – how cold you are! – it gives me
little shivers when you look so – and I am always hot – Lettie!”
“Well?”
“You are cruel! Kiss me – now – No, I don’t want your
cheek – kiss me yourself. Why don’t you say something?”
“What for? What’s the use of saying anything when there’s
nothing immediate to say?”
“You are offended!”
“It feels like snow today,” she answered.
At last, however, winter began to gather her limbs, to rise,
and drift with saddened garments northward.
The strike was over. The men had compromised. It was
a gentle way of telling them they were beaten. But the strike
was over.
The birds fl uttered and dashed; the catkins on the hazel loosened their winter rigidity, and swung soft tassels. All
through the day sounded long, sweet whistlings from the
bushes; then later, loud, laughing shouts of bird triumph on
every hand.
I remember a day when the breast of the hills was heaving in a last quick waking sigh, and the blue eyes of the waters opened bright. Across the infi nite skies of March great
rounded masses of cloud had sailed stately all day, domed with
white radiance, softened with faint, fl eeting shadows as if companies of angels were gently sweeping past; adorned with rest-
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
ing, silken shadows likes those of a full white breast. All day
the clouds had moved on to their vast destination, and I had
clung to the earth yearning and impatient. I took a brush and
tried to paint them, then I raged at myself. I wished that in
all the wild valley where cloud shadows were travelling like
pilgrims, something would call me forth from my rooted loneliness. Through all the grandeur of the white and blue day,
the poised cloud masses swung their slow fl ight, and left me
unnoticed.
At evening they were all gone, and the empty sky, like
a blue bubble over us, swam on its pale bright rims.
Leslie came, and asked his betrothed to go out with him,
under the darkening wonderful bubble. She bade me accompany her, and, to escape from myself, I went.
It was warm in the shelter of the wood and in the crouching hollows of the hills. But over the slanting shoulders of the
hills the wind swept, whipping the redness into our faces.
“Get me some of those alder catkins, Leslie,” said Lettie, as
we came down to the stream.
“Yes, those, where they hang over the brook. They are
ruddy like new blood freshening under the skin. Look, tassels
of crimson and gold!” She pointed to the dusty hazel catkins
mingled with the alder on her bosom. Then she began to quote
Christina Rossetti’s “A Birthday”.
“I’m glad you came to take me a walk,” she continued
– “Doesn’t Strelley Mill look pretty? Like a group of orange
and scarlet fungI in a fairy picture. Do you know, I haven’t
been, no, not for quite a long time. Shall we call now?”
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