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THE WHITE PEACOCK
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 fi eld 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 –”
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“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 – fl esh of one
fl esh.”
“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
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
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?”
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“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 fi ercely, 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.
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
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 fi ends 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 fi ne 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.
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“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 fi ring 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.
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“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 refl ection 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 refl ection 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
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
any more – and the rest was misty because there were so many
faces lapped one over the other – refl ected.”
“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 –”
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
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
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