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THE WHITE PEACOCK
and she was such a treat, so soft and warm, and so amusing.
He was always laughing at her quaint crude notions, and at
her queer little turns of speech. She talked to him with a little language, she sat on his knee and twisted his moustache,
fi nding small, unreal fault with his features for the delight of
dwelling upon them. He was, he said, incredibly happy. Really he could not believe it. Meg was, ah! she was a treat. Then
he would laugh, thinking how indifferent he had been about
taking her. A little shadow might cross his eyes, but he would
laugh again, and tell me one of his wife’s funny little notions.
She was quite uneducated, and such fun, he said. I looked at
him as he sounded this note. I remembered his crude superiority of early days, which had angered Emily so deeply. There
was in him something of the prig. I did not like his amused
indulgence of his wife.
At threshing day, when I worked for the last time at the
Mill, I noticed the new tendency in him. The Saxtons had always kept up a certain proud reserve. In former years, the family had moved into the parlour on threshing day, and an extra woman had been hired to wait on the men who came with
the machine. This time George suggested: “Let us have dinner
with the men in the kitchen, Cyril. They are a rum gang. It’s
rather good sport mixing with them. They’ve seen a bit of life,
and I like to hear them, they’re so blunt. They’re good studies
though.”
The farmer sat at the head of the table. The seven men
trooped in, very sheepish, and took their places. They had not
much to say at fi rst. They were a mixed set, some rather small,
young, and furtive looking, some unshapely and coarse, with
371
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
unpleasant eyes, the eyelids slack. There was one man whom
we called the Parrot, because he had a hooked nose, and put
forward his head as he talked. He had been a very large man,
but he was grey, and bending at the shoulders. His face was
pale and fl eshy, and his eyes seemed dull-sighted.
George patronised the men, and they did not object. He
chaffed them, making a good deal of demonstration in giving
them more beer. He invited them to pass up their plates, called
the woman to bring more bread, and altogether played mine
host of a feast of beggars. The Parrot ate very slowly.
“Come, Dad,” said George, “you’re not getting on. Not got
many grinders – ?”
“What I’ve got’s in th’ road. Is’ll ‘a’e ter get ’em out. I can
manage wi’ bare gums, like a baby again.”
“Second childhood, eh? Ah well, we must all come to it,”
George laughed.
The old man lifted his head and looked at him, and said
slowly:
“You’n got ter get ower th’ fi rst afore that.”
George laughed, unperturbed. Evidently he was well used
to the thrusts of the public house.
“I suppose you soon got over yours,” he said.
The old man raised himself and his eyes fl ickered into life.
He chewed slowly, then said:
“I’d married, an’ paid for it; I’d broke a constable’s jaw an’
paid for it; I’d deserted from the army, an’ paid for that: I’d had
a bullet through my cheek in India atop of it all, by I was your
age.”
372
THE WHITE PEACOCK
“Oh!” said George, with condescending interest, “you’ve
seen a bit of life then?”
They drew the old man out, and he told them in his slow,
laconic fashion, a few brutal stories. They laughed and chaffed
him. George seemed to have a thirst for tales of brutal experience, the raw gin of life. He drank it all in with relish, enjoying
the sensation. The dinner was over. It was time to go out again
to work.
“And how old are you, Dad?” George asked. The Parrot
looked at him again with his heavy, tired, ironic eyes, and answered:
“If you’ll be any better for knowing – sixty-four.”
“It’s a bit rough on you, isn’t it?” continued the young man,
“going round with the threshing machine and sleeping outdoors at that time of life? I should ‘a thought you’d ‘a wanted
a bit o’ comfort –”
“How do you mean, ‘rough on me’?” the Parrot replied
slowly.
“Oh, I think you know what I mean,” answered George easily.
“Don’t know as I do,” said the slow old Parrot.
“Well, you haven’t made exactly a good thing out of life,
have you?”
“What d’you mean by a good thing? I’ve had my life, an’ I’m
satisfi ed wi’ it. Is’ll die with a full belly.”
“Oh, so you have saved a bit?”
“No,” said the old man deliberately, “I’ve spent as I’ve gone
on. An’ I’ve had all I wish for. But I pity the angels, when the
373
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
Lord sets me before them like a book to read. Heaven won’t be
heaven just then.”
“You’re a philosopher in your way,” laughed George.
“And you,” replied the old man, “toddling about your backyard, think yourself mighty wise. But your wisdom ‘11 go with
your teeth. You’ll learn in time to say nothing.”
The old man went out and began his work, carrying the
sacks of corn from the machine to the chamber.
“There’s a lot in the old Parrot,” said George, “as he’ll never
tell.”
I laughed.
“He makes you feel, as well, as if you’d a lot to discover in
life,” he continued, looking thoughtfully over the dusty strawstack at the chuffi ng machine.
After the harvest was ended the father began to deplete his
I farm. Most of the stock was transferred to the Ram. George
was going to take over his father’s milk business, and was going to farm enough of the land attaching to the Inn to support nine or ten cows. Until the spring, however, Mr Saxton
retained his own milk round, and worked at improving the
condition of the land ready for the valuation. George, with
three cows, started a little milk supply in the neighbourhood
of the Inn, prepared his land for the summer, and helped in
the public-house.
Emily was the fi rst to depart fi nally from the Mill. She went
to a school in Nottingham, and shortly afterwards Mollie, her
younger sister, went to her. In October I moved to London.
Lettie and Leslie were settled in their home in Brentwood,
Yorkshire. We all felt very keenly our exile from Nether-mere.
374
THE WHITE PEACOCK
But as yet the bonds were not broken; only use could sever
them. Christmas brought us all home again, hastening to greet
each other. There was a slight change in everybody. Lettie was
brighter, more imperious, and very gay; Emily was quiet, selfrestrained, and looked happier; Leslie was jollier and at the
same time more subdued and earnest; George looked very
healthy and happy, and sounded well pleased with himself; my
mother with her gaiety at our return brought tears to our eyes.
We dined one evening at Highclose with the Tempests. It
was dull as usual, and we left before ten o’clock. Lettie had
changed her shoes and put on a fi ne cloak of greenish blue.
We walked over the frost-bound road. The ice on Nethermere
gleamed mysteriously in the moonlight, and uttered strange,
half-audible whoops and yelps. The moon was very high in the
sky, small and brilliant like a vial full of the pure white liquid
of light. There was no sound in the night save the haunting
movement of the ice, and the clear twinkle of Lettie’s laughter.
On the drive leading to the wood we saw someone approaching. The wild grass was grey on either side, the thorn
trees stood with shaggy black beards sweeping down, the pine
trees were erect like dark soldiers. The black shape of the man
drew near, with a shadow running at its feet. I recognised
George, obscured as he was in his cap and his upturned collar.
Lettie was in front with her husband. As George was passing,
she said, in bright clear tones:
“A Happy New Year to you.”
He stopped, swung round, and laughed.
“I thought you wouldn’t have known me,” he said.
375
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“What, is it you, George?” cried Lettie in great surprise –
“Now, what a joke! How are you?” – she put our her white
hand from her draperies. He took it, and answered, “I am very
well – and you – ?” However meaningless the words were, the
tone was curiously friendly, intimate, informal.
“As you see,” she replied, laughing, interested in his attitude – “but where are you going?”
“I am going home,” he answered, in a voice that meant
“have you forgotten that I too am married”?
“Oh, of course!” cried Lettie. “You are now mine host of
the Ram. You must tell me about it. May I ask him to come
home with us for an hour, Mother? – It is New Year’s Eve, you
know.”
“You have asked him already,” laughed Mother.
“Will Mrs Saxton spare you for so long?” asked Lettie of
George.
“Meg? Oh, she does not order my comings and goings.”
“Does she not?” laughed Lettie. “She is very unwise. Train
up a husband in the way he should go, and in after life – I never could quote a text from end to end. I am full of beginnings,
but as for a fi nish —! Leslie, my shoe-lace is untied – shall
I wait till I can put my foot on the fence?”
Leslie knelt down at her feet. She shook the hood back
from her head, and her ornaments sparkled in the moonlight.
Her face with its whiteness and its shadows was full of fascination, and in their dark recesses her eyes thrilled George
with hidden magic. She smiled at him along her cheeks while
her husband crouched before her. Then, as the three walked
along towards the wood she fl ung her draperies into loose elo-
376
THE WHITE PEACOCK
quence and there was a glimpse of her bosom white with the
moon. She laughed and chattered, and shook her silken stuffs,
sending out a perfume exquisite on the frosted air. When we
reached the house Lettie dropped her draperies and rustled
into the drawing-room. There the lamp was low-lit, shedding
a yellow twilight from the window space. Lettie stood between
the fi relight and the dusky lamp-glow, tall and warm between
the lights. As she turned laughing to the two men, she let her
cloak slide over her white shoulder and fall with silk splendour of a peacock’s gorgeous blue over the arm of the large settee. There she stood, with her white hand upon the peacock of
her cloak, where it tumbled against her dull orange dress. She
knew her own splendour, and she drew up her throat laughing and brilliant with triumph. Then she raised both her arms
to her head and remained for a moment delicately touching
her hair into order, still fronting the two men. Then with a fi nal little laugh she moved slowly and turned up the lamp, dispelling some of the witchcraft from the room. She had developed strangely in six months. She seemed to have discovered
the wonderful charm of her womanhood. As she leaned forward with her arm outstretched to the lamp, as she delicately
adjusted the wicks with mysterious fi ngers, she seemed to be
moving in some alluring fi gure of a dance, her hair like a nimbus clouding the light, her bosom lit with wonder. The soft
outstretching of her hand was like the whispering of strange
words into the blood, and as she fi ngered a book the heart
watched silently for the meaning.
377
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“Won’t you take off my shoes, darling?” she said, sinking
among the cushions of the settee. Leslie kneeled again before
her, and she bent her head and watched him.
“My feet are a tiny bit cold,” she said plaintively, giving him
her foot, that seemed like gold in the yellow silk stocking. He
took it between his hands, stroking it.
“It is quite cold,” he said, and he held both her feet in his
hands.
“Ah, you dear boy!” she cried with sudden gentleness,
bending forward and touching his cheek.
“Is it great fun being mine host of ‘Ye Ramme Inne’!” she
said playfully to George. There seemed a long distance between
them now as she sat, with the man in evening dress crouching
before her putting golden shoes on her feet.
“It is rather,” he replied, “the men in the smoke-room say
such rum things. My word, you hear some tales there.”
“Tell us, do!” she pleaded.
“Oh! I couldn’t. I never could tell a tale, and even if I could –
well –”
“But I do long to hear,” she said, “what the men say in the
smoke-room of ‘Ye Ramme Inne’. Is it quite untellable?”
“Quite!” he laughed.
“What a pity! See what a cruel thing it is to be a woman,
Leslie: we never know what men say in smoke-rooms, while
you read in your novels everything a woman ever uttered. It
is a shame! George, you are a wretch, you should tell me. I do
envy you –”
“What do you envy me, exactly?” he asked, laughing always
at her whimsical way.
378
THE WHITE PEACOCK
“Your smoke-room. The way you see life – or the way you
hear it, rather.”
“But I should have thought you saw life ten times more
than me,” he replied.
“I! I only see manners – good manners and bad manners.
You know ‘manners maketh a man’. That’s when a woman’s
there. But you wait a while, you’ll see.”
“When shall I see?” asked George, fl attered and interested.
“When you have made the fortune you talked about,” she
replied.
He was uplifted by her remembering the things he had
said.
“But when I have made it – when!” – he said sceptically
– “even then – well, I shall only be, or have been, landlord of
‘Ye Ramme Inne’.” He looked at her, waiting for her to lift up
his hopes with her gay balloons.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter! Leslie might be landlord of some
‘Ram Inn’ when he’s at home, for all anybody would know –
mightn’t you, hubby, dear?”
“Thanks!” replied Leslie, with good-humoured sarcasm.
“You can’t tell a publican from a peer, if he’s a rich publican,” she continued. “Money maketh the man, you know.”
“Plus manners,” added George, laughing.
“Oh, they are always There – where I am. I give you ten
years. At the end of that time you must invite us to your swell
place – say the Hall at Eberwich – and we will come – ‘with
all our numerous array’.”
379
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
She sat among her cushions smiling upon him. She was
half ironical, half sincere. He smiled back at her, his dark eyes
full of trembling hope, and pleasure, and pride.
“How is Meg?” she asked. “Is she as charming as ever – or
have you spoiled her?”
“Oh, she is as charming as ever,” he replied. “And we are
tremendously fond of one another.”
“That is right! – I do think men are delightful,” she added,
smiling.
“I am glad you think so,” he laughed.
They talked on brightly about a thousand things. She
touched on Paris, and pictures, and new music, with her quick
chatter, sounding to George wonderful in her culture and facility. And at last he said he must go.
“Not until you have eaten a biscuit and drunk good luck
with me,” she cried, catching her dress about her like a dim
fl ame and running out of the room. We all drank to the New
Year in the cold champagne.
“To the Vita Nuova!” said Lettie, and we drank, smiling.
“Hark!” said George, “the hooters.”
We stood still and listened. There was a faint booing noise
far away outside. It was midnight. Lettie caught up a wrap and
we went to the door. The wood, the ice, the grey dim hills lay
frozen in the light of the moon. But outside the valley, far away
in Derbyshire, away towards Nottingham, on every hand the
distant hooters and buzzers of mines and ironworks crowed
small on the borders of the night, like so many strange, low
voices of cockerels bursting forth at different pitch, with different tone, warning us of the dawn of the New Year.
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