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THE WHITE PEACOCK
She enquired of him concerning Meg and his children and
the affairs of Eberwich, but the interest was fl imsy, as she preserved a wide distance between them, although apparently she
was so unaffected and friendly. We left before eleven.
When we were seated in the cab and rushing down-hill,
he said:
“You know, she makes me mad.”
He was frowning, looking out of the window away from
me. “Who, Lettie? Why, what riles you?” I asked.
He was some time in replying.
“Why, she’s so affected.”
I sat in the small, close space and waited.
“Do you know – ?” he laughed, keeping his face averted
from me. “She makes my blood boil. I could hate her.”
“Why?” I said gently.
“I don’t know. I feel as if she’d insulted me. She does lie,
doesn’t she?”
“I didn’t notice it,” I said, but I knew he meant her shirking,
her shuffl ing of her life.
“And you think of those poor devils under the bridge – and
then of her and them frittering away themselves and money in
that idiocy –”
He spoke with passion.
“You are quoting Longfellow,” I said.
“What?” he asked, looking at me suddenly.
“‘Life is real, life is earnest – ’”
He fl ushed slightly at my good-natured gibe.
“I don’t know what it is,” he replied. “But it’s a pretty rotten
business, when you think of her fooling about wasting herself,
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
and all the waste that goes on up there, and the poor devils
rotting on the Embankment – and –”
“And you – and Mayhew – and me –” I continued.
He looked at me very intently to see if I was mocking. He
laughed. I could see he was very much moved.
“Is the time quite out of joint?” I asked.
“Why! “ – he laughed. “No. But she makes me feel so angry – as if I should burst. – I don’t know when I felt in such
a rage. I wonder why. I’m sorry for him, poor devil. Lettie and
Leslie’ – they seemed christened for one another, didn’t they?”
“What if you’d had her?” I asked.
“We should have been like a cat and dog; I’d rather be with
Meg a thousand times – now!” he added signifi cantly. He sat
watching the lamps and the people and the dark buildings
slipping past us.
“Shall we go and have a drink?” I asked him, thinking we
would call in Frascati’s to see the come-and-go.
“I could do with a brandy,” he replied, looking at me slowly.
We sat in the restaurant listening to the jigging of the music, watching the changing fl ow of the people. I like to sit a long
time by the hollyhocks watching the throng of varied bees
which poise and hesitate outside the wild fl owers, then swing
in with a hum which sets everything aquiver. But still more
fascinating it is to watch the come and go of people weaving
and intermingling in the complex mesh of their intentions,
with all the subtle grace and mystery of their moving, shapely
bodies.
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
I sat still, looking out across the amphitheatre. George
looked also, but he drank glass after glass of brandy. “I like to
watch the people,” said I.
“Ay – and doesn’t it seem an aimless, idiotic business –
look at them!” he replied in tones of contempt. I looked instead at him, in some surprise and resentment. His face was
gloomy, stupid and unrelieved. The amount of brandy he had
drunk had increased his ill humour.
“Shall we be going?” I said. I did not want him to get drunk
in his present state of mind.
“Ay – in half a minute,” he fi nished the brandy, and rose.
Although he had drunk a good deal, he was quite steady, only
there was a disagreeable look always on his face, and his eyes
seemed smaller and more glittering than I had seen them.
We took a bus to Victoria. He sat swaying on his seat in the
dim, clumsy vehicle, saying not a word. In the vast cavern of
the station the theatre-goers were hastening, crossing the
pale grey strand, small creatures scurrying hither and thither
in the space beneath the lonely lamps. As the train crawled
over the river we watched the far-fl ung hoop of diamond
lights curving slowly round and striping with bright threads
the black water. He sat looking with heavy eyes, seeming to
shrink from the enormous unintelligible lettering of the
poem of London.
The town was too large for him, he could not take in its immense, its stupendous poetry. What did come home to him was
its fl agrant discords. The unintelligibilty of the vast city made
him apprehensive, and the crudity of its big, coarse contrasts
wounded him unutterably.
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“What is the matter?” I asked him as we went along the
silent pavement at Norwood.
“Nothing,” he replied. “Nothing!” and I did not trouble
him further.
We occupied a large, two-bedded room – that looked down
the hill and over to the far woods of Kent. He was morose and
untalkative. I brought up a soda-syphon and whisky, and we
proceeded to undress. When he stood in his pyjamas he waited
as if uncertain.
“Do you want a drink?” he asked.
I did not. He crossed to the table, and as I got into my bed
I heard the brief fi zzing of the syphon. He drank his glass at
one draught, then switched off the light. In the sudden darkness I saw his pale shadow go across to the sofa in the windowspace. The blinds were undrawn, and the stars looked in. He
gazed out on the great bay of darkness wherein, far away and
below, fl oated a few sparks of lamps like herring-boats at sea.
“Aren’t you coming to bed?” I asked.
“I’m not sleepy – you go to sleep,” he answered, resenting
having to speak at all.
“Then put on a dressing-gown – there’s one in that corner – turn the light on.”
He did not answer, but fumbled for the garment in the
darkness. When he had found it, he said:
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
I did not. He fumbled again in his pockets for cigarettes, always refusing to switch on the light. I watched his face bowed
to the match as he lighted his cigarette. He was still handsome
in the ruddy light, but his features were coarser. I felt very
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
sorry for him, but I saw that I could get no nearer to him, to
relieve him. For some time I lay in the darkness watching the
end of his cigarette like a ruddy, malignant insect hovering
near his lips, putting the timid stars immensely far away. He
sat quiet still, leaning on the sofa arm. Occasionally there was
a little glow on his cheeks as the cigarette burned brighter,
then again I could see nothing but the dull red bee.
I suppose I must have dropped asleep. Suddenly I started
as something fell to the fl oor. I heard him cursing under his
breath.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I’ve only knocked something down – cigarette-case or
something,” he replied, apologetically.
“Aren’t you coming to bed?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m coming,” he answered quite docile.
He seemed to wander about and knock against things as he
came. He dropped heavily into bed.
“Are you sleepy now?” I asked.
“I dunno – I shall be directly,” he replied.
“What’s up with you?” I asked.
“I dunno,” he answered. “I’m like this sometimes, when
there’s nothing I want to do, and nowhere I want to go, and
nobody I want to be near. Then you feel so rottenly lonely,
Cyril. You feel awful, like a vacuum, with a pressure on you,
a sort of pressure of darkness, and you yourself – just nothing, a vacuum – that’s what it’s like – a little vacuum that’s
not dark, all loose in the middle of a space of darkness, that’s
pressing on you.”
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“Good gracious!” I exclaimed, rousing myself in bed. “That
sounds bad!”
He laughed slightly.
“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s only the excitement of London,
and that little man in the park, and that woman on the seat –
I wonder where she is tonight, poor devil – and then Lettie.
I seem thrown off my balance. – I think really, I ought to have
made something of myself –”
“What?” I asked, as he hesitated.
“I don’t know,” he replied slowly, “ – a poet or something,
like Burns – I don’t know. I shall laugh at myself for thinking
so, tomorrow. But I am born a generation too soon – I wasn’t
ripe enough when I came. I wanted something I hadn’t got.
I’m something short. I’m like corn in a wet harvest – full, but
pappy, no good. I s’ll rot. I came too soon; or I wanted something that would ha’ made me grow fi erce. That’s why I wanted
Lettie – I think. But am I talking damn rot? What am I saying?
What are you making me talk for? What are you listening for?”
I rose and went across to him, saying:
“I don’t want you to talk! If you sleep till morning things
will look different.”
I sat on his bed and took his hand. He lay quite still.
“I’m only a kid after all, Cyril,” he said, a few moments later.
“We all are,” I answered, still holding his hand. Presently
he fell asleep.
When I awoke the sunlight was laughing with the young
morning in the room. The large blue sky shone against the
window, and the birds were calling in the garden below, shouting to one another and making fun of life. I felt glad to have
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
opened my eyes. I lay for a moment looking out on the morning as on a blue bright sea in which I was going to plunge.
Then my eyes wandered to the little table near the couch.
I noticed the glitter of George’s cigarette-case, and then, with
a start, the whisky decanter. It was nearly empty. He must have
drunk three-quarters of a pint of liquor while I was dozing.
I could not believe it. I thought I must have been mistaken as
to the quantity the bottle contained. I leaned out to see what it
was that had startled me by its fall the night before. It was the
large, heavy drinking glass which he had knocked down but
not broken. I could see no stain on the carpet.
George was still asleep. He lay half uncovered, and was
breathing quietly. His face looked inert like a mask. The pallid,
uninspired clay of his features seemed to have sunk a little out
of shape, so that he appeared rather haggard, rather ugly, with
grooves of ineffectual misery along his cheeks. I wanted him to
wake, so that his inert, fl accid features might be inspired with
life again. I could not believe his charm and his beauty could
have forsaken him so, and left his features dreary, sunken clay.
As I looked he woke. His eyes opened slowly. He looked
at me and turned away, unable to meet my eyes. He pulled
the bedclothes up over his shoulders, as though to cover himself from me, and he lay with his back to me, quite still, as if
he were asleep, although I knew he was quite awake; he was
suffering the humiliation of lying waiting for his life to crawl
back and inhabit his body. As it was, his vitality was not yet
suffi cient to inform the muscles of his face and give him an
expression, much less to answer by challenge.
CHAPTER VI
PISGAH
When her eldest boy was three years old Lettie returned
to live at Eberwich. Old Mr Tempest died suddenly, so Leslie came down to inhabit Highclose. He was a very much occupied man. Very often he was in Germany or in the South
of England engaged on business. At home he was unfailingly
attentive to his wife and his two children. He had cultivated
a taste for public life. In spite of his pressure of business he
had become a County Councillor, and one of the prominent
members of the Conservative Association. He was very fond
of answering or proposing toasts at some public dinner, of
entertaining political men at Highclose, of taking the chair
at political meetings, and fi nally, of speaking on this or that
platform. His name was fairly often seen in the newspapers. As
a mine-owner, he spoke as an authority on the employment of
labour, on royalties, land-owning and so on.
At home he was quite tame. He treated his wife with respect, romped in the nursery, and domineered the servants
royally. They liked him for it – her they did not like. He was
noisy, but unobservant, she was quiet and exacting. He would
swear and bluster furiously, but when he was round the corner they smiled. She gave her orders and passed very moderate
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
censure, but they went away cursing to themselves. As Lettie
was always a very good wife, Leslie adored her when he had
the time, and when he had not, forgot her comfortably.
She was very contradictory. At times she would write to me
in terms of passionate dissatisfaction: she had nothing at all in
her life, it was a barren futility.
“I hope I shall have another child next spring,” she would
write, “there is only that to take away the misery of this torpor.
I seem full of passion and energy, and it all fi zzles out in daytoday domestics –”
When I replied to her, urging her to take some work that
she could throw her soul into, she would reply indifferently.
Then later:
“You charge me with contradiction. Well, naturally. You
see I wrote that screeching letter in a mood which won’t come
again for some time. Generally I am quite content to take the
rain and the calm days just as they come, then something fl ings
me out of myself – and I am a trifl e demented: – very, very
blue, as I tell Leslie.”
Like so many women, she seemed to live, for the most part
contentedly, a small indoor existence with artifi cial light and
padded upholstery. Only occasionally, hearing the winds of
life outside, she clamoured to be out in the black, keen storm.
She was driven to the door, she looked out and called into the
tumult wildly, but feminine caution kept her from stepping
over the threshold.
George was fl ourishing in his horse-dealing.
In the morning, processions of splendid shire horses, tied
tail and head, would tramp grandly along the quiet lanes of
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
Eberwich, led by George’s man, or by Tom Mayhew, while in
the fresh clean sunlight George would go riding by, two restless nags dancing beside him.
When I came home from France fi ve years after our meeting in London I found him installed in the Hollies. He had
rented the house from the Mayhews, and had moved there
with his family, leaving Oswald in charge of the Ram. I called
at the large house one afternoon, but George was out. His family surprised me. The twins were tall lads of six. There were two
more boys, and Meg was nursing a beautiful baby girl about
a year old. This child was evidently mistress of the household.
Meg, who was growing stouter, indulged the little creature in
every way.
“How is George?” I asked her.
“Oh, he’s very well,” she replied. “He’s always got something on hand. He hardly seems to have a spare moment; what
with his socialism, and one thing and another.”
It was true, the outcome of his visit to London had been
a wild devotion to the cause of the down-trodden. I saw a picture of Watt’s “Mammon” on the walls of the morning-room,
and the works of Blatchford, Masterman, and Chiozza Money
on the side-table. The socialists of the district used to meet every other Thursday evening at the Hollies to discuss reform.
Meg did not care for these earnest souls.
“They’re not my sort,” she said, “too jerky and bumptious.
They think everybody’s slow-witted but them. There’s one thing
about them, though, they don’t drink, so that’s a blessing.”
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