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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“Why!” I said, “Have you had much trouble that way?” She
lowered her voice to a pitch which was suffi ciently mysterious
to attract the attention of the boys.
“I shouldn’t say anything if it wasn’t that you were like
brothers,” she said. “But he did begin to have dreadful drinking bouts. You know it was always spirits, and generally
brandy – and that makes such work with them. You’ve no
idea what he’s like when he’s evil-drunk. Sometimes he’s all
for talk, sometimes he’s laughing at everything, and sometimes
he’s just snappy. And then –” here her tones grew ominous,
“– he’ll come home evil-drunk.”
At the memory she grew serious.
“You couldn’t imagine what it’s like, Cyril,” she said. “It’s
like having Satan in the house with you, or a black tiger glowering at you. I’m sure nobody knows what I’ve suffered with
him –”
The children stood with large awful eyes and paling lips,
listening.
“But he’s better now?” I said.
“Oh, yes – since Gertie came,” – she looked fondly at the
baby in her arms – “He’s a lot better now. You see he always
wanted a girl, and he’s very fond of her – isn’t he, pet? – are
you your Dadda’s girlie? – and Mamma’s too, aren’t you?”
The baby turned with sudden coy shyness, and clung to her
mother’s neck. Meg kissed her fondly, then the child laid her
cheek against her mother’s. The mother’s dark eyes, and the
baby’s large, hazel eyes looked at me serenely. The two were
very calm, very complete and triumphant together. In their
completeness was a security which made me feel alone and in-
431
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
effectual. A woman who has her child in her arms is a tower of
strength, a beautiful, unassailable tower of strength that may
in its turn stand quietly dealing death.
I told Meg I would call again to see George. Two evenings
later I asked Lettie to lend me a dog-cart to drive over to the
Hollies. Leslie was away on one of his political jaunts, and she
was restless. She proposed to go with me. She had called on
Meg twice before in the new large home.
We started about six o’clock. The night was dark and muddy. Lettie wanted to call in Eberwich village, so she drove the
long way round Selsby. The horse was walking through the
gate of the Hollies at about seven o’clock. Meg was upstairs in
the nursery, the maid told me, and George was in the diningroom getting baby to sleep.
“All right!” I said, “we will go in to him. Don’t bother to tell
him.”
As we stood in the gloomy, square hall we heard the rumble of a rocking-chair, the stroke coming slow and heavy to the
tune of “Henry Martin”, one of our Strelley Mill folk songs.
Then, through the man’s heavily-accented singing fl oated the
long light crooning of the baby as she sang, in her quaint little
fashion, a mischievous second to her father’s lullaby. He waxed
a little louder; and without knowing why, we found ourselves
smiling with piquant amusement. The baby grew louder too,
till there was a shrill ring of laughter and mockery in her music. He sang louder and louder, the baby shrilled higher and
higher, the chair swung in long, heavy beats. Then suddenly
he began to laugh. The rocking stopped, and he said, still with
laughter and enjoyment in his tones:
432
THE WHITE PEACOCK
“Now that is very wicked! Ah, naughty Girlie – go to boh,
go to bohey! – at once.”
The baby chuckled her small, insolent mockery.
“Come, Mamma!” he said, “come and take Girlie to bohey!”
The baby laughed again, but with an uncertain touch
of appeal in her tone. We opened the door and entered. He
looked up very much startled to see us. He was sitting in a tall
rocking-chair by the fi re, coatless, with white shirt-sleeves. The
baby, in her high-waisted, tight little night-gown, stood on his
knee, her wide eyes fi xed on us, wild wisps of her brown hair
brushed across her forehead and glinting like puffs of bronze
dust over her ears. Quickly she put her arms round his neck
and tucked her face under his chin, her small feet poised on
his thigh, the night-gown dropping upon them. He shook his
head as the puff of soft brown hair tickled him. He smiled at
us, saying:
“You see I’m busy!”
Then he turned again to the little brown head tucked under his chin, blew away the luminous cloud of hair, and rubbed
his lips and his moustache on the small white neck, so warm
and secret. The baby put up her shoulders, and shrank a little,
bubbling in his neck with hidden laughter. She did not lift her
face or loosen her arms.
“She thinks she is shy,” he said. “Look up, young hussy, and
see the lady and gentleman. She is a positive owl, she won’t go
to bed – will you, young brown-owl?”
He tickled her neck again with his moustache, and the
child bubbled over with naughty, merry laughter.
433
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
The room was very warm, with a red bank of fi re up the
chimney mouth. It was half lighted from a heavy bronze chandelier, black and gloomy, in the middle of the room. There was
the same sombre, sparse furniture that the Mayhews had had.
George looked large and handsome, the glossy black silk of his
waistcoat fi tting close to his sides, the roundness of the shoulder muscle fi lling the white linen of his sleeves.
Suddenly the baby lifted her head and stared at us, thrusting into her mouth the dummy that was pinned to the breast
of her night-gown. The faded pink sleeves of the night-gown
were tight on her fat little wrists. She stood thus sucking her
dummy, one arm round her father’s neck, watching us with
hazel solemn eyes. Then she pushed her fat little fi st up among
the bush of small curls, and began to twist her fi ngers about
her ear that was white like a camellia fl ower.
“She is really sleepy,” said Lettie.
“Come then!” said he, folding her for sleep against his
breast. “Come and go to boh.”
But the young rascal immediately began to cry her remonstrance. She stiffened herself, freed herself, and stood again on
his knee, watching us solemnly, vibrating the dummy in her
mouth as she suddenly sucked at it, twisting her father’s ear in
her small fi ngers till he winced.
“Her nails are sharp.” he said, smiling.
He began asking and giving the small information that
pass between friends who have not met for a long time. The
baby laid her head on his shoulder, keeping her tired, owl-like
eyes fi xed darkly on us. Then gradually the lids fl uttered and
sank, and she dropped on to his arm.
434
THE WHITE PEACOCK
“She is asleep,” whispered Lettie.
Immediately the dark eyes opened again. We looked signifi cantly at one another, continuing our subdued talk. After
a while the baby slept soundly.
Presently Meg came downstairs. She greeted us in breathless whispers of surprise, and then turned to her husband.
“Has she gone?” she whispered, bending over the sleeping
child in astonishment. “My, this is wonderful, isn’t it!” She
took the sleeping drooping baby from his arms, putting her
mouth close to its forehead, murmuring with soothing, inarticulate sounds.
We stayed talking for some time when Meg had put the
baby to bed. George had a new tone of assurance and authority. In the fi rst place he was an established man, living in
a large house, having altogether three men working for him.
In the second place he had ceased to value the conventional
treasures of social position and ostentatious refi nement. Very,
very many things he condemned as fl ummery and sickly waste
of time. The life of an ordinary well-to-do person he set down
as adorned futility, almost idiocy. He spoke passionately of the
monstrous denial of life to the many of the fortunate few. He
talked at Lettie most fl agrantly.
“Of course,” she said, “I have read Mr Wells and Mr Shaw,
and even Niel Lyon and a Dutchman – what is his name,
Querido? But what can I do? I think the rich have as much
misery as the poor, and of quite as deadly a sort. What can I do?
It is a question of life and the development of the human race.
Society and its regulations is not a sort of drill that endless Na-
435
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
poleons have forced on us: it is the only way we have yet found
of living together.”
“Pah!” said he, “that is rank cowardice. It is feeble and futile
to the last degree.”
“We can’t grow consumption-proof in a generation, nor
can we grow poverty-proof.”
“We can begin to take active measures,” he replied contemptuously.
“We can all go into a sanatorium and live miserably and
dejectedly warding off death,” she said, “but life is full of goodliness for all that.”
“It is fuller of misery,” he said.
Nevertheless, she had shaken him. She still kept her astonishing power of infl uencing his opinions. All his passion, and
heat, and rude speech, analysed out, was only his terror at her
threatening of his life-interest.
She was rather piqued by his rough treatment of her, and
by his contemptuous tone. Moreover, she could never quite let
him be. She felt a driving force which impelled her against her
will to interfere in his life. She invited him to dine with them
at Highclose. He was now quite possible. He had, in the course
of his business, been suffi ciently in the company of gentlemen
to be altogether “comme it faut” at a private dinner, and after
dinner.
She wrote me concerning him occasionally:
“George Saxton was here to dinner yesterday. He and Leslie had frightful battles over the nationalisation of industries.
George is rather more than a match for Leslie, which, in his secret heart, makes our friend gloriously proud. It is very amus-
436
THE WHITE PEACOCK
ing. I, of course, have to preserve the balance of power, and, of
course, to bolster my husband’s dignity. At a crucial dangerous
moment, when George is just going to wave his bloody sword
and Leslie lies bleeding with rage, I step in and prick the victor
under the heart with some little satire or some esoteric question, I raise Leslie and say his blood is luminous for the truth,
and vous voilà! Then I abate for the thousandth time Leslie’s
conservative crow, and I appeal once more to George – it is no
use my arguing with him, he gets so angry – I make an abtruse
appeal for all the wonderful, sad, and beautiful expressions on
the countenance of life, expressions which he does not see or
which he distorts by his oblique vision of socialism into grimaces – and there I am! I think I am something of a Machiavelli, but it is quite true, what I say –”
Again she wrote:
“We happened to be motoring from Derby on Sunday
morning, and as we came to the top of the hill, we had to
thread our way through quite a large crowd. I looked up,
and whom should I see but our friend George, holding forth
about the state endowment of mothers. I made Leslie stop
while we listened. The market-place was quite full of people.
George saw us, and became fi ery. Leslie then grew excited, and
although I clung to the skirts of his coat with all my strength,
he jumped up and began to question. I must say it with shame
and humility – he made an ass of himself. The men all round
were jeering and muttering under their breath. I think Leslie
is not very popular among them, he is such an advocate of
machinery which will do the work of men. So they cheered
our friend George when he thundered forth his replies and
437
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
his demonstrations. He pointed his fi ngers at us, and fl ung
his hand at us, and shouted till I quailed in my seat. I cannot
understand why he should become so frenzied as soon as I am
within range. George had a triumph that morning, but when
I saw him a few days later he seemed very uneasy, rather selfmistrustful –”
Almost a year later I heard from her again on the same
subject.
“I have had such a lark. Two or three times I have been to
the Hollies: to socialist meetings. Leslie does not know. They
are great fun. Of course, I am in sympathy with the socialists,
but I cannot narrow my eyes till I see one thing only. Life is
like a large, rather beautiful man who is young and full of
vigour, but hairy, barbaric, with hands hard and dirty, the
dirt ingrained. I know his hands are very ugly, I know his
mouth is not fi rmly shapen, I know his limbs are hairy and
brutal: but his eyes are deep and very beautiful. That is what
I tell George.
“The people are so earnest, they make me sad. But then,
they are so didactic, they hold forth so much, they are so cocksure and so narrow-eyed, they make me laugh. George laughs
too. I am sure we made such fun of a straight-haired goggle
of a girl who had suffered in prison for the cause of women,
that I am ashamed when I see my ‘Woman’s League’ badge.
At the bottom, you know, Cyril, I don’t care for anything very
much, except myself. Things seem so frivolous. I am the only
real thing, I and the children –”
Gradually George fell out of the socialist movement. It wearied him. It did not feed him altogether. He began by mocking
438
THE WHITE PEACOCK
his friends of the confraternity. Then he spoke in bitter dislike of Hudson, the wordy, humorous, shallow leader of the
movement in Eberwich; it was Hudson with his wriggling and
his clap-trap who disgusted George with the cause. Finally the
meetings at the Hollies ceased, and my friend dropped all connection with his former associates.
He began to speculate in land. A hosiery factory moved to
Eberwich, giving the place a new stimulus to growth. George
happened to buy a piece of land at the end of the street of the
village. When he got it, it was laid out in allotment gardens.
These were becoming valueless owing to the encroachment
of houses. He took it, divided it up, and offered it as sites for
a new row of shops. He sold at a good profi t.
Altogether he was becoming very well off. I heard from
Meg that he was fl ourishing, that he did not drink “anything
to speak of,” but that he was always out, she hardly saw anything of him. If getting-on was to keep him so much away from
home, she would be content with a little less fortune. He complained that she was narrow, and that she would not entertain
any sympathy with any of his ideas.
“Nobody comes here to see me twice,” he said. “Because
Meg receives them in such an off-hand fashion. I asked Jim
Curtiss and his wife from Everley Hall one evening. We were
uncomfortable all the time. Meg had hardly a word for anybody – ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and ‘Hm Hm!’ – They’ll never come
again.”
Meg herself said:
439
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“Oh, I can’t stand stuck-up folks. They make me feel uncomfortable. As soon as they begin mincing their words I’m
done for – I can no more talk than a lobster –”
Thus their natures contradicted each other. He tried hard
to gain a footing in Eberwich. As it was he belonged to no class
of society whatsoever. Meg visited and entertained the wives of
small shop-keepers and publicans: this was her set.
George voted the women loud-mouthed, vulgar, and narrow – not without some cause. Meg, however, persisted. She
visited when she thought fi t, and entertained when he was out.
He made acquaintance after acquaintance: Dr Francis; Mr Cartridge, the veterinary surgeon; Toby Heswall, the brewer’s son;
the Curtisses, farmers of good standing from Everly Hall. But
it was no good. George was by nature a family man. He wanted
to be private and secure in his own rooms, then he was at ease.
As Meg never went out with him, and as every attempt to entertain at the Hollies fi lled him with shame and mortifi cation,
he began to give up trying to place himself, and remained suspended in social isolation at the Hollies.
The friendship between Lettie and himself had been kept
up, in spite of all things. Leslie was sometimes jealous, but he
dared not show it openly, for fear of his wife’s scathing contempt. George went to Highclose perhaps once in a fortnight,
perhaps not so often. Lettie never went to the Hollies, as Meg’s
attitude was too antagonistic.
Meg complained very bitterly of her husband. He often
made a beast of himself drinking, he thought more of himself
than he ought, home was not good enough for him, he was
440
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