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THE WHITE PEACOCK
selfi sh to the back-bone, he cared neither for her nor the children, only for himself.
I happened to be at home for Lettie’s thirty-fi rst birthday.
George was then thirty-fi ve. Lettie had allowed her husband
to forget her birthday. He was now very much immersed in
politics, foreseeing a general election in the following year,
and intending to contest the seat in Parliament. The division
was an impregnable Liberal stronghold, but Leslie had hopes
that he might capture the situation. Therefore he spent a great
deal of time at the Conservative club, and among the men of
infl uence in the southern division. Lettie encouraged him in
these affairs. It relieved her of him. It was thus that she let him
forget her birthday, while, for some unknown reason, she let
the intelligence slip to George. He was invited to dinner, as
I was at home.
George came at seven o’clock. There was a strange feeling of festivity in the house, although there were no evident
signs. Lettie had dressed with some magnifi cence in a blackish
purple gauze over soft satin of lighter tone, nearly the colour
of double violets. She wore vivid green azurite ornaments on
the fairness of her bosom, and her bright hair was bound by
a band of the same colour. It was rather startling. She was conscious of her effect, and was very excited. Immediately George
saw her his eyes wakened with a dark glow. She stood up as he
entered, her hand stretched straight out to him, her body very
erect, her eyes bright and rousing, like two blue pennants.
“Thank you so much,” she said softly, giving his hand a last
pressure before she let it go. He could not answer, so he sat
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
down, bowing his head, then looking up at her in suspense.
He smiled at her.
Presently the children came in. They looked very quaint,
like acolytes, in their long straight dressing-gowns of quilted
blue silk. The boy, particularly, looked as if he were going to
light the candles in some childish church in paradise. He was
very tall and slender and fair, with a round fi ne head, and serene features. Both children looked remarkable, almost transparently clean: it is impossible to consider anything more fresh
and fair. The girl was a merry, curly-headed puss of six. She
played with her mother’s green jewels and prattled prettily,
while the boy stood at his mother’s side, a slender and silent
acolyte in his pale blue gown. I was impressed by his patience
and his purity. When the girl had bounded away into George’s
arms, the lad laid his hand timidly on Lettie’s knee and looked
with a little wonder at her dress.
“How pretty those green stones are, Mother!” he said. “Yes,”
replied Lettie brightly, lifting them and letting their strange
pattern fall again on her bosom. “I like them.”
“Are you going to sing, Mother?” he asked.
“Perhaps. But why?” said Lettie, smiling.
“Because you generally sing when Mr Saxton comes.” He
bent his head and stroked Lettie’s dress shyly.
“Do I?” she said, laughing. “Can you hear?”
“Just a little,” he replied. “Quite small, as if it were nearly
lost in the dark.”
He was hesitating, shy as boys are. Lettie laid her hand on
his head and stroked his smooth fair hair.
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“Sing a song for us before we go, Mother –” he asked, almost shamefully. She kissed him.
She played without a copy of the music. He stood at her
side, while Lucy, the little mouse, sat on her mother’s skirts,
pressing Lettie’s silk slippers in turn upon the pedals. The
mother and the boy sang their song.
“Gaily the troubadour touched his guitar As he was hastening from the war.”
The boy had a pure treble, clear as the fl ight of swallows in
the morning. The light shone on his lips. Under the piano the
girl child sat laughing, pressing her mother’s feet with all her
strength, and laughing again. Lettie smiled as she sang.
At last they kissed us a gentle “good night”, and fl itted out
of the room. The girl popped her curly head round the door
again. We saw the white cuff of the nurse’s wrist as she held
the youngster’s arm.
“You’ll come and kiss us when we’re in bed, Mum?” asked
the rogue. Her mother laughed and agreed.
Lucy was withdrawn for a moment; then we heard her,
“Just a tick, nurse, just half a tick!”
The curly head appeared round the door again.
“And one teenie sweetie,” she suggested, “only one!”
“Go, you – !” Lettie clapped her hands in mock wrath. The
child vanished, but immediately there appeared again round
the door two blue laughing eyes and the snub tip of a nose.
“A nice one, Mum – not a jelly one!”
Lettie rose with a rustle to sweep upon her. The child vanished with a glitter of laughter. We heard her calling breathlessly on the stairs – “Wait a bit, Freddies – wait for me!”
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
George and Lettie smiled at each other when the children
had gone. As the smile died from their faces they looked down
sadly, and until dinner was announced they were very still and
heavy with melancholy. After dinner Lettie debated pleasantly
which bon-bon she should take for the children. When she
came down again she smoked a cigarette with us over coffee.
George did not like to see her smoking, yet he brightened a little when he sat down after giving her a light, pleased with the
mark of recklessness in her.
“It is ten years today since my party at Woodside,” she said,
reaching for the small Roman salt-cellar of green jade that she
used as an ash-tray.
“My Lord – ten years!” he exclaimed bitterly. “It seems
a hundred.”
“It does and it doesn’t,” she answered, smiling.
“If I look straight back, and think of my excitement, it
seems only yesterday. If I look between then and now, at all
the days that lie between, it is an age.”
“If I look at myself,” he said, “I think I am another person
altogether.”
“You have changed,” she agreed, looking at him sadly.
“There is a great change – but you are not another person.
I often think – there is one of his old looks, he is just the same
at the bottom!”
They embarked on a barge of gloomy recollections and
drifted along the soiled canal of their past.
“The worst of it is,” he said, “I have got a miserable carelessness, a contempt for things. You know I had such a faculty for
reverence. I always believed in things.”
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“I know you did,” she smiled. “You were so humblyminded – too humbly-minded, I always considered. You always
thought things had a deep religious meaning, somewhere hidden, and you reverenced them. Is it different now?”
“You know me very well,” he laughed. “What is there left
for me to believe in, if not in myself?”
“You have to live for your wife and children,” she said with
fi rmness.
“Meg has plenty to secure her and the children as long as
they live,” he said, smiling. “So I don’t know that I’m essential.”
“But you are,” she replied. “You are necessary as a father
and a husband, if not as a provider.”
“I think,” said he, “marriage is more of a duel than a duet.
One party wins and takes the other captive, slave, servant –
what you like. It is so, more or less.”
“Well?” said Lettie.
“Well!” he answered. “Meg is not like you. She wants me,
part of me, so she’d kill me rather than let me go loose.”
“Oh, no!” said Lettie, emphatically.
“You know nothing about it,” he said quietly.
“In the marital duel Meg is winning. The woman generally
does; she has the children on her side. I can’t give her any of
the real part of me, the vital part that she wants – I can’t, any
more than you could give kisses to a stranger. And I feel that
I’m losing – and don’t care.”
“No,” she said, “you are getting morbid.”
He put the cigarette between his lips, drew a deep breath,
then slowly sent the smoke down his nostrils.
“No,” he said.
445
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“Look here!” she said. “Let me sing to you, shall I, and make
you cheerful again?”
She sang from Wagner. It was the music of resignation and
despair. She had not thought of it. All the time he listened he
was thinking. The music stimulated his thoughts and illuminated the trend of his brooding. All the time he sat looking
at her his eyes were dark with his thoughts. She fi nished the
“Star of Eve” from Tannhäuser and came over to him.
“Why are you so sad tonight, when it is my birthday?” she
asked plaintively.
“Am I slow?” he replied. “I am sorry.”
“What is the matter?” she said, sinking onto the small
sofa near to him.
“Nothing!” he replied – “You are looking very beautiful.”
“There, I wanted you to say that! You ought to be quite gay,
you know, when I am so smart tonight.”
“Nay,” he said, “I know I ought. But the tomorrow seems
to have fallen in love with me. I can’t get out of its lean arms.”
“Why!” she said. “Tomorrow’s arms are not lean. They are
white, like mine.” She lifted her arms and looked at them,
smiling.
“How do you know?” he asked, pertinently.
“Oh, of course they are,” was her light answer.
He laughed, brief and sceptical.
“No!” he said. “It came when the children kissed us.”
“What?” she asked.
“These lean arms of tomorrow’s round me, and the white
arms round you,” he replied, smiling whimsically. She reached
out and clasped his hand.
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“You foolish boy,” she said.
He laughed painfully, not able to look at her.
“You know,” he said, and his voice was low and diffi cult
“I have needed you for a light. You will soon be the only light
again.”
“Who is the other?” she asked.
“My little girl!” he answered. Then he continued, “And you
know, I couldn’t endure complete darkness, I couldn’t. It’s the
solitariness.”
“You mustn’t talk like this,” she said. “You know you
mustn’t.” She put her hand on his head and ran her fi ngers
through the hair he had so ruffl ed.
“It is as thick as ever, your hair,” she said.
He did not answer, but kept his face bent out of sight. She
rose from her seat and stood at the back of his low armchair.
Taking an amber comb from her hair, she bent over him, and
with the translucent comb and her white fi ngers she busied
herself with his hair.
“I believe you would have a parting,” she said softly.
He laughed shortly at her playfulness. She continued
combing, just touching, pressing the strands in place with the
tips of her fi ngers.
“I was only a warmth to you,” he said, pursuing the same
train of thought. “So you could do without me. But you were
like the light to me, and otherwise it was dark and aimless.
Aimlessness is horrible.”
She had fi nally smoothed his hair, so she lifted her hands
and put back her head.
447
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“There!” she said. “It looks fair fi ne, as Alice would say. Raven’s wings are raggy in comparison.”
He did not pay any attention to her.
“Aren’t you going to look at yourself?” she said, playfully
reproachful. She put her fi nger-tips under his chin. He lifted
his head and they looked at each other, she smiling, trying
to make him play, he smiling with his lips, but not with eyes,
dark with pain.
“We can’t go on like this, Lettie, can we?” he said softly.
“Yes,” she answered him, “Yes; why not?”
“It can’t!” he said, “it can’t, I couldn’t keep it up, Lettie.”
“But don’t think about it,” she answered. “Don’t think of
it.”
“Lettie,” he said. “I have to set my teeth with loneliness.”
“Hush!” she said. “No! There are the children. Don’t say
anything – do not be serious, will you?”
“No, there are the children,” he replied, smiling dimly.
“Yes! Hush now! Stand up and look what a fi ne parting
I have made in your hair. Stand up, and see if my style becomes
you.”
“It is no good, Lettie,” he said, “we can’t go on.”
“Oh, but come, come, come!” she exclaimed. “We are not
talking about going on; we are considering what a fi ne parting I have made down the middle, like two wings of a spread
bird –” she looked down, smiling playfully on him, just closing her eyes slightly in petition.
He rose and took a deep breath, and set his shoulders.
“No,” he said, and at the sound of his voice, Lettie went
pale and also stiffened herself.
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“No!” he repeated. “It is impossible. I felt as soon as Fred
came into the room – it must be one way or another.”
“Very well then,” said Lettie, coldly. Her voice was “muted”
like a violin.
“Yes,” he replied, submissive. “The children.” He looked at
her, contracting his lips in a smile of misery.
“Are you sure it must be so fi nal?” she asked, rebellious,
even resentful. She was twisting the azurite jewels on her bosom, and pressing the blunt points into her fl esh. He looked
up from the fascination of her action when he heard the tone
of her last question. He was angry.
“Quite sure!” he said at last, simply, ironically.
She bowed her head in assent. His face twitched sharply
as he restrained himself from speaking again. Then he turned
and quietly left the room. She did not watch him go, but stood
as he had left her. When, after some time, she heard the grating of his dog-cart on the gravel, and then the sharp trot of
hoofs down the frozen road, she dropped herself on the settee,
and lay with her bosom against the cushions, looking fi xedly
at the wall.
CHAPTER VII
THE SCARP SLOPE
Leslie won the conservative victory in the general election
which took place a year or so after my last visit to Highclose.
In the interim the Tempests had entertained a continuous
stream of people. I heard occasionally from Lettie how she was
busy, amused, or bored. She told me that George had thrown
himself into the struggle on behalf of the candidate of the Labour Party; that she had not seen him, except in the streets, for
a very long time.
When I went down to Eberwich in the March succeeding
the election, I found several people staying with my sister. She
had under her wing a young literary fellow who affected the
“Doady” style – Dora Copperfi eld’s “Doady”. He had bunches
of half-curly hair, and a romantic black cravat; he played the
impulsive part, but was really as calculating as any man on
the stock-exchange. It delighted Lettie to “mother” him. He
was so shrewd as to be less than harmless. His fellow guests,
a woman much experienced in music and an elderly man who
was in the artistic world without being of it, were interesting
for a time. Bubble after bubble of fl oating fancy and wit we
blew with our breath in the evenings. I rose in the morning
loathing the idea of more bubble-blowing.
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