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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“I suppose,” said the child, with her insolent, high-pitched
superiority, “it’s some money that he doesn’t want us to know
about.”
“That’s about it!” said Meg, giving a small laugh at the
child’s perspicuity.
“So’s he can keep it for himself, that’s what it is,” continued
the child, nodding her head in rebuke at him.
“I’ve no right to any money, have I?” asked the father sarcastically.
“No, you haven’t,” the child nodded her head at him dictatorially, “you haven’t, because you only put it in the fi re.”
“You’ve got it wrong,” he sneered. “You mean it’s like giving a child fi re to play with.”
“Um! – and it is, isn’t it, Mam?” – the small woman turned
to her mother for corroboration. Meg had fl ushed at his sneer,
when he quoted for the child its mother’s dictum.
“And you’re very naughty!” preached Gertie, turning her
back disdainfully on her father.
“Is that what the parson’s been telling you?” he asked,
a grain of amusement still in his bitterness.
“No, it isn’t!” retorted the youngster. “If you want to know
you should go and listen for yourself. Everybody that goes to
church looks nice –” she glanced at her mother and at herself,
pruning herself proudly, “ – and God loves them,” she added.
She assumed a sanctifi ed expression, and continued after a little thought, “Because they look nice and are meek.”
“What!” exclaimed Meg, laughing, glancing with secret
pride at me.
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“Because they’re meek!” repeated Gertie, with a superior
little smile of knowledge.
“You’re off the mark this time,” said George.
“No, I’m not, am I, Mam? Isn’t it right, Mam? ‘The meek
shall inevit the erf’?”
Meg was too much amused to answer.
“The meek shall have herrings on earth,” mocked the father, also amused. His daughter looked dubiously at him. She
smelled impropriety.
“It’s not, Mam, is it?” she asked, turning to her mother. Meg
laughed.
“The meek shall have herrings on earth,” repeated George
with soft banter.
“No, it’s not, Mam, is it?” cried the child in real distress.
“Tell your father he’s always teaching you something
wrong,” answered Meg.
Then I said I must go. They pressed me to stay.
“Oh yes – do stop to dinner,” suddenly pleaded the child,
smoothing her wild ravels of curls after having drawn off her
hat. She asked me again and again, with much earnestness.
“But why?” I asked.
“So’s you can talk to us this afternoon – an’ so’s Dad won’t
be so dis’greeable,” she replied plaintively, poking the black
spots on her muff.
Meg moved nearer to her daughter with a little gesture of
compassion.
“But,” said I, “I promised a lady I would be back for lunch,
so I must. You have some more visitors, you know.”
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“Oh, well!” she complained. “They go in another room, and
Dad doesn’t care about them.”
“But come!” said I.
“Well, he’s just as dis’greeable when Auntie Emily’s here –
he is with her an’ all.”
“You are having your character given away,” said Meg brutally, turning to him.
I bade him good-bye. He did me the honour of coming
with me to the door. We could neither of us fi nd a word to say,
though we were both moved. When at last I held his hand and
was looking at him as I said “Good-bye”, he looked back at me
for the fi rst time during our meeting. His eyes were heavy, and
as he lifted them to me, seemed to recoil in an agony of shame.
CHAPTER VIII
A PROSPECT AMONG
THE MARSHES OF LETHE
George steadily declined from this time. I went to see him
two years later. He was not at home. Meg wept to me as she told
me of him, how he let the business slip, how he drank, what
a brute he was in drink, and how unbearable afterwards. He
was ruining his constitution, he was ruining her life and the
children’s. I felt very sorry for her as she sat, large and ruddy,
brimming over with bitter tears. She asked me if I did not think
I might infl uence him. He was, she said, at the Ram. When he
had an extra bad bout on he went up there, and stayed sometimes for a week at a time, with Oswald, coming back to the
Hollies when he had recovered – “though,” said Meg, “he’s
sick every morning and almost after every meal.”
All the time Meg was telling me this, sat curled up in a large
chair their youngest boy, a pale, sensitive, rather spoiled lad of
seven or eight years, with a petulant mouth and nervous dark
eyes. He sat watching his mother as she told her tale, heaving
his shoulders and settling himself in a new position when his
feelings were nearly too much for him. He was full of wild,
childish pity for his mother, and furious, childish hate of his
464
THE WHITE PEACOCK
father, the author of all their trouble. I called at the Ram and
saw George. He was half drunk.
I went up to Highclose with a heavy heart. Lettie’s last child
had been born, much to the surprise of everybody, some few
months before I came down. There was a space of seven years
between her youngest girl and this baby. Lettie was much absorbed in motherhood.
When I went up to talk to her about George, I found her in
the bedroom nursing the baby, who was very good and quiet
on her knee. She listened to me sadly, but her attention was
caught away by each movement made by the child. As I was
telling her of the attitude of George’s children towards their
father and mother, she glanced from the baby to me, and exclaimed:
“See how he watches the light fl ash across your spectacles
when you turn suddenly – Look!”
But I was weary of babies. My friends had all grown up and
married and infl icted them on me. There were storms of babies.
I longed for a place where they would be obsolete, and young,
arrogant, impervious mothers might be a forgotten tradition.
Lettie’s heart would quicken in answer to only one pulse, the
easy, light ticking of the baby’s blood.
I remembered, one day as I sat in the train hastening to
Charing Cross on my way from France, that that was George’s
birthday. I had the feeling of him upon me, heavily, and I could
not rid myself of the depression. I put it down to travel fatigue,
and tried to dismiss it. As I watched the evening sun glitter
along the new corn-stubble in the fi elds we passed, trying to
describe the effect to myself, I found myself asking, “But –
465
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
what’s the matter? I’ve not had bad news, have I, to make my
chest feel so weighted?”
I was surprised when I reached my lodging in New Malden to fi nd no letters for me, save one fat budget from Alice.
I knew her squat, saturnine handwriting on the envelope, and
I thought I knew what contents to expect from the letter.
She had married an old acquaintance who had been her
particular aversion. This young man had got himself into
trouble, so that the condemnations of the righteous pursued
him like clouds of gnats on a summer evening. Alice immediately rose to sting back his vulgar enemies, and having rendered him a service, felt she could only wipe out the score by
marrying him. They were fairly comfortable. Occasionally, as
she said, there were displays of small fi reworks in the back
yard. He worked in the offi ces of some iron foundries just over
the Erewash in Derbyshire. Alice lived in a dirty little place
in the valley a mile and a half from Eberwich, not far from his
work. She had no children, and practically no friends; a few
young matrons for acquaintances. As wife of a superior clerk,
she had to preserve her dignity among the work-people. So
all her little crackling fi res were sodded down with the sods
of British respectability. Occasionally she smouldered a fi erce
smoke that made one’s eyes water. Occasionally, perhaps once
a year, she wrote me a whole venomous budget, much to my
amusement.
I was not in any haste to open this fat letter until, after supper, I turned to it as a resource from my depression.
“Oh dear, Cyril, I’m in a bubbling state, I want to yell, not
write. Oh, Cyril, why didn’t you marry me, or why didn’t our
466
THE WHITE PEACOCK
Georgie Saxton, or somebody. I’m deadly sick. Percival Charles
is enough to stop a clock. Oh, Cyril, he lives in an eternal Sunday suit, holy broadcloth and righteous three inches of cuffs!
He goes to bed in it. Nay, he wallows in Bibles when he goes to
bed. I can feel the brass covers of all his family Bibles sticking
in my ribs as I lie by his side. I could weep with wrath, yet I put
on my black hat and trot to chapel with him like a lamb.
“Oh, Cyril, nothing’s happened. Nothing has happened to
me all these years. I shall die of it. When I see Percival Charles
at dinner, after having asked a blessing, I feel as if I should
never touch a bit at his table again. In about an hour I shall
hear him hurrying up the entry – prayers always make him
hungry – and his fi rst look will be on the table. But I’m not
fair to him – he’s really a good fellow – I only wish he wasn’t.
“It’s George Saxton who’s put this Seidlitz powder in my
marital cup of cocoa. Cyril, I must a tale unfold. It is fi fteen years
since our George married Meg. When I count up, and think of
the future, it nearly makes me scream. But my tale, my tale!
“Can you remember his faithful-dog, wounded-stag, gentle-gazelle eyes? Cyril, you can see the whisky or the brandy
combusting in them. He’s got d.t.‘s, blue-devils – and I’ve seen
him, and I’m swarming myself with little red devils after it.
I went up to Eberwich on Wednesday afternoon for a pound
of fry for Percival Charles’ Thursday dinner. I walked by that
little path which you know goes round the back of the Hollies – it’s as near as any way for me. I thought I heard a row in
the paddock at the back of the stables, so I said I might as well
see the fun. I went to the gate, basket in one hand, ninepence
467
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
in coppers in the other, a demure deacon’s wife. I didn’t take
in the scene at fi rst.
“There was our Georgie, in leggings and breeches as of yore,
and a whip. He was fl ourishing, and striding, and yelling. ‘Go
it, old boy,’ I said, ‘you’ll want your stocking round your throat
tonight.’ But, Cyril, I had spoken too soon. Oh, lum! There
came raking up the croft that long, wire-springy racehorse of
his, ears fl at, and, clinging to its neck, the pale-faced lad, Wilfred. The kid was white as death, and squealing ‘Mam! Mam!’
I thought it was a bit rotten of Georgie trying to teach the kid
to jockey. The race-horse, Bonny-Boy – Boney Boy, I call him –
came bouncing round like a spiral egg-whish. Then I saw our
Georgie rush up screaming, nearly spitting the moustache off
his face, and fetch the horse a cut with the whip. It went off
like a fl ame along hot paraffi n. The kid shrieked and clung.
Georgie went rushing after him, running staggery, and swearing, fairly screaming – awful – ‘a lily-livered little swine!’ The
high lanky race-horse went larroping round as if it was going
mad. I was dazed. Then Meg came rushing, and the other two
lads, all screaming. She went for George, but he lifted his whip
like the devil. She daren’t go near him – she rushed at him,
and stopped, rushed at him, and stopped, striking at him with
her two fi sts. He waved his whip and kept her off, and the racehorse kept tearing along. Meg fl ew to stop it, he ran with his
drunken totter-step, brandishing his whip. I fl ew as well. I hit
him with my basket. The kid fell off, and Mag rushed to him.
Some men came running. George stood fairly shuddering. You
would never have known his face, Cyril. He was mad, demoni-
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
acal. I feel sometimes as if I should burst and shatter to bits like
a sky-rocket when I think of it. I’ve got such a weal on my arm.
“I lost Percival Charles’s ninepence and my nice white cloth
out of the basket, and everything, besides having black looks
on Thursday because it was mutton-chops, which he hates. Oh,
Cyril, ‘I wish I was a cassowary, on the banks of the Timbuctoo.’
When I saw Meg sobbing over that lad – thank goodness he
wasn’t hurt! – I wished our Georgie was dead; I do now, also;
I wish we only had to remember him. I haven’t been to see them
lately – can’t stand Meg’s ikeyness. I wonder how it all will end.
“There’s P. C. bidding ‘Good night and God bless You’ to
Brother Jakes, and no supper ready –”
As soon as I could, after reading Alice’s letter, I went down
to Eberwich to see how things were. Memories of the old days
came over me again till my heart hungered for its old people.
They told me at the Hollies that, after a bad attack of delirium tremens, George had been sent to Papplewick in the
lonely country to stay with Emily. I borrowed a bicycle to ride
the nine miles. The summer had been wet, and everything was
late. At the end of September the foliage was heavy green, and
the wheat stood dejectedly in stook. I rode through the still
sweetness of an autumn morning. The mist was folded blue
along the hedges; the elm trees loomed up along the dim walls
of the morning, the horse-chestnut trees at hand fl ickered with
a few yellow leaves like bright blossoms. As I rode through the
tree tunnel by the church where, on his last night, the keeper
had told me his story, I smelled the cold rotting of the leaves
of the cloudy summer.
469
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
I passed silently through the lanes, where the chill grass
was weighed down with grey-blue seed-pearls of dew in the
shadow, where the wet woollen spider-cloths of autumn were
spread as on a loom. Brown birds rustled in fl ocks like driven
leaves before me. I heard the far-off hooting of the “loose-all”
at the pits, telling me it was half-past eleven, that the men and
boys would be sitting in the narrow darkness of the mines eating their “snap”, while shadowy mice darted for the crumbs,
and the boys laughed with red mouths rimmed with grime,
as the bold little creatures peeped at them in the dim light
of the lamps. The dogwood berries stood jauntily scarlet on
the hedge-tops, the bunched scarlet and green berries of the
convolvulus and bryony hung amid golden trails, the blackberries dropped ungathered. I rode slowly on, the plants dying
around me, the berries leaning their heavy ruddy mouths, and
languishing for the birds, the men imprisoned underground
below me, the brown birds dashing in haste along the hedges.
Swineshed Farm, where the Renshaws lived, stood quite
alone among its fi elds, hidden from the highway and from everything. The lane leading up to it was deep and unsunned.
On my right, I caught glimpses through the hedge of the cornfi elds, where the shocks of wheat stood like small yellow-sailed
ships in a widespread fl otilla. The upper part of the fi eld was
cleared. I heard the clank of a wagon and the voices of men,
and I saw the high load of sheaves go lurching, rocking up the
incline to the stack-yard.
The lane debouched into a close-bitten fi eld, and out of this
empty land the farm rose up with its buildings like a huddle
of old, painted vessels fl oating in still water. White fowls went
470
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