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THE WHITE PEACOCK
stepping discreetly through the mild sunshine and the shadow. I leaned my bicycle against the grey, silken doors of the old
coach-house. The place was breathing with silence. I hesitated
to knock at the open door. Emily came. She was rich as always
with her large beauty, and stately now with the stateliness of
a strong woman six months gone with child.
She exclaimed with surprise, and I followed her into the
kitchen, catching a glimpse of the glistening pans and the
white wood baths as I passed through the scullery. The kitchen
was a good-sized, low room that through long course of years
had become absolutely a home. The great beams of the ceiling bowed easily, the chimney-seat had a bit of dark-green curtain, and under the high mantel-piece was another low shelf
that the men could reach with their hands as they sat in the
inglenook. There the pipes lay. Many generations of peaceful
men and fruitful women had passed through the room, and
not one but had added a new small comfort; a chair in the right
place, a hook, a stool, a cushion, a certain pleasing cloth for the
sofa covers, a shelf of books. The room, that looked so quiet and
crude, was a home evolved through generations to fi t the large
bodies of the men who dwelled in it, and the placid fancy of
the women. At last, it had an individuality. It was the home of
the Renshaws, warm, lovable, serene. Emily was in perfect accord with its brownness, its shadows, its ease. I, as I sat on the
sofa under the window, felt rejected by the kind room. I was
distressed with a sense of ephemerality, of pale, erratic fragility.
Emily, in her full-blooded beauty, was at home. It is rare
now to feel a kinship between a room and the one who inhabits it, a close bond of blood relation. Emily had at last found her
471
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
place, and had escaped from the torture of strange, complex
modern life. She was making a pie, and the fl our was white on
her brown arms. She pushed the tickling hair from her face
with her arm, and looked at me with tranquil pleasure, as she
worked the paste in the yellow bowl. I was quiet, subdued before her.
“You are very happy?” I said.
“Ah, very!” she replied. “And you? – you are not, you look
worn.”
“Yes,” I replied. “I am happy enough. I am living my life.”
“Don’t you fi nd it wearisome?” she asked pityingly.
She made me tell her all my doings, and she marvelled, but
all the time her eyes were dubious and pitiful.
“You have George here,” I said.
“Yes. He’s in a poor state, but he’s not as sick as he was.”
“What about the delirium tremens?”
“Oh, he was better of that – very nearly – before he came
here. He sometimes fancies they’re coming on again, and he’s
terrifi ed. Isn’t it awful! And he’s brought it all on himself.
Tom’s very good to him.”
“There’s nothing the matter with him – physically, is
there?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied, as she went to the oven to turn
a pie that was baking. She put her arm to her forehead and
brushed aside her hair, leaving a mark of fl our on her nose. For
a moment or two she remained kneeling on the fender, looking into the fi re and thinking. “He was in a poor way when he
came here, could eat nothing, sick every morning. I suppose
472
THE WHITE PEACOCK
it’s his liver. They all end like that.” She continued to wipe the
large black plums and put them in the dish.
“Hardening of the liver?” I asked. She nodded.
“And is he in bed?” I asked again.
“Yes,” she replied. “It’s as I say, if he’d get up and potter
about a bit, he’d get over it. But he lies there skulking.”
“And what time will he get up?” I insisted.
“I don’t know. He may crawl down somewhere towards teatime. Do you want to see him? That’s what you came for, isn’t
it?”
She smiled at me with a little sarcasm, and added, “You always thought more of him than anybody, didn’t you? Ah, well,
come up and see him.”
I followed her up the back stairs, which led out of the kitchen, and which emerged straight in a bedroom. We crossed the
hollow-sounding plaster-fl oor of this naked room and opened
a door at the opposite side. George lay in bed watching us with
apprehensive eyes.
“Here is Cyril come to see you,” said Emily, “so I’ve brought
him up, for I didn’t know when you’d be downstairs.”
A small smile of relief came on his face, and he put out his
hand from the bed. He lay with the disorderly clothes pulled
up to his chin. His face was discoloured and rather bloated, his
nose swollen.
“Don’t you feel so well this morning?” asked Emily, softening with pity when she came into contact with his sickness.
“Oh, all right,” he replied, wishing only to get rid of us.
473
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“You should try to get up a bit, it’s a beautiful morning,
warm and soft –” she said gently. He did not reply, and she
went downstairs.
I looked round to the cold, whitewashed room, with its
ceiling curving and sloping down the walls. It was sparsely
furnished, and bare of even the slightest ornament. The only
things of warm colour were the cow and horse skins on the
fl oor. All the rest was white or grey or drab. On one side, the
room sloped down so that the window was below my knees,
and nearly touching the fl oor, on the other side was a larger
window, breast high. Through it one could see the jumbled,
ruddy roofs of the sheds and the skies. The tiles were shining
with patches of vivid orange lichen. Beyond was the cornfi eld,
and the men, small in the distance, lifting the sheaves on the
cart.
“You will come back to farming again, won’t you?” I asked
him, turning to the bed. He smiled.
“I don’t know,” he answered dully.
“Would you rather I went downstairs?” I asked.
“No, I’m glad to see you,” he replied, in the same uneasy
fashion.
“I’ve only just come back from France,” I said.
“Ah!” he replied, indifferent.
“I am sorry you’re ill,” I said.
He stared unmovedly at the opposite wall. I went to the
window and looked out. After some time, I compelled myself
to say, in a casual manner:
“Won’t you get up and come out a bit?”
474
THE WHITE PEACOCK
“I suppose I s’ll have to,” he said, gathering himself slowly
together for the effort. He pushed himself up in bed.
When he took off the jacket of his pyjamas to wash himself
I turned away. His arms seemed thin, and he had bellied, and
was bowed and unsightly. I remembered the morning we swam
in the millpond. I remembered that he was now in the prime
of his life. I looked at his bluish feeble hands as he laboriously
washed himself. The soap once slipped from his fi ngers as he
was picking it up, and fell, rattling the pot loudly. It startled
us, and he seemed to grip the sides of the washstand to steady
himself. Then he went on with his slow, painful toilet. As he
combed his hair he looked at himself with dull eyes of shame.
The men were coming in from the scullery when we got
downstairs. Dinner was smoking on the table. I shook hands
with Tom Renshaw, and with the old man’s hard, fi erce left
hand. Then I was introduced to Arthur Renshaw, a cleanfaced, large, bashful lad of twenty. I nodded to the man, Jim,
and to Jim’s wife, Annie. We all sat down to table.
“Well, an’ ‘ow are ter feelin’ by now, like?” asked the old
man heartily of George. Receiving no answer, he continued,
“Tha should ‘a gor up an’ corn’ an’ gen us a ‘and wi’ th’ wheat,
it ‘ud ‘a done thee good.”
“You will have a bit of this mutton, won’t you?” Tom asked
him, tapping the joint with the carving-knife. George shook
his head.
“It’s quite lean and tender,” he said gently.
“No, thanks,” said George.
“Gi’e ’im a bit, gi’e ’im a bit!” cried the old man. “It’ll do ’im
good – it’s what ‘e wants, a bit o’ strengthenin’ nourishment.”
475
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“It’s no good if his stomach won’t have it.” said Tom, in
mild reproof, as if he were sneaking of a child. Arthur fi lled
George’s glass with beer without speaking. The two young
men were full of kind, gentle attention.
“Let ’im ‘a’e a spoonful o’ tonnup then,” persisted the old
man. “I canna eat while ‘is plate stands there emp’y.”
So they put turnip and onion sauce on George’s plate, and
he took up his fork and tasted a few mouthfuls. The men ate
largely, and with zest. The sight of their grand satisfaction,
amounting almost to gusto, sickened him.
When at last the old man laid down the dessert-spoon
which he used in place of a knife and fork, he looked again at
George’s plate, and said:
“Why tha ‘asna aten a smite, not a smite! Tha non goos th’
raight road to be better.”
George maintained a stupid silence.
“Don’t bother him, Father,” said Emily.
“Tha art an öwd whittle, Feythey,” added Tom, smiling
good-naturedly. He spoke to his father in dialect, but to Emily
in good English. Whatever she said had Tom’s immediate support. Before serving us with pie, Emily gave her brother junket
and damsons, setting the plate and the spoon before him as if
he were a child. For this act of grace Tom looked at her lovingly, and stroked her hand as she passed.
After dinner, George said, with a miserable struggle for an
indifferent tone:
“Aren’t you going to give Cyril a glass of whisky?”
He looked up furtively, in a confl ict of shame and hope.
A silence fell on the room.
476
THE WHITE PEACOCK
“Ay!” said the old man softly. “Let ’im ‘ave a drop.”
“Yes!” added Tom, in submissive pleading.
All the men in the room shrank a little, awaiting the verdict of the woman.
“I don’t know,” she said clearly, “that Cyril wants a glass.”
“I don’t mind,” I answered, feeling myself blush. I had not
the courage to counteract her will directly. Not even the old
man had that courage. We waited in suspense. After keeping
us so for a few minutes, while we smouldered with mortifi cation, she went into another room, and we heard her unlocking
a door. She returned with a decanter containing rather less
than half a pint of liquor. She put out fi ve tumblers.
“Tha neda gi’e me none,” said the old man. “Ah’m non
a proud chap. Ah’m not.”
“Nor me neither,” said Arthur.
“You will, Tom?” she asked.
“Do you want me to?” he replied, smiling.
“I don’t,” she answered sharply. “I want nobody to have it,
when you look at the results of it. But if Cyril is having a glass,
you may as well have one with him.”
Tom was pleased with her. She gave her husband and me
fairly stiff glasses.
“Steady, steady!” he said. “Give that George, and give me
not so much. Two fi ngers, two of your fi ngers, you know.”
But she passed him the glass. When George had had his
share, there remained but a drop in the decanter.
Emily watched the drunkard coldly as he took this remainder.
477
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
George and I talked for a time while the men smoked. He,
from his glum stupidity, broke into a harsh, almost imbecile
loquacity.
“Have you seen my family lately?” he asked, continuing.
“Yes! Not badly set up, are they, the children? But the little
devils are soft, mard-soft, every one of ’em. It’s their mother’s
bringin’ up – she marded ’em till they were soft, an’ would
never let me have a say in it. I should ‘a brought ’em up different, you know I should.”
Tom looked at Emily, and, remarking her angry contempt,
suggested that she should go out with him to look at the stacks.
I watched the tall, square-shouldered man leaning with deference and tenderness towards his wife as she walked calmly at
his side. She was the mistress, quiet and self-assured, he her
rejoiced husband and servant.
George was talking about himself. If I had not seen him,
I should hardly have recognised the words as his. He was lamentably decayed. He talked stupidly, with vulgar contumely of
others, and in weak praise of himself.
The old man rose, with a:
“Well, I suppose we mun ma’e another dag at it,” and the
men left the house.
George continued his foolish, harsh monologue, making
gestures of emphasis with his head and his hands. He continued when we were walking round the buildings into the fi elds,
the same babble of bragging and abuse. I was wearied and disgusted. He looked, and he sounded, so worthless.
Across the empty cornfi eld the partridges were running.
We walked through the September haze slowly, because he
478
THE WHITE PEACOCK
was feeble on his legs. As he became tired he ceased to talk.
We leaned for some time on a gate, in the brief glow of the
transient afternoon, and he was stupid again. He did not notice the brown haste of the partridges, he did not care to share
with me the handful of ripe blackberries, and when I pulled
the bryony ropes off the hedges, and held the great knots of
red and green berries in my hand, he glanced at them without
interest or appreciation.
“Poison-berries, aren’t they?” he said dully.
Like a tree that is falling, going soft and pale and rotten,
clammy with small fungi, he stood leaning against the gate,
while the dim afternoon drifted with a fl ow of thick sweet sunshine past him, not touching him.
In the stackyard, the summer’s splendid monuments of
wheat and grass were reared in gold and grey. The wheat was
littered brightly round the rising stack. The loaded wagon
clanked slowly up the incline, drew near, and rode like a ship
at anchor against the scotches, brushing the stack with a crisp,
sharp sound. Tom climbed the ladder and stood a moment
there against the sky, amid the brightness and fragrance of
the gold corn, and waved his arm to his wife who was passing
in the shadow of the building. Then Arthur began to lift the
sheaves to the stack, and the two men worked in an exquisite,
subtle rhythm, their white sleeves and their dark heads gleaming, moving against the mild sky and the corn. The silence was
broken only by the occasional lurch of the body of the wagon,
as the teamer stepped to the front, or again to the rear of the
load. Occasionally I could catch the blue glitter of the prongs
of the forks. Tom, now lifted high above the small wagon load,
479
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
called to his brother some question about the stack. The sound
of his voice was strong and mellow.
I turned to George, who was also watching, and said: “You
ought to be like that.”
We heard Tom calling, “All right!” and saw him standing
high up on the tallest corner of the stack, as on the prow of
a ship.
George watched, and his face slowly gathered expression.
He turned to me, his dark eyes alive with horror and despair.
“I shall soon – be out of everybody’s way!” he said. His moment of fear and despair was cruel. I cursed myself for having
roused him from his stupor.
“You will be better,” I said.
He watched again the handsome movement of the men at
the stack.
“I couldn’t team ten sheaves,” he said.
“You will in a month or two,” I urged.
He continued to watch, while Tom got on the ladder and
came down the front of the stack.
“Nay, the sooner I clear out, the better,” he repeated to
himself.
When we went in to tea, he was, as Tom said, “downcast”.
The men talked uneasily with abated voices. Emily attended to
him with a little, palpitating solicitude. We were all uncomfortably impressed with the sense of our alienation from him
He sat apart and obscure among us, like a condemned man.
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