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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“I’m sure you like tantaffl ins, don’t you, Georgie?” said Alice, in her mocking fashion. He was not sure. He could not
analyse the fl avours, he felt confused and bewildered even
through his sense of taste! Alice begged him to have salad.
“No, thanks,” said he. “I don’t like it.”
“Oh, George!” she said. “How can you say so when I’m offering it you.”
“Well – I’ve only had it once,” said he, “and that was when
I was working with Flint, and he gave us fat bacon and bits of
lettuce soaked in vinegar – ‘Ave a bit more salt,’ he kept saying, but I’d had enough.”
“But all our lettuce,” said Alice with a wink, “is as sweet as
a nut, no vinegar about our lettuce.” George laughed in much
confusion at her pun on my sister’s name.
“I believe you,” he said, with pompous gallantry.
“Think of that!” cried Alice. “Our Georgie believes me. Oh,
I am so, so pleased!”
He smiled painfully. His hand was resting on the table, the
thumb tucked tight under the fi ngers, his knuckles white as
he nervously gripped his thumb. At last supper was fi nished,
and he picked up his serviette from the fl oor and began to fold
it. Lettie also seemed ill at ease. She had teased him till the
sense of his awkwardness had become uncomfortable. Now
she felt sorry, and a trifl e repentant, so she went to the piano,
as she always did to dispel her moods. When she was angry she
played tender fragments of Tchaikovsky, when she was miserable, Mozart. Now she played Handel in a manner that suggested the plains of heaven in the long notes, and in the little
trills as if she were waltzing up the ladder of Jacob’s dream like
41
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
the damsels in Blake’s pictures. I often told her she fl attered
herself scandalously through the piano; but generally she pretended not to understand me, and occasionally she surprised
me by a sudden rush of tears to her eyes. For George’s sake, she
played Gounod’s “Ave Maria”, knowing that the sentiment of
the chant would appeal to him, and make him sad, forgetful of
the petty evils of this life. I smiled as I watched the cheap spell
working. When she had fi nished, her fi ngers lay motionless
for a minute on the keys, then she spun round, and looked
him straight in the eyes, giving promise of a smile. But she
glanced down at her knee.
“You are tired of music,” she said.
“No,” he replied, shaking his head.
“Like it better than salad?” she asked with a fl ash of raillery.
He looked up at her with a sudden smile, but did not reply.
He was not handsome; his features were too often in a heavy
repose; but when he looked up and smiled unexpectedly, he
fl ooded her with an access of tenderness.
“Then you’ll have a little more,” said she, and she turned
again to the piano. She played soft, wistful morsels, then suddenly broke off in the midst of one sentimental plaint, and left
the piano, dropping into a low chair by the fi re. There she sat
and looked at him. He was conscious that her eyes were fi xed
on him, but he dared not look back at her, so he pulled his
moustache.
“You are only a boy, after all,” she said to him quietly. Then
he turned and asked her why.
42
THE WHITE PEACOCK
“It is a boy that you are,” she repeated, leaning back in her
chair, and smiling lazily at him.
“I never thought so,” he replied seriously.
“Really?” she said, chuckling.
“No,” said he, trying to recall his previous impressions. She
laughed heartily, saying:
“You’re growing up.”
“How?” he asked.
“Growing up,” she repeated, still laughing.
“But I’m sure I was never boyish,” said he.
“I’m teaching you,” said she, “and when you’re boyish you’ll
be a very decent man. A mere man daren’t be a boy for fear of
tumbling off his manly dignity, and then he’d be a fool, poor
thing.”
He laughed, and sat still to think about it, as was his way.
“Do you like pictures?” she asked suddenly, being tired of
looking at him.
“Better than anything,” he replied.
“Except dinner, and a warm hearth and a lazy evening,”
she said.
He looked at her suddenly, hardening at her insult, and
biting his lips at the taste of this humiliation. She repented,
and smiled her plaintive regret to him.
“I’ll show you some,” she said, rising and going out of the
room. He felt he was nearer her. She returned, carrying a pile
of great books.
“Jove – you’re pretty strong!” said he.
“You are charming in your compliment,” she said. He
glanced at her to see if she were mocking.
43
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“That’s the highest you could say of me, isn’t it?” she insisted.
“Is it?” he asked, unwilling to compromise himself.
“For sure,” she answered – and then, laying the books on
the table, “I know how a man will compliment me by the way
he looks at me” – she kneeled before the fi re. “Some look at
my hair, some watch the rise and fall of my breathing, some
look at my neck, and a few – not you among them – look
me in the eyes for my thoughts. To you, I’m a fi ne specimen,
strong! Pretty strong! You primitive man!”
He sat twisting his fi ngers; she was very contrary.
“Bring your chair up,” she said, sitting down at the table
and opening a book. She talked to him of each picture, insisting on hearing his opinion. Sometimes he disagreed with her
and would not be persuaded. At such times she was piqued.
“If,” said she, “an ancient Briton in his skins came and contradicted me as you do, wouldn’t you tell him not to make an
ass of himself?”
“I don’t know,” said he.
“Then you ought to,” she replied. “You know nothing.”
“How is it you ask me then?” he said.
She began to laugh.
“Why – that’s a pertinent question. I think you might be
rather nice, you know.”
“Thank you,” he said, smiling ironically.
“Oh!” she said. “I know, you think you’re perfect, but you’re
not, you’re very annoying.”
“Yes,” exclaimed Alice, who had entered the room again,
dressed ready to depart. “He’s so blooming slow! Great whizz!
44
THE WHITE PEACOCK
Who wants fellows to carry cold dinners? Shouldn’t you like
to shake him, Lettie?”
“I don’t feel concerned enough,” replied the other calmly.
“Did you ever carry a boiled pudding, Georgie?” asked Alice
with innocent interest, punching me slyly.
“Me! – why? – what makes you ask?” he replied, quite at
a loss.
“Oh, I only wondered if your people needed any indigestion mixture – Pa mixes it – 1/1½ a bottle.”
“I don’t see –” he began.
“Ta – ta, old boy, I’ll give you time to think about it. Good
night, Lettie. Absence makes the heart grow fonder – Georgie – of someone else. Farewell. Come along, Sybil love, the
moon is shining – Good night all, good night!”
I escorted her home, while they continued to look at the
pictures. He was a romanticist. He liked Copley, Fielding, Cattermole and Birket Foster; he could see nothing whatsoever
in Girtin or David Cox. They fell out decidedly over George
Clausen.
“But,” said Lettie, “he is a real realist, he makes common
things beautiful, he sees the mystery and magnifi cence that
envelops us even when we work menially. I do know and I can
speak. If I hoed in the fi elds beside you –” This was a very new
idea for him, almost a shock to his imagination, and she talked
unheeded. The picture under discussion was a water-colour
– “Hoeing” by Clausen.
“You’d be just that colour in the sunset,” she said, thus
bringing him back to the subject, “and if you looked at the
ground you’d fi nd there was a sense of warm gold fi re in it, and
45
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
once you’d perceived the colour, it would strengthen till you’d
see nothing else. You are blind; you are only half-born; you
are gross with good living and heavy sleeping. You are a piano
which will only play a dozen common notes. Sunset is nothing
to you – it merely happens anywhere. Oh, but you make me
feel as if I’d like to make you suffer. If you’d ever been sick; if
you’d ever been born into a home where there was something
oppressed you, and you couldn’t understand; if ever you’d believed, or even doubted, you might have been a man by now.
You never grow up, like bulbs which spend all summer getting fat and fl eshy, but never wakening the germ of a fl ower. As for me, the fl ower is born in me, but it wants bringing
forth. Things don’t fl ower if they’re overfed. You have to suffer
before you blossom in this life. When death is just touching
a plant, it forces it into a passion of fl owering. You wonder
how I have touched death. You don’t know. There’s always
a sense of death in this home. I believe my mother hated my
father before I was born. That was death in her veins for me
before I was born. It makes a difference –”
As he sat listening, his eyes grew wide and his lips were
parted, like a child who feels the tale but does not understand
the words. She, looking away from herself at last, saw him, began to laugh gently, and patted his hand, saying:
“Oh! my dear heart, are you bewildered? How amiable of
you to listen to me – there isn’t any meaning in it all – there
isn’t really!”
“But,” said he, “why do you say it?”
“Oh, the question!” she laughed. “Let us go back to our muttons, we’re gazing at each other like two dazed images.” They
46
THE WHITE PEACOCK
turned on, chatting casually, till George suddenly exclaimed,
“There!”
It was Maurice Griffi nhagen’s “Idyll”.
“What of it?” she asked, gradually fl ushing. She remembered her own enthusiasm over the picture.
“Wouldn’t it be fi ne?” he exclaimed, looking at her with
glowing eyes, his teeth showing white in a smile that was not
amusement.
“What?” she asked, dropping her head in confusion.
“That – a girl like that – half afraid – and passion!” He lit up
curiously.
“She may well be half afraid, when the barbarian comes
out in his glory, skins and all.”
“But don’t you like it?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders, saying, “Make love to the next
girl you meet, and by the time the poppies redden the fi eld,
she’ll hang in your arms. She’ll have need to be more than half
afraid, won’t she?”
She played with the leaves of the book, and did not look at
him.
“But,” he faltered, his eyes glowing, “it would be-rather –”
“Don’t, sweet lad, don’t!” she cried, laughing.
“But I shouldn’t –” he insisted. “I don’t know whether
I should like any girl I know to –”
“Precious Sir Galahad,” she said in a mock caressing voice,
and stroking his cheek with her fi nger, “you ought to have
been a monk – a martyr, a Carthusian.”
He laughed, taking no notice. He was breathlessly quivering under the new sensation of heavy, unappeased fi re in his
47
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
breast, and in the muscles of his arms. He glanced at her bosom and shivered.
“Are you studying just how to play the part?” she asked.
“No – but –” he tried to look at her, but failed. He shrank,
laughing, and dropped his head.
“What?” she asked with vibrant curiosity.
Having become a few degrees calmer, he looked up at her
now, his eyes wide and vivid with a declaration that made her
shrink back as if fl ame had leaped towards her face. She bent
down her head and picked at her dress.
“Didn’t you know the picture before?” she said, in a low,
toneless voice.
He shut his eyes and shrank with shame.
“No, I’ve never seen it before,” he said.
“I’m surprised,” she said. “It is a very common one.”
“Is it?” he answered, and this make-belief conversation fell.
She looked up, and found his eyes. They gazed at each other
for a moment before they hid their faces again. It was a torture
to each of them to look thus nakedly at the other, a dazzled,
shrinking pain that they forced themselves to undergo for
a moment, that they might the moment after tremble with
a fi erce sensation that fi lled their veins with fl uid, fi ery electricity. She sought, almost in panic, for something to say.
“I believe it’s in Liverpool, the picture,” she contrived to
say.
He dared not kill this conversation, he was too self-conscious. He forced himself to reply, “I didn’t know there was
a gallery in Liverpool.”
“Oh yes, a very good one,” she said.
48
THE WHITE PEACOCK
Their eyes met in the briefest fl ash of a glance, then both
turned their faces aside. Thus averted, one from the other, they
made talk. At last she rose, gathered the books together, and
carried them off. At the door she turned. She must steal another keen moment: “Are you admiring my strength?” she asked.
Her pose was fi ne. With her head thrown back, the roundness of her throat ran fi nely down to the bosom, which swelled
above the pile of books held by her straight arms. He looked at
her. Their lips smiled curiously. She put back her throat as if
she were drinking. They felt the blood beating madly in their
necks. Then, suddenly breaking into a slight trembling, she
turned round and left the room.
While she was out, he sat twisting his moustache. She came
back along the hall talking madly to herself in French. Having
been much impressed by Sarah Bernhardt’s “Dame aux Camélias” and “Adrienne Lecouvreur”, Lettie had caught something of the weird tone of this great actress, and her raillery
and mockery came out in little wild waves. She laughed at him,
and at herself, and at men in general, and at love in particular. Whatever he said to her, she answered in the same mad
clatter of French, speaking high and harshly. The sound was
strange and uncomfortable. There was a painful perplexity in
his brow, such as I often perceived afterwards, a sense of something hurting, something he could not understand.
“Well, well, well, well!” she exclaimed at last. “We must be
mad sometimes, or we should be getting aged, hein?”
“I wish I could understand,” he said plaintively.
49
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“Poor dear!” she laughed. “How sober he is! And will you
really go? They will think we’ve given you no supper, you look
so sad.”
“I have supped – full –” he began, his eyes dancing with
a smile as he ventured upon a quotation. He was very much
excited.
“Of horrors!” she cried, completing it. “Now that is worse
than anything I have given you.”
“Is it?” he replied, and they smiled at each other.
“Far worse,” she answered. They waited in suspense for
some moments. He looked at her.
“Good-bye,” she said, holding out her hand. Her voice was
full of insurgent tenderness. He looked at her again, his eyes
fl ickering. Then he took her hand. She pressed his fi ngers,
holding them a little while. Then ashamed of her display of
feeling, she looked down. He had a deep cut across his thumb.
“What a gash!” she exclaimed, shivering, and clinging a little tighter to his fi ngers before she released them. He gave
a little laugh.
“Does it hurt you?” she asked very gently.
He laughed again – “No!” he said softly, as if his thumb
were not worthy of consideration.
They smiled again at each other, and, with a blind movement, he broke the spell and was gone.
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