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THE WHITE PEACOCK
“I’ll see what the old girl’s up to,” he said, and the heavy
tread came towards us. Like me, he stumbled at the little step,
but escaped collision with the table.
“Damn that fool’s step,” he said heartily. It was the doctor – for he kept his hat on his head, and did not hesitate to
stroll about the house. He was a big, burly, red-faced man.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, observing my mother. My
mother bowed.
“Mrs Beardsall?” he asked, taking off his hat.
My mother bowed.
“I posted a letter to you. You are a relative of his – of poor
old Carlin’s?” – he nodded sideways towards the bed. “The
nearest,” said my mother.
“Poor fellow – he was a bit stranded. Comes of being
a bachelor, Ma’am.”
“I was very much surprised to hear from him,” said my
mother.
“Yes, I guess he’s not been much of a one for writing to
his friends. He’s had a bad time lately. You have to pay some
time or other. We bring them on ourselves – silly devils as we
are. – I beg your pardon.”
There was a moment of silence, during which the doctor
sighed, and then began to whistle softly.
“Well – we might be more comfortable if we had the blind
up,” he said, letting daylight in among the glimmer of the tapers as he spoke.
“At any rate,” he said, “you won’t have any trouble settling
up – no debts or anything of that. I believe there’s a bit to
leave – so it’s not so bad. Poor devil – he was very down at the
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
last; but we have to pay at one end or the other. What on earth
is the old girl after?” he asked, looking up at the raftered ceiling, which was rumbling and thundering with the old lady’s
violent rummaging.
“We wanted the key of his desk,” said my mother.
“Oh – I can fi nd you that – and the will. He told me where
they were, and to give them you when you came. He seemed to
think a lot of you. Perhaps he might ha’ done better for himself –”
Here we heard the heavy tread of the old lady coming
downstairs. The doctor went to the foot of the stairs.
“Hello, now – be careful!” he bawled. The poor old woman
did as he expected, and trod on the braces of the trousers she
was trailing, and came crashing into his arms. He set her tenderly down, saying, “Not hurt, are you? – no!” and he smiled at
her and shook his head.
“Eh, Doctor – Eh, Doctor – bless ye, I’m thankful ye’ve
come. Ye’ll see to ’em now, will ye?”
“Yes –” he nodded in his bluff, winning way, and hurrying
into the kitchen, he mixed her a glass of whisky, and brought
one for himself, saying to her, “There you are – ’twas a nasty
shaking for you.”
The poor old woman sat in a chair by the open door of
the staircase, the pile of clothing tumbled about her feet. She
looked round pitifully at us, and at the daylight struggling
among the candle-light, making a ghostly gleam on the bed
where the rigid fi gure lay unmoved; her hand trembled so that
she could scarcely hold her glass.
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
The doctor gave us the keys, and we rifl ed the desk and the
drawers, sorting out all the papers. The doctor sat sipping and
talking to us all the time.
“Yes,” he said, “he’s only been here about two years. Felt
himself beginning to break up then, I think. He’d been a long
time abroad; they always called him Frenchy.” The doctor
sipped and refl ected, and sipped again, “Ay – he’d run the
rig in his day – used to dream dreadfully. Good thing the old
woman was so deaf. Awful, when a man gives himself away
in his sleep; played the deuce with him, knowing it.” Sip, sip,
sip – and more refl ections – and another glass to be mixed.
“But he was a jolly decent fellow – generous, open-handed.
The folks didn’t like him, because they couldn’t get to the bottom of him; they always hate a thing they can’t fathom. He
was close, there’s no mistake – save when he was asleep sometimes.” The doctor looked at his glass and sighed.
“However – we shall miss him – shan’t we, Mrs May?” he
bawled suddenly, startling us, making us glance at the bed.
He lit his pipe and puffed voluminously in order to obscure the attraction of his glass. Meanwhile we examined the
papers. There were very few letters – one or two addressed to
Paris. There were many bills, and receipts, and notes – business, all business.
There was hardly a trace of sentiment among all the litter.
My mother sorted out such papers as she considered valuable;
the others, letters and missives which she glanced at cursorily and put aside, she took into the kitchen and burned. She
seemed afraid to fi nd out too much.
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
The doctor continued to colour his tobacco smoke with
a few pensive words.
“Ay,” he said, “there are two ways. You can burn your lamp
with a big draught, and it’ll fl are away, till the oil’s gone, then
it’ll stink and smoke itself out. Or you can keep it trim on the
kitchen table, dirty your fi ngers occasionally trimming it up,
and it’ll last a long time, and sink out mildly.” Here he turned
to his glass, and fi nding it empty, was awakened to reality.
“Anything I can do, Madam?” he asked.
“No, thank you.”
“Ay, I don’t suppose there’s much to settle. Nor many tears
to shed – when a fellow spends his years an’ his prime on the
Lord knows who, you can’t expect those that remember him
young to feel his loss too keenly. He’d had his fl ing in his day,
though, ma’am. Ay – must ha’ had some rich times. No lasting satisfaction in it though – always wanting, craving. There’s
nothing like marrying – you’ve got your dish before you then,
and you’ve got to eat it.” He lapsed again into refl ection, from
which he did not rouse till we had locked up the desk, burned
the useless papers, put the others into my pocket and the black
bag, and were standing ready to depart. Then the doctor looked
up suddenly and said:
“But what about the funeral?”
Then he noticed the weariness of my mother’s look, and he
jumped up, and quickly seized his hat, saying:
“Come across to my wife and have a cup of tea. Buried in
these dam holes a fellow gets such a boor. Do come – my little
wife is lonely – come just to see her.”
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
My mother smiled and thanked him. We turned to go. My
mother hesitated in her walk; on the threshold of the room
she glanced round at the bed, but she went on.
Outside, in the fresh air of the fading afternoon, I could
not believe it was true. It was not true, that sad, colourless face
with grey beard, wavering in the yellow candle-light. It was
a lie – that wooden bedstead, that deaf woman, they were fading phrases of the untruth. That yellow blaze of little sunfl owers was true, and the shadow from the sun-dial on the warm
old almshouses – that was real. The heavy afternoon sunlight
came round us warm and reviving; we shivered, and the untruth went out of our veins, and we were no longer chilled.
The doctor’s house stood sweetly among the beech trees,
and at the iron fence in front of the little lawn a woman was
talking to a beautiful Jersey cow that pushed its dark nose
through the fence from the fi eld beyond. She was a little, dark
woman with vivid colouring; she rubbed the nose of the delicate animal, peeped right into the dark eyes, and talked in
a lovable Scottish speech; talked as a mother talks softly to her
child. When she turned round in surprise to greet us there
was still the softness of a rich affection in her eyes. She gave
us tea, and scones, and apple jelly, and all the time we listened
with delight to her voice, which was musical as bees humming
in the lime trees. Though she said nothing signifi cant, we listened to her attentively.
Her husband was merry and kind. She glanced at him with
quick glances of apprehension, and her eyes avoided him. He,
in his merry, frank way, chaffed her, and praised her extravagantly, and teased her again. Then he became a trifl e uneasy.
65
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
I think she was afraid he had been drinking; I think she was
shaken with horror when she found him tipsy, and bewildered
and terrifi ed when she saw him drunk. They had no children.
I noticed he ceased to joke when she became a little constrained. He glanced at her often, and looked somewhat pitiful
when she avoided his looks, and he grew uneasy, and I could
see he wanted to go away.
“I had better go with you to see the vicar, then,” he said
to me, and we left the room, whose windows looked south,
over the meadows, the room where dainty little water-colours,
and beautiful bits of embroidery, and empty fl ower-vases, and
two dirty novels from the town library, and the closed piano,
and the odd cups, and the chipped spout of the teapot causing
stains on the cloth – all told one story.
We went to the joiner’s and ordered the coffi n, and the doctor had a glass of whisky on it; the graveyard fees were paid, and
the doctor sealed the engagement with a drop of brandy; the
vicar’s port completed the doctor’s joviality, and we went home.
This time the disquiet in the little woman’s dark eyes could
not dispel the doctor’s merriment. He rattled away, and she
nervously twisted her wedding-ring. He insisted on driving us
to the station, in spite of our alarm.
“But you will be quite safe with him,” said his wife, in her
caressing Highland speech. When she shook hands at parting
I noticed the hardness of the little palm; – and I have always
hated an old, black alpaca dress.
It is such a long way home from the station at Eberwich.
We rode part way in the bus; then we walked. It is a very Hong
way for my mother, when her steps are heavy with trouble.
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
Rebecca was out by the rhododendrons looking for us. She
hurried to us all solicitous, and asked Mother if she had had
tea.
“But you’ll do with another cup,” she said, and ran back
into the house.
She came into the dining-room to take my mother’s bonnet and coat. She wanted us to talk; she was distressed on my
mother’s behalf; she noticed the blackness that lay under her
eyes, and she fi dgeted about, unwilling to ask anything, yet
uneasy and anxious to know.
“Lettie has been home,” she said.
“And gone back again?” asked Mother.
“She only came to change her dress. She put the green poplin on. She wondered where you’d gone.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said you’d just gone out a bit. She said she was glad. She
was as lively as a squirrel.”
Rebecca looked wistfully at my mother. At length the latter
said:
“He’s dead, Rebecca. I have seen him.”
“Now thank God for that – no more need to worry over
him.”
“Well! – He died all alone, Rebecca – all alone.”
“He died as you’ve lived,” said Becky with some asperity.
“But I’ve had the children, I’ve had the children – we won’t
tell Lettie, Rebecca.”
“No ‘m.” Rebecca left the room.
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“You and Lettie will have the money,” said mother to me.
There was a sum of four thousand pounds or so. It was left to
my mother; or, in default to Lettie and me.”
“Well, Mother – if it’s ours, it’s yours.”
There was silence for some minutes, then she said, “You
might have had a father –”
“We’re thankful we hadn’t, Mother. You spared us that.”
“But how can you tell?” said my mother.
“I can,” I replied. “And I am thankful to you.”
“If ever you feel scorn for one who is near you rising in
your throat, try and be generous, my lad.”
“Well –” said I.
“Yes,” she replied, “we’ll say no more. Sometime you must
tell Lettie – you tell her.”
I did tell her, a week or so afterwards.
“Who knows?” she asked, her face hardening.
“Mother, Becky, and ourselves.”
“Nobody else?”
“No.”
“Then it’s a good thing he is out of the way if he was such
a nuisance to Mother. Where is she?”
“Upstairs.”
Lettie ran to her.
CHAPTER V
THE SCENT OF BLOOD
The death of the man who was our father changed our
lives. It was not that we suffered a great grief; the chief trouble
was the unanswered crying of failure. But we were changed in
our feelings and in our relations; there was a new consciousness, a new carefulness.
We had lived between the woods and the water all our
lives, Lettie and I, and she had sought the bright notes in everything. She seemed to hear the water laughing, and the leaves
tittering and giggling like young girls; the aspen fl uttered like
the draperies of a fl irt, and the sound of the wood-pigeons was
almost foolish in its sentimentality.
Lately, however, she had noticed again the cruel, pitiful
crying of a hedgehog caught in a gin, and she had noticed
the traps for the fi erce little murderers, traps walled in with
a small fence of fi r, and baited with the guts of a killed rabbit.
On an afternoon a short time after our visit to Cossethay,
Lettie sat in the window seat. The sun clung to her hair, and
kissed her with passionate splashes of colour brought from the
vermilion, dying creeper outside. The sun loved Lettie, and was
loath to leave her. She looked out over Nethermere to Highclose, vague in the September mist. Had it not been for the
69
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
scarlet light on her face, I should have thought her look was
sad and serious. She nestled up to the window, and leaned her
head against the wooden shaft. Gradually she drooped into
sleep. Then she became wonderfully childish again – it was
the girl of seventeen sleeping there, with her full pouting lips
slightly apart, and the breath coming lightly. I felt the old feeling of responsibility; I must protect her, and take care of her.
There was a crunch of the gravel. It was Leslie coming. He
lifted his hat to her, thinking she was looking. He had that
fi ne, lithe physique, suggestive of much animal vigour; his person was exceedingly attractive; one watched him move about,
and felt pleasure. His face was less pleasing than his person.
He was not handsome; his eyebrows were too light, his nose
was large and ugly, and his forehead, though high and fair, was
without dignity. But he had a frank, good-natured expression,
and a fi ne, wholesome laugh.
He wondered why she did not move. As he came nearer
he saw. Then he winked at me and came in. He tiptoed across
the room to look at her. The sweet carelessness of her attitude,
the appealing, half-pitiful girlishness of her face touched his
responsive heart, and he leaned forward and kissed her cheek
where already was a crimson stain of sunshine.
She roused half out of her sleep with a little, petulant “Oh!”
as an awkward child. He sat down behind her, and gently
drew her head against him, looking down at her with a tender,
soothing smile. I thought she was going to fall asleep thus. But
her eyelids quivered, and her eyes beneath them fl ickered into
consciousness.
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