The White Peacock Part 15

"There's one down this hole."

The hole was too small for George to get his hand in, so we dug it out with the rake handle. The stick went savagely down the hole, and there came a squeak.

"Mice!" said George, and as he said it the mother slid out. Somebody knocked her on the back, and the hole was opened out. Little mice seemed to swarm everywhere. It was like killing insects. We counted nine little ones lying dead.

"Poor brute," said George, looking at the mother, "What a job she must have had rearing that lot!" He picked her up, handled her curiously and with pity. Then he said, "Well, I may as well finish this to-night!"

His father took another scythe from off the hedge, and together they soon laid the proud, quivering heads low. Leslie and I tied up as they mowed, and soon all was finished.

The beautiful day was flushing to die. Over in the west the mist was gathering bluer. The intense stillness was broken by the rhythmic hum of the engines at the distant coal-mine, as they drew up the last bantles of men. As we walked across the fields the tubes of stubble tinkled like dulcimers. The scent of the corn began to rise gently. The last cry of the pheasants came from the wood, and the little clouds of birds were gone.

I carried a scythe, and we walked, pleasantly weary, down the hill towards the farm. The children had gone home with the rabbits.

When we reached the mill, we found the girls just rising from the table.

Emily began to carry away the used pots, and to set clean ones for us.

She merely glanced at us and said her formal greeting. Lettie picked up a book that lay in the ingle seat, and went to the window. George dropped into a chair. He had flung off his coat, and had pushed back his hair. He rested his great brown arms on the table and was silent for a moment.

"Running like that," he said to me, pa.s.sing his hand over his eyes, "makes you more tired than a whole day's work. I don't think I shall do it again."

"The sport's exciting while it lasts," said Leslie.

"It does you more harm than the rabbits do us good," said Mrs. Saxton.

"Oh, I don't know, mother," drawled her son, "it's a couple of shillings."

"And a couple of days off your life."

"What be that!" he replied, taking a piece of bread and b.u.t.ter, and biting a large piece from it.

"Pour us a drop of tea," he said to Emily.

"I don't know that I shall wait on such brutes," she replied, relenting, and flourishing the teapot.

"Oh," said he, taking another piece of bread and b.u.t.ter, "I'm not all alone in my savageness this time."

"Men are all brutes," said Lettie, hotly, without looking up from her book.

"You can tame us," said Leslie, in mighty good humour.

She did not reply. George began, in that deliberate voice that so annoyed Emily:

"It does make you mad, though, to touch the fur, and not be able to grab him"-he laughed quietly.

Emily moved off in disgust. Lettie opened her mouth sharply to speak, but remained silent.

"I don't know," said Leslie. "When it comes to killing it goes against the stomach."

"If you can run," said George, "you should be able to run to death. When your blood's up, you don't hang half way."

"I think a man is horrible," said Lettie, "who can tear the head off a little mite of a thing like a rabbit, after running it in torture over a field."

"When he is nothing but a barbarian to begin with--" said Emily.

"If you began to run yourself-you'd be the same," said George.

"Why, women are cruel enough," said Leslie, with a glance at Lettie.

"Yes," he continued, "they're cruel enough in their way"-another look, and a comical little smile.

"Well," said George, "what's the good finicking! If you feel like doing a thing-you'd better do it."

"Unless you haven't courage," said Emily, bitingly.

He looked up at her with dark eyes, suddenly full of anger.

"But," said Lettie-she could not hold herself from asking, "Don't you think it's brutal, now-that you _do_ think-isn't it degrading and mean to run the poor little things down?"

"Perhaps it is," he replied, "but it wasn't an hour ago."

"You have no feeling," she said bitterly.

He laughed deprecatingly, but said nothing.

We finished tea in silence, Lettie reading, Emily moving about the house. George got up and went out at the end. A moment or two after we heard him across the yard with the milk-buckets, singing "The Ash Grove."

"He doesn't care a sc.r.a.p for anything," said Emily with acc.u.mulated bitterness. Lettie looked out of the window across the yard, thinking.

She looked very glum.

After a while we went out also, before the light faded altogether from the pond. Emily took us into the lower garden to get some ripe plums.

The old garden was very low. The soil was black. The cornbind and goosegra.s.s were clutching at the ancient gooseberry bushes, which sprawled by the paths. The garden was not very productive, save of weeds, and perhaps, tremendous lank artichokes or swollen marrows. But at the bottom, where the end of the farm buildings rose high and grey, there was a plum-tree which had been crucified to the wall, and which had broken away and leaned forward from bondage. Now under the boughs were hidden great mist-bloomed, crimson treasures, splendid globes. I shook the old, ragged trunk, green, with even the fresh gum dulled over, and the treasures fell heavily, thudding down among the immense rhubarb leaves below. The girls laughed, and we divided the spoil, and turned back to the yard. We went down to the edge of the garden, which skirted the bottom pond, a pool chained in a heavy growth of weeds. It was moving with rats, the father had said. The rushes were thick below us; opposite, the great bank fronted us, with orchard trees climbing it like a hillside. The lower pond received the overflow from the upper by a tunnel from the deep black sluice.

Two rats ran into the black culvert at our approach. We sat on some piled, mossy stones to watch. The rats came out again, ran a little way, stopped, ran again, listened, were rea.s.sured, and slid about freely, dragging their long naked tails. Soon six or seven grey beasts were playing round the mouth of the culvert, in the gloom. They sat and wiped their sharp faces, stroking their whiskers. Then one would give a little rush and a little squirm of excitement and would jump vertically into the air, alighting on four feet, running, sliding into the black shadow.

One dropped with an ugly plop into the water, and swam toward us, the h.o.a.ry imp, his sharp snout and his wicked little eyes moving at us.

Lettie shuddered. I threw a stone into the dead pool, and frightened them all. But we had frightened ourselves more, so we hurried away, and stamped our feet in relief on the free pavement of the yard.

Leslie was looking for us. He had been inspecting the yard and the stock under Mr. Saxton's supervision.

"Were you running away from me?" he asked.

"No," she replied. "I have been to fetch you a plum. Look!" And she showed him two in a leaf.

"They are too pretty to eat!" said he.

"You have not tasted yet," she laughed.

"Come," he said, offering her his arm. "Let us go up to the water." She took his arm.

It was a splendid evening, with the light all thick and yellow lying on the smooth pond. Lettie made him lift her on to a leaning bough of willow. He sat with his head resting against her skirts. Emily and I moved on. We heard him murmur something, and her voice reply, gently, caressingly: