The White Peacock Part 16

"No-let us be still-it is all so still-I love it best of all now."

Emily and I talked, sitting at the base of the alders, a little way on.

After an excitement, and in the evening, especially in autumn, one is inclined to be sad and sentimental. We had forgotten that the darkness was weaving. I heard in the little distance Leslie's voice begin to murmur like a flying beetle that comes not too near. Then, away down in the yard George began singing the old song, "I sowed the seeds of love."

This interrupted the flight of Leslie's voice, and as the singing came nearer, the hum of low words ceased. We went forward to meet George.

Leslie sat up, clasping his knees, and did not speak. George came near, saying:

"The moon is going to rise."

"Let me get down," said Lettie, lifting her hands to him to help her.

He, mistaking her wish, put his hands under her arms, and set her gently down, as one would a child. Leslie got up quickly, and seemed to hold himself separate, resenting the intrusion.

"I thought you were all four together," said George quietly. Lettie turned quickly at the apology:

"So we were. So we are-five now. Is it there the moon will rise?"

"Yes-I like to see it come over the wood. It lifts slowly up to stare at you. I always think it wants to know something, and I always think I have something to answer, only I don't know what it is," said Emily.

Where the sky was pale in the east over the rim of wood came the forehead of the yellow moon. We stood and watched in silence. Then, as the great disc, nearly full, lifted and looked straight upon us, we were washed off our feet in a vague sea of moonlight. We stood with the light like water on our faces. Lettie was glad, a little bit exalted; Emily was pa.s.sionately troubled; her lips were parted, almost beseeching; Leslie was frowning, oblivious, and George was thinking, and the terrible, immense moonbeams braided through his feeling. At length Leslie said softly, mistakenly:

"Come along, dear"-and he took her arm.

She let him lead her along the bank of the pond, and across the plank over the sluice.

"Do you know," she said, as we were carefully descending the steep bank of the orchard, "I feel as if I wanted to laugh, or dance-something rather outrageous."

"Surely not like that _now_," Leslie replied in a low voice, feeling really hurt.

"I do though! I will race you to the bottom."

"No, no, dear!" He held her back. When he came to the wicket leading on to the front lawns, he said something to her softly, as he held the gate.

I think he wanted to utter his half finished proposal, and so bind her.

She broke free, and, observing the long lawn which lay in grey shadow between the eastern and western glows, she cried:

"Polka!-a polka-one can dance a polka when the gra.s.s is smooth and short-even if there are some fallen leaves. Yes, yes-how jolly!"

She held out her hand to Leslie, but it was too great a shock to his mood. So she called to me, and there was a shade of anxiety in her voice, lest after all she should be caught in the toils of the night's sentiment.

"Pat-you'll dance with me-Leslie hates a polka." I danced with her. I do not know the time when I could not polka-it seems innate in one's feet, to dance that dance. We went flying round, hissing through the dead leaves. The night, the low hung yellow moon, the pallor of the west, the blue cloud of evening overhead went round and through the fantastic branches of the old laburnum, spinning a little madness. You cannot tire Lettie; her feet are wings that beat the air. When at last I stayed her she laughed as fresh as ever, as she bound her hair.

"There!" she said to Leslie, in tones of extreme satisfaction, "that was lovely. Do you come and dance now."

"Not a polka," said he, sadly, feeling the poetry in his heart insulted by the jigging measure.

"But one cannot dance anything else on wet gra.s.s, and through shuffling dead leaves. You, George?"

"Emily says I jump," he replied.

"Come on-come on"-and in a moment they were bounding across the gra.s.s.

After a few steps she fell in with him, and they spun round the gra.s.s.

It was true, he leaped, sprang with large strides, carrying her with him. It was a tremendous, irresistible dancing. Emily and I must join, making an inner ring. Now and again there was a sense of something white flying near, and wild rustle of draperies, and a swish of disturbed leaves as they whirled past us. Long after we were tired they danced on.

At the end, he looked big, erect, nerved with triumph, and she was exhilarated like a Bacchante.

"Have you finished?" Leslie asked.

She knew she was safe from his question that day.

"Yes," she panted. "You should have danced. Give me my hat, please. Do I look very disgraceful?"

He took her hat and gave it to her.

"Disgraceful?" he repeated.

"Oh, you _are_ solemn to-night! What is it?"

"Yes, what is it?" he repeated ironically.

"It must be the moon. Now, is my hat straight? Tell me now-you're not looking. Then put it level. Now then! Why, your hands are quite cold, and mine so hot! I feel so impish," and she laughed.

"There-now I'm ready. Do you notice those little chrysanthemums trying to smell sadly; when the old moon is laughing and winking through those boughs. What business have they with their sadness!" She took a handful of petals and flung them into the air: "There-if they sigh they ask for sorrow-I like things to wink and look wild."

CHAPTER VI

THE EDUCATION OF GEORGE

As I have said, Strelley Mill lies at the north end of the long Nethermere valley. On the northern slopes lay its pasture and arable lands. The s.h.a.ggy common, now closed and part of the estate, covered the western slope, and the cultivated land was bounded on the east by the sharp dip of the brook course, a thread of woodland broadening into a spinney and ending at the upper pond; beyond this, on the east, rose the sharp, wild, gra.s.sy hillside, scattered with old trees, ruinous with the gaunt, ragged bones of old hedge-rows, grown into thorn trees. Along the rim of the hills, beginning in the northwest, were dark woodlands, which swept round east and south till they raced down in riot to the very edge of southern Nethermere, surrounding our house. From the eastern hill crest, looking straight across, you could see the spire of Selsby Church, and a few roofs, and the head-stocks of the pit.

So on three sides the farm was skirted by woods, the dens of rabbits, and the common held another warren.

Now the squire of the estate, head of an ancient, once even famous, but now decayed house, loved his rabbits. Unlike the family fortunes, the family tree flourished amazingly; Sherwood could show nothing comparable. Its ramifications were stupendous; it was more like a banyan than a British oak. How was the good squire to nourish himself and his lady, his name, his tradition, and his thirteen l.u.s.ty branches on his meagre estates? An evil fortune discovered to him that he could sell each of his rabbits, those bits of furry vermin, for a shilling or thereabouts in Nottingham; since which time the n.o.ble family subsisted by rabbits.

Farms were gnawed away; corn and sweet gra.s.s departed from the face of the hills; cattle grew lean, unable to eat the defiled herbage. Then the farm became the home of a keeper, and the country was silent, with no sound of cattle, no clink of horses, no barking of l.u.s.ty dogs.

But the squire loved his rabbits. He defended them against the snares of the despairing farmer, protected them with gun and notices to quit. How he glowed with thankfulness as he saw the dishevelled hillside heave when the gnawing hosts moved on!

"Are they not quails and manna?" said he to his sporting guest, early one Monday morning, as the high meadow broke into life at the sound of his gun. "Quails and manna-in this wilderness?"

"They are, by Jove!" a.s.sented the sporting guest as he took another gun, while the saturnine keeper smiled grimly.

Meanwhile, Strelley Mill began to suffer under this gangrene. It was the outpost in the wilderness. It was an understood thing that none of the squire's tenants had a gun.

"Well," said the squire to Mr. Saxton, "you have the land for next to nothing-next to nothing-at a rent really absurd. Surely the little that the rabbits eat--"