The White Peacock Part 19

"Something decisive."

"I don't know what can happen-unless the Squire turns us out."

"No?" I said.

He did not speak.

"You should make things happen," said I.

"Don't make me feel a worse fool, Cyril," he replied despairingly.

Gyp whined and jumped, tugging her chain to follow us. The grey blurs among the blackness of the bushes were resting sheep. A chill, dim mist crept along the ground.

"But, for all that, Cyril," he said, "to have her laugh at you across the table; to hear her sing as she moved about, before you are washed at night, when the fire's warm, and you're tired; to have her sit by you on the hearth seat, close and soft... ."

"In Spain," I said. "In Spain."

He took no notice, but turned suddenly, laughing.

"Do you know, when I was stooking up, lifting the sheaves, it felt like having your arm round a girl. It was quite a sudden sensation."

"You'd better take care," said I, "you'll mesh yourself in the silk of dreams, and then--"

He laughed, not having heard my words.

"The time seems to go like lightning-thinking" he confessed-"I seem to sweep the mornings up in a handful."

"Oh, Lord!" said I. "Why don't you scheme forgetting what you want, instead of dreaming fulfilments?"

"Well," he replied. "If it was a fine dream, wouldn't you want to go on dreaming?" and with that he finished, and I went home.

I sat at my window looking out, trying to get things straight. Mist rose, and wreathed round Nethermere, like ghosts meeting and embracing sadly. I thought of the time when my friend should not follow the harrow on our own snug valley side, and when Lettie's room next mine should be closed to hide its emptiness, not its joy. My heart clung pa.s.sionately to the hollow which held us all; how could I bear that it should be desolate! I wondered what Lettie would do.

In the morning I was up early, when daybreak came with a shiver through the woods. I went out, while the moon still shone sickly in the west.

The world shrank from the morning. It was then that the last of the summer things died. The wood was dark,-and smelt damp and heavy with autumn. On the paths the leaves lay clogged.

As I came near the farm I heard the yelling of dogs. Running, I reached the Common, and saw the sheep huddled and scattered in groups, something leaped round them. George burst into sight pursuing. Directly, there was the bang, bang of a gun. I picked up a heavy piece of sandstone and ran forwards. Three sheep scattered wildly before me. In the dim light I saw their grey shadows move among the gorse bushes. Then a dog leaped, and I flung my stone with all my might. I hit. There came a high-pitched howling yelp of pain; I saw the brute make off, and went after him, dodging the p.r.i.c.kly bushes, leaping the trailing brambles. The gunshots rang out again, and I heard the men shouting with excitement. My dog was out of sight, but I followed still, slanting down the hill. In a field ahead I saw someone running. Leaping the low hedge, I pursued, and overtook Emily, who was hurrying as fast as she could through the wet gra.s.s. There was another gunshot and great shouting. Emily glanced round, saw me, and started.

"It's gone to the quarries," she panted. We walked on, without saying a word. Skirting the spinney, we followed the brook course, and came at last to the quarry fence. The old excavations were filled now with trees. The steep walls, twenty feet deep in places, were packed with loose stones, and trailed with hanging brambles. We climbed down the steep bank of the brook, and entered the quarries by the bed of the stream. Under the groves of ash and oak a pale primrose still lingered, glimmering wanly beside the hidden water. Emily found a smear of blood on a beautiful trail of yellow convolvulus. We followed the tracks on to the open, where the brook flowed on the hard rock bed, and the stony floor of the quarry was only a tangle of gorse and bramble and honeysuckle.

"Take a good stone," said I, and we pressed on, where the grove in the great excavation darkened again, and the brook slid secretly under the arms of the bushes and the hair of the long gra.s.s. We beat the cover almost to the road. I thought the brute had escaped, and I pulled a bunch of mountain-ash berries, and stood tapping them against my knee. I was startled by a snarl and a little scream. Running forward, I came upon one of the old, horse-shoe lime kilns that stood at the head of the quarry. There, in the mouth of one of the kilns, Emily was kneeling on the dog, her hands buried in the hair of its throat, pushing back its head. The little jerks of the brute's body were the spasms of death; already the eyes were turning inward, and the upper lip was drawn from the teeth by pain.

"Good Lord, Emily! But he is dead!" exclaimed.

"Has he hurt you?" I drew her away. She shuddered violently, and seemed to feel a horror of herself.

"No-no," she said, looking at herself, with blood all on her skirt, where she had knelt on the wound which I had given the dog, and pressed the broken rib into the chest. There was a trickle of blood on her arm.

"Did he bite you?" I asked, anxious.

"No-oh, no-I just peeped in, and he jumped. But he had no strength, and I hit him back with my stone, and I lost my balance, and fell on him."

"Let me wash your arm."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "isn't it horrible! Oh, I think it is so awful."

"What?" said I, busy bathing her arm in the cold water of the brook.

"This-this whole brutal affair."

"It ought to be cauterised," said I, looking at a score on her arm from the dog's tooth.

"That scratch-that's nothing! Can you get that off my skirt-I feel hateful to myself."

I washed her skirt with my handkerchief as well as I could, saying:

"Let me just sear it for you; we can go to the Kennels. Do-you ought-I don't feel safe otherwise."

"Really," she said, glancing up at me, a smile coming into her fine dark eyes.

"Yes-come along."

"Ha, ha!" she laughed. "You look so serious."

I took her arm and drew her away. She linked her arm in mine and leaned on me.

"It is just like Lorna Doone," she said as if she enjoyed it.

"But you will let me do it," said I, referring to the cauterising.

"You make me; but I shall feel-ugh, I daren't think of it. Get me some of those berries."

I plucked a few bunches of guelder-rose fruits, transparent, ruby berries. She stroked them softly against her lips and cheek, caressing them. Then she murmured to herself:

"I have always wanted to put red berries in my hair."

The shawl she had been wearing was thrown across her shoulders, and her head was bare, and her black hair, soft and short and ecstatic, tumbled wildly into loose light curls. She thrust the stalks of the berries under her combs. Her hair was not heavy or long enough to have held them. Then, with the ruby bunches glowing through the black mist of curls, she looked up at me, brightly, with wide eyes. I looked at her, and felt the smile winning into her eyes. Then I turned and dragged a trail of golden-leaved convolvulus from the hedge, and I twisted it into a coronet for her.

"There!" said I, "you're crowned."

She put back her head, and the low laughter shook in her throat.

"What!" she asked, putting all the courage and recklessness she had into the question, and in her soul trembling.

"Not Chloe, not Bacchante. You have always got your soul in your eyes, such an earnest, troublesome soul."

The laughter faded at once, and her great seriousness looked out again at me, pleading.