The White Peacock Part 26

"No-saying fragrant prayers-that your thin soul might mount up--"

"Hang thin souls, Lettie! I'm not one of your souly sort. I can't stand Pre-Raphaelities. You-You're not a Burne-Jonesess-you're an Albert Moore. I think there's more in the warm touch of a soft body than in a prayer. I'll pray with kisses."

"And when you can't?"

"I'll wait till prayer-time again. By Jove, I'd rather feel my arms full of you; I'd rather touch that red mouth-you grudger!-than sing hymns with you in any heaven."

"I'm afraid you'll never sing hymns with me in heaven."

"Well-I have you here-yes, I have you now."

"Our life is but a fading dawn?"

"Liar!-Well, you called me! Besides, I don't care; 'Carpe diem', my rosebud, my fawn. There's a nice Carmen about a fawn. 'Time to leave its mother, and venture into a warm embrace.' Poor old Horace-I've forgotten him."

"Then poor old Horace."

"Ha! Ha!-Well, I shan't forget _you_. What's that queer look in your eyes?"

"What is it?"

"Nay-you tell me. You are such a tease, there's no getting to the bottom of you."

"You can fathom the depth of a kiss--"

"I will-I will--"

After a while he asked:

"When shall we be properly engaged, Lettie?"

"Oh, wait till Christmas-till I am twenty-one."

"Nearly three months! Why on earth--"

"It will make no difference. I shall be able to choose thee of my own free choice then."

"But three months!"

"I shall consider thee engaged-it doesn't matter about other people."

"I thought we should be married in three months."

"Ah-married in haste--. But what will your mother say?"

"Say! Oh, she'll say it's the first wise thing I've done. You'll make a fine wife, Lettie, able to entertain, and all that."

"You will flutter brilliantly."

"We will."

"No-you'll be the moth-I'll paint your wings-gaudy feather-dust. Then when you lose your coloured dust, when you fly too near the light, or when you play dodge with a b.u.t.terfly net-away goes my part-you can't fly-I-alas, poor me! What becomes of the feather-dust when the moth brushes his wings against a b.u.t.terfly net?"

"What are you making so many words about? You don't know now, do you?"

"No-that I don't."

"Then just be comfortable. Let me look at myself in your eyes."

"Narcissus, Narcissus!-Do you see yourself well? Does the image flatter you?-Or is it a troubled stream, distorting your fair lineaments."

"I can't see anything-only feel you looking-you are laughing at me.-What have you behind there-what joke?"

"I-I'm thinking you're just like Narcissus-a sweet, beautiful youth."

"Be serious-do."

"It would be dangerous. You'd die of it, and I-I should--"

"What!"

"Be just like I am now-serious."

He looked proudly, thinking she referred to the earnestness of her love.

In the wood the wind rumbled and roared hoa.r.s.ely overhead, but not a breath stirred among the saddened bracken. An occasional raindrop was shaken out of the trees; I slipped on the wet paths. Black bars striped the grey tree-trunks, where water had trickled down; the bracken was overthrown, its yellow ranks broken. I slid down the steep path to the gate, out of the wood.

Armies of cloud marched in rank across the sky, heavily laden, almost brushing the gorse on the common. The wind was cold and disheartening.

The ground sobbed at every step. The brook was full, swirling along, hurrying, talking to itself, in absorbed intent tones. The clouds darkened; I felt the rain. Careless of the mud, I ran, and burst into the farm kitchen.

The children were painting, and they immediately claimed my help.

"Emily-and George-are in the front room," said the mother quietly, for it was Sunday afternoon. I satisfied the little ones; I said a few words to the mother, and sat down to take off my clogs.

In the parlour, the father, big and comfortable, was sleeping in an arm-chair. Emily was writing at the table-she hurriedly hid her papers when I entered. George was sitting by the fire, reading. He looked up as I entered, and I loved him when he looked up at me, and as he lingered on his quiet "Hullo!" His eyes were beautifully eloquent-as eloquent as a kiss.

We talked in subdued murmurs, because the father was asleep, opulently asleep, his tanned face as still as a brown pear against the wall. The clock itself went slowly, with languid throbs. We gathered round the fire, and talked quietly, about nothing-blissful merely in the sound of our voices, a murmured, soothing sound-a grateful, dispa.s.sionate love trio.

At last George rose, put down his book-looked at his father-and went out.

In the barn there was a sound of the pulper crunching the turnips. The crisp strips of turnip sprinkled quietly down onto a heap of gold which grew beneath the pulper. The smell of pulped turnips, keen and sweet, brings back to me the feeling of many winter nights, when frozen hoof-prints crunch in the yard, and Orion is in the south; when a friendship was at its mystical best.

"Pulping on Sunday!" I exclaimed.

"Father didn't do it yesterday; it's his work; and I didn't notice it.