The White Peacock Part 65

She took the scarf from her head and let it wave out on the wind; the colour was warm in her face with climbing, and her curls were freed by the wind, sparkling and rippling.

"Well-you're not a man," he said, looking at her, and speaking with timid bitterness.

"No," she laughed, "if I were, I would shape things-oh, wouldn't I have my own way!"

"And don't you now?"

"Oh-I don't want it particularly-when I've got it. When I've had my way, I _do want_ somebody to take it back from me."

She put her head back and looked at him sideways, laughing through the glitter of her hair.

They came to the kennels. She sat down on the edge of the great stone water trough, and put her hands in the water, moving them gently like submerged flowers through the clear pool.

"I love to see myself in the water," she said, "I don't mean _on_ the water, Narcissus-but that's how I should like to be out west, to have a little lake of my own, and swim with my limbs quite free in the water."

"Do you swim well?" he asked.

"Fairly."

"I would race you-in your little lake."

She laughed, took her hands out of the water, and watched the clear drops trickle off. Then she lifted her head suddenly, at some thought or other. She looked across the valley, and saw the red roofs of the Mill.

"-Ilion, Ilion Fatalis incestusque judex Et mulier peregrina vert.i.t.

In pulverem--"

"What's that?" he said.

"Nothing."

"That's a private trough," exclaimed a thin voice, high like a peewit's cry. We started in surprise to see a tall, black-bearded man looking at us and away from us nervously, fidgeting uneasily some ten yards off.

"Is it?" said Lettie, looking at her wet hands, which she proceeded to dry on a fragment of a handkerchief.

"You mustn't meddle with it," said the man in the same reedy, oboe voice. Then he turned his head away, and his pale grey eyes roved the countryside--when he had courage, he turned his back to us, shading his eyes to continue his scrutiny. He walked hurriedly, a few steps, then craned his neck, peering into the valley, and hastened a dozen yards in another direction, again stretching and peering about. Then he went indoors.

"He is pretending to look for somebody," said Lettie, "but it's only because he's afraid we shall think he came out just to look at us"-and they laughed.

Suddenly a woman appeared at the gate; she had pale eyes like the mouse-voiced man.

"You'll get Bright's disease sitting on that there damp stone," she said to Lettie, who at once rose apologetically.

"I ought to know," continued the mouse-voiced woman, "my own mother died of it."

"Indeed," murmured Lettie, "I'm sorry."

"Yes," continued the woman, "it behooves you to be careful. Do you come from Strelley Mill Farm?" she asked suddenly of George, surveying his shameful deshabille with bitter reproof.

He admitted the imputation.

"And you're going to leave, aren't you?"

Which also he admitted.

"Humph!-we s'll 'appen get some neighbours. It's a dog's life for loneliness. I suppose you knew the last lot that was here."

Another brief admission.

"A dirty lot-a dirty beagle she must have been. You should just ha'

seen these grates."

"Yes," said Lettie, "I have seen them."

"Faugh-the state! But come in-come in, you'll see a difference."

They entered, out of curiosity. The kitchen was indeed different. It was clean and sparkling, warm with bright red chintzes on the sofa and on every chair cushion. Unfortunately the effect was spoiled by green and yellow antimacca.s.sars, and by a profusion of paper and woollen flowers.

There were three cases of woollen flowers, and on the wall, four fans st.i.tched over with ruffled green and yellow paper, adorned with yellow paper roses, carnations, arum lilies, and poppies; there were also wall pockets full of paper flowers; while the wood outside was loaded with blossom. "Yes," said Lettie, "there is a difference." The woman swelled, and looked round. The black-bearded man peeped from behind the Christian Herald-those long blaring trumpets!-and shrank again. The woman darted at his pipe, which he had put on a piece of newspaper on the hob, and blew some imaginary ash from it. Then she caught sight of something-perhaps some dust-on the fireplace.

"There!" she cried, "I knew it; I couldn't leave him one second! I haven't work enough burning wood, but he must be poke--poke--"

"I only pushed a piece in between the bars," complained the mouse-voice from behind the paper.

"Pushed a piece in!" she re-echoed, with awful scorn, seizing the poker and thrusting it over his paper. "What do you call that, sitting there telling your stories before folks--"

They crept out and hurried away. Glancing round, Lettie saw the woman mopping the doorstep after them, and she laughed. He pulled his watch out of his breeches' pocket; it was half-past three.

"What are you looking at the time for?" she asked.

"Meg's coming to tea," he replied.

She said no more, and they walked slowly on.

When they came on to the shoulder of the hill, and looked down on to the mill, and the mill-pond, she said:

"I will not come down with you-I will go home."

"Not come down to tea!" he exclaimed, full of reproach and amazement.

"Why, what will they say?"

"No, I won't come down-let me say farewell-'jamque Vale! Do you remember how Eurydice sank back into h.e.l.l?"

"But"-he stammered, "you must come down to tea-how can I tell them?

Why won't you come?"

She answered him in Latin, with two lines from Virgil. As she watched him, she pitied his helplessness, and gave him a last cut as she said, very softly and tenderly:

"It wouldn't be fair to Meg."

He stood looking at her; his face was coloured only by the grey-brown tan; his eyes, the dark, self-mistrustful eyes of the family, were darker than ever, dilated with misery of helplessness; and she was infinitely pitiful. She wanted to cry in her yearning.