The White Peacock Part 82

"She thinks she is shy," he said. "Look up, young hussy, and see the lady and gentleman. She is a positive owl, she won't go to bed-will you, young brown-owl?"

He tickled her neck again with his moustache, and the child bubbled over with naughty, merry laughter.

The room was very warm, with a red bank of fire up the chimney mouth. It was half lighted from a heavy bronze chandelier, black and gloomy, in the middle of the room. There was the same sombre, spa.r.s.e furniture that the Mayhews had had. George looked large and handsome, the glossy black silk of his waistcoat fitting close to his sides, the roundness of the shoulder muscle filling the white linen of his sleeves.

Suddenly the baby lifted her head and stared at us, thrusting into her mouth the dummy that was pinned to the breast of her night-gown. The faded pink sleeves of the night-gown were tight on her fat little wrists. She stood thus sucking her dummy, one arm round her father's neck, watching us with hazel solemn eyes. Then she pushed her fat little fist up among the bush of small curls, and began to twist her fingers about her ear that was white like a camelia flower.

"She is really sleepy," said Lettie.

"Come then!" said he, folding her for sleep against his breast. "Come and go to boh."

But the young rascal immediately began to cry her remonstrance. She stiffened herself, freed herself, and stood again on his knee, watching us solemnly, vibrating the dummy in her mouth as she suddenly sucked at it, twisting her father's ear in her small fingers till he winced.

"Her nails _are_ sharp," he said, smiling.

He began asking and giving the small information that pa.s.s between friends who have not met for a long time. The baby laid her head on his shoulder, keeping her tired, owl-like eyes fixed darkly on us. Then gradually the lids fluttered and sank, and she dropped on to his arm.

"She is asleep," whispered Lettie.

Immediately the dark eyes opened again. We looked significantly at one another, continuing our subdued talk. After a while the baby slept soundly.

Presently Meg came downstairs. She greeted us in breathless whispers of surprise, and then turned to her husband.

"Has she gone?" she whispered, bending over the sleeping child in astonishment. "My, this is wonderful, isn't it!"

She took the sleeping drooping baby from his arms, putting her mouth close to its forehead, murmuring with soothing, inarticulate sounds.

We stayed talking for some time when Meg had put the baby to bed. George had a new tone of a.s.surance and authority. In the first place he was an established man, living in a large house, having altogether three men working for him. In the second place he had ceased to value the conventional treasures of social position and ostentatious refinement.

Very, very many things he condemned as flummery and sickly waste of time. The life of an ordinary well-to-do person he set down as adorned futility, almost idiocy. He spoke pa.s.sionately of the monstrous denial of life to the many by the fortunate few. He talked at Lettie most flagrantly.

"Of course," she said, "I have read Mr. Wells and Mr. Shaw, and even Niel Lyons and a Dutchman-what is his name, Querido? But what can I do?

I think the rich have as much misery as the poor, and of quite as deadly a sort. What can I do? It is a question of life and the development of the human race. Society and its regulations is not a sort of drill that endless Napoleons have forced on us: it is the only way we have yet found of living together."

"Pah!" said he, "that is rank cowardice. It is feeble and futile to the last degree."

"We can't grow consumption-proof in a generation, nor can we grow poverty-proof."

"We can begin to take active measures," he replied contemptuously.

"We can all go into a sanatorium and live miserably and dejectedly warding off death," she said, "but life is full of goodliness for all that."

"It is fuller of misery," he said.

Nevertheless, she had shaken him. She still kept her astonishing power of influencing his opinions. All his pa.s.sion, and heat, and rude speech, a.n.a.lysed out, was only his terror at her threatening of his life-interest.

She was rather piqued by his rough treatment of her, and by his contemptuous tone. Moreover, she could never quite let him be. She felt a driving force which impelled her almost against her will to interfere in his life. She invited him to dine with them at Highclose. He was now quite possible. He had, in the course of his business, been sufficiently in the company of gentlemen to be altogether _"comme it faut"_ at a private dinner, and after dinner.

She wrote me concerning him occasionally:

"George Saxton was here to dinner yesterday. He and Leslie had frightful battles over the nationalisation of industries. George is rather more than a match for Leslie, which, in his secret heart, makes our friend gloriously proud. It is very amusing. I, of course, have to preserve the balance of power, and, of course, to bolster my husband's dignity. At a crucial dangerous moment, when George is just going to wave his b.l.o.o.d.y sword and Leslie lies bleeding with rage, I step in and p.r.i.c.k the victor under the heart with some little satire or some esoteric question, I raise Leslie and say his blood is luminous for the truth, and vous voila! Then I abate for the thousandth time Leslie's conservative crow, and I appeal once more to George-it is no use my arguing with him, he gets so angry-I make an abtruse appeal for all the wonderful, sad, and beautiful expressions on the countenance of life, expressions which he does not see or which he distorts by his oblique vision of socialism into grimaces-and there I am! I think I am something of a Machiavelli, but it is quite true, what I say--"

Again she wrote:

"We happened to be motoring from Derby on Sunday morning, and as we came to the top of the hill, we had to thread our way through quite a large crowd. I looked up, and whom should I see but our friend George, holding forth about the state endowment of mothers. I made Leslie stop while we listened. The market-place was quite full of people. George saw us, and became fiery. Leslie then grew excited, and although I clung to the skirts of his coat with all my strength, he jumped up and began to question. I must say it with shame and humility-he made an a.s.s of himself. The men all round were jeering and muttering under their breath. I think Leslie is not very popular among them, he is such an advocate of machinery which will do the work of men. So they cheered our friend George when he thundered forth his replies and his demonstrations. He pointed his finger at us, and flung his hand at us, and shouted till I quailed in my seat. I cannot understand why he should become so frenzied as soon as I am within range. George had a triumph that morning, but when I saw him a few days later he seemed very uneasy, rather self-mistrustful--"

Almost a year later I heard from her again on the same subject.

"I have had such a lark. Two or three times I have been to the 'Hollies'; to socialist meetings. Leslie does not know. They are great fun. Of course, I am in sympathy with the socialists, but I cannot narrow my eyes till I see one thing only. Life is like a large, rather beautiful man who is young and full of vigour, but hairy, barbaric, with hands hard and dirty, the dirt ingrained. I know his hands are very ugly, I know his mouth is not firmly shapen, I know his limbs are hairy and brutal: but his eyes are deep and very beautiful. That is what I tell George.

The people are so earnest, they make me sad. But then, they are so didactic, they hold forth so much, they are so c.o.c.k-sure and so narrow-eyed, they make me laugh. George laughs too. I am sure we made such fun of a straight-haired goggle of a girl who had suffered in prison for the cause of women, that I am ashamed when I see my "Woman's League" badge. At the bottom, you know, Cyril, I don't care for anything very much, except myself. Things seem so frivolous. I am the only real thing, I and the children--"

Gradually George fell out of the socialist movement. It wearied him. It did not feed him altogether. He began by mocking his friends of the confraternity. Then he spoke in bitter dislike of Hudson, the wordy, humorous, shallow leader of the movement in Eberwich; it was Hudson with his wriggling and his clap-trap who disgusted George with the cause.

Finally the meetings at the 'Hollies' ceased, and my friend dropped all connection with his former a.s.sociates.

He began to speculate in land. A hosiery factory moved to Eberwich, giving the place a new stimulus to growth. George happened to buy a piece of land at the end of the street of the village. When he got it, it was laid out in allotment gardens. These were becoming valueless owing to the encroachment of houses. He took it, divided it up, and offered it as sites for a new row of shops. He sold at a good profit.

Altogether he was becoming very well off. I heard from Meg that he was flourishing, that he did not drink "anything to speak of," but that he was always out, she hardly saw anything of him. If getting-on was to keep him so much away from home, she would be content with a little less fortune. He complained that she was narrow, and that she would not entertain any sympathy with any of his ideas.

"n.o.body comes here to see me twice," he said. "Because Meg receives them in such an off-hand fashion. I asked Jim Curtiss and his wife from Everley Hall one evening. We were uncomfortable all the time. Meg had hardly a word for anybody-'Yes' and 'No' and 'Hm Hm!'-They'll never come again."

Meg herself said:

"Oh, I can't stand stuck-up folks. They make me feel uncomfortable. As soon as they begin mincing their words I'm done for-I can no more talk than a lobster--"

Thus their natures contradicted each other. He tried hard to gain a footing in Eberwich. As it was he belonged to no cla.s.s of society whatsoever. Meg visited and entertained the wives of small shop-keepers and publicans: this was her set.

George voted the women loud-mouthed, vulgar, and narrow-not without some cause. Meg, however, persisted. She visited when she thought fit, and entertained when he was out. He made acquaintance after acquaintance: Dr. Francis; Mr. Cartridge, the veterinary surgeon; Toby Heswall, the brewer's son; the Curtisses, farmers of good standing from Everley Hall. But it was no good. George was by nature a family man. He wanted to be private and secure in his own rooms, then he was at ease.

As Meg never went out with him, and as every attempt to entertain at the "Hollies" filled him with shame and mortification, he began to give up trying to place himself, and remained suspended in social isolation at the "Hollies."

The friendship between Lettie and himself had been kept up, in spite of all things. Leslie was sometimes jealous, but he dared not show it openly, for fear of his wife's scathing contempt. George went to "Highclose" perhaps once in a fortnight, perhaps not so often. Lettie never went to the "Hollies," as Meg's att.i.tude was too antagonistic.

Meg complained very bitterly of her husband. He often made a beast of himself drinking, he thought more of himself than he ought, home was not good enough for him, he was selfish to the back-bone, he cared neither for her nor the children, only for himself.

I happened to be at home for Lettie's thirty-first birthday. George was then thirty-five. Lettie had allowed her husband to forget her birthday.

He was now very much immersed in politics, foreseeing a general election in the following year, and intending to contest the seat in parliament.

The division was an impregnable Liberal stronghold, but Leslie had hopes that he might capture the situation. Therefore he spent a great deal of time at the conservative club, and among the men of influence in the southern division. Lettie encouraged him in these affairs. It relieved her of him. It was thus that she let him forget her birthday, while, for some unknown reason, she let the intelligence slip to George. He was invited to dinner, as I was at home.

George came at seven o'clock. There was a strange feeling of festivity in the house, although there were no evident signs. Lettie had dressed with some magnificence in a blackish purple gauze over soft satin of lighter tone, nearly the colour of double violets. She wore vivid green azurite ornaments on the fairness of her bosom, and her bright hair was bound by a band of the same colour. It was rather startling. She was conscious of her effect, and was very excited. Immediately George saw her his eyes wakened with a dark glow. She stood up as he entered, her hand stretched straight out to him, her body very erect, her eyes bright and rousing, like two blue pennants.

"Thank you so much," she said softly, giving his hand a last pressure before she let it go. He could not answer, so he sat down, bowing his head, then looking up at her in suspense. She smiled at her.

Presently the children came in. They looked very quaint, like acolytes, in their long straight dressing-gowns of quilted blue silk. The boy, particularly, looked as if he were going to light the candles in some childish church in paradise. He was very tall and slender and fair, with a round fine head, and serene features. Both children looked remarkably, almost transparently clean: it is impossible to consider anything more fresh and fair. The girl was a merry, curly headed puss of six. She played with her mother's green jewels and prattled prettily, while the boy stood at his mother's side, a slender and silent acolyte in his pale blue gown. I was impressed by his patience and his purity. When the girl had bounded away into George's arms, the lad laid his hand timidly on Lettie's knee and looked with a little wonder at her dress.

"How pretty those green stones are, mother!" he said.