The White Peacock Part 83

"Yes," replied Lettie brightly, lifting them and letting their strange pattern fall again on her bosom. "I like them."

"Are you going to sing, mother?" he asked.

"Perhaps. But why?" said Lettie, smiling.

"Because you generally sing when Mr. Saxton comes."

He bent his head and stroked Lettie's dress shyly.

"Do I," she said, laughing, "Can you hear?"

"Just a little," he replied. "Quite small, as if it were nearly lost in the dark."

He was hesitating, shy as boys are. Lettie laid her hand on his head and stroked his smooth fair hair.

"Sing a song for us before we go, mother" he asked, almost shamefully.

She kissed him.

"You shall sing with me," she said. "What shall it be?"

She played without a copy of the music. He stood at her side, while Lucy, the little mouse, sat on her mother's skirts, pressing Lettie's silk slippers in turn upon the pedals. The mother and the boy sang their song.

"Gaily the troubadour touched his guitar As he was hastening from the war."

The boy had a pure treble, clear as the flight of swallows in the morning. The light shone on his lips. Under the piano the girl child sat laughing, pressing her mother's feet with all her strength, and laughing again. Lettie smiled as she sang.

At last they kissed us a gentle "good-night," and flitted out of the room. The girl popped her curly head round the door again. We saw the white cuff on the nurse's wrist as she held the youngster's arm.

"You'll come and kiss us when we're in bed, Mum?" asked the rogue. Her mother laughed and agreed.

Lucy was withdrawn for a moment; then we heard her, "Just a tick, nurse, just half-a-tick!"

The curly head appeared round the door again.

"And _one_ teenie sweetie," she suggested, "only _one!_"

"Go, you--!" Lettie clapped her hands in mock wrath. The child vanished, but immediately there appeared again round the door two blue laughing eyes and the snub tip of a nose.

"A nice one, Mum-not a jelly-one!"

Lettie rose with a rustle to sweep upon her. The child vanished with a glitter of laughter. We heard her calling breathlessly on the stairs-"Wait a bit, Freddie,-wait for me!"

George and Lettie smiled at each other when the children had gone. As the smile died from their faces they looked down sadly, and until dinner was announced they were very still and heavy with melancholy. After dinner Lettie debated pleasantly which bon-bon she should take for the children. When she came down again she smoked a cigarette with us over coffee. George did not like to see her smoking, yet he brightened a little when he sat down after giving her a light, pleased with the mark of recklessness in her.

"It is ten years to-day since my party at Woodside," she said, reaching for the small Roman salt-cellar of green jade that she used as an ash-tray.

"My Lord-ten years!" he exclaimed bitterly. "It seems a hundred."

"It does and it doesn't," she answered, smiling.

"If I look straight back, and think of my excitement, it seems only yesterday. If I look between then and now, at all the days that lie between, it is an age."

"If I look at myself," he said, "I think I am another person altogether."

"You have changed," she agreed, looking at him sadly. "There is a great change-but you are not another person. I often think-there is one of his old looks, he is just the same at the bottom!"

They embarked on a barge of gloomy recollections and drifted along the soiled ca.n.a.l of their past.

"The worst of it is," he said. "I have got a miserable carelessness, a contempt for things. You know I had such a faculty for reverence. I always believed in things."

"I know you did," she smiled. "You were so humbly-minded-too humbly-minded, I always considered. You always thought things had a deep religious meaning, somewhere hidden, and you reverenced them. Is it different now?"

"You know me very well," he laughed. "What is there left for me to believe in, if not in myself?"

"You have to live for your wife and children," she said with firmness.

"Meg has plenty to secure her and the children as long as they live," he said, smiling. "So I don't know that I'm essential."

"But you are," she replied. "You are necessary as a father and a husband, if not as a provider."

"I think," said he, "marriage is more of a duel than a duet. One party wins and takes the other captive, slave, servant-what you like. It is so, more or less."

"Well?" said Lettie.

"Well!" he answered. "Meg is not like you. She wants me, part of me, so she'd kill me rather than let me go loose."

"Oh, no!" said Lettie, emphatically.

"You know nothing about it," he said quietly.

"In the marital duel Meg is winning. The woman generally does; she has the children on her side. I can't give her any of the real part of me, the vital part that she wants-I can't, any more than you could give kisses to a stranger. And I feel that I'm losing-and don't care."

"No," she said, "you are getting morbid."

He put the cigarette between his lips, drew a deep breath, then slowly sent the smoke down his nostrils.

"No," he said.

"Look here!" she said. "Let me sing to you, shall I, and make you cheerful again?"

She sang from Wagner. It was the music of resignation and despair. She had not thought of it. All the time he listened he was thinking. The music stimulated his thoughts and illuminated the trend of his brooding.

All the time he sat looking at her his eyes were dark with his thoughts.

She finished the "Star of Eve" from Tannhauser and came over to him.

"Why are you so sad to-night, when it is my birthday?" she asked plaintively.

"Am I slow?" he replied. "I am sorry."