The White Peacock Part 85

Leslie won the conservative victory in the general election which took place a year or so after my last visit to "Highclose."

In the interim the Tempests had entertained a continuous stream of people. I heard occasionally from Lettie how she was busy, amused, or bored. She told me that George had thrown himself into the struggle on behalf of the candidate of the Labour Party; that she had not seen him, except in the streets, for a very long time.

When I went down to Eberwich in the March succeeding the election, I found several people staying with my sister. She had under her wing a young literary fellow who affected the "Doady" style-Dora Copperfield's "Doady." He had bunches of half-curly hair, and a romantic black cravat; he played the impulsive part, but was really as calculating as any man on the stock-exchange. It delighted Lettie to "mother" him. He was so shrewd as to be less than harmless. His fellow guests, a woman much experienced in music and an elderly man who was in the artistic world without being of it, were interesting for a time. Bubble after bubble of floating fancy and wit we blew with our breath in the evenings. I rose in the morning loathing the idea of more bubble-blowing.

I wandered around Nethermere, which had now forgotten me. The daffodils under the boat-house continued their golden laughter, and nodded to one another in gossip, as I watched them, never for a moment pausing to notice me. The yellow reflection of daffodils among the shadows of grey willow in the water trembled faintly as they told haunted tales in the gloom. I felt like a child left out of the group of my playmates. There was a wind running across Nethermere, and on the eager water blue and glistening grey shadows changed places swiftly. Along the sh.o.r.e the wild birds rose, flapping in expostulation as I pa.s.sed, peewits mewing fiercely round my head, while two white swans lifted their glistening feathers till they looked like grand double water-lilies, laying back their orange beaks among the petals, and fronting me with haughty resentment, charging towards me insolently.

I wanted to be recognised by something. I said to myself that the dryads were looking out for me from the wood's edge. But as I advanced they shrank, and glancing wistfully, turned back like pale flowers falling in the shadow of the forest. I was a stranger, an intruder. Among the bushes a twitter of lively birds exclaimed upon me. Finches went leaping past in bright flashes, and a robin sat and asked rudely: "h.e.l.lo! Who are you?"

The bracken lay sere under the trees, broken and chavelled by the restless wild winds of the long winter.

The trees caught the wind in their tall netted twigs, and the young morning wind moaned at its captivity. As I trod the discarded oak-leaves and the bracken they uttered their last sharp gasps, pressed into oblivion. The wood was roofed with a wide young sobbing sound, and floored with a faint hiss like the intaking of the last breath. Between, was all the glad out-peeping of buds and anemone flowers and the rush of birds. I, wandering alone, felt them all, the anguish of the bracken fallen face-down in defeat, the careless dash of the birds, the sobbing of the young wind arrested in its haste, the trembling, expanding delight of the buds. I alone among them could hear the whole succession of chords.

The brooks talked on just the same, just as gladly, just as boisterously as they had done when I had netted small, glittering fish in the rest-pools. At Strelley Mill a servant girl in a white cap, and white ap.r.o.n-bands, came running out of the house with purple prayer-books, which she gave to the elder of two finicking girls who sat disconsolately with their black-silked mother in the governess cart at the gate, ready to go to church. Near Woodside there was barbed-wire along the path, and at the end of every riding it was tarred on the tree-trunks, "Private."

I had done with the valley of Nethermere. The valley of Nethermere had cast me out many years before, while I had fondly believed it cherished me in memory.

I went along the road to Eberwich. The church bells were ringing boisterously, with the careless boisterousness of the brooks and the birds and the rollicking coltsfoots and celandines.

A few people were hastening blithely to service. Miners and other labouring men were pa.s.sing in aimless gangs, walking nowhere in particular, so long as they reached a sufficiently distant public house.

I reached the 'Hollies.' It was much more spruce than it had been. The yard, however, and the stables had again a somewhat abandoned air. I asked the maid for George.

"Oh, master's not up yet," she said, giving a little significant toss of her head, and smiling. I waited a moment.

"But he rung for a bottle of beer about ten minutes since, so I should think--" she emphasised the word with some ironical contempt, "-he won't be very long," she added, in tones which conveyed that she was not by any means sure. I asked for Meg.

"Oh, Missis is gone to church-and the children-But Miss Saxton is in, she might--"

"Emily!" I exclaimed.

The maid smiled.

"She's in the drawing-room. She's engaged, but perhaps if I tell her--"

"Yes, do," said I, sure that Emily would receive me.

I found my old sweetheart sitting in a low chair by the fire, a man standing on the hearthrug pulling his moustache. Emily and I both felt a thrill of old delight at meeting.

"I can hardly believe it is really you," she said, laughing me one of the old intimate looks. She had changed a great deal. She was very handsome, but she had now a new self-confidence, a fine, free indifference.

"Let me introduce you. Mr. Renshaw, Cyril. Tom, you know who it is you have heard me speak often enough of Cyril. I am going to marry Tom in three weeks' time," she said, laughing.

"The devil you are!" I exclaimed involuntarily.

"If he will have me," she added, quite as a playful afterthought.

Tom was a well-built fair man, smoothly, almost delicately tanned. There was something soldierly in his bearing, something self-conscious in the way he bent his head and pulled his moustache, something charming and fresh in the way he laughed at Emily's last preposterous speech.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.

"Why didn't you ask me?" she retorted, arching her brows.

"Mr. Renshaw," I said. "You have out-manoeuvred me all unawares, quite indecently."

"I am very sorry," he said, giving one more twist to his moustache, then breaking into a loud, short laugh at his joke.

"Do you really feel cross?" said Emily to me, knitting her brows and smiling quaintly.

"I do!" I replied, with truthful emphasis.

She laughed, and laughed again, very much amused.

"It is such a joke," she said. "To think you should feel cross now, when it is-how long is it ago--?

"I will not count up," said I.

"Are you not sorry for me?" I asked of Tom Renshaw.

He looked at me with his young blue eyes, eyes so bright, so navely inquisitive, so winsomely meditative. He did not know quite what to say, or how to take it.

"Very!" he replied in another short burst of laughter, quickly twisting his moustache again and looking down at his feet.

He was twenty-nine years old; had been a soldier in China for five years, was now farming his father's farm at Papplewick, where Emily was schoolmistress. He had been at home eighteen months. His father was an old man of seventy who had had his right hand chopped to bits in the chopping machine. So they told me. I liked Tom for his handsome bearing and his fresh, winsome way. He was exceedingly manly: that is to say he did not dream of questioning or a.n.a.lysing anything. All that came his way was ready labelled nice or nasty, good or bad. He did not imagine that anything could be other than just what it appeared to be:-and with this appearance, he was quite content. He looked up to Emily as one wiser, n.o.bler, nearer to G.o.d than himself.

"I am a thousand years older than he," she said to me, laughing. "Just as you are centuries older than I."

"And you love him for his youth?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied. "For that and-he is wonderfully sagacious-and so gentle."

"And I was never gentle, was I?" I said.

"No! As restless and as urgent as the wind," she said, and I saw a last flicker of the old terror.

"Where is George?" I asked.

"In bed," she replies briefly. "He's recovering from one of his orgies.

If I were Meg I would not live with him."

"Is he so bad?" I asked.

"Bad!" she replied. "He's disgusting, and I'm sure he's dangerous. I'd have him removed to an inebriate's home."

"You'd have to persuade him to go," said Tom, who had come into the room again. "He does have dreadful bouts, though! He's killing himself, sure enough. I feel awfully sorry for the fellow."

"It seems so contemptible to me," said Emily, "to become enslaved to one of your likings till it makes a beast of you. Look what a spectacle he is for his children, and what a disgusting disgrace for his wife."

"Well, if he can't help it, he can't, poor chap," said Tom. "Though I do think a man should have more backbone."