The White Peacock Part 88

"See how he watches the light flash across your spectacles when you turn suddenly-Look!"

But I was weary of babies. My friends had all grown up and married and inflicted them on me. There were storms of babies. I longed for a place where they would be obsolete, and young, arrogant, impervious mothers might be a forgotten tradition. Lettie's heart would quicken in answer to only one pulse, the easy, light ticking of the baby's blood.

I remembered, one day as I sat in the train hastening to Charing Cross on my way from France, that that was George's birthday. I had the feeling of him upon me, heavily, and I could not rid myself of the depression. I put it down to travel fatigue, and tried to dismiss it. As I watched the evening sun glitter along the new corn-stubble in the fields we pa.s.sed, trying to describe the effect to myself, I found myself asking: "But-what's the matter? I've not had bad news, have I, to make my chest feel so weighted?"

I was surprised when I reached my lodging in New Maiden to find no letters for me, save one fat budget from Alice. I knew her squat, saturnine handwriting on the envelope, and I thought I knew what contents to expect from the letter.

She had married an old acquaintance who had been her particular aversion. This young man had got himself into trouble, so that the condemnations of the righteous pursued him like clouds of gnats on a summer evening. Alice immediately rose to sting back his vulgar enemies, and having rendered him a service, felt she could only wipe out the score by marrying him. They were fairly comfortable. Occasionally, as she said, there were displays of small fireworks in the back yard. He worked in the offices of some iron foundries just over the Erewash in Derbyshire. Alice lived in a dirty little place in the valley a mile and a half from Eberwich, not far from his work. She had no children, and practically no friends; a few young matrons for acquaintances. As wife of a superior clerk, she had to preserve her dignity among the work-people. So all her little crackling fires were sodded down with the sods of British respectability. Occasionally she smouldered a fierce smoke that made one's eyes water. Occasionally, perhaps once a year, she wrote me a whole venomous budget, much to my amus.e.m.e.nt.

I was not in any haste to open this fat letter until, after supper, I turned to it as a resource from my depression.

"Oh dear Cyril, I'm in a bubbling state, I want to yell, not write. Oh, Cyril, why didn't _you_ marry me, or why didn't our Georgie Saxton, or somebody. I'm deadly sick. Percival Charles is enough to stop a clock.

Oh, Cyril, he lives in an eternal Sunday suit, holy broadcloth and righteous three inches of cuffs! He goes to bed in it. Nay, he wallows in Bibles when he goes to bed. I can feel the bra.s.s covers of all his family Bibles sticking in my ribs as I lie by his side. I could weep with wrath, yet I put on my black hat and trot to chapel with him like a lamb.

"Oh, Cyril, nothing's happened. Nothing has happened to me all these years. I shall die of it. When I see Percival Charles at dinner, after having asked a blessing, I feel as if I should never touch a bit at his table again. In about an hour I shall hear him hurrying up the entry-prayers always make him hungry-and his first look will be on the table. But I'm not fair to him-he's really a good fellow-I only wish he wasn't.

"It's George Saxton who's put this seidlitz powder in my marital cup of cocoa. Cyril, I must a tale unfold. It is fifteen years since our George married Meg. When I count up, and think of the future, it nearly makes me scream. But my tale, my tale!

"Can you remember his faithful-dog, wounded-stag, gentle-gazelle eyes?

Cyril, you can see the whisky or the brandy combusting in them. He's got d-t's, blue-devils-and I've seen him, and I'm swarming myself with little red devils after it. I went up to Eberwich on Wednesday afternoon for a pound of fry for Percival Charles' Thursday dinner. I walked by that little path which you know goes round the back of the 'Hollies'-it's as near as any way for me. I thought I heard a row in the paddock at the back of the stables, so I said I might as well see the fun. I went to the gate, basket in one hand, ninepence in coppers in the other, a demure deacon's wife. I didn't take in the scene at first.

"There was our Georgie, in leggings and breeches as of yore, and a whip.

He was flourishing, and striding, and yelling. 'Go it old boy,' I said, 'you'll want your stocking round your throat to-night.' But Cyril, I had spoken too soon. Oh, lum! There came raking up the croft that long, wire-springy racehorse of his, ears flat, and, clinging to its neck, the pale-faced lad, Wilfred. The kid was white as death, and squealing 'Mam!

mam!' I thought it was a bit rotten of Georgie trying to teach the kid to jockey. The race-horse, Bonny-Boy-Boney Boy I call him-came bouncing round like a spiral egg-whish. Then I saw our Georgie rush up screaming, nearly spitting the moustache off his face, and fetch the horse a cut with the whip. It went off like a flame along hot paraffin.

The kid shrieked and clung. Georgie went rushing after him, running staggery, and swearing, fairly screaming,-awful-'a lily-livered little swine!' The high lanky race-horse went larroping round as if it was going mad. I was dazed. Then Meg came rushing, and the other two lads, all screaming. She went for George, but he lifted his whip like the devil. She daren't go near him-she rushed at him, and stopped, rushed at him, and stopped, striking at him with her two fists. He waved his whip and kept her off, and the race-horse kept tearing along. Meg flew to stop it, he ran with his drunken totter-step, brandishing his whip. I flew as well. I hit him with my basket. The kid fell off, and Meg rushed to him. Some men came running. George stood fairly shuddering. You would never have known his face, Cyril. He was mad, demoniacal. I feel sometimes as if I should burst and shatter to bits like a sky-rocket when I think of it. I've got such a weal on my arm.

"I lost Percival Charles' ninepence and my nice white cloth out of the basket, and everything, besides having black looks on Thursday because it was mutton chops, which he hates. Oh, Cyril, 'I wish I was a ca.s.sowary, on the banks of the Timbuctoo.' When I saw Meg sobbing over that lad-thank goodness he wasn't hurt-! I wished our Georgie was dead; I do now, also; I wish we only had to remember him. I haven't been to see them lately-can't stand Meg's ikeyness. I wonder how it all will end.

"There's P. C. bidding 'Good night and G.o.d Bless You' to Brother Jakes, and no supper ready--"

As soon as I could, after reading Alice's letter, I went down to Eberwich to see how things were. Memories of the old days came over me again till my heart hungered for its old people.

They told me at the "Hollies" that, after a bad attack of delirium tremens, George had been sent to Papplewick in the lonely country to stay with Emily. I borrowed a bicycle to ride the nine miles. The summer had been wet, and everything was late. At the end of September the foliage was heavy green, and the wheat stood dejectedly in stook. I rode through the still sweetness of an autumn morning. The mist was folded blue along the hedges; the elm trees loomed up along the dim walls of the morning, the horse-chestnut trees at hand flickered with a few yellow leaves like bright blossoms. As I rode through the tree tunnel by the church where, on his last night, the keeper had told me his story, I smelled the cold rotting of the leaves of the cloudy summer.

I pa.s.sed silently through the lanes, where the chill gra.s.s was weighed down with grey-blue seed-pearls of dew in the shadow, where the wet woollen spider-cloths of autumn were spread as on a loom. Brown birds rustled in flocks like driven leaves before me. I heard the far-off hooting of the "loose-all" at the pits, telling me it was half-past eleven, that the men and boys would be sitting in the narrow darkness of the mines eating their "snap," while shadowy mice darted for the crumbs, and the boys laughed with red mouths rimmed with grime, as the bold little creatures peeped at them in the dim light of the lamps. The dogwood berries stood jauntily scarlet on the hedge-tops, the bunched scarlet and green berries of the convolvulus and bryony hung amid golden trails, the blackberries dropped ungathered. I rode slowly on, the plants dying around me, the berries leaning their heavy ruddy mouths, and languishing for the birds, the men imprisoned underground below me, the brown birds dashing in haste along the hedges.

Swineshed Farm, where the Renshaws lived, stood quite alone among its fields, hidden from the highway and from everything. The lane leading up to it was deep and unsunned. On my right, I caught glimpses through the hedge of the corn-fields, where the shocks of wheat stood like small yellow-sailed ships in a widespread flotilla. The upper part of the field was cleared. I heard the clank of a wagon and the voices of men, and I saw the high load of sheaves go lurching, rocking up the incline to the stackyard.

The lane debouched into a close-bitten field, and out of this empty land the farm rose up with its buildings like a huddle of old, painted vessels floating in still water. White fowls went stepping discreetly through the mild sunshine and the shadow. I leaned my bicycle against the grey, silken doors of the old coach-house. The place was breathing with silence. I hesitated to knock at the open door. Emily came. She was rich as always with her large beauty, and stately now with the stateliness of a strong woman six months gone with child.

She exclaimed with surprise, and I followed her into the kitchen, catching a glimpse of the glistening pans and the white wood baths as I pa.s.sed through the scullery. The kitchen was a good-sized, low room that through long course of years had become absolutely a home. The great beams of the ceiling bowed easily, the chimney-seat had a bit of dark-green curtain, and under the high mantel-piece was another low shelf that the men could reach with their hands as they sat in the ingle-nook. There the pipes lay. Many generations of peaceful men and fruitful women had pa.s.sed through the room, and not one but had added a new small comfort; a chair in the right place, a hook, a stool, a cushion, a certain pleasing cloth for the sofa covers, a shelf of books.

The room, that looked so quiet and crude, was a home evolved through generations to fit the large bodies of the men who dwelled in it, and the placid fancy of the women. At last, it had an individuality. It was the home of the Renshaws, warm, lovable, serene. Emily was in perfect accord with its brownness, its shadows, its ease. I, as I sat on the sofa under the window, felt rejected by the kind room. I was distressed with a sense of ephemerality, of pale, erratic fragility.

Emily, in her full-blooded beauty, was at home. It is rare now to feel a kinship between a room and the one who inhabits it, a close bond of blood relation. Emily had at last found her place, and had escaped from the torture of strange, complex modern life. She was making a pie, and the flour was white on her brown arms. She pushed the tickling hair from her face with her arm, and looked at me with tranquil pleasure, as she worked the paste in the yellow bowl. I was quiet, subdued before her.

"You are very happy?" I said.

"Ah very!" she replied. "And you?-you are not, you look worn."

"Yes," I replied. "I am happy enough. I am living my life."

"Don't you find it wearisome?" she asked pityingly.

She made me tell her all my doings, and she marvelled, but all the time her eyes were dubious and pitiful.

"You have George here," I said.

"Yes. He's in a poor state, but he's not as sick as he was."

"What about the delirium tremens?"

"Oh, he was better of that-very nearly-before he came here. He sometimes fancies they're coming on again, and he's terrified. Isn't it awful! And he's brought it all on himself. Tom's very good to him."

"There's nothing the matter with him-physically, is there?" I asked.

"I don't know," she replied, as she went to the oven to turn a pie that was baking. She put her arm to her forehead and brushed aside her hair, leaving a mark of flour on her nose. For a moment or two she remained kneeling on the fender, looking into the fire and thinking. "He was in a poor way when he came here, could eat nothing, sick every morning. I suppose it's his liver. They all end like that." She continued to wipe the large black plums and put them in the dish.

"Hardening of the liver?" I asked. She nodded.

"And is he in bed?" I asked again.

"Yes," she replied. "It's as I say, if he'd get up and potter about a bit, he'd get over it. But he lies there skulking."

"And what time will he get up?" I insisted.

"I don't know. He may crawl down somewhere towards tea-time. Do you want to see him? That's what you came for, isn't it?"

She smiled at me with a little sarcasm, and added: "You always thought more of him than anybody, didn't you? Ah, well, come up and see him."

I followed her up the back stairs, which led out of the kitchen, and which emerged straight in a bedroom. We crossed the hollow-sounding plaster-floor of this naked room and opened a door at the opposite side.

George lay in bed watching us with apprehensive eyes.

"Here is Cyril come to see you," said Emily, "so I've brought him up, for I didn't know when you'd be downstairs."

A small smile of relief came on his face, and he put out his hand from the bed. He lay with the disorderly clothes pulled up to his chin. His face was discoloured and rather bloated, his nose swollen.

"Don't you feel so well this morning?" asked Emily, softening with pity when she came into contact with his sickness.

"Oh, all right," he replied, wishing only to get rid of us.

"You should try to get up a bit, it's a beautiful morning, warm and soft-" she said gently. He did not reply, and she went downstairs.

I looked round to the cold, whitewashed room, with its ceiling curving and sloping down the walls. It was spa.r.s.ely furnished, and bare of even the slightest ornament. The only things of warm colour were the cow and horse skins on the floor. All the rest was white or grey or drab. On one side, the roof sloped down so that the window was below my knees, and nearly touching the floor, on the other side was a larger window, breast high. Through it one could see the jumbled, ruddy roofs of the sheds and the skies. The tiles were shining with patches of vivid orange lichen.

Beyond was the corn-field, and the men, small in the distance, lifting the sheaves on the cart.

"You will come back to farming again, won't you?" I asked him, turning to the bed. He smiled.

"I don't know," he answered dully.