The White Peacock (2 page)

Rebecca turned and left the room. I went and peeped in the drawing–room.
Mother sat before the little brown piano, with her plump, rather stiff
fingers moving across the keys, a faint smile on her lips. At that
moment Lettie came flying past me, and flung her arms round mother's
neck, kissing her and saying:

"Oh, my Dear, fancy my Dear playing the piano! Oh, Little Woman, we
never knew you could!"

"Nor can I," replied mother laughing, disengaging herself. "I only
wondered if I could just strum out this old tune; I learned it when I
was quite a girl, on this piano. It was a cracked one then; the only one
I had."

"But play again, dearie, do play again. It was like the clinking of
lustre glasses, and you look so quaint at the piano. Do play, my dear!"
pleaded Lettie.

"Nay," said my mother, "the touch of the old keys on my fingers is
making me sentimental—you wouldn't like to see me reduced to the tears
of old age?"

"Old age!" scolded Lettie, kissing her again. "You are young enough to
play little romances. Tell us about it mother."

"About what, child?"

"When you used to play."

"Before my fingers were stiff with fifty odd years? Where have you been,
Cyril, that you weren't in to dinner?"

"Only down to Strelley Mill," said I.

"Of course," said mother coldly.

"Why 'of course'?" I asked.

"And you came away as soon as Em went to school?" said Lettie.

"I did," said I.

They were cross with me, these two women. After I had swallowed my
little resentment I said:

"They would have me stay to dinner."

My mother vouchsafed no reply.

"And has the great George found a girl yet?" asked Lettie.

"No," I replied, "he never will at this rate. Nobody will ever be good
enough for him."

"I'm sure I don't know what you can find in any of them to take you
there so much," said my mother.

"Don't be so mean, Mater," I answered, nettled. "You know I like them."

"I know you like
her
" said my mother sarcastically. "As for him—he's
an unlicked cub. What can you expect when his mother has spoiled him as
she has. But I wonder you are so interested in licking him." My mother
sniffed contemptuously.

"He is rather good looking," said Lettie with a smile.

"You
could make a man of him, I am sure," I said, bowing satirically
to her.

"I
am not interested," she replied, also satirical.

Then she tossed her head, and all the fine hairs that were free from
bonds made a mist of yellow light in the sun.

"What frock shall I wear Mater?" she asked.

"Nay, don't ask me," replied her mother.

"I think I'll wear the heliotrope—though this sun will fade it," she
said pensively. She was tall, nearly six feet in height, but slenderly
formed. Her hair was yellow, tending towards a dun brown. She had
beautiful eyes and brows, but not a nice nose. Her hands were very
beautiful.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

She did not answer me.

"To Tempest's!" I said. She did not reply.

"Well I don't know what you can see in
him
," I continued.

"Indeed!" said she. "He's as good as most folk——" then we both began
to laugh.

"Not," she continued blushing, "that I think anything about him. I'm
merely going for a game of tennis. Are you coming?"

"What shall you say if I agree?" I asked.

"Oh!" she tossed her head. "We shall all be very pleased I'm sure."

"Ooray!" said I with fine irony.

She laughed at me, blushed, and ran upstairs.

Half an hour afterwards she popped her head in the study to bid me
good–bye, wishing to see if I appreciated her. She was so charming in
her fresh linen frock and flowered hat, that I could not but be proud of
her. She expected me to follow her to the window, for from between the
great purple rhododendrons she waved me a lace mitten, then glinted on
like a flower moving brightly through the green hazels. Her path lay
through the wood in the opposite direction from Strelley Mill, down the
red drive across the tree–scattered space to the highroad. This road ran
along the end of our lakelet, Nethermere, for about a quarter of a mile.
Nethermere is the lowest in a chain of three ponds. The other two are
the upper and lower mill ponds at Strelley: this is the largest and most
charming piece of water, a mile long and about a quarter of a mile in
width. Our wood runs down to the water's edge. On the opposite side, on
a hill beyond the farthest corner of the lake, stands Highclose. It
looks across the water at us in Woodside with one eye as it were, while
our cottage casts a sidelong glance back again at the proud house, and
peeps coyly through the trees.

I could see Lettie like a distant sail stealing along the water's edge,
her parasol flowing above. She turned through the wicket under the pine
clump, climbed the steep field, and was enfolded again in the trees
beside Highclose.

Leslie was sprawled on a camp–chair, under a copper beech on the lawn,
his cigar glowing. He watched the ash grow strange and grey in the warm
daylight, and he felt sorry for poor Nell Wycherley, whom he had driven
that morning to the station, for would she not be frightfully cut up as
the train whirled her further and further away? These girls are so daft
with a fellow! But she was a nice little thing—he'd get Marie to write
to her.

At this point he caught sight of a parasol fluttering along the drive,
and immediately he fell into a deep sleep, with just a tiny slit in his
slumber to allow him to see Lettie approach. She, finding her watchman
ungallantly asleep, and his cigar, instead of his lamp untrimmed, broke
off a twig of syringa whose ivory buds had not yet burst with luscious
scent. I know not how the end of his nose tickled in anticipation before
she tickled him in reality, but he kept bravely still until the petals
swept him. Then, starting from his sleep, he exclaimed: "Lettie! I was
dreaming of kisses!"

"On the bridge of your nose?" laughed she—"But whose were the
kisses?"

"Who produced the sensation?" he smiled.

"Since I only tapped your nose you should dream of——"

"Go on!" said he, expectantly.

"Of Doctor Slop," she replied, smiling to herself as she closed her
parasol.

"I do not know the gentleman," he said, afraid that she was laughing at
him.

"No—your nose is quite classic," she answered, giving him one of
those brief intimate glances with which women flatter men so cleverly.
He radiated with pleasure.

The long–drawn booming of the wind in the wood and the sobbing and
moaning in the maples and oaks near the house, had made Lettie restless.
She did not want to go anywhere, she did not want to do anything, so she
insisted on my just going out with her as far as the edge of the water.
We crossed the tangle of fern and bracken, bramble and wild raspberry
canes that spread in the open space before the house, and we went down
the grassy slope to the edge of Nethermere. The wind whipped up noisy
little wavelets, and the cluck and clatter of these among the pebbles,
the swish of the rushes and the freshening of the breeze against our
faces, roused us.

The tall meadow–sweet was in bud along the tiny beach and we walked
knee–deep among it, watching the foamy race of the ripples and the
whitening of the willows on the far shore. At the place where Nethermere
narrows to the upper end, and receives the brook from Strelley, the wood
sweeps down and stands with its feet washed round with waters. We broke
our way along the shore, crushing the sharp–scented wild mint, whose
odour checks the breath, and examining here and there among the marshy
places ragged nests of water–fowl, now deserted. Some slim young
lap–wings started at our approach, and sped lightly from us, their necks
outstretched in straining fear of that which could not hurt them. One,
two, fled cheeping into cover of the wood; almost instantly they coursed
back again to where we stood, to dart off from us at an angle, in an
ecstasy of bewilderment and terror.

"What has frightened the crazy little things?" asked Lettie.

"I don't know. They've cheek enough sometimes; then they go whining,
skelping off from a fancy as if they had a snake under their wings."

Lettie however paid small attention to my eloquence. She pushed aside an
elder bush, which graciously showered down upon her myriad crumbs from
its flowers like slices of bread, and bathed her in a medicinal scent. I
followed her, taking my dose, and was startled to hear her sudden, "Oh,
Cyril!"

On the bank before us lay a black cat, both hindpaws torn and bloody in
a trap. It had no doubt been bounding forward after its prey when it was
caught. It was gaunt and wild; no wonder it frightened the poor
lap–wings into cheeping hysteria. It glared at us fiercely, growling
low.

"How cruel—oh, how cruel!" cried Lettie, shuddering.

I wrapped my cap and Lettie's scarf over my hands and bent to open the
trap. The cat struck with her teeth, tearing the cloth convulsively.
When it was free, it sprang away with one bound, and fell panting,
watching us.

I wrapped the creature in my jacket, and picked her up, murmuring:

"Poor Mrs. Nickie Ben—we always prophesied it of you."

"What will you do with it?" asked Lettie.

"It is one of the Strelley Mill cats," said I, "and so I'll take her
home."

The poor animal moved and murmured and I carried her, but we brought her
home. They stared, on seeing me enter the kitchen coatless, carrying a
strange bundle, while Lettie followed me.

"I have brought poor Mrs. Nickie Ben," said I, unfolding my burden.

"Oh, what a shame!" cried Emily, putting out her hand to touch the cat,
but drawing quickly back, like the pee–wits.

"This is how they all go," said the mother.

"I wish keepers had to sit two or three days with their bare ankles in a
trap," said Mollie in vindictive tones.

We laid the poor brute on the rug, and gave it warm milk. It drank very
little, being too feeble, Mollie, full of anger, fetched Mr. Nickie Ben,
another fine black cat, to survey his crippled mate. Mr. Nickie Ben
looked, shrugged his sleek shoulders, and walked away with high steps.
There was a general feminine outcry on masculine callousness.

George came in for hot water. He exclaimed in surprise on seeing us, and
his eyes became animated.

"Look at Mrs. Nickie Ben," cried Mollie. He dropped on his knees on the
rug and lifted the wounded paws.

"Broken," said he.

"How awful!" said Emily, shuddering violently, and leaving the room.

"Both?" I asked.

"Only one—look!"

"You are hurting her!" cried Lettie.

"It's no good," said he.

Mollie and the mother hurried out of the kitchen into the parlour.

"What are you going to do?" asked Lettie.

"Put her out of her misery," he replied, taking up the poor cat. We
followed him into the barn.

"The quickest way," said he, "is to swing her round and knock her head
against the wall."

"You make me sick," exclaimed Lettie.

"I'll drown her then," he said with a smile. We watched him morbidly, as
he took a length of twine and fastened a noose round the animal's neck,
and near it an iron goose; he kept a long piece of cord attached to the
goose.

"You're not coming, are you?" said he. Lettie looked at him; she had
grown rather white.

"It'll make you sick," he said. She did not answer, but followed him
across the yard to the garden. On the bank of the lower mill–pond he
turned again to us and said:

"Now for it!—you are chief mourners." As neither of us replied, he
smiled, and dropped the poor writhing cat into the water, saying,
"Good–bye, Mrs. Nickie Ben."

We waited on the bank some time. He eyed us curiously.

"Cyril," said Lettie quietly, "isn't it cruel?—isn't it awful?"

I had nothing to say.

"Do you mean me?" asked George.

"Not you in particular—everything! If we move the blood rises in our
heel–prints."

He looked at her seriously, with dark eyes.

"I had to drown her out of mercy," said he, fastening the cord he held
to an ash–pole. Then he went to get a spade, and with it, he dug a grave
in the old black earth.

"If," said he, "the poor old cat had made a prettier corpse, you'd have
thrown violets on her."

He had struck the spade into the ground, and hauled up the cat and the
iron goose.

"Well," he said, surveying the hideous object, "haven't her good looks
gone! She was a fine cat."

"Bury it and have done," Lettie replied.

He did so asking: "Shall you have bad dreams after it?"

"Dreams do not trouble me," she answered, turning away.

We went indoors, into the parlour, where Emily sat by a window, biting
her finger. The room was long and not very high; there was a great rough
beam across the ceiling. On the mantel–piece, and in the fireplace, and
over the piano were wild flowers and fresh leaves plentifully scattered;
the room was cool with the scent of the woods.

"Has he done it?" asked Emily—"and did you watch him? If I had seen it
I should have hated the sight of him, and I'd rather have touched a
maggot than him."

"I shouldn't be particularly pleased if he touched me," said Lettie.

"There is something so loathsome about callousness and brutality," said
Emily. "He fills me with disgust."

"Does he?" said Lettie, smiling coldly. She went across to the old
piano. "He's only healthy. He's never been sick, not anyway, yet." She
sat down and played at random, letting the numbed notes fall like dead
leaves from the haughty, ancient piano.

Emily and I talked on by the window, about books and people. She was
intensely serious, and generally succeeded in reducing me to the same
state.

After a while, when the milking and feeding were finished, George came
in. Lettie was still playing the piano. He asked her why she didn't play
something with a tune in it, and this caused her to turn round in her
chair to give him a withering answer. His appearance, however, scattered
her words like startled birds. He had come straight from washing in the
scullery, to the parlour, and he stood behind Lettie's chair
unconcernedly wiping the moisture from his arms. His sleeves were rolled
up to the shoulder, and his shirt was opened wide at the breast. Lettie
was somewhat taken aback by the sight of him standing with legs apart,
dressed in dirty leggings and boots, and breeches torn at the knee,
naked at the breast and arms.

"Why don't you play something with a tune in it?" he repeated, rubbing
the towel over his shoulders beneath the shirt.

"A tune!" she echoed, watching the swelling of his arms as he moved
them, and the rise and fall of his breasts, wonderfully solid and white.
Then having curiously examined the sudden meeting of the sunhot skin
with the white flesh in his throat, her eyes met his, and she turned
again to the piano, while the colour grew in her ears, mercifully
sheltered by a profusion of bright curls.

"What shall I play?" she asked, fingering the keys somewhat confusedly.

He dragged out a book of songs from a little heap of music, and set it
before her.

"Which do you want to sing?" she asked thrilling a little as she felt
his arms so near her.

"Anything you like."

"A love song?" she said.

"If you like—yes, a love song——" he laughed with clumsy insinuation
that made the girl writhe.

She did not answer, but began to play Sullivan's "Tit Willow." He had a
passable bass voice, not of any great depth, and he sang with gusto.
Then she gave him "Drink to me only with thine eyes." At the end she
turned and asked him if he liked the words. He replied that he thought
them rather daft. But he looked at her with glowing brown eyes, as if in
hesitating challenge.

"That's because you have no wine in your eyes to pledge with," she
replied, answering his challenge with a blue blaze of her eyes. Then her
eyelashes drooped on to her cheek. He laughed with a faint ring of
consciousness, and asked her how could she know.

"Because," she said slowly, looking up at him with pretended scorn,
"because there's no change in your eyes when I look at you. I always
think people who are worth much talk with their eyes. That's why you are
forced to respect many quite uneducated people. Their eyes are so
eloquent, and full of knowledge." She had continued to look at him as
she spoke—watching his faint appreciation of her upturned face, and her
hair, where the light was always tangled, watching his brief
self–examination to see if he could feel any truth in her words,
watching till he broke into a little laugh which was rather more awkward
and less satisfied than usual. Then she turned away, smiling also.

"There's nothing in this book nice to sing," she said, turning over the
leaves discontentedly. I found her a volume, and she sang "Should he
upbraid." She had a fine soprano voice, and the song delighted him. He
moved nearer to her, and when at the finish she looked round with a
flashing, mischievous air, she found him pledging her with wonderful
eyes.

"You like that," said she with the air of superior knowledge, as if,
dear me, all one had to do was to turn over to the right page of the
vast volume of one's soul to suit these people.

"I do," he answered emphatically, thus acknowledging her triumph.

"I'd rather 'dance and sing' round 'wrinkled care' than carefully shut
the door on him, while I slept in the chimney wouldn't you?" she asked.

He laughed, and began to consider what she meant before he replied.

"As you do," she added.

"What?" he asked.

"Keep half your senses asleep—half alive."

"Do I?" he asked.

"Of course you do;—'bos–bovis; an ox.' You are like a stalled ox, food
and comfort, no more. Don't you love comfort?" she smiled.

"Don't you?" he replied, smiling shamefaced.

"Of course. Come and turn over for me while I play this piece. Well,
I'll nod when you must turn—bring a chair."

She began to play a romance of Schubert's. He leaned nearer to her to
take hold of the leaf of music; she felt her loose hair touch his face,
and turned to him a quick, laughing glance, while she played. At the end
of the page she nodded, but he was oblivious; "Yes!" she said, suddenly
impatient, and he tried to get the leaf over; she quickly pushed his
hand aside, turned the page herself and continued playing.

"Sorry!" said he, blushing actually.

"Don't bother," she said, continuing to play without observing him. When
she had finished:

"There!" she said, "now tell me how you felt while I was playing."

"Oh—a fool!"—he replied, covered with confusion.

"I'm glad to hear it," she said—"but I didn't mean that. I meant how
did the music make you feel?"

"I don't know—whether—it made me feel anything," he replied
deliberately, pondering over his answer, as usual.

"I tell you," she declared, "you're either asleep or stupid. Did you
really see nothing in the music? But what did you think about?"

He laughed—and thought awhile—and laughed again.

"Why!" he admitted, laughing, and trying to tell the exact truth, "I
thought how pretty your hands are—and what they are like to touch—and
I thought it was a new experience to feel somebody's hair tickling my
cheek." When he had finished his deliberate account she gave his hand a
little knock, and left him saying:

"You are worse and worse."

She came across the room to the couch where I was sitting talking to
Emily, and put her arm around my neck.

"Isn't it time to go home, Pat?" she asked.

"Half past eight—quite early," said I.

"But I believe—I think I ought to be home now," she said.

"Don't go," said he.

"Why?" I asked.

"Stay to supper," urged Emily.

"But I believe——" she hesitated.

"She has another fish to fry," I said.

"I am not sure——" she hesitated again. Then she flashed into sudden
wrath, exclaiming, "Don't be so mean and nasty, Cyril!"

"Were you going somewhere?" asked George humbly.

"Why—no!" she said, blushing.

"Then stay to supper—will you?" he begged. She laughed, and yielded. We
went into the kitchen. Mr. Saxton was sitting reading. Trip, the big
bull terrier, lay at his feet pretending to sleep; Mr. Nickie Ben
reposed calmly on the sofa; Mrs. Saxton and Mollie were just going to
bed. We bade them good–night, and sat down. Annie, the servant, had gone
home, so Emily prepared the supper.