The White Peacock (35 page)

"I was not saying anything about it," he replied.

"Yes, you were," she retorted. "I don't know what you call it then——"

The babies outside continued to cry.

"Bring Alfy to me," called Meg, yielding to the mother feeling.

"Oh, no, damn it!" said George, "let Oswald take him."

"Yes," replied Meg bitterly, "let anybody take him so long as he's out
of your sight. You never ought to have children, you didn't——"

George murmured something about "to–day."

"Come then!" said Meg with a whole passion of tenderness, as she took
the red–haired baby and held it to her bosom, "Why, what is it then,
what is it, my precious? Hush then pet, hush then!"

The baby did not hush. Meg rose from her chair and stood rocking the
baby in her arms, swaying from one foot to the other.

"He's got a bit of wind," she said.

We tried to continue the meal, but everything was awkward and difficult.

"I wonder if he's hungry," said Meg, "let's try him."

She turned away and gave him her breast. Then he was still, so she
covered herself as much as she could, and sat down again to tea. We had
finished, so we sat and waited while she ate. This disjointing of the
meal, by reflex action, made Emily and me more accurate. We were
exquisitely attentive, and polite to a nicety. Our very speech was
clipped with precision, as we drifted to a discussion of Strauss and
Debussy. This of course put a breach between us two and our hosts, but
we could not help it; it was our only way of covering over the
awkwardness of the occasion. George sat looking glum and listening to
us. Meg was quite indifferent. She listened occasionally, but her
position as mother made her impregnable. She sat eating calmly, looking
down now and again at her baby, holding us in slight scorn, babblers
that we were. She was secure in her high maternity; she was mistress and
sole authority. George, as father, was first servant; as an indifferent
father, she humiliated him and was hostile to his wishes. Emily and I
were mere intruders, feeling ourselves such. After tea we went upstairs
to wash our hands. The grandmother had had a second stroke of paralysis,
and lay inert, almost stupified. Her large bulk upon the bed was
horrible to me, and her face, with the muscles all slack and awry,
seemed like some cruel cartoon. She spoke a few thick words to me.
George asked her if she felt all right, or should he rub her. She turned
her old eyes slowly to him.

"My leg—my leg a bit," she said in her strange guttural.

He took off his coat, and pushing his hand under the bed–clothes, sat
rubbing the poor old woman's limb patiently, slowly, for some time. She
watched him for a moment, then without her turning her eyes from him, he
passed out of her vision and she lay staring at nothing, in his
direction.

"There," he said at last, "is that any better then, mother?"

"Ay, that's a bit better," she said slowly.

"Should I gi'e thee a drink?" he asked, lingering, wishing to minister
all he could to her before he went.

She looked at him, and he brought the cup. She swallowed a few drops
with difficulty.

"Doesn't it make you miserable to have her always there?" I asked him,
when we were in the next room. He sat down on the large white bed and
laughed shortly.

"We're used to it—we never notice her, poor old gran'ma."

"But she must have made a difference to you—she must make a big
difference at the bottom, even if you don't know it," I said.

"She'd got such a strong character," he said musing, "—she seemed to
understand me. She was a real friend to me before she was so bad.
Sometimes I happen to look at her—generally I never see her, you know
how I mean—but sometimes I do—and then—it seems a bit rotten——"

He smiled at me peculiarly, "—it seems to take the shine off things,"
he added, and then, smiling again with ugly irony—"She's our skeleton
in the closet." He indicated her large bulk.

The church bells began to ring. The grey church stood on a rise among
the fields not far away, like a handsome old stag looking over towards
the inn. The five bells began to play, and the sound came beating upon
the window.

"I hate Sunday night," he said restlessly.

"Because you've nothing to do?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "It seems like a gag, and you feel helpless. I
don't want to go to church, and hark at the bells, they make you feel
uncomfortable."

"What do you generally do?" I asked.

"Feel miserable—I've been down to Mayhew's these last two Sundays, and
Meg's been pretty mad. She says it's the only night I could stop with
her, or go out with her. But if I stop with her, what can I do?—and if
we go out, it's only for half an hour. I hate Sunday night—it's a dead
end."

When we went downstairs, the table was cleared, and Meg was bathing the
dark baby. Thus she was perfect. She handled the bonny, naked child with
beauty of gentleness. She kneeled over him nobly. Her arms and her bosom
and her throat had a nobility of roundness and softness. She drooped her
head with the grace of a Madonna, and her movements were lovely,
accurate and exquisite, like an old song perfectly sung. Her voice,
playing and soothing round the curved limbs of the baby, was like water,
soft as wine in the sun, running with delight.

We watched humbly, sharing the wonder from afar.

Emily was very envious of Meg's felicity. She begged to be allowed to
bathe the second baby. Meg granted her bounteous permission:

"Yes, you can wash him if you like, but what about your frock?"

Emily, delighted, began to undress the baby whose hair was like crocus
petals. Her fingers trembled with pleasure as she loosed the little
tapes. I always remember the inarticulate delight with which she took
the child in her hands, when at last his little shirt was removed, and
felt his soft white limbs and body. A distinct, glowing atmosphere
seemed suddenly to burst out around her and the child, leaving me
outside. The moment before she had been very near to me, her eyes
searching mine, her spirit clinging timidly about me. Now I was put
away, quite alone, neglected, forgotten, outside the glow which
surrounded the woman and the baby.

"Ha!—Ha–a–a!" she said with a deep throated vowel, as she put her face
against the child's small breasts, so round, almost like a girl's,
silken and warm and wonderful. She kissed him, and touched him, and
hovered over him, drinking in his baby sweetnesses, the sweetness of the
laughing little mouth's wide, wet kisses, of the round, waving limbs, of
the little shoulders so winsomely curving to the arms and the breasts,
of the tiny soft neck hidden very warm beneath the chin, tasting
deliciously with her lips and her cheeks all the exquisite softness,
silkiness, warmth, and tender life of the baby's body.

A woman is so ready to disclaim the body of a man's love; she yields him
her own soft beauty with so much gentle patience and regret; she clings
to his neck, to his head and his cheeks, fondling them for the soul's
meaning that is there, and shrinking from his passionate limbs and his
body. It was with some perplexity, some anger and bitterness that I
watched Emily moved almost to ecstasy by the baby's small, innocuous
person.

"Meg never found any pleasure in me as she does in the kids," said
George bitterly, for himself.

The child, laughing and crowing, caught his hands in Emily's hair and
pulled dark tresses down, while she cried out in remonstrance, and tried
to loosen the small fists that were shut so fast. She took him from the
water and rubbed him dry, with marvellous gentle little rubs, he kicking
and expostulating. She brought his fine hair into one silken
up–springing of ruddy gold like an aureole. She played with his tiny
balls of toes, like wee pink mushrooms, till at last she dare detain him
no longer, when she put on his flannel and his night–gown and gave him
to Meg.

Before carrying him to bed Meg took him to feed him. His mouth was
stretched round the nipple as he sucked, his face was pressed close and
closer to the breast, his fingers wandered over the fine white globe,
blue veined and heavy, trying to hold it. Meg looked down upon him with
a consuming passion of tenderness, and Emily clasped her hands and
leaned forward to him. Even thus they thought him exquisite.

When the twins were both asleep, I must tiptoe upstairs to see them.
They lay cheek by cheek in the crib next the large white bed, breathing
little, ruffling breaths, out of unison, so small and pathetic with
their tiny shut fingers. I remembered the two larks.

From the next room came a heavy sound of the old woman's breathing. Meg
went in to her. As in passing I caught sight of the large, prone figure
in the bed, I thought of Guy de Maupassant's "Toine," who acted as an
incubator.

The old woman lay still another year, then she suddenly sank out of
life. George ceased to write to me, but I learned his news elsewhere. He
became more and more intimate with the Mayhews. After old Mayhew's
bankruptcy, the two sons had remained on in the large dark house that
stood off the Nottingham Road in Eberwich. This house had been
bequeathed to the oldest daughter by the mother. Maud Mayhew, who was
married and separated from her husband, kept house for her brothers. She
was a tall, large woman with high cheek–bones and oily black hair looped
over her ears. Tom Mayhew was also a handsome man, very dark and ruddy,
with insolent bright eyes.

The Mayhews' house was called the "Hollies." It was a solid building, of
old red brick, standing fifty yards back from the Eberwich highroad.
Between it and the road was an unkempt lawn, surrounded by very high
black holly trees. The house seemed to be imprisoned among the bristling
hollies. Passing through the large gate, one came immediately upon the
bare side of the house and upon the great range of stables. Old Mayhew
had in his day stabled thirty or more horses there. Now grass was
between the red bricks, and all the bleaching doors were shut, save
perhaps two or three which were open for George's horses.

The "Hollies" became a kind of club for the disconsolate, "better–off"
men of the district. The large dining–room was gloomily and sparsely
furnished, the drawing–room was a desert, but the smaller morning–room
was comfortable enough, with wicker arm–chairs, heavy curtains, and a
large sideboard. In this room George and the Mayhews met with several
men two or three times a week. There they discussed horses and made mock
of the authority of women. George provided the whisky, and they all
gambled timidly at cards. These bachelor parties were the source of
great annoyance to the wives of the married men who attended them.

"He's quite unbearable when he's been at those Mayhews'," said Meg. "I'm
sure they do nothing but cry us down."

Maud Mayhew kept apart from these meetings, watching over her two
children. She had been very unhappily married, and now was reserved,
silent. The women of Eberwich watched her as she went swiftly along the
street in the morning with her basket, and they gloried a little in her
overthrow, because she was too proud to accept consolation, yet they
were sorry in their hearts for her, and she was never touched with
calumny. George saw her frequently, but she treated him coldly as she
treated the other men, so he was afraid of her.

He had more facilities now for his horse–dealing. When the grandmother
died, in the October two years after the marriage of George she left him
seven hundred pounds. To Meg she left the Inn, and the two houses she
had built in Newerton, together with brewery shares to the value of
nearly a thousand pounds. George and Meg felt themselves to be people of
property. The result, however, was only a little further coldness
between them. He was very careful that she had all that was hers. She
said to him once when they were quarrelling, that he needn't go feeding
the Mayhews on the money that came out of her business. Thenceforward he
kept strict accounts of all his affairs, and she must audit them,
receiving her exact dues. This was a mortification to her woman's
capricious soul of generosity and cruelty.

The Christmas after the grandmother's death another son was born to
them. For the time George and Meg became very good friends again.

When in the following March I heard he was coming down to London with
Tom Mayhew on business, I wrote and asked him to stay with me. Meg
replied, saying she was so glad I had asked him: she did not want him
going off with that fellow again; he had been such a lot better lately,
and she was sure it was only those men at Mayhew's made him what he was.

He consented to stay with me. I wrote and told him Lettie and Leslie
were in London, and that we should dine with them one evening. I met him
at King's Cross and we all three drove west. Mayhew was a remarkably
handsome, well–built man; he and George made a notable couple. They were
both in breeches and gaiters, but George still looked like a yeoman,
while Mayhew had all the braggadocio of the stable. We made an
impossible trio. Mayhew laughed and jested broadly for a short time,
then he grew restless and fidgety. He felt restrained and awkward in my
presence. Later, he told George I was a damned parson. On the other
hand, I was content to look at his rather vulgar beauty—his teeth were
blackened with smoking—and to listen to his ineffectual talk, but I
could find absolutely no response. George was go–between. To me he was
cautious and rather deferential, to Mayhew he was careless, and his
attitude was tinged with contempt.

When the son of the horse–dealer at last left us to go to some of his
father's old cronies, we were glad. Very uncertain, very sensitive and
wavering, our old intimacy burned again like the fragile burning of
alcohol. Closed together in the same blue flames, we discovered and
watched the pageant of life in the town revealed wonderfully to us. We
laughed at the tyranny of old romance. We scorned the faded procession
of old years, and made mock of the vast pilgrimage of by–gone romances
travelling farther into the dim distance. Were we not in the midst of
the bewildering pageant of modern life, with all its confusion of
bannerets and colours, with its infinite interweaving of sounds, the
screech of the modern toys of haste striking like keen spray, the heavy
boom of busy mankind gathering its bread, earnestly, forming the bed of
all other sounds; and between these two the swiftness of songs, the
triumphant tilt of the joy of life, the hoarse oboes of privation, the
shuddering drums of tragedy, and the eternal scraping of the two
deep–toned strings of despair?

We watched the taxicabs coursing with their noses down to the street, we
watched the rocking hansoms, and the lumbering stateliness of buses. In
the silent green cavern of the park we stood and listened to the surging
of the ocean of life. We watched a girl with streaming hair go galloping
down the Row, a dark man, laughing and showing his white teeth,
galloping more heavily at her elbow. We saw a squad of life–guards enter
the gates of the park, erect and glittering with silver and white and
red. They came near to us, and we thrilled a little as we watched the
muscles of their white smooth thighs answering the movement of the
horses, and their cheeks and their chins bending with proud manliness to
the rhythm of the march. We watched the exquisite rhythm of the body of
men moving in scarlet and silver further down the leafless avenue, like
a slightly wavering spark of red life blown along. At the Marble Arch
Corner we listened to a little socialist who was flaring fiercely under
a plane tree. The hot stream of his words flowed over the old wounds
that the knowledge of the unending miseries of the poor had given me,
and I winced. For him the world was all East–end, and all the East–End
was as a pool from which the waters are drained off, leaving the
water–things to wrestle in the wet mud under the sun, till the whole of
the city seems a heaving, shuddering struggle of black–mudded objects
deprived of the elements of life. I felt a great terror of the little
man, lest he should make me see all mud, as I had seen before. Then I
felt a breathless pity for him, that his eyes should be always filled
with mud, and never brightened. George listened intently to the speaker,
very much moved by him.

At night, after the theatre, we saw the outcasts sleep in a rank under
the Waterloo bridge, their heads to the wall, their feet lying out on
the pavement: a long, black, ruffled heap at the foot of the wall. All
the faces were covered but two, that of a peaked, pale little man, and
that of a brutal woman. Over these two faces, floating like uneasy pale
dreams on their obscurity, swept now and again the trailing light of the
tram cars. We picked our way past the line of abandoned feet, shrinking
from the sight of the thin bare ankles of a young man, from the draggled
edge of the skirts of a bunched–up woman, from the pitiable sight of the
men who had wrapped their legs in newspaper for a little warmth, and lay
like worthless parcels. It was raining. Some men stood at the edge of
the causeway fixed in dreary misery, finding no room to sleep. Outside,
on a seat in the blackness and the rain, a woman sat sleeping, while the
water trickled and hung heavily at the ends of her loosened strands of
hair. Her hands were pushed in the bosom of her jacket. She lurched
forward in her sleep, started, and one of her hands fell out of her
bosom. She sank again to sleep. George gripped my arm.

"Give her something," he whispered in panic. I was afraid. Then suddenly
getting a florin from my pocket, I stiffened my nerves and slid it into
her palm. Her hand was soft, and warm, and curled in sleep. She started
violently, looking up at me, then down at her hand. I turned my face
aside, terrified lest she should look in my eyes, and full of shame and
grief I ran down the embankment to him. We hurried along under the plane
trees in silence. The shining cars were drawing tall in the distance
over Westminster Bridge, a fainter, yellow light running with them on
the water below. The wet streets were spilled with golden liquor of
light, and on the deep blackness of the river were the restless yellow
slashes of the lamps.

Lettie and Leslie were staying up at Hampstead with a friend of the
Tempests, one of the largest shareholders in the firm of Tempest,
Wharton & Co. The Raphaels had a substantial house, and Lettie preferred
to go to them rather than to an hotel, especially as she had brought
with her her infant son, now ten months old, with his nurse. They
invited George and me to dinner on the Friday evening. The party
included Lettie's host and hostess, and also a Scottish poetess, and an
Irish musician, composer of songs and pianoforte rhapsodies.

Lettie wore a black lace dress in mourning for one of Leslie's maternal
aunts. This made her look older, otherwise there seemed to be no change
in her. A subtle observer might have noticed a little hardness about her
mouth, and disillusion hanging slightly on her eyes. She was, however,
excited by the company in which she found herself, therefore she
overflowed with clever speeches and rapid, brilliant observations.
Certainly on such occasions she was admirable. The rest of the company
formed, as it were, the orchestra which accompanied her.

George was exceedingly quiet. He spoke a few words now and then to
Mrs Raphael, but on the whole he was altogether silent, listening.

"Really!" Lettie was saying, "I don't see that one thing is worth doing
any more than another. It's like dessert: you are equally indifferent
whether you have grapes, or pears, or pineapple."

"Have you already dined so far?" sang the Scottish poetess in her
musical, plaintive manner.

"The only thing worth doing is producing," said Lettie.

"Alas, that is what all the young folk are saying nowadays!" sighed the
Irish musician.

"That is the only thing one finds any pleasure in—that is to say, any
satisfaction," continued Lettie, smiling, and turning to the two
artists.

"Do you not think so?" she added.

"You do come to a point at last," said the Scottish poetess, "when your
work is a real source of satisfaction."

"Do you write poetry then?" asked George of Lettie.

"I! Oh, dear no! I have tried strenuously to make up a Limerick for a
competition, but in vain. So you see, I am a failure there. Did you know
I have a son, though?—a marvellous little fellow, is he not,
Leslie?—he is my work. I am a wonderful mother, am I not, Leslie?"

"Too devoted," he replied.

"There!" she exclaimed in triumph—"When I have to sign my name and
occupation in a visitor's book, it will be '——Mother'. I hope my
business will flourish," she concluded, smiling.

There was a touch of ironical brutality in her now. She was, at the
bottom, quite sincere. Having reached that point in a woman's career
when most, perhaps all of the things in life seem worthless and insipid,
she had determined to put up with it, to ignore her own self, to empty
her own potentialities into the vessel of another or others, and to live
her life at second hand. This peculiar abnegation of self is the
resource of a woman for the escaping of the responsibilities of her own
development. Like a nun, she puts over her living face a veil, as a sign
that the woman no longer exists for herself: she is the servant of God,
of some man, of her children, or may be of some cause. As a servant, she
is no longer responsible for her self, which would make her terrified
and lonely. Service is light and easy. To be responsible for the good
progress of one's life is terrifying. It is the most insufferable form
of loneliness, and the heaviest of responsibilities. So Lettie indulged
her husband, but did not yield her independence to him; rather it was
she who took much of the responsibility of him into her hands, and
therefore he was so devoted to her. She had, however, now determined to
abandon the charge of herself to serve her children. When the children
grew up, either they would unconsciously fling her away, back upon
herself again in bitterness and loneliness, or they would tenderly
cherish her, chafing at her love–bonds occasionally.

George looked and listened to all the flutter of conversation, and said
nothing. It seemed to him like so much unreasonable rustling of pieces
of paper, of leaves of books, and so on. Later in the evening Lettie
sang, no longer Italian folk songs, but the fragmentary utterances of
Debussy and Strauss. These also to George were quite meaningless, and
rather wearisome. It made him impatient to see her wasting herself upon
them.