The White Peacock (36 page)

"Do you like those songs?" she asked in the frank, careless manner she
affected.

"Not much," he replied, ungraciously.

"Don't you?" she exclaimed, adding with a smile, "Those are the most
wonderful things in the world, those little things"—she began to hum a
Debussy idiom. He could not answer her on the point, so he sat with the
arrow sticking in him, and did not speak.

She enquired of him concerning Meg and his children and the affairs of
Eberwich, but the interest was flimsy, as she preserved a wide distance
between them, although apparently she was so unaffected and friendly. We
left before eleven.

When we were seated in the cab and rushing down hill, he said:

"You know, she makes me mad."

He was frowning, looking out of the window away from me.

"Who, Lettie? Why, what riles you?" I asked.

He was some time in replying.

"Why, she's so affected."

I sat still in the small, close space and waited.

"Do you know——?" he laughed, keeping his face averted from me. "She
makes my blood boil. I could hate her."

"Why?" I said gently.

"I don't know. I feel as if she'd insulted me. She does lie, doesn't
she?"

"I didn't notice it," I said, but I knew he meant her shirking, her
shuffling of her life.

"And you think of those poor devils under the bridge—and then of her
and them frittering away themselves and money in that idiocy——"

He spoke with passion.

"You are quoting Longfellow," I said.

"What?" he asked, looking at me suddenly.

"'Life is real, life is earnest——'"

He flushed slightly at my good–natured gibe.

"I don't know what it is," he replied. "But it's a pretty rotten
business, when you think of her fooling about wasting herself, and all
the waste that goes on up there, and the poor devils rotting on the
embankment—and——"

"And you—and Mayhew—and me——" I continued.

He looked at me very intently to see if I were mocking. He laughed. I
could see he was very much moved.

"Is the time quite out of joint?" I asked.

"Why!"—he laughed. "No. But she makes me feel so angry—as if I should
burst—I don't know when I felt in such a rage. I wonder why. I'm sorry
for him, poor devil. 'Lettie and Leslie'—they seemed christened for one
another, didn't they?"

"What if you'd had her?" I asked.

"We should have been like a cat and dog; I'd rather be with Meg a
thousand times—now!" he added significantly. He sat watching the lamps
and the people and the dark buildings slipping past us.

"Shall we go and have a drink?" I asked him, thinking we would call in
Frascati's to see the come–and–go.

"I could do with a brandy," he replied, looking at me slowly.

We sat in the restaurant listening to the jigging of the music, watching
the changing flow of the people. I like to sit a long time by the
hollyhocks watching the throng of varied bees which poise and hesitate
outside the wild flowers, then swing in with a hum which sets everything
aquiver. But still more fascinating it is to watch the come and go of
people weaving and intermingling in the complex mesh of their
intentions, with all the subtle grace and mystery of their moving,
shapely bodies.

I sat still, looking out across the amphitheatre. George looked also,
but he drank glass after glass of brandy.

"I like to watch the people," said I.

"Ay—and doesn't it seem an aimless, idiotic business—look at them!" he
replied in tones of contempt. I looked instead at him, in some surprise
and resentment His face was gloomy, stupid and unrelieved. The amount of
brandy he had drunk had increased his ill humour.

"Shall we be going?" I said. I did not want him to get drunk in his
present state of mind.

"Ay—in half a minute," he finished the brandy, and rose. Although he
had drunk a good deal, he was quite steady, only there was a
disagreeable look always on his face, and his eyes seemed smaller and
more glittering than I had seen them. We took a bus to Victoria. He sat
swaying on his seat in the dim, clumsy vehicle, saying not a word. In
the vast cavern of the station the theatre–goers were hastening,
crossing the pale grey strand, small creatures scurrying hither and
thither in the space beneath the lonely lamps. As the train crawled over
the river we watched the far–flung hoop of diamond lights curving slowly
round and striping with bright threads the black water. He sat looking
with heavy eyes, seeming to shrink from the enormous unintelligible
lettering of the poem of London.

The town was too large for him, he could not take in its immense, its
stupendous poetry. What did come home to him was its flagrant discords.
The unintelligibility of the vast city made him apprehensive, and the
crudity of its big, coarse contrasts wounded him unutterably.

"What is the matter?" I asked him as we went along the silent pavement
at Norwood.

"Nothing," he replied. "Nothing!" and I did not trouble him further.

We occupied a large, two–bedded room—that looked down the hill and over
to the far woods of Kent. He was morose and untalkative. I brought up a
soda–syphon and whisky, and we proceeded to undress. When he stood in
his pajamas he waited as if uncertain.

"Do you want a drink?" he asked.

I did not. He crossed to the table, and as I got into my bed I heard the
brief fizzing of the syphon. He drank his glass at one draught, then
switched off the light. In the sudden darkness I saw his pale shadow go
across to the sofa in the window–space. The blinds were undrawn, and the
stars looked in. He gazed out on the great bay of darkness wherein, far
away and below, floated a few sparks of lamps like herring boats at sea.

"Aren't you coming to bed?" I asked.

"I'm not sleepy—you go to sleep," he answered, resenting having to
speak at all.

"Then put on a dressing gown—there's one in that corner—turn the light
on."

He did not answer, but fumbled for the garment in the darkness. When he
had found it, he said:

"Do you mind if I smoke?"

I did not. He fumbled again in his pockets for cigarettes, always
refusing to switch on the light. I watched his face bowed to the match
as he lighted his cigarette. He was still handsome in the ruddy light,
but his features were coarser. I felt very sorry for him, but I saw that
I could get no nearer to him, to relieve him. For some time I lay in the
darkness watching the end of his cigarette like a ruddy, malignant
insect hovering near his lips, putting the timid stars immensely far
away. He sat quite still, leaning on the sofa arm. Occasionally there
was a little glow on his cheeks as the cigarette burned brighter, then
again I could see nothing but the dull red bee.

I suppose I must have dropped asleep. Suddenly I started as something
fell to the floor. I heard him cursing under his breath.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"I've only knocked something down—cigarette case or something," he
replied, apologetically.

"Aren't you coming to bed?" I asked.

"Yes, I'm coming," he answered quite docile.

He seemed to wander about and knock against things as he came. He
dropped heavily into bed.

"Are you sleepy now?" I asked.

"I dunno—I shall be directly," he replied.

"What's up with you?" I asked.

"I dunno," he answered. "I am like this sometimes, when there's nothing
I want to do, and nowhere I want to go, and nobody I want to be near.
Then you feel so rottenly lonely, Cyril. You feel awful, like a vacuum,
with a pressure on you, a sort of pressure of darkness, and you
yourself—just nothing, a vacuum—that's what it's like—a little vacuum
that's not dark, all loose in the middle of a space of darkness, that's
pressing on you."

"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, rousing myself in bed. "That sounds bad!"

He laughed slightly.

"It's all right," he said, "it's only the excitement of London, and that
little man in the park, and that woman on the seat—I wonder where she
is to–night, poor devil—and then Lettie. I seem thrown off my
balance.—I think really, I ought to have made something of myself——"

"What?" I asked, as he hesitated.

"I don't know," he replied slowly, "—a poet or something, like Burns—I
don't know. I shall laugh at myself for thinking so, to–morrow. But I am
born a generation too soon—I wasn't ripe enough when I came. I wanted
something I hadn't got. I'm something short. I'm like corn in a wet
harvest—full, but pappy, no good. Is'll rot. I came too soon; or I
wanted something that would ha' made me grow fierce. That's why I wanted
Lettie—I think. But am I talking damn rot? What am I saying? What are
you making me talk for? What are you listening for?"

I rose and went across to him, saying: "I don't want you to talk! If you
sleep till morning things will look different."

I sat on his bed and took his hand. He lay quite still.

"I'm only a kid after all, Cyril," he said, a few moments later.

"We all are," I answered, still holding his hand. Presently he fell
asleep.

When I awoke the sunlight was laughing with the young morning in the
room. The large blue sky shone against the window, and the birds were
calling in the garden below, shouting to one another and making fun of
life. I felt glad to have opened my eyes. I lay for a moment looking out
on the morning as on a blue bright sea in which I was going to plunge.

Then my eyes wandered to the little table near the couch. I noticed the
glitter of George's cigarette case, and then, with a start, the whisky
decanter. It was nearly empty. He must have drunk three–quarters of a
pint of liquor while I was dozing. I could not believe it. I thought I
must have been mistaken as to the quantity the bottle contained. I
leaned out to see what it was that had startled me by its fall the night
before. It was the large, heavy drinking glass which he had knocked down
but not broken. I could see no stain on the carpet.

George was still asleep. He lay half uncovered, and was breathing
quietly. His face looked inert like a mask. The pallid, uninspired clay
of his features seemed to have sunk a little out of shape, so that he
appeared rather haggard, rather ugly, with grooves of ineffectual misery
along his cheeks. I wanted him to wake, so that his inert, flaccid
features might be inspired with life again. I could not believe his
charm and his beauty could have forsaken him so, and left his features
dreary, sunken clay.

As I looked he woke. His eyes opened slowly. He looked at me and turned
away, unable to meet my eyes. He pulled the bedclothes up over his
shoulders, as though to cover himself from me, and he lay with his back
to me, quite still, as if he were asleep, although I knew he was quite
awake; he was suffering the humiliation of lying waiting for his life to
crawl back and inhabit his body. As it was, his vitality was not yet
sufficient to inform the muscles of his face and give him an expression,
much less to answer by challenge.

When her eldest boy was three years old Lettie returned to live at
Eberwich. Old Mr. Tempest died suddenly, so Leslie came down to inhabit
"Highclose." He was a very much occupied man. Very often he was in
Germany or in the South of England engaged on business. At home he was
unfailingly attentive to his wife and his two children. He had
cultivated a taste for public life. In spite of his pressure of business
he had become a County Councillor, and one of the prominent members of
the Conservative Association. He was very fond of answering or proposing
toasts at some public dinner, of entertaining political men at
"Highclose," of taking the chair at political meetings, and finally, of
speaking on this or that platform. His name was fairly often seen in the
newspapers. As a mine owner, he spoke as an authority on the employment
of labour, on royalties, land–owning and so on.

At home he was quite tame. He treated his wife with respect, romped in
the nursery, and domineered the servants royally. They liked him for
it—her they did not like. He was noisy, but unobservant, she was quiet
and exacting. He would swear and bluster furiously, but when he was
round the corner they smiled. She gave her orders and passed very
moderate censure, but they went away cursing to themselves. As Lettie
was always a very good wife, Leslie adored her when he had the time, and
when he had not, forgot her comfortably.

She was very contradictory. At times she would write to me in terms of
passionate dissatisfaction: she had nothing at all in her life, it was a
barren futility.

"I hope I shall have another child next spring," she would write, "there
is only that to take away the misery of this torpor. I seem full of
passion and energy, and it all fizzles out in day to day domestics——"

When I replied to her urging her to take some work that she could throw
her soul into, she would reply indifferently. Then later:

"You charge me with contradiction. Well, naturally. You see I wrote that
screeching letter in a mood which won't come again for some time.
Generally I am quite content to take the rain and the calm days just as
they come, then something flings me out of myself—and I am a trifle
demented:—very, very blue, as I tell Leslie."

Like so many women, she seemed to live, for the most part contentedly, a
small indoor existence with artificial light and padded upholstery. Only
occasionally, hearing the winds of life outside, she clamoured to be out
in the black, keen storm. She was driven to the door, she looked out and
called into the tumult wildly, but feminine caution kept her from
stepping over the threshold.

George was flourishing in his horse–dealing.

In the morning, processions of splendid shire horses, tied tail and
head, would tramp grandly along the quiet lanes of Eberwich, led by
George's man, or by Tom Mayhew, while in the fresh clean sunlight George
would go riding by, two restless nags dancing beside him.