The White Peacock (6 page)

"I couldn't," said I.

We returned again. The two children were peering into the thick corn
also. We thought there was nothing more. George began to mow. As I
walked round I caught sight of a rabbit skulking near the bottom corner
of the patch. Its ears lay pressed against its back; I could see the
palpitation of the heart under the brown fur, and I could see the
shining dark eyes looking at me. I felt no pity for it, but still I
could not actually hurt it. I beckoned to the father. He ran up, and
aimed a blow with the rake. There was a sharp little cry which sent a
hot pain through me as if I had been cut. But the rabbit ran out, and
instantly I forgot the cry, and gave pursuit, fairly feeling my fingers
stiffen to choke it. It was all lame. Leslie was upon it in a moment,
and he almost pulled its head off in his excitement to kill it.

I looked up. The girls were at the gate, just turning away.

"There are no more," said the father.

At that instant Mary shouted.

"There's one down this hole."

The hole was too small for George to get his hand in, so we dug it out
with the rake handle. The stick went savagely down the hole, and there
came a squeak.

"Mice!" said George, and as he said it the mother slid out. Somebody
knocked her on the back, and the hole was opened out. Little mice seemed
to swarm everywhere. It was like killing insects. We counted nine little
ones lying dead.

"Poor brute," said George, looking at the mother, "What a job she must
have had rearing that lot!" He picked her up, handled her curiously and
with pity. Then he said, "Well, I may as well finish this to–night!"

His father took another scythe from off the hedge, and together they
soon laid the proud, quivering heads low. Leslie and I tied up as they
mowed, and soon all was finished.

The beautiful day was flushing to die. Over in the west the mist was
gathering bluer. The intense stillness was broken by the rhythmic hum of
the engines at the distant coal–mine, as they drew up the last bantles
of men. As we walked across the fields the tubes of stubble tinkled like
dulcimers. The scent of the corn began to rise gently. The last cry of
the pheasants came from the wood, and the little clouds of birds were
gone.

I carried a scythe, and we walked, pleasantly weary, down the hill
towards the farm. The children had gone home with the rabbits.

When we reached the mill, we found the girls just rising from the table.
Emily began to carry away the used pots, and to set clean ones for us.
She merely glanced at us and said her formal greeting. Lettie picked up
a book that lay in the ingle seat, and went to the window. George
dropped into a chair. He had flung off his coat, and had pushed back his
hair. He rested his great brown arms on the table and was silent for a
moment.

"Running like that," he said to me, passing his hand over his eyes,
"makes you more tired than a whole day's work. I don't think I shall do
it again."

"The sport's exciting while it lasts," said Leslie.

"It does you more harm than the rabbits do us good," said Mrs. Saxton.

"Oh, I don't know, mother," drawled her son, "it's a couple of
shillings."

"And a couple of days off your life."

"What be that!" he replied, taking a piece of bread and butter, and
biting a large piece from it.

"Pour us a drop of tea," he said to Emily.

"I don't know that I shall wait on such brutes," she replied, relenting,
and flourishing the teapot.

"Oh," said he, taking another piece of bread and butter, "I'm not all
alone in my savageness this time."

"Men are all brutes," said Lettie, hotly, without looking up from her
book.

"You can tame us," said Leslie, in mighty good humour.

She did not reply. George began, in that deliberate voice that so
annoyed Emily:

"It does make you mad, though, to touch the fur, and not be able to grab
him"—he laughed quietly.

Emily moved off in disgust. Lettie opened her mouth sharply to speak,
but remained silent.

"I don't know," said Leslie. "When it comes to killing it goes against
the stomach."

"If you can run," said George, "you should be able to run to death. When
your blood's up, you don't hang half way."

"I think a man is horrible," said Lettie, "who can tear the head off a
little mite of a thing like a rabbit, after running it in torture over a
field."

"When he is nothing but a barbarian to begin with——" said Emily.

"If you began to run yourself—you'd be the same," said George.

"Why, women are cruel enough," said Leslie, with a glance at Lettie.
"Yes," he continued, "they're cruel enough in their way"—another look,
and a comical little smile.

"Well," said George, "what's the good finicking! If you feel like doing
a thing—you'd better do it."

"Unless you haven't courage," said Emily, bitingly.

He looked up at her with dark eyes, suddenly full of anger.

"But," said Lettie—she could not hold herself from asking, "Don't you
think it's brutal, now—that you
do
think—isn't it degrading and mean
to run the poor little things down?"

"Perhaps it is," he replied, "but it wasn't an hour ago."

"You have no feeling," she said bitterly.

He laughed deprecatingly, but said nothing.

We finished tea in silence, Lettie reading, Emily moving about the
house. George got up and went out at the end. A moment or two after we
heard him across the yard with the milk–buckets, singing "The Ash
Grove."

"He doesn't care a scrap for anything," said Emily with accumulated
bitterness. Lettie looked out of the window across the yard, thinking.
She looked very glum.

After a while we went out also, before the light faded altogether from
the pond. Emily took us into the lower garden to get some ripe plums.
The old garden was very low. The soil was black. The cornbind and
goosegrass were clutching at the ancient gooseberry bushes, which
sprawled by the paths. The garden was not very productive, save of
weeds, and perhaps, tremendous lank artichokes or swollen marrows. But
at the bottom, where the end of the farm buildings rose high and grey,
there was a plum–tree which had been crucified to the wall, and which
had broken away and leaned forward from bondage. Now under the boughs
were hidden great mist–bloomed, crimson treasures, splendid globes. I
shook the old, ragged trunk, green, with even the fresh gum dulled over,
and the treasures fell heavily, thudding down among the immense rhubarb
leaves below. The girls laughed, and we divided the spoil, and turned
back to the yard. We went down to the edge of the garden, which skirted
the bottom pond, a pool chained in a heavy growth of weeds. It was
moving with rats, the father had said. The rushes were thick below us;
opposite, the great bank fronted us, with orchard trees climbing it like
a hillside. The lower pond received the overflow from the upper by a
tunnel from the deep black sluice.

Two rats ran into the black culvert at our approach. We sat on some
piled, mossy stones to watch. The rats came out again, ran a little way,
stopped, ran again, listened, were reassured, and slid about freely,
dragging their long naked tails. Soon six or seven grey beasts were
playing round the mouth of the culvert, in the gloom. They sat and wiped
their sharp faces, stroking their whiskers. Then one would give a little
rush and a little squirm of excitement and would jump vertically into
the air, alighting on four feet, running, sliding into the black shadow.
One dropped with an ugly plop into the water, and swam toward us, the
hoary imp, his sharp snout and his wicked little eyes moving at us.
Lettie shuddered. I threw a stone into the dead pool, and frightened
them all. But we had frightened ourselves more, so we hurried away, and
stamped our feet in relief on the free pavement of the yard.

Leslie was looking for us. He had been inspecting the yard and the stock
under Mr. Saxton's supervision.

"Were you running away from me?" he asked.

"No," she replied. "I have been to fetch you a plum. Look!" And she
showed him two in a leaf.

"They are too pretty to eat!" said he.

"You have not tasted yet," she laughed.

"Come," he said, offering her his arm. "Let us go up to the water." She
took his arm.

It was a splendid evening, with the light all thick and yellow lying on
the smooth pond. Lettie made him lift her on to a leaning bough of
willow. He sat with his head resting against her skirts. Emily and I
moved on. We heard him murmur something, and her voice reply, gently,
caressingly:

"No—let us be still—it is all so still—I love it best of all now."

Emily and I talked, sitting at the base of the alders, a little way on.
After an excitement, and in the evening, especially in autumn, one is
inclined to be sad and sentimental. We had forgotten that the darkness
was weaving. I heard in the little distance Leslie's voice begin to
murmur like a flying beetle that comes not too near. Then, away down in
the yard George began singing the old song, "I sowed the seeds of love."

This interrupted the flight of Leslie's voice, and as the singing came
nearer, the hum of low words ceased. We went forward to meet George.
Leslie sat up, clasping his knees, and did not speak. George came near,
saying:

"The moon is going to rise."

"Let me get down," said Lettie, lifting her hands to him to help her.
He, mistaking her wish, put his hands under her arms, and set her gently
down, as one would a child. Leslie got up quickly, and seemed to hold
himself separate, resenting the intrusion.

"I thought you were all four together," said George quietly. Lettie
turned quickly at the apology:

"So we were. So we are—five now. Is it there the moon will rise?"

"Yes—I like to see it come over the wood. It lifts slowly up to stare
at you. I always think it wants to know something, and I always think I
have something to answer, only I don't know what it is," said Emily.

Where the sky was pale in the east over the rim of wood came the
forehead of the yellow moon. We stood and watched in silence. Then, as
the great disc, nearly full, lifted and looked straight upon us, we were
washed off our feet in a vague sea of moonlight. We stood with the light
like water on our faces. Lettie was glad, a little bit exalted; Emily
was passionately troubled; her lips were parted, almost beseeching;
Leslie was frowning, oblivious, and George was thinking, and the
terrible, immense moonbeams braided through his feeling. At length
Leslie said softly, mistakenly:

"Come along, dear"—and he took her arm.

She let him lead her along the bank of the pond, and across the plank
over the sluice.

"Do you know," she said, as we were carefully descending the steep bank
of the orchard, "I feel as if I wanted to laugh, or dance—something
rather outrageous."

"Surely not like that
now
," Leslie replied in a low voice, feeling
really hurt.

"I do though! I will race you to the bottom."

"No, no, dear!" He held her back. When he came to the wicket leading on
to the front lawns, he said something to her softly, as he held the
gate.

I think he wanted to utter his half finished proposal, and so bind her.

She broke free, and, observing the long lawn which lay in grey shadow
between the eastern and western glows, she cried:

"Polka!—a polka—one can dance a polka when the grass is smooth and
short—even if there are some fallen leaves. Yes, yes—how jolly!"

She held out her hand to Leslie, but it was too great a shock to his
mood. So she called to me, and there was a shade of anxiety in her
voice, lest after all she should be caught in the toils of the night's
sentiment.

"Pat—you'll dance with me—Leslie hates a polka." I danced with her. I
do not know the time when I could not polka—it seems innate in one's
feet, to dance that dance. We went flying round, hissing through the
dead leaves. The night, the low hung yellow moon, the pallor of the
west, the blue cloud of evening overhead went round and through the
fantastic branches of the old laburnum, spinning a little madness. You
cannot tire Lettie; her feet are wings that beat the air. When at last I
stayed her she laughed as fresh as ever, as she bound her hair.

"There!" she said to Leslie, in tones of extreme satisfaction, "that was
lovely. Do you come and dance now."

"Not a polka," said he, sadly, feeling the poetry in his heart insulted
by the jigging measure.

"But one cannot dance anything else on wet grass, and through shuffling
dead leaves. You, George?"

"Emily says I jump," he replied.

"Come on—come on"—and in a moment they were bounding across the grass.
After a few steps she fell in with him, and they spun round the grass.
It was true, he leaped, sprang with large strides, carrying her with
him. It was a tremendous, irresistible dancing. Emily and I must join,
making an inner ring. Now and again there was a sense of something white
flying near, and wild rustle of draperies, and a swish of disturbed
leaves as they whirled past us. Long after we were tired they danced on.

At the end, he looked big, erect, nerved with triumph, and she was
exhilarated like a Bacchante.

"Have you finished?" Leslie asked.

She knew she was safe from his question that day.

"Yes," she panted. "You should have danced. Give me my hat, please. Do I
look very disgraceful?"

He took her hat and gave it to her.

"Disgraceful?" he repeated.

"Oh, you
are
solemn to–night! What is it?"

"Yes, what is it?" he repeated ironically.

"It must be the moon. Now, is my hat straight? Tell me now—you're not
looking. Then put it level. Now then! Why, your hands are quite cold,
and mine so hot! I feel so impish," and she laughed.