The White Peacock Part 4

"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 was.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 s.h.i.+rt.

"A tune!" she echoed, watching the swelling of his arms as he moved them, and the rise and fall of his b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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 "t.i.t Willow." He had a pa.s.sable ba.s.s 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 flas.h.i.+ng, 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, blus.h.i.+ng 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!"