The White Peacock Part 8

"Except dinner, and a warm hearth and a lazy evening," she said.

He looked at her suddenly, hardening at her insult, and biting his lips at the taste of this humiliation. She repented, and smiled her plaintive regret to him.

"I'll show you some," she said, rising and going out of the room. He felt he was nearer her. She returned, carrying a pile of great books.

"Jove-you're pretty strong!" said he.

"You are charming in your compliment," she said.

He glanced at her to see if she were mocking.

"That's the highest you could say of me, isn't it?" she insisted.

"Is it?" he asked, unwilling to compromise himself.

"For sure," she answered-and then, laying the books on the table, "I know how a man will compliment me by the way he looks at me"-she kneeled before the fire. "Some look at my hair, some watch the rise and fall of my breathing, some look at my neck, and a few,-not you among them,-look me in the eyes for my thoughts. To you, I'm a fine specimen, strong! Pretty strong! You primitive man!"

He sat twisting his fingers; she was very contrary.

"Bring your chair up," she said, sitting down at the table and opening a book. She talked to him of each picture, insisting on hearing his opinion. Sometimes he disagreed with her and would not be persuaded. At such times she was piqued.

"If," said she, "an ancient Briton in his skins came and contradicted me as you do, wouldn't you tell him not to make an a.s.s of himself?"

"I don't know," said he.

"Then you ought to," she replied. "You know nothing."

"How is it you ask me then?" he said.

She began to laugh.

"Why-that's a pertinent question. I think you might be rather nice, you know."

"Thank you," he said, smiling ironically.

"Oh!" she said. "I know, you think you're perfect, but you're not, you're very annoying."

"Yes," exclaimed Alice, who had entered the room again, dressed ready to depart. "He's so blooming slow! Great whizz! Who wants fellows to carry cold dinners? Shouldn't you like to shake him Lettie?"

"I don't feel concerned enough," replied the other calmly.

"Did you ever carry a boiled pudding Georgy?" asked Alice with innocent interest, punching me slyly.

"Me!-why?-what makes you ask?" he replied, quite at a loss.

"Oh, I only wondered if your people needed any indigestion mixture-pa mixes it-1/1 a bottle."

"I don't see--" he began.

"Ta-ta, old boy, I'll give you time to think about it. Good-night, Lettie. Absence makes the heart grow fonder-Georgy-of someone else.

Farewell. Come along, Sybil love, the moon is s.h.i.+ning-Good-night all, good-night!"

I escorted her home, while they continued to look at the pictures. He was a romanticist. He liked Copley, Fielding, Cattermole and Birket Foster; he could see nothing whatsoever in Girtin or David c.o.x. They fell out decidedly over George Clausen.

"But," said Lettie, "he is a real realist, he makes common things beautiful, he sees the mystery and magnificence that envelops us even when we work menially. I _do_ know and I _can_ speak. If I hoed in the fields beside you--" This was a very new idea for him, almost a shock to his imagination, and she talked unheeded. The picture under discussion was a water-colour-"Hoeing" by Clausen.

"You'd be just that colour in the sunset," she said, thus bringing him back to the subject, "and if you looked at the ground you'd find there was a sense of warm gold fire in it, and once you'd perceived the colour, it would strengthen till you'd see nothing else. You are blind; you are only half-born; you are gross with good living and heavy sleeping. You are a piano which will only play a dozen common notes.

Sunset is nothing to you-it merely happens anywhere. Oh, but you make me feel as if I'd like to make you suffer. If you'd ever been sick; if you'd ever been born into a home where there was something oppressed you, and you couldn't understand; if ever you'd believed, or even doubted, you might have been a man by now. You never grow up, like bulbs which spend all summer getting fat and fleshy, but never wakening the germ of a flower. As for me, the flower is born in me, but it wants bringing forth. Things don't flower if they're overfed. You have to suffer before you blossom in this life. When death is just touching a plant, it forces it into a pa.s.sion of flowering. You wonder how I have touched death. You don't know. There's always a sense of death in this home. I believe my mother hated my father before I was born. That was death in her veins for me before I was born. It makes a difference--"

As he sat listening, his eyes grew wide and his lips were parted, like a child who feels the tale but does not understand the words. She, looking away from herself at last, saw him, began to laugh gently, and patted his hand saying:

"Oh! my dear heart, are you bewildered? How amiable of you to listen to me-there isn't any meaning in it all-there isn't really!"

"But," said he, "why do you say it?"

"Oh, the question!" she laughed. "Let us go back to our muttons, we're gazing at each other like two dazed images."

They turned on, chatting casually, till George suddenly exclaimed, "There!"

It was Maurice Griffinhagen's "Idyll."

"What of it?" she asked, gradually flus.h.i.+ng. She remembered her own enthusiasm over the picture.

"Wouldn't it be fine?" he exclaimed, looking at her with glowing eyes, his teeth showing white in a smile that was not amus.e.m.e.nt.

"What?" she asked, dropping her head in confusion.

"That-a girl like that-half afraid-and pa.s.sion!" He lit up curiously.

"She may well be half afraid, when the barbarian comes out in his glory, skins and all."

"But don't you like it?" he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders, saying, "Make love to the next girl you meet, and by the time the poppies redden the field, she'll hang in your arms. She'll have need to be more than half afraid, won't she?"

She played with the leaves of the book, and did not look at him.

"But," he faltered, his eyes glowing, "it would be-rather--"

"Don't, sweet lad, don't!" she cried laughing.

"But I shouldn't-" he insisted, "I don't know whether I should like any girl I know to--"

"Precious Sir Galahad," she said in a mock caressing voice, and stroking his cheek with her finger, "You ought to have been a monk-a martyr, a Carthusian."

He laughed, taking no notice. He was breathlessly quivering under the new sensation of heavy, unappeased fire in his breast, and in the muscles of his arms. He glanced at her bosom and s.h.i.+vered.

"Are you studying just how to play the part?" she asked.