The White Peacock Part 40

"You are cruel! Kiss me-now-No, I don't want your cheek-kiss me yourself. Why don't you say something?"

"What for? What's the use of saying anything when there's nothing immediate to say?"

"You are offended!"

"It feels like snow to-day," she answered.

At last, however, winter began to gather her limbs, to rise, and drift with saddened garments northward.

The strike was over. The men had compromised. It was a gentle way of telling them they were beaten. But the strike was over.

The birds fluttered and dashed; the catkins on the hazel loosened their winter rigidity, and swung soft ta.s.sels. All through the day sounded long, sweet whistlings from the brushes; then later, loud, laughing shouts of bird triumph on every hand.

I remember a day when the breast of the hills was heaving in a last quick waking sigh, and the blue eyes of the waters opened bright. Across the infinite skies of March great rounded ma.s.ses of cloud had sailed stately all day, domed with a white radiance, softened with faint, fleeting shadows as if companies of angels were gently sweeping past; adorned with resting, silken shadows like those of a full white breast.

All day the clouds had moved on to their vast destination, and I had clung to the earth yearning and impatient. I took a brush and tried to paint them, then I raged at myself. I wished that in all the wild valley where cloud shadows were travelling like pilgrims, something would call me forth from my rooted loneliness. Through all the grandeur of the white and blue day, the poised cloud ma.s.ses swung their slow flight, and left me unnoticed.

At evening they were all gone, and the empty sky, like a blue bubble over us, swam on its pale bright rims.

Leslie came, and asked his betrothed to go out with him, under the darkening wonderful bubble. She bade me accompany her, and, to escape from myself, I went.

It was warm in the shelter of the wood and in the crouching hollows of the hills. But over the slanting shoulders of the hills the wind swept, whipping the redness into our faces.

"Get me some of those alder catkins, Leslie," said Lettie, as we came down to the stream.

"Yes, those, where they hang over the brook. They are ruddy like new blood freshening under the skin. Look, ta.s.sels of crimson and gold!" She pointed to the dusty hazel catkins mingled with the alder on her bosom.

Then she began to quote Christina Rossetti's "A Birthday."

"I'm glad you came to take me a walk," she continued-"Doesn't Strelley Mill look pretty? Like a group of orange and scarlet fungi in a fairy picture. Do you know, I haven't been, no, not for quite a long time.

Shall we call now?"

"The daylight will be gone if we do. It is half past five-more! I saw him-the son-the other morning."

"Where?"

"He was carting manure-I made haste by."

"Did he speak to you-did you look at him?"

"No, he said nothing. I glanced at him-he's just the same, brick colour-stolid. Mind that stone-it rocks. I'm glad you've got strong boots on."

"Seeing that I usually wear them--"

She stood poised a moment on a large stone, the fresh spring brook hastening towards her, deepening, sidling round her.

"You won't call and see them, then?" she asked.

"No. I like to hear the brook tinkling, don't you?" he replied.

"Ah, yes-it's full of music."

"Shall we go on?" he said, impatient but submissive.

"I'll catch up in a minute," said I.

I went in and found Emily putting some bread into the oven.

"Come out for a walk," said I.

"Now? Let me tell mother-I was longing--"

She ran and put on her long grey coat and her red tam-o-shanter. As we went down the yard, George called to me.

"I'll come back," I shouted.

He came to the crew-yard gate to see us off. When we came out onto the path, we saw Lettie standing on the top bar of the stile, balancing with her hand on Leslie's head. She saw us, she saw George, and she waved to us. Leslie was looking up at her anxiously. She waved again, then we could hear her laughing, and telling him excitedly to stand still, and steady her while she turned. She turned round, and leaped with a great flutter, like a big bird launching, down from the top of the stile to the ground and into his arms. Then we climbed the steep hill-side-Sunny Bank, that had once shone yellow with wheat, and now waved black tattered ranks of thistles where the rabbits ran. We pa.s.sed the little cottages in the hollow scooped out of the hill, and gained the highlands that look out over Leicesters.h.i.+re to Charnwood on the left, and away into the mountain k.n.o.b of Derbys.h.i.+re straight in front and towards the right.

The upper road is all gra.s.sy, fallen into long disuse. It used to lead from the Abbey to the Hall; but now it ends blindly on the hill-brow.

Half way along is the old White House farm, with its green mounting steps mouldering outside. Ladies have mounted here and ridden towards the Vale of Belvoir-but now a labourer holds the farm.

We came to the quarries, and looked in at the lime-kilns.

"Let us go right into the wood out of the quarry," said Leslie. "I have not been since I was a little lad."

"It is trespa.s.sing," said Emily.

"We don't trespa.s.s," he replied grandiloquently.

So we went along by the hurrying brook, which fell over little cascades in its haste, never looking once at the primroses that were glimmering all along its banks. We turned aside, and climbed the hill through the woods. Velvety green sprigs of dog-mercury were scattered on the red soil. We came to the top of a slope, where the wood thinned. As I talked to Emily I became dimly aware of a whiteness over the ground. She exclaimed with surprise, and I found that I was walking, in the first shades of twilight, over clumps of snowdrops. The hazels were thin, and only here and there an oak tree uprose. All the ground was white with snowdrops, like drops of manna scattered over the red earth, on the grey-green cl.u.s.ters of leaves. There was a deep little dell, sharp sloping like a cup, and white sprinkling of flowers all the way down, with white flowers showing pale among the first inpouring of shadow at the bottom. The earth was red and warm, p.r.i.c.ked with the dark, succulent green of bluebell sheaths, and embroidered with grey-green cl.u.s.ters of spears, and many white flowerets. High above, above the light tracery of hazel, the weird oaks tangled in the sunset. Below, in the first shadows, drooped hosts of little white flowers, so silent and sad; it seemed like a holy communion of pure wild things, numberless, frail, and folded meekly in the evening light. Other flower companies are glad; stately barbaric hordes of bluebells, merry-headed cowslip groups, even light, tossing wood-anemones; but snowdrops are sad and mysterious. We have lost their meaning. They do not belong to us, who ravish them. The girls bent among them, touching them with their fingers, and symbolising the yearning which I felt. Folded in the twilight, these conquered flowerets are sad like forlorn little friends of dryads.

"What do they mean, do you think?" said Lettie in a low voice, as her white fingers touched the flowers, and her black furs fell on them.

"There are not so many this year," said Leslie.

"They remind me of mistletoe, which is never ours, though we wear it,"

said Emily to me.

"What do you think they say-what do they make you think, Cyril?" Lettie repeated.

"I don't know. Emily says they belong to some old wild lost religion.

They were the symbol of tears, perhaps, to some strange hearted Druid folk before us."

"More than tears," said Lettie. "More than tears, they are so still.

Something out of an old religion, that we have lost. They make me feel afraid."

"What should you have to fear?" asked Leslie.

"If I knew I shouldn't fear," she answered. "Look at all the snowdrops"-they hung in dim, strange flecks among the dusky leaves-"look at them-closed up, retreating, powerless. They belong to some knowledge we have lost, that I have lost and that I need. I feel afraid. They seem like something in fate. Do you think, Cyril, we can lose things off the earth-like mastodons, and those old monstrosities-but things that matter-wisdom?"

"It is against my creed," said I.