The White Peacock Part 77

"Yes!" he replied heedlessly-"you know she ought to have sent the girl out with the kids this afternoon, and have got dressed directly. But no, she must sit gossiping with Emily all the time they were asleep, and then as soon as they wake up she begins to make cake--"

"I suppose she felt she'd enjoy a pleasant chat, all quiet," I answered.

"But she knew quite well you were coming, and what it would be. But a woman's no dam foresight."

"Nay, what does it matter!" said I.

"Sunday's the only day we can have a bit of peace, so she might keep 'em quiet then."

"I suppose it was the only time, too, that she could have a quiet gossip," I replied.

"But you don't know," he said, "there seems to be never a minute of freedom. Teenie sleeps in now, and lives with us in the kitchen-Oswald as well-so I never know what it is to have a moment private. There doesn't seem a single spot anywhere where I can sit quiet. It's the kids all day, and the kids all night, and the servants, and then all the men in the house-I sometimes feel as if I should like to get away. I shall leave the pub as soon as I can-only Meg doesn't want to."

"But if you leave the public-house-what then?"

"I should like to get back on a farm. This is no sort of a place, really, for farming. I've always got some business on hand, there's a traveller to see, or I've got to go to the brewers, or I've somebody to look at a horse, or something. Your life's all messed up. If I had a place of my own, and farmed it in peace--"

"You'd be as miserable as you could be," I said.

"Perhaps so," he a.s.sented, in his old reflective manner. "Perhaps so!

Anyhow, I needn't bother, for I feel as if I never shall go back-to the land."

"Which means at the bottom of your heart you don't intend to," I said laughing.

"Perhaps so!" he again yielded. "You see I'm doing pretty well here-apart from the public-house: I always think that's Meg's. Come and look in the stable. I've got a s.h.i.+re mare and two nags: pretty good. I went down to Melton Mowbray with Tom Mayhew, to a chap they've had dealings with. Tom's all right, and he knows how to buy, but he is such a lazy careless devil, too lazy to be bothered to sell--"

George was evidently interested. As we went round to the stables, Emily came out with the baby, which was dressed in a new silk frock. She advanced, smiling to me with dark eyes:

"See, now he is good! Doesn't he look pretty?"

She held the baby for me to look at. I glanced at it, but I was only conscious of the near warmth of her cheek, and of the scent of her hair.

"Who is he like?" I asked, looking up and finding myself full in her eyes. The question was quite irrelevant: her eyes spoke a whole clear message that made my heart throb; yet she answered.

"Who is he? Why, n.o.body, of course! But he _will_ be like father, don't you think?"

The question drew my eyes to hers again, and again we looked each other the strange intelligence that made her flush and me breathe in as I smiled.

"Ay! Blue eyes like your father's-not like yours--"

Again the wild messages in her looks.

"No!" she answered very softly. "And I think he'll be jolly, like father-they have neither of them our eyes, have they?"

"No," I answered, overcome by a sudden hot flush of tenderness. "No-not vulnerable. To have such soft, vulnerable eyes as you used makes one feel nervous and irascible. But you have clothed over the sensitiveness of yours, haven't you?-like naked life, naked defenceless protoplasm they were, is it not so?"

She laughed, and at the old painful memories she dilated in the old way, and I felt the old tremor at seeing her soul flung quivering on my pity.

"And were mine like that?" asked George, who had come up.

He must have perceived the bewilderment of my look as I tried to adjust myself to him. A slight shadow, a slight chagrin appeared on his face.

"Yes," I answered, "yes-but not so bad. You never gave yourself away so much-you were most cautious: but just as defenceless."

"And am I altered?" he asked, with quiet irony, as if he knew I was not interested in him.

"Yes, more cautious. You keep in the shadow. But Emily has clothed herself, and can now walk among the crowd at her own gait."

It was with an effort I refrained from putting my lips to kiss her at that moment as she looked at me with womanly dignity and tenderness.

Then I remembered, and said:

"But you are taking me to the stable George! Come and see the horses too, Emily."

"I will. I admire them so much," she replied, and thus we both indulged him.

He talked to his horses and of them, laying his hand upon them, running over their limbs. The glossy, restless animals interested him more than anything. He broke into a little flush of enthusiasm over them. They were his new interest. They were quiet and yet responsive; he was their master and owner. This gave him real pleasure.

But the baby became displeased again. Emily looked at me for sympathy with him.

"He is a little wanderer," she said, "he likes to be always moving.

Perhaps he objects to the ammonia of stables too," she added, frowning and laughing slightly, "it is not very agreeable, is it?"

"Not particularly," I agreed, and as she moved off I went with her, leaving him in the stables. When Emily and I were alone we sauntered aimlessly back to the garden. She persisted in talking to the baby, and in talking to me about the baby, till I wished the child in Jericho.

This made her laugh, and she continued to tantalise me. The holly-hock flowers of the second whorl were flus.h.i.+ng to the top of the spires. The bees, covered with pale crumbs of pollen, were swaying a moment outside the wide gates of the florets, then they swung in with excited hum, and clung madly to the fury white capitols, and worked riotously round the waxy bases. Emily held out the baby to watch, talking all the time in low, fond tones. The child stretched towards the bright flowers. The sun glistened on his smooth hair as on bronze dust, and the wondering blue eyes of the baby followed the bees. Then he made small sounds, and suddenly waved his hands, like rumpled pink holly-hock buds.

"Look!" said Emily, "look at the little bees! Ah, but you mustn't touch them, they bite. They're coming!" she cried, with sudden laughing apprehension, drawing the child away. He made noises of remonstrance.

She put him near to the flowers again till he knocked the spire with his hand and two indignant bees came sailing out. Emily drew back quickly crying in alarm, then laughing with excited eyes at me, as if she had just escaped a peril in my presence. Thus she teased me by flinging me all kinds of bright gages of love while she kept me aloof because of the child. She laughed with pure pleasure at this state of affairs, and delighted the more when I frowned, till at last I swallowed my resentment and laughed too, playing with the hands of the baby, and watching his blue eyes change slowly like a softly sailing sky.

Presently Meg called us in to tea. She wore a dress of fine blue stuff with cream silk embroidery, and she looked handsome, for her hair was very hastily dressed.

"What, have you had that child all this time?" she exclaimed, on seeing Emily. "Where is his father?"

"I don't know-we left him in the stable, didn't we Cyril? But I like nursing him, Meg. I like it ever so much," replied Emily.

"Oh, yes, you may be sure George would get off it if he could. He's always in the stable. As I tell him, he fair stinks of horses. He's not that fond of the children, I can tell you. Come on, my pet-why, come to its mammy."

She took the baby and kissed it pa.s.sionately, and made extravagant love to it. A clean shaven young man with thick bare arms went across the yard.

"Here, just look and tell George as tea is ready," said Meg.

"Where is he?" asked Oswald, the st.u.r.dy youth who attended to the farm business.

"You know where to find him," replied Meg, with that careless freedom which was so subtly derogatory to her husband.

George came hurrying from the out-building. "What, is it tea already?"

he said.

"It's a wonder you haven't been crying out for it this last hour," said Meg.