The White Peacock Part 9

"No-but--" he tried to look at her, but failed. He shrank, laughing, and dropped his head.

"What?" she asked with vibrant curiosity.

Having become a few degrees calmer, he looked up at her now, his eyes wide and vivid with a declaration that made her shrink back as if flame had leaped towards her face. She bent down her head and picked at her dress.

"Didn't you know the picture before?" she said, in a low, toneless voice.

He shut his eyes and shrank with shame.

"No, I've never seen it before," he said.

"I'm surprised," she said. "It is a very common one."

"Is it?" he answered, and this make-belief conversation fell. She looked up, and found his eyes. They gazed at each other for a moment before they hid their faces again. It was a torture to each of them to look thus nakedly at the other, a dazzled, shrinking pain that they forced themselves to undergo for a moment, that they might the moment after tremble with a fierce sensation that filled their veins with fluid, fiery electricity. She sought almost in panic, for something to say.

"I believe it's in Liverpool, the picture," she contrived to say.

He dared not kill this conversation, he was too self-conscious. He forced himself to reply, "I didn't know there was a gallery in Liverpool."

"Oh, yes, a very good one," she said.

Their eyes met in the briefest flash of a glance, then both turned their faces aside. Thus averted, one from the other, they made talk. At last she rose, gathered the books together, and carried them off. At the door she turned. She must steal another keen moment: "Are you admiring my strength?" she asked. Her pose was fine. With her head thrown back, the roundness of her throat ran finely down to the bosom which swelled above the pile of books held by her straight arms. He looked at her. Their lips smiled curiously. She put back her throat as if she were drinking.

They felt the blood beating madly in their necks. Then, suddenly breaking into a slight trembling, she turned round and left the room.

While she was out, he sat twisting his moustache. She came back along the hall talking madly to herself in French. Having been much impressed by Sarah Bernhardt's "Dame aux Camelias" and "Adrienne Lecouvreur,"

Lettie had caught something of the weird tone of this great actress, and her raillery and mockery came out in little wild waves. She laughed at him, and at herself, and at men in general, and at love in particular.

Whatever he said to her, she answered in the same mad clatter of French, speaking high and harshly. The sound was strange and uncomfortable.

There was a painful perplexity in his brow, such as I often perceived afterwards, a sense of something hurting, something he could not understand.

"Well, well, well, well!" she exclaimed at last. "We must be mad sometimes, or we should be getting aged, Hein?"

"I wish I could understand," he said plaintively.

"Poor dear!" she laughed. "How sober he is! And will you really go? They will think we've given you no supper, you look so sad."

"I have supped-full--" he began, his eyes dancing with a smile as he ventured upon a quotation. He was very much excited.

"Of horrors!" she cried completing it. "Now that is worse than anything I have given you."

"Is it?" he replied, and they smiled at each other.

"Far worse," she answered. They waited in suspense for some moments. He looked at her.

"Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand. Her voice was full of insurgent tenderness. He looked at her again, his eyes flickering. Then he took her hand. She pressed his fingers, holding them a little while.

Then ashamed of her display of feeling, she looked down. He had a deep cut across his thumb.

"What a gas.h.!.+" she exclaimed, s.h.i.+vering, and clinging a little tighter to his fingers before she released them. He gave a little laugh.

"Does it hurt you?" she asked very gently.

He laughed again-"No!" he said softly, as if his thumb were not worthy of consideration.

They smiled again at each other, and, with a blind movement, he broke the spell and was gone.

CHAPTER IV

THE FATHER

Autumn set in, and the red dahlias which kept the warm light alive in their bosoms so late into the evening died in the night, and the morning had nothing but brown b.a.l.l.s of rottenness to show.

They called me as I pa.s.sed the post-office door in Eberwich one evening, and they gave me a letter for my mother. The distorted, sprawling handwriting perplexed me with a dim uneasiness; I put the letter away, and forgot it. I remembered it later in the evening, when I wished to recall something to interest my mother. She looked at the handwriting, and began hastily and nervously to tear open the envelope; she held it away from her in the light of the lamp, and with eyes drawn half closed, tried to scan it. So I found her spectacles, but she did not speak her thanks, and her hand trembled. She read the short letter quickly; then she sat down, and read it again, and continued to look at it.

"What is it mother?" I asked.

She did not answer, but continued staring at the letter. I went up to her, and put my hand on her shoulder, feeling very uncomfortable. She took no notice of me, beginning to murmur: "Poor Frank-Poor Frank."

That was my father's name.

"But what is it mother?-tell me what's the matter!"

She turned and looked at me as if I were a stranger; she got up, and began to walk about the room; then she left the room, and I heard her go out of the house.

The letter had fallen on to the floor. I picked it up. The handwriting was very broken. The address gave a village some few miles away; the date was three days before.

"My Dear Lettice:

"You will want to know I am gone. I can hardly last a day or two-my kidneys are nearly gone.

"I came over one day. I didn't see you, but I saw the girl by the window, and I had a few words with the lad. He never knew, and he felt nothing. I think the girl might have done. If you knew how awfully lonely I am, Lettice-how awfully I have been, you might feel sorry.

"I have saved what I could, to pay you back. I have had the worst of it Lettice, and I'm glad the end has come. I have had the worst of it.

"Good-bye-for ever-your husband,

"FRANK BEARDSALL."

I was numbed by this letter of my father's. With almost agonised effort I strove to recall him, but I knew that my image of a tall, handsome, dark man with pale grey eyes was made up from my mother's few words, and from a portrait I had once seen.

The marriage had been unhappy. My father was of frivolous, rather vulgar character, but plausible, having a good deal of charm. He was a liar, without notion of honesty, and he had deceived my mother thoroughly. One after another she discovered his mean dishonesties and deceits, and her soul revolted from him, and because the illusion of him had broken into a thousand vulgar fragments, she turned away with the scorn of a woman who finds her romance has been a trumpery tale. When he left her for other pleasures-Lettie being a baby of three years, while I was five-she rejoiced bitterly. She had heard of him indirectly-and of him nothing good, although he prospered-but he had never come to see her or written to her in all the eighteen years.

In a while my mother came in. She sat down, pleating up the hem of her black ap.r.o.n, and smoothing it out again.

"You know," she said, "he had a right to the children, and I've kept them all the time."

"He could have come," said I.