The White Peacock (Romance Classic). D. H. Lawrence
voice, invited the excited children into her peep-show. A swarthy man stood with his thin legs astride on the platform of the roundabouts, and sloping backwards, his mouth distended with a row of fingers, he whistled astonishingly to the coarse row of the organ, and his whistling sounded clear, like the flight of a wild goose high over the chimney tops, as he was carried round and round. A little fat man with an ugly swelling on his chest stood screaming from a filthy booth to a crowd of urchins, bidding them challenge a big, stolid young man who stood with folded arms, his fists pushing out his biceps. On being asked if he would undertake any of these prospective challenges, this young man nodded, not having yet attained a talking stage:— yes he would take two at a time, screamed the little fat man with the big excrescence on his chest, pointing at the cowering lads and girls. Farther off, Punch’s quaint voice could be heard when the coconut man ceased grinding out screeches from his rattle. The coconut man was wroth, for these youngsters would not risk a penny shy, and the rattle yelled like a fiend. A little girl came along to look at us, daintily licking an ice-cream sandwich. We were uninteresting, however, so she passed on to stare at the caravans.
We had almost gathered courage to cross the wakes, when the cracked bell of the church sent its note falling over the babble.
“One — two — three”— had it really sounded three! Then it rang on a lower bell —“One — two — three.” A passing bell for a man! I looked at my mother — she turned away from me.
The organ flared on — the husky woman came forward to make another appeal. Then there was a lull. The man with the lump on his chest had gone inside the rag to spar with the solid fellow. The coconut man had gone to the “Three Tunns” in fury, and a brazen girl of seventeen or so was in charge of the nuts. The horses careered round, carrying two frightened boys.
Suddenly the quick, throbbing note of the low bell struck again through the din. I listened — but could not keep count. One, two, three, four — for the third time that great lad had determined to go on the horses, and they had started while his foot was on the step, and he had been foiled — eight, nine, ten — no wonder that whistling man had such a big Adam’s apple — I wondered if it hurt his neck when he talked, being so pointed — nineteen, twenty — the girl was licking more ice-cream, with precious, tiny licks — twenty-five, twenty-six — I wondered if I did count to twenty-six mechanically. At this point I gave it up, and watched for Lord Tennyson’s bald head to come spinning round on the painted rim of the roundabouts, followed by a red-faced Lord Roberts, and a villainous-looking Disraeli.
“Fifty-one —” said my mother. “Come — come along.” We hurried through the fair, towards the church; towards a garden where the last red sentinels looked out from the top of the hollyhock spires. The garden was a tousled mass of faded pink chrysanthemums, and weak-eyed Michaelmas daisies, and spectre stalks of hollyhocks. It belonged to a low, dark house, which crouched behind a screen of yews. We walked along to the front. The blinds were down, and in one room we could see the stale light of candles burning.
“Is this Yew Cottage?” asked my mother of a curious lad.
“It’s Mrs May’s,” replied the boy.
“Does she live alone?” I asked.
“She ‘ad French Carlin — but he’s dead — an’ she’s letten th’ candles ter keep th’ owd lad off’n ’im.”
We went to the house and knocked.
“An’ ye come about him?” hoarsely whispered a bent old woman, looking up with very blue eyes, nodding her old head with its velvet net significantly towards the inner room.
“Yes —” said my mother, “we had a letter.”
“Ay, poor fellow — he’s gone, missis,” and the old lady shook her head. Then she looked at us curiously, leaned forward, and, putting her withered old hand on my mother’s arm, her hand with its dark blue veins, she whispered in confidence, “And the candles ‘as gone out twice. ‘E wor a funny feller, very funny!”
“I must come in and settle things — I am his nearest relative,” said my mother, trembling.
“Yes — I must ‘a dozed, for when I looked up, it wor black darkness. Missis, I dursn’t sit up wi’ ’im no more, an’ many a one I’ve laid out. Eh, but his sufferin’s, Missis — poor feller — eh, Missis!”— she lifted her ancient hands, and looked up at my mother, with her eyes so intensely blue.
“Do you know where he kept his papers?” asked my mother.
“Yis, I axed Father Burns about it; he said we mun pray for ’im. I bought him candles out o’ my own pocket. He wor a rum feller, he wor!” and again she shook her grey head mournfully. My mother took a step forward.
“Did ye want to see ’im?” asked the old woman with half-timid questioning.
“Yes,” replied my mother, with a vigorous nod. She perceived now that the old lady was deaf.
We followed the woman into the kitchen, a long, low room, dark, with drawn blinds.
“Sit ye down,” said the old lady in the same low tone, as if she were speaking to herself:
“Ye are his sister, ‘appen?”
My mother shook her head.
“Oh — his brother’s wife!” persisted the old lady.
We shook our heads.
“Only a cousin?” she guessed, and looked at us appealingly. I nodded assent.
“Sit ye there a minute,” she said, and trotted off. She banged the door, and jarred a chair as she went. When she returned, she set down a bottle and two glasses with a thump on the table in front of us. Her thin, skinny wrist seemed hardly capable of carrying the bottle.
“It’s one as he’d only just begun of —‘ave a drop to keep ye up — do now, poor thing,” she said, pushing the bottle to my mother and hurrying off, returning with the sugar and the kettle. We refused.
“‘E won’t want it no more, poor feller — an’ it’s good, Missis, he allers drank it good. Ay — an’ ‘e ‘adn’t a drop the last three days, poor man, poor feller, not a drop. Come now, it’ll stay ye, come now.” We refused.
“‘T’s in there,” she whispered, pointing to a closed door in a dark corner of the gloomy kitchen. I stumbled up a little step, and went plunging against a rickety table on which was a candle in a tall brass candlestick. Over went the candle, and it rolled on the floor, and the brass holder fell with much clanging.
“Eh! — Eh! Dear — Lord, Dear — Heart. Dear — Heart!” wailed the old woman. She hastened trembling round to the other side of the bed, and relit the extinguished candle at the taper which was still burning. As she returned, the light glowed on her old, wrinkled face, and on the burnished knobs of the dark mahogany bedstead, while a stream of wax dripped down on to the floor. By the glimmering light of the two tapers we could see the outlined form under the counterpane. She turned back the hem and began to make painful wailing sounds. My heart was beating heavily, and I felt choked. I did not want to look — but I must. It was the man I had seen in the woods — with the puffiness gone from his face. I felt the great wild pity, and a sense of terror, and a sense of horror, and a sense of awful littleness and loneliness among a great empty space. I felt beyond myself as if I were a mere fleck drifting unconsciously through the dark. Then I felt my mother’s arm round my shoulders, and she cried pitifully, “Oh, my son, my son!”
I shivered, and came back to myself. There were no tears in my mother’s face, only a great pleading. “Never mind, Mother — never mind,” I said incoherently.
She rose and covered the face again, and went round to the old lady, and held her still, and stayed her little wailings. The woman wiped from her cheeks the few tears of old age, and pushed her grey hair smooth under the velvet network.
“Where are all his things?” asked mother.
“Eh?”