Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/104

96 failed. “Good God!—being knocked into this state by a damned keeper!”

“Come on,” I said, “let’s see if we can’t get indoors.”

“No!” he said quickly, “we needn’t tell them—don’t let them know.”

I sat thinking of the pain in my own chest, and wishing I could remember hearing Annable’s jaw smash, and wishing that my knuckles were more bruised than they were—though that was bad enough. I got up, and helped George to rise. He swayed, almost pulling me over. But in a while he could walk unevenly.

“Am I,” he said, “covered with clay and stuff?”

“Not much,” I replied, troubled by the shame and confusion with which he spoke.

“Get it off,” he said, standing still to be cleaned.

I did my best. Then we walked about the fields for a time, gloomy, silent, and sore.

Suddenly, as we went by the pond-side, we were startled by great, swishing black shadows that swept just above our heads. The swans were flying up for shelter, now that a cold wind had begun to fret Nethermore. They swung down on to the glassy mill-pond, shaking the moonlight in flecks across the deep shadows; the night rang with the clacking of their wings on the water; the stillness and calm were broken; the moonlight was furrowed and scattered, and broken. The swans, as they sailed into shadow, were dim, haunting spectres; the wind found us shivering.

“Don’t—you won’t say anything?” he asked as I was leaving him.