Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/239

Rh in the bush. She married a young fellow. Then I was proved to have died, and I read a little obituary notice on myself in a woman’s paper she subscribed to. She wrote it herself—as a warning to other young ladies of position not to be seduced by plausible “Poor Young Men.”

Now she’s dead. They’ve got the paper—her paper—in the kitchen down there, and it’s full of photographs, even an old photo of me—“an unfortunate misalliance.” I feel, somehow, as if I were at an end too. I thought I’d grown a solid, middle-aged-man, and here I feel sore as I did at twenty-six, and I talk as I used to.

One thing—I have got some children, and they’re of a breed as you’d not meet anywhere. I was a good animal before everything, and I’ve got some children.”

He sat looking up where the big moon swam through the black branches of the yew.

“So she’s dead—your poor peacock!” I murmured.

He got up, looking always at the sky, and stretched himself again. He was an impressive figure massed in blackness against the moonlight, with his arms outspread.

“I suppose,” he said, “it wasn’t all her fault.”

“A white peacock, we will say,” I suggested.

He laughed.

“Go home by the top road, will you!” he said. “I believe there’s something on in the bottom wood.”

“All right,” I answered, with a quiver of apprehension.

“Yes, she was fair enough,” he muttered.

“Ay,” said I, rising. I held out my hand from