Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/478

470. He did not know quite what to say, or how to take it.

“Very!” he replied in another short burst of laughter, quickly twisting his moustache again and looking down at his feet.

He was twenty-nine years old; had been a soldier in China for five years, was now farming his father’s farm at Papplewick, where Emily was schoolmistress. He had been at home eighteen months. His father was an old man of seventy who had had his right hand chopped to bits in the chopping machine. So they told me. I liked Tom for his handsome bearing, and his fresh, winsome way. He was exceedingly manly: that is to say he did not dream of questioning or analysing anything. All that came his way was ready labelled nice or nasty, good or bad. He did not imagine that anything could be other than just what it appeared to be:—and with this appearance, he was quite content. He looked up to Emily as one wiser, nobler, nearer to God than himself.

“I am a thousand years older than he,” she said to me, laughing. “Just as you are centuries older than I.”

“And you love him for his youth?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “For that and—he is wonderfully sagacious—and so gentle.”

“And I was never gentle, was I?” I said.

“No! As restless and as urgent as the wind,” she said, and I saw a last flicker of the old terror.

“Where is George?” I asked.

“In bed,” she replies briefly. “He’s recovering from one of his orgies. If I were Meg I would not live with him.”