The White Peacock by D. H. Lawrence Page A

started.
    "It's gone to the quarries," she panted. We walked on, without saying a
word. Skirting the spinney, we followed the brook course, and came at
last to the quarry fence. The old excavations were filled now with
trees. The steep walls, twenty feet deep in places, were packed with
loose stones, and trailed with hanging brambles. We climbed down the
steep bank of the brook, and entered the quarries by the bed of the
stream. Under the groves of ash and oak a pale primrose still lingered,
glimmering wanly beside the hidden water. Emily found a smear of blood
on a beautiful trail of yellow convolvulus. We followed the tracks on to
the open, where the brook flowed on the hard rock bed, and the stony
floor of the quarry was only a tangle of gorse and bramble and
honeysuckle.
    "Take a good stone," said I, and we pressed on, where the grove in the
great excavation darkened again, and the brook slid secretly under the
arms of the bushes and the hair of the long grass. We beat the cover
almost to the road. I thought the brute had escaped, and I pulled a
bunch of mountain–ash berries, and stood tapping them against my knee. I
was startled by a snarl and a little scream. Running forward, I came
upon one of the old, horse–shoe lime kilns that stood at the head of the
quarry. There, in the mouth of one of the kilns, Emily was kneeling on
the dog, her hands buried in the hair of its throat, pushing back its
head. The little jerks of the brute's body were the spasms of death;
already the eyes were turning inward, and the upper lip was drawn from
the teeth by pain.
    "Good Lord, Emily! But he is dead!" exclaimed.
    "Has he hurt you?" I drew her away. She shuddered violently, and seemed
to feel a horror of herself.
    "No—no," she said, looking at herself, with blood all on her skirt,
where she had knelt on the wound which I had given the dog, and pressed
the broken rib into the chest. There was a trickle of blood on her arm.
    "Did he bite you?" I asked, anxious.
    "No—oh, no—I just peeped in, and he jumped. But he had no strength,
and I hit him back with my stone, and I lost my balance, and fell on
him."
    "Let me wash your arm."
    "Oh!" she exclaimed, "isn't it horrible! Oh, I think it is so awful."
    "What?" said I, busy bathing her arm in the cold water of the brook.
    "This—this whole brutal affair."
    "It ought to be cauterised," said I, looking at a score on her arm from
the dog's tooth.
    "That scratch—that's nothing! Can you get that off my skirt—I feel
hateful to myself."
    I washed her skirt with my handkerchief as well as I could, saying:
    "Let me just sear it for you; we can go to the Kennels. Do—you ought—I
don't feel safe otherwise."
    "Really," she said, glancing up at me, a smile coming into her fine dark
eyes.
    "Yes—come along."
    "Ha, ha!" she laughed. "You look so serious."
    I took her arm and drew her away. She linked her arm in mine and leaned
on me.
    "It is just like Lorna Doone," she said as if she enjoyed it.
    "But you will let me do it," said I, referring to the cauterising.
    "You make me; but I shall feel—ugh, I daren't think of it. Get me some
of those berries."
    I plucked a few bunches of guelder–rose fruits, transparent, ruby
berries. She stroked them softly against her lips and cheek, caressing
them. Then she murmured to herself:
    "I have always wanted to put red berries in my hair."
    The shawl she had been wearing was thrown across her shoulders, and her
head was bare, and her black hair, soft and short and ecstatic, tumbled
wildly into loose light curls. She thrust the stalks of the berries
under her combs. Her hair was not heavy or long enough to have held
them. Then, with the ruby bunches glowing through the black mist of
curls, she looked up at me, brightly, with wide eyes. I looked at her,
and felt the smile winning into her eyes. Then I turned and dragged a
trail of golden–leaved convolvulus from the hedge, and I twisted it into
a coronet for her.
    "There!" said I, "you're crowned."
    She