There was thin, crisp snow on the ground, the sky was blue, the wind
very cold, the air clear. Farmers were just turning out the cows for an
hour or so in the midday, and the smell of cow-sheds was unendurable
as I entered Tible. I noticed the ash-twigs up in the sky were pale and
luminous, passing into the blue. And then I saw the peacocks. There they
were in the road before me, three of them, and tailless, brown, speckled
birds, with dark-blue necks and ragged crests. They stepped archly over
the filigree snow, and their bodies moved with slow motion, like small,
light, flat-bottomed boats. I admired them, they were curious. Then a
gust of wind caught them, heeled them over as if they were three frail
boats, opening their feathers like ragged sails. They hopped and skipped
with discomfort, to get out of the draught of the wind. And then, in
the lee of the walls, they resumed their arch, wintry motion, light
and unballasted now their tails were gone, indifferent. They were
indifferent to my presence. I might have touched them. They turned off
to the shelter of an open shed.
As I passed the end of the upper house, I saw a young woman just coming
out of the back door. I had spoken to her in the summer. She recognised
me at once, and waved to me. She was carrying a pail, wearing a white
apron that was longer than her preposterously short skirt, and she had
on the cotton bonnet. I took off my hat to her and was going on. But she
put down her pail and darted with a swift, furtive movement after me.
“Do you mind waiting a minute?” she said. “I'll be out in a minute.”
She gave me a slight, odd smile, and ran back. Her face was long and
sallow and her nose rather red. But her gloomy black eyes softened
caressively to me for a moment, with that momentary humility which
makes a man lord of the earth.
I stood in the road, looking at the fluffy, dark-red young cattle that
mooed and seemed to bark at me. They seemed happy, frisky cattle, a
little impudent, and either determined to go back into the warm shed, or
determined not to go back. I could not decide which.
Presently the woman came forward again, her head rather ducked. But she
looked up at me and smiled, with that odd, immediate intimacy, something
witch-like and impossible.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “Shall we stand in this
cart-shed--it will be more out of the wind.”
So we stood among the shafts of the open cart-shed, that faced the road.
Then she looked down at the ground, a little sideways, and I noticed a
small black frown on her brows. She seemed to brood for a moment. Then
she looked straight into my eyes, so that I blinked and wanted to turn
my face aside. She was searching me for something and her look was too
near. The frown was still on her keen, sallow brow.
“Can you speak French?” she asked me abruptly.
“More or less,” I replied.
“I was supposed to learn it at school,” she said. “But I don't know a
word.” She ducked her head and laughed, with a slightly ugly grimace and
a rolling of her black eyes.
“No good keeping your mind full of scraps,” I answered.
But she had turned aside her sallow, long face, and did not hear what
I said. Suddenly again she looked at me. She was searching. And at the
same time she smiled at me, and her eyes looked softly, darkly, with
infinite trustful humility into mine. I was being cajoled.
“Would you mind reading a letter for me, in French?” she said, her face
immediately black and bitter-looking. She glanced at me, frowning.
“Not at all,” I said.
“It's a letter to my husband,” she said, still scrutinising.
I looked at her, and didn't quite realise. She looked too far into me,
my wits were gone. She glanced round. Then she looked at me shrewdly.
She drew a letter from her pocket, and handed it to me. It was addressed
from France to M. Alfred Goyte, at Tible. I took out the letter and
began to read it, as mere words. “Mon cher Alfred”--it might have been a
bit of a torn newspaper. So I followed the script: the trite phrases of
a letter from a French-speaking girl to an Englishman. “I think of
you always, always. Do you think sometimes of me?” And then I vaguely
realised that I was reading a man's private correspondence. And yet, how
could one consider these trivial, facile French phrases private? Nothing
more trite and vulgar in the world than such a love-letter--no newspaper
more obvious.
Therefore I read with a callous heart the effusions of the Belgian
damsel. But then I gathered my attention. For the letter went on, “Notre
cher petit bébé--our dear little baby was born a week ago. Almost I
died, knowing you were far away, and perhaps forgetting the fruit of our
perfect love. But the child comforted me. He has the smiling eyes and
virile air of his English father. I pray to the Mother of Jesus to send
me the dear father of my child, that I may see him with my child in his
arms, and that we may be united in holy family love. Ah, my Alfred, can
I tell you how I miss you, how I weep for you? My thoughts are with you
always, I think of nothing but you, I live for nothing but you and our
dear baby. If you do not come back to me soon, I shall die, and our
child will die. But no, you cannot come back to me. But I can come to
you. I can come to England with our child. If you do not wish to present
me to your good mother and father you can meet me in some town, some
city, for I shall be so frightened to be alone in England with my child,
and no one to take care of us. Yet I must come to you, I must bring my
child, my little Alfred, to his father, the big, beautiful Alfred that
I love so much. Oh, write and tell me where I shall come. I have some
money. I am not a penniless creature. I have money for myself and my
dear baby----”
I read to the end. It was signed: “Your very happy and still more
unhappy Elise.” I suppose I must have been smiling.
“I can see it makes you laugh,” said Mrs. Goyte, sardonically. I looked
up at her.
“It's a love-letter, I know that,” she said. “There's too many 'Alfreds'
in it.”
“One too many,” I said.
“Oh yes.--And what does she say--Eliza? We know her name's Eliza, that's
another thing.” She grimaced a little, looking up at me with a mocking
laugh.
“Where did you get this letter?” I said.
“Postman gave it me last week.”
“And is your husband at home?”
“I expect him home to-night. He had an accident and hurt his leg. He's
been abroad most of his time for this last four years. He's chauffeur to
a gentleman who travels about in one country and another, on some sort
of business. Married? We married? Why, six years. And I tell you I've
seen little enough of him for four of them. But he always was a rake.
He went through the South African War, and stopped out there for five
years. I'm living with his father and mother. I've no home of my own
now. My people had a big farm--over a thousand acres--in Oxfordshire.
Not like here--no. Oh, they're very good to me, his father and mother.
Oh yes, they couldn't be better. They think more of me than of their own
daughters.--But it's not like being in a place of your own, is it? You
can't _really_ do as you like. No, there's only me and his father and
mother at home. Always a chauffeur? No, he's been all sorts of things:
was to be a farm-bailiff by rights. He's had a good education--but he
liked the motors better.--Then he was five years in the Cape Mounted
Police. I met him when he came back from there, and married him--more
fool me----”
At this point the peacocks came round the corner on a puff of wind.
“Hello, Joey!” she called, and one of the birds came forward, on
delicate legs. Its grey spreckled back was very elegant, it rolled its
full, dark-blue neck as it moved to her. She crouched down. “Joey dear,”
she said, in an odd, saturnine caressive voice: “you're bound to find
me, aren't you?” She put her face downward, and the bird rolled his
neck, almost touching her face with his beak, as if kissing her.
“He loves you,” I said.
She twisted her face up at me with a laugh.
“Yes,” she said, “he loves me, Joey does”--then, to the bird--“and I
love Joey, don't I? I _do_ love Joey.” And she smoothed his feathers for
a moment. Then she rose, saying: “He's an affectionate bird.”