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 scrutinizing.
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 Lance-Corporal 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 English
soldier. “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, 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 Élise.” 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 tonight. He’s been wounded, you know, and we’ve been
applying for him home. He was home about six weeks ago—he’s been in
Scotland since then. Oh, he was wounded in the leg. Yes, he’s all
right, a great strapping fellow. But he’s lame, he limps a bit. He
expects he’ll get his discharge—but I don’t think he will. We married?
We’ve been married six years—and he joined up the first day of the war.
Oh, he thought he’d like the life. He’d been through the South African
War. No, he was sick of it, fed up. 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. Before the war? Oh,
he was anything. He’s had a good education—but he liked the farming
better. Then he was a chauffeur. That’s how he knew French. He was
driving a gentleman in France for a long time—”
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 speckled 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 forward, 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.”