The Wintry Peacock Page 2

  In the night, however, we heard him thumping about. I got up anxiously with a candle. He had eaten some food, and scattered more, making a mess. And he was perched on the back of a heavy arm-chair. So I concluded he was recovered, or recovering.

  The next day was clear, and the snow had frozen, so I decided to carry him back to Tible. He consented, after various flappings, to sit in a big fish-bag with his battered head peeping out with wild uneasiness. And so I set off with him, slithering down into the valley, making good progress down in the pale shadows beside the rushing waters, then climbing painfully up the arrested white valley-side, plumed with clusters of young pine-trees, into the paler white radiance of the snowy upper regions, where the wind cut fine. Joey seemed to watch all the time with wide, anxious, unseeing eyes, brilliant and inscrutable. As I drew near to Tible township, he stirred violently in the bag, though I do not know if he had recognised the place. Then, as I came to the sheds, he looked sharply from side to side, and stretched his neck out long. I was a little afraid of him. He gave a loud, vehement yell, opening his sinister beak, and I stood still, looking at him as he struggled in the bag, shaken myself by his struggles, yet not thinking to release him.

  Mrs. Goyte came darting past the end of the house, her head sticking forward in sharp scrutiny. She saw me, and came forward.

  "Have you got Joey?" she cried sharply, as if I were a thief.

  I opened the bag, and he flopped out, flapping as if he hated the touch of the snow, now. She gathered him up and put her lips to his beak. She was flushed and handsome, her eyes bright, her hair slack, thick, but more witch-like than ever. She did not speak.

  She had been followed by a grey-haired woman with a round, rather sallow face and a slightly hostile bearing.

  "Did you bring him with you, then?" she asked sharply. I answered that I had rescued him the previous evening.

  From the background slowly approached a slender man with a grey moustache and large patches on his trousers.

  "You've got 'im back 'gain, Ah see," he said to his daughter-in-law. His wife explained how I had found Joey.

  "Ah," went on the grey man. "It wor our Alfred scarred him off, back your life. He must 'a' flyed ower t' valley. Tha ma' thank thy stars as 'e wor fun, Maggie. 'E'd a bin froze. They a bit nesh, you know," he concluded to me.

  "They are," I answered. "This isn't their country."

  "No, it isna," replied Mr. Goyte. He spoke very slowly and deliberately, quietly, as if the soft pedal were always down in his voice. He looked at his daughter-in-law as she crouched, flushed and dark, before the peacock, which would lay its long blue neck for a moment along her lap. In spite of his grey moustache and thin grey hair, the elderly man had a face young and almost delicate, like a young man's. His blue eyes twinkled with some inscrutable source of pleasure, his skin was fine and tender, his nose delicately arched. His grey hair being slightly ruffled, he had a debonnair look, as of a youth who is in love.

  "We mun tell 'im it's come," he said slowly, and turning he called:

  "Alfred—Alfred! Wheer's ter gotten to?"

  Then he turned again to the group.

  "Get up, then, Maggie, lass, get up wi' thee. Tha ma'es too much o' th' bod."

  A young man approached, limping, wearing a thick short coat and knee-breeches. He was Danish-looking, broad at the loins.

  "I's come back, then," said the father to the son—"leastwise, he's bin browt back, flyed ower the Griff Low."

  The son looked at me. He had a devil-may-care bearing, his cap on one side, his hands stuck in the front pockets of his breeches. But he said nothing.

  "Shall you come in a minute, Master?" said the elderly woman, to me.

  "Ay, come in an' ha'e a cup o' tea or summat. You'll do wi' summat, carryin' that bod. Come on, Maggie wench, let's go in."

  So we went indoors, into the rather stuffy, overcrowded living-room, that was too cosy and too warm. The son followed last, standing in the doorway. The father talked to me. Maggie put out the tea-cups. The mother went into the dairy again.

  "Tha'lt rouse thysen up a bit again now, Maggie," the father-in-law said—and then to me: "'Er's not bin very bright sin' Alfred come whoam, an' the bod flyed awee. 'E come whoam a Wednesday night, Alfred did. But ay, you knowed, didna yer. Ay, 'e comed 'a Wednesday—an' I reckon there wor a bit of a to-do between 'em, worn't there, Maggie?"

  He twinkled maliciously to his daughter-in-law, who was flushed brilliant and handsome.

  "Oh, be quiet, father. You're wound up, by the sound of you," she said to him, as if crossly. But she could never be cross with him.

  "'Er's got 'er colour back this mornin'," continued the father-in-law slowly. "It's bin heavy weather wi' 'er this last two days. Ay—'er's bin north-east sin 'er seed you a Wednesday."

  "Father, do stop talking. You'd wear the leg off an iron pot. I can't think where you've found your tongue, all of a sudden," said Maggie, with caressive sharpness.

  "Ah've found it wheer I lost it. Aren't goin' ter come in an' sit thee down, Alfred?"

  But Alfred turned and disappeared.

  "'E's got th' monkey on 'is back, ower this letter job," said the father secretly to me. "Mother 'er knows nowt about it. Lot o' tomfoolery, isn't it? Ay! What's good o' makin' a peck o' trouble ower what's far enough off, an' ned niver come no nigher. No—not a smite o' use. That's what I tell 'er. 'Er should ta'e no notice on't. Ay, what can y'expect."

  The mother came in again, and the talk became general. Maggie flashed her eyes at me from time to time, complacent and satisfied, moving among the men. I paid her little compliments, which she did not seem to hear. She attended to me with a kind of sinister, witch-like gracious-ness, her dark head ducked between her shoulders, at once humble and powerful. She was happy as a child attending to her father-in-law and to me. But there was something ominous between her eyebrows, as if a dark moth were settled there—and something ominous in her bent, hulking bearing.

  She sat on a low stool by the fire, near her father-in-law. Her head was dropped, she seemed in a state of abstraction. From time to time she would suddenly recover, and look up at us, laughing and chatting. Then she would forget again. Yet in her hulked black forgetting she seemed very near to us.

  The door having been opened, the peacock came slowly in, prancing calmly. He went near to her, and crouched down, coiling his blue neck. She glanced at him, but almost as if she did not observe him. The bird sat silent, seeming to sleep, and the woman also sat huddled and silent, seeming oblivious. Then once more there was a heavy step, and Alfred entered. He looked at his wife, and he looked at the peacock crouching by her. He stood large in the doorway, his hands stuck in front of him, in his breeches pockets. Nobody spoke. He turned on his heel and went out again.

  I rose also to go. Maggie started as if coming to herself.

  "Must you go?" she asked, rising and coming near to me, standing in front of me, twisting her head sideways and looking up at me. "Can't you stop a bit longer? We can all be cosy to-day, there's nothing to do outdoors." And she laughed, showing her teeth oddly. She had a long chin.

  I said I must go. The peacock uncoiled and coiled again his long blue neck as he lay on the hearth. Maggie still stood close in front of me, so that I was acutely aware of my waistcoat buttons.

  "Oh, well," she said, "you'll come again, won't you? Do come again."

  I promised.

  "Come to tea one day—yes, do!"

  I promised—one day.

  The moment I was out of her presence I ceased utterly to exist for her—as utterly as I ceased to exist for Joey. With her curious abstractedness she forgot me again immediately. I knew it as I left her. Yet she seemed almost in physical contact with me while I was with her.

  The sky was all pallid again, yellowish. When I went out there was no sun; the snow was blue and cold. I hurried away down the hill, musing on Maggie. The road made a loop down the sharp face of the slope. As I went crunching over the laborious snow I became aware of a
figure striding awkwardly down the steep scarp to intercept me. It was a man with his hands in front of him, half stuck in his breeches pockets, and his shoulders square—a real knock-about fellow. Alfred, of course. He waited for me by the stone fence.

  "Excuse me," he said as I came up.

  I came to a halt in front of him and looked into his sullen blue eyes. He had a certain odd haughtiness on his brows. But his blue eyes stared insolently at me.

  "Do you know anything about a letter—in French—that my wife opened—a letter of mine?"

  "Yes," said I. "She asked me to read it to her."

  He looked square at me. He did not know exactly how to feel.

  "What was there in it?" he asked.

  "Why?" I said. "Don't you know?"

  "She makes out she's burnt it," he said.

  "Without showing it you?" I asked.

  He nodded slightly. He seemed to be meditating as to what line of action he should take. He wanted to know the contents of the letter: he must know: and therefore he must ask me, for evidently his wife had taunted him. At the same time, no doubt, he would like to wreak untold vengeance on my unfortunate person. So he eyed me, and I eyed him, and neither of us spoke. He did not want to repeat his request to me. And yet I only looked at him, and considered.

  Suddenly he threw back his head and glanced down the valley. Then he changed his position and he looked at me more confidentially.

  "She burnt the blasted thing before I saw it," he said.

  "Well," I answered slowly, "she doesn't know herself what was in it."

  He continued to watch me narrowly. I grinned to myself.

  "I didn't like to read her out what there was in it," I continued.

  He suddenly flushed out so that the veins in his neck stood out, and he stirred again uncomfortably.

  "The Belgian girl said her baby had been born a week ago, and that they were going to call it Alfred," I told him.

  He met my eyes. I was grinning. He began to grin, too.

  "Good luck to her," he said.

  "Best of luck," said I.

  "And what did you tell her?" he asked.

  "That the baby belonged to the old mother—that it was brother to your girl, who was writing to you as a friend of the family."

  He stood smiling, with the long, subtle malice of a farmer.

  "And did she take it in?" he asked.

  "As much as she took anything else."

  He stood grinning fixedly. Then he broke into a short laugh.

  "Good for her!" he exclaimed cryptically.

  And then he laughed aloud once more, evidently feeling he had won a big move in his contest with his wife.

  "What about the other woman?" I asked.

  "Who?"

  "Elise."

  "Oh"—he shifted uneasily—"she was all right———"

  "You'll be getting back to her," I said.

  He looked at me. Then he made a grimace with his mouth.

  "Not me," he said. "Back your life it's a plant."

  "You don't think the cher petit bébé is a little Alfred?"

  "It might be," he said.

  "Only might?"

  "Yes—an' there's lots of mites in a pound of cheese." He laughed boisterously but uneasily.

  "What did she say, exactly?" he asked.

  I began to repeat, as well as I could, the phrases of the letter:

  "Mon cher Alfred,—Figure-toi comme je suis désolée——"

  He listened with some confusion. When I had finished all I could remember, he said:

  "They know how to pitch you out a letter, those Belgian lasses."

  "Practice," said I.

  "They get plenty," he said.

  There was a pause.

  "Oh well," he said. "I've never got that letter, anyhow."

  The wind blew fine and keen, in the sunshine, across the snow. I blew my nose and prepared to depart.

  "And she doesn't know anything?" he continued, jerking his head up the hill in the direction of Tible.

  "She knows nothing but what I've said—that is, if she really burnt the letter."

  "I believe she burnt it," he said, "for spite. She's a little devil, she is. But I shall have it out with her." His jaw was stubborn and sullen. Then suddenly he turned to me with a new note.

  "Why?" he said. "Why didn't you wring that b—— peacock's neck—that b——Joey?"

  "Why?" I said. "What for?"

  "I hate the brute," he said. "I let fly at him the night I got back——"

  I laughed. He stood and mused.

  "Poor little Elise," he murmured.

  "Was she small—petite?" I asked. He jerked up his head.

  "No," he said. "Rather tall."

  "Taller than your wife, I suppose."

  Again he looked into my eyes. And then once more he went into a loud burst of laughter that made the still, snow-deserted valley clap again.

  "God, it's a knockout!" he said, thoroughly amused. Then he stood at ease, one foot out, his hands in his breeches pocket, in front of him, his head thrown back, a handsome figure of a man.

  "But I'll do that blasted Joey in——" he mused, I ran down the hill, shouting also with laughter.

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