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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wintry Peacock, by D. H. Lawrence
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wintry Peacock
+       From "The New Decameron", Volume III.
+
+Author: D. H. Lawrence
+
+Release Date: August 31, 2007 [EBook #22477]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINTRY PEACOCK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+WINTRY PEACOCK
+
+From "The New Decameron"--Volume III.
+
+By D. H. Lawrence
+
+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."
+
+I smiled at the roll of her "bir-rrd."
+
+"Oh yes, he is," she protested. "He came with me from my home seven
+years ago. Those others are his descendants--but they're not like
+Joey--_are they, dee-urr?_" Her voice rose at the end with a witch-like
+cry.
+
+Then she forgot the birds in the cart-shed, and turned to business
+again.
+
+"Won't you read that letter?" she said. "Read it, so that I know what
+it says."
+
+"It's rather behind his back," I said.
+
+"Oh, never mind him," she cried, "He's been behind my back long enough.
+If he never did no worse things behind my back than I do behind his, he
+wouldn't have cause to grumble. You read me what it says."
+
+Now I felt a distinct reluctance to do as she bid, and yet I began--"'My
+dear Alfred.'"
+
+"I guessed that much," she said. "Eliza's dear Alfred." She laughed.
+"How do you say it in French? _Eliza?_"
+
+I told her, and she repeated the name with great contempt--_Elise_.
+
+"Go on," she said. "You're not reading."
+
+So I began--"'I have been thinking of you sometimes--have you been
+thinking of me?'"
+
+"Of several others as well, beside her, I'll wager," said Mrs. Goyte.
+
+"Probably not," said I, and continued. "'A dear little baby was born
+here a week ago. Ah, can I tell you my feelings when I take my darling
+little brother into my arms----'"
+
+"I'll bet it's _his_," cried Mrs. Goyte.
+
+"No," I said. "It's her mother's."
+
+"Don't you believe it," she cried. "It's a blind. You mark, it's her own
+right enough--and his."
+
+"No," I said. "It's her mother's. 'He has sweet smiling eyes, but not
+like your beautiful English eyes----'"
+
+She suddenly struck her hand on her skirt with a wild motion, and bent
+down, doubled with laughter. Then she rose and covered her face with her
+hand.
+
+"I'm forced to laugh at the beautiful English eyes," she said.
+
+"Aren't his eyes beautiful?" I asked.
+
+"Oh yes--_very!_ Go on!--_Joey dear, dee-urr Joey!_"--this to the
+peacock.
+
+"--Er--'We miss you very much. We all miss you. We wish you were here
+to see the darling baby. Ah, Alfred, how happy we were when you stayed
+with us. We all loved you so much. My mother will call the baby Alfred
+so that we shall never forget you----'"
+
+"Of course it's his right enough," cried Mrs. Goyte.
+
+"No," I said. "It's the mother's. Er--'My mother is very well. My father
+came home yesterday--from Lille. He is delighted with his son, my little
+brother, and wishes to have him named after you, because you were so
+good to us all in that terrible time, which I shall never forget.
+I must weep now when I think of it. Well, you are far away in England,
+and perhaps I shall never see you again. How did you find your dear
+mother and father? I am so happy that your leg is better, and that you
+can nearly walk----'"
+
+"How did he find his dear _wife!_" cried Mrs. Goyte. "He never told her
+that he had one. Think of taking the poor girl in like that!"
+
+"'We are so pleased when you write to us. Yet now you are in England you
+will forget the family you served so well----'"
+
+"A bit too well--_eh, Joey!_" cried the wife.
+
+"'If it had not been for you we should not be alive now, to grieve and
+to rejoice in this life, that is so hard for us. But we have recovered
+some of our losses, and no longer feel the burden of poverty. The little
+Alfred is a great comforter to me. I hold him to my breast and think of
+the big, good Alfred, and I weep to think that those times of suffering
+were perhaps the times of a great happiness that is gone for ever.'"
+
+"Oh, but isn't it a shame to take a poor girl in like that!" cried Mrs.
+Goyte. "Never to let on that he was married, and raise her hopes--I call
+it beastly, I do."
+
+"You don't know," I said. "You know how anxious women are to fall in
+love, wife or no wife. How could he help it, if she was determined to
+fall in love with him?"
+
+"He could have helped it if he'd wanted to."
+
+"Well," I said. "We aren't all heroes."
+
+"Oh, but that's different!--The big, good Alfred!--did you ever hear
+such Tommy-rot in your life?--Go on--what does she say at the end?"
+
+"Er--' We shall be pleased to hear of your life in England. We all send
+many kind regards to your good parents. I wish you all happiness for
+your future days. Your very affectionate and ever-grateful Elise.'"
+
+There was silence for a moment, during which Mrs. Goyte remained with
+her head dropped, sinister and abstracted. Suddenly she lifted her face,
+and her eyes flashed.
+
+"Oh, but I call it beastly, I call it mean, to take a girl in like
+that."
+
+"Nay," I said. "Probably he hasn't taken her in at all. Do you think
+those French girls are such poor innocent things? I guess she's a great
+deal more downy than he."
+
+"Oh, he's one of the biggest fools that ever walked," she cried.
+
+"There you are!" said I.
+
+"But it's his child right enough," she said.
+
+"I don't think so," said I.
+
+"I'm sure of it."
+
+"Oh well," I said--"if you prefer to think that way."
+
+"What other reason has she for writing like that----?"
+
+I went out into the road and looked at the cattle.
+
+"Who is this driving the cows?" I said. She too came out.
+
+"It's the boy from the next farm," she said.
+
+"Oh well," said I, "those Belgian girls! You never know where their
+letters will end.--And after all, it's his affair--you needn't bother."
+
+"Oh----!" she cried, with rough scorn--"it's not _me_ that bothers. But
+it's the nasty meanness of it. Me writing him such loving letters"--she
+put her hands before her face and laughed malevolently--"and sending him
+nice little cakes and bits I thought he'd fancy all the time. You bet
+he fed that gurrl on my things--I know he did. It's just like him.--I'll
+bet they laughed together over my letters. I'll bet anything they
+did----"
+
+"Nay," said I. "He'd burn your letters for fear they'd give him away."
+
+There was a black look on her yellow face. Suddenly a voice was heard
+calling. She poked her head out of the shed, and answered coolly:
+
+"All right!" Then, turning to me: "That's his mother looking after me."
+
+She laughed into my face, witch-like, and we turned down the road.
+
+When I awoke, the morning after this episode, I found the house darkened
+with deep, soft snow, which had blown against the large west windows,
+covering them with a screen. I went outside, and saw the valley all
+white and ghastly below me, the trees beneath black and thin looking
+like wire, the rock-faces dark between the glistening shroud, and the
+sky above sombre, heavy, yellowish-dark, much too heavy for the world
+below of hollow bluey whiteness figured with black. I felt I was in
+a valley of the dead. And I sensed I was a prisoner, for the snow was
+everywhere deep, and drifted in places. So all the morning I remained
+indoors, looking up the drive at the shrubs so heavily plumed with snow,
+at the gateposts raised high with a foot or more of extra whiteness.
+Or I looked down into the white-and-black valley, that was utterly
+motionless and beyond life, a hollow sarcophagus.
+
+Nothing stirred the whole day--no plume fell off the shrubs, the valley
+was as abstracted as a grove of death. I looked over at the tiny,
+half-buried farms away on the bare uplands beyond the valley hollow,
+and I thought of Tible in the snow, of the black, witch-like little
+Mrs. Goyte. And the snow seemed to lay me bare to influences I wanted to
+escape.
+
+In the faint glow of half-clear light that came about four o'clock in
+the afternoon, I was roused to see a motion in the snow away below, near
+where the thorn-trees stood very black and dwarfed, like a little savage
+group, in the dismal white. I watched closely. Yes, there was a flapping
+and a struggle--a big bird, it must be, labouring in the snow. I
+wondered. Our biggest birds, in the valley, were the large hawks that
+often hung flickering opposite my windows, level with me, but high
+above some prey on the steep valley-side. This was much too big for a
+hawk--too big for any known bird. I searched in my mind for the largest
+English wild birds--geese, buzzards.
+
+Still it laboured and strove, then was still, a dark spot, then
+struggled again. I went out of the house and down the steep slope,
+at risk of breaking my leg between the rocks. I knew the ground so
+well--and yet I got well shaken before I drew near the thorn-trees.
+
+Yes, it was a bird. It was Joey. It was the grey-brown peacock with a
+blue neck. He was snow-wet and spent.
+
+"Joey--Joey de-urr!" I said, staggering unevenly towards him. He looked
+so pathetic, rowing and struggling in the snow, too spent to rise,
+his blue neck stretching out and lying sometimes on the snow, his eyes
+closing and opening quickly, his crest all battered.
+
+"Joey dee-urr! Dee-urr!" I said caressingly to him. And at last he lay
+still, blinking, in the surged and furrowed snow, whilst I came near and
+touched him, stroked him, gathered him under my arm. He stretched his
+long, wetted neck away from me as I held him, none the less he was quiet
+in my arm, too tired, perhaps, to struggle. Still he held his poor,
+crested head away from me, and seemed sometimes to droop, to wilt, as if
+he might suddenly die.
+
+He was not so heavy as I expected, yet it was a struggle to get up to
+the house with him again. We set him down, not too near the fire, and
+gently wiped him with cloths. He submitted, only now and then stretched
+his soft neck away from us, avoiding us helplessly. Then we set warm
+food by him. I put it to his beak, tried to make him eat. But he ignored
+it. He seemed to be ignorant of what we were doing, recoiled inside
+himself inexplicably. So we put him in a basket with cloths, and left
+him crouching oblivious. His food we put near him. The blinds were
+drawn, the house was warm, it was night. Sometimes he stirred, but
+mostly he huddled still, leaning his queer crested head on one side. He
+touched no food, and took no heed of sounds or movements. We talked of
+brandy or stimulants. But I realised we had best leave him alone.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wintry Peacock, by D. H. Lawrence
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