Wintry Peacock | Page 2

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?