Wintry Peacock

Wintry Peacock, by D. H.
Lawrence

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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