Wintry Peacock | Page 7

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