Part 8

So the days went by. Almost every evening Joe went off alone, returning late. He was sullen, taciturn and had a hang-dog look, a curious way of dropping his head and looking dangerously from under his brows. And he and Albert did not get on so well any more with one another. For all his fun and nonsense, Albert was really irritable, soon made angry. And Joe’s stand-offish sulkiness and complete lack of confidence riled him, got on his nerves. His fun and nonsense took a biting, sarcastic turn, at which Joe’s eyes glittered occasionally, though the young man turned unheeding aside. Then again Joe would be full of odd, whimsical fun, outshining Albert himself.

Miss Stokes still came to the station with the wain: Monkey-nuts, Albert called her, though not to her face. For she was very clear and good-looking, almost she seemed to gleam. And Albert was a tiny bit afraid of her. She very rarely addressed Joe whilst the hay-loading was going on, and that young man always turned his back to her. He seemed thinner, and his limber figure looked more slouching. But still it had the tender, attractive appearance, especially from behind. His tanned face, a little thinned and darkened, took a handsome, slightly sinister look.

“Come on, Joe!” the corporal urged sharply one day. “What’re you doing, boy? Looking for beetles on the bank?”

Joe turned round swiftly, almost menacing, to work.

“He’s a different fellow these days, Miss Stokes,” said Albert to the young woman. “What’s got him? Is it Monkey-nuts that don’t suit him, do you think?”

“Choked with chaff, more like,” she retorted. “It’s as bad as feeding a threshing machine, to have to listen to some folks.”

“As bad as what?” said Albert. “You don’t mean me, do you, Miss Stokes?”

“No,” she cried. “I don’t mean you.”

Joe’s face became dark red during these sallies, but he said nothing. He would eye the young woman curiously, as she swung so easily at the work, and he had some of the look of a dog which is going to bite.

Albert, with his nerves on edge, began to find the strain rather severe. The next Saturday evening, when Joe came in more black-browed than ever, he watched him, determined to have it out with him.

When the boy went upstairs to bed, the corporal followed him. He closed the door behind him carefully, sat on the bed and watched the younger man undressing. And for once he spoke in a natural voice, neither chaffing nor commanding.

“What’s gone wrong, boy?”

Joe stopped a moment as if he had been shot. Then he went on unwinding his puttees, and did not answer or look up.

“You can hear, can’t you?” said Albert, nettled.

“Yes, I can hear,” said Joe, stooping over his puttees till his face was purple.

“Then why don’t you answer?”

Joe sat up. He gave a long, sideways look at the corporal. Then he lifted his eyes and stared at a crack in the ceiling.

The corporal watched these movements shrewdly.

“And _then_ what?” he asked, ironically.

Again Joe turned and stared him in the face. The corporal smiled very slightly, but kindly.

“There’ll be murder done one of these days,” said Joe, in a quiet, unimpassioned voice.

“So long as it’s by daylight—” replied Albert. Then he went over, sat down by Joe, put his hand on his shoulder affectionately, and continued, “What is it, boy? What’s gone wrong? You can trust me, can’t you?”

Joe turned and looked curiously at the face so near to his.

“It’s nothing, that’s all,” he said laconically.

Albert frowned.

“Then who’s going to be murdered?—and who’s going to do the murdering?—me or you—which is it, boy?” He smiled gently at the stupid youth, looking straight at him all the while, into his eyes. Gradually the stupid, hunted, glowering look died out of Joe’s eyes. He turned his head aside, gently, as one rousing from a spell.

“I don’t want her,” he said, with fierce resentment.

“Then you needn’t have her,” said Albert. “What do you go for, boy?”

But it wasn’t as simple as all that. Joe made no remark.

“She’s a smart-looking girl. What’s wrong with her, my boy? I should have thought you were a lucky chap, myself.”

“I don’t want ’er,” Joe barked, with ferocity and resentment.

“Then tell her so and have done,” said Albert. He waited awhile. There was no response. “Why don’t you?” he added.

“Because I don’t,” confessed Joe, sulkily.

Albert pondered—rubbed his head.

“You’re too soft-hearted, that’s where it is, boy. You want your mettle dipping in cold water, to temper it. You’re too soft-hearted—”

He laid his arm affectionately across the shoulders of the younger man. Joe seemed to yield a little towards him.

“When are you going to see her again?” Albert asked. For a long time there was no answer.

“When is it, boy?” persisted the softened voice of the corporal.

“Tomorrow,” confessed Joe.

“Then let me go,” said Albert. “Let me go, will you?”

The morrow was Sunday, a sunny day, but a cold evening. The sky was grey, the new foliage very green, but the air was chill and depressing. Albert walked briskly down the white road towards Beeley. He crossed a larch plantation, and followed a narrow by-road, where blue speedwell flowers fell from the banks into the dust. He walked swinging his cane, with mixed sensations. Then having gone a certain length, he turned and began to walk in the opposite direction.

So he saw a young woman approaching him. She was wearing a wide hat of grey straw, and a loose, swinging dress of nigger-grey velvet. She walked with slow inevitability. Albert faltered a little as he approached her. Then he saluted her, and his roguish, slightly withered skin flushed. She was staring straight into his face.

He fell in by her side, saying impudently:

“Not so nice for a walk as it was, is it?”

She only stared at him. He looked back at her.

“You’ve seen me before, you know,” he said, grinning slightly. “Perhaps you never noticed me. Oh, I’m quite nice looking, in a quiet way, you know. What—?”

But Miss Stokes did not speak: she only stared with large, icy blue eyes at him. He became self-conscious, lifted up his chin, walked with his nose in the air, and whistled at random. So they went down the quiet, deserted grey lane. He was whistling the air: “I’m Gilbert, the filbert, the colonel of the nuts.”

At last she found her voice:

“Where’s Joe?”

“He thought you’d like a change: they say variety’s the salt of life—that’s why I’m mostly in pickle.”

“Where is he?”

“Am I my brother’s keeper? He’s gone his own ways.”

“Where?”

“Nay, how am I to know? Not so far but he’ll be back for supper.”

She stopped in the middle of the lane. He stopped facing her.

“Where’s Joe?” she asked.

He struck a careless attitude, looked down the road this way and that, lifted his eyebrows, pushed his khaki cap on one side, and answered:

“He is not conducting the service tonight: he asked me if I’d officiate.”

“Why hasn’t he come?”

“Didn’t want to, I expect. _I_ wanted to.”

She stared him up and down, and he felt uncomfortable in his spine, but maintained his air of nonchalance. Then she turned slowly on her heel, and started to walk back. The corporal went at her side.

“You’re not going back, are you?” he pleaded. “Why, me and you, we should get on like a house on fire.”

She took no heed, but walked on. He went uncomfortably at her side, making his funny remarks from time to time. But she was as if stone deaf. He glanced at her, and to his dismay saw the tears running down her cheeks. He stopped suddenly, and pushed back his cap.

“I say, you know—” he began.

But she was walking on like an automaton, and he had to hurry after her.

She never spoke to him. At the gate of her farm she walked straight in, as if he were not there. He watched her disappear. Then he turned on his heel, cursing silently, puzzled, lifting off his cap to scratch his head.

That night, when they were in bed, he remarked: “Say, Joe, boy; strikes me you’re well-off without Monkey-nuts. Gord love us, beans ain’t in it.”

So they slept in amity. But they waited with some anxiety for the morrow.

It was a cold morning, a grey sky shifting in a cold wind, and threatening rain. They watched the wagon come up the road and through the yard gates. Miss Stokes was with her team as usual; her “Whoa!” rang out like a war-whoop.

She faced up at the truck where the two men stood.

“Joe!” she called, to the averted figure which stood up in the wind.

“What?” he turned unwillingly.

She made a queer movement, lifting her head slightly in a sipping, half-inviting, half-commanding gesture. And Joe was crouching already to jump off the truck to obey her, when Albert put his hand on his shoulder.

“Half a minute, boy! Where are you off? Work’s work, and nuts is nuts. You stop here.”

Joe slowly straightened himself.

“Joe!” came the woman’s clear call from below.

Again Joe looked at her. But Albert’s hand was on his shoulder, detaining him. He stood half averted, with his tail between his legs.

“Take your hand off him, you!” said Miss Stokes.

“Yes, Major,” retorted Albert satirically.

She stood and watched.

“Joe!” Her voice rang for the third time.

Joe turned and looked at her, and a slow, jeering smile gathered on his face.

“Monkey-nuts!” he replied, in a tone mocking her call.

She turned white—dead white. The men thought she would fall. Albert began yelling to the porters up the line to come and help with the load. He could yell like any non-commissioned officer upon occasion.

Some way or other the wagon was unloaded, the girl was gone. Joe and his corporal looked at one another and smiled slowly. But they had a weight on their minds, they were afraid.

They were reassured, however, when they found that Miss Stokes came no more with the hay. As far as they were concerned, she had vanished into oblivion. And Joe felt more relieved even than he had felt when he heard the firing cease, after the news had come that the armistice was signed.

WINTRY PEACOCK

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 scrutinizing.

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 Lance-Corporal 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 English soldier. “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, 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 Élise.” 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 tonight. He’s been wounded, you know, and we’ve been applying for him home. He was home about six weeks ago—he’s been in Scotland since then. Oh, he was wounded in the leg. Yes, he’s all right, a great strapping fellow. But he’s lame, he limps a bit. He expects he’ll get his discharge—but I don’t think he will. We married? We’ve been married six years—and he joined up the first day of the war. Oh, he thought he’d like the life. He’d been through the South African War. No, he was sick of it, fed up. 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. Before the war? Oh, he was anything. He’s had a good education—but he liked the farming better. Then he was a chauffeur. That’s how he knew French. He was driving a gentleman in France for a long time—”

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 speckled 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 forward, 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—all these four years. 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—_Élise_.

“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—on leave. 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 wound is better, and that you can nearly walk—”

“How did he find his dear _wife!_” cried Mrs. Goyte. “He never told her 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 comfort 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.”