The little girl beside Marie Léonie had risen from the three-legged stool and held a dead, white fowl with a nearly naked breast by its neck. She said hoarsely:
“These ’ere be ’er Ladyship’s settins of prize Reds.” She was blonde, red-faced and wore on her dull fair hair a rather large cap, on her thin body a check blue cotton gown. “’Arf a crownd a piece the heggs be or twenty-four shillings a dozen if you take a gross.”
Marie Léonie heard the hoarse voice with some satisfaction. This girl whom they had only had-for a fortnight seemed to be satisfactory mentally; it was not her business to sell the eggs but Gunning’s; nevertheless she knew the details. Marie Léonie did not turn round: it was not her business to talk to anyone who wanted to buy eggs and she had no curiosity as to customers. She had too much else to think about. The voice said:
“Half a crown seems a great deal for an egg. What is that in dollars? This must be that tyranny over edibles by the producer of which one has heard so much.”
“Tiddn nothin’ in dollars,” the girl said. “’Arf a dollar is two bob. ’Arf a crown is two’ n six.”
The conversation continued, but it grew dim in Marie Léonie’s thoughts. The child and the voice disputed as to what a dollar was – or so it appeared, for Marie Léonie was not familiar with either of the accents of the disputants. The child was a combative child. She drove both Gunning and the cabinet-maker Camp with an organ of brass. Of tin perhaps, like a penny whistle. When she was not grubbily working, she read books with avidity – books about Blood if she could get them. She had an exaggerated respect for the Family but none for any other soul in the world….
Marie Léonie considered that, by now, she might have got down to the depth of the cask where you find sediment. She ran some cider into a clear glass, stopping the tube with her thumb. The cider was clear enough to let her bottle another dozen, she judged; then she would send for Gunning to take the spile-bung out of the next cask. Four sixty-gallon casks she had to attend to; two of them were done. She began to tire: she was not unfatigable if she was indefatigable. She began at any rate to feel drowsy. She wished Valentine could have helped her. But that girl had not much backbone and she, Marie Léonie, acknowledged that for the sake of the future it was good that she should rest and read books in Latin or Greek. And avoid nervous encounters.
She had tucked her up under an eiderdown on their four-post bed because They would have all the windows open and currents of air must above all be avoided by women…. Elle had smiled and said that it had once been her dream to read the works of Æschylus beside the blue Mediterranean. They had kissed each other….
The maid beside her was saying that orfen ’n orfen she’d ’eared ’er farver ’oo was a dealer wen a lot of ol’ ’ens, say, ’ad gone to three an nine say: “Make it two arf dollars!” They didn’ ’ave dollars in thet country but they did ’ave ’arf dollars. N Capt’n Kidd th’ pirate: ’e ’ad dollars, n’ pieces of eight ‘n’ moi-dors too!
A wasp annoyed Marie Léonie; it buzzed almost on her nose, retired, returned, made a wide circuit. There were already several wasps struggling in the glass of cider she had just drawn; there were others in circles round spots of cider on the slats of wood on which the barrels were arranged. They drew in their tails and then expanded, ecstatically. Yet only two nights before she and Valentine had gone with Gunning all over the orchard with a lantern, a trowel and a bottle of prussic acid, stopping up holes along the paths and in banks. She had liked the experience; the darkness, the ring of light from the lantern on the rough grass; the feeling that she was out, near Mark and that yet Gunning and his lantern kept spiritual visitors away…. What she suffered between the desire to visit her man in the deep nights and the possibility of coming up against revenants… Was it reasonable?… What women had to suffer for their men! Even if they were faithful….
What the unfortunate Elle had not suffered!…
Even on what you might call her nuit de noces…. At the time it had seemed incomprehensible. She had had no details. It had merely seemed fantastic: possibly even tragic because Mark had taken it so hardly. Truly she believed he had become insane. At two in the morning, beside Mark’s bed. They had — the two brothers — exchanged words of considerable violence whilst the girl shivered; and was determined. That girl had been determined. She would not go back to her mother. At two in the morning…. Well, if you refuse to go back to your mother at two in the morning you kick indeed your slipper over the mill!
The details of that night came back to her, amongst wasps and beneath the conversation of the unseen woman, in the shed where the water ran in the trough. She had set the bottles in the trough because it is a good thing to cool cider before the process of fermentation in the bottles begins. The bottles with their shining necks of green glass were an agreeable spectacle. The lady behind her back was talking of Oklahoma…. The cowboy with the large nose that she had seen on the film at the Piccadilly Cinema had come from Oklahoma. It was no doubt somewhere in America. She had been used to go to the Piccadilly Cinema on a Friday. You do not go to the theatre on a Friday if you are bien pensant, but you may regard the cinema as being to the theatre what a repas maigre is as against a meal with meat…. The lady speaking behind her came apparently from Oklahoma: she had eaten prairie chickens in her time. On a farm. Now, however, she was very rich. Or so she told the little maid. Her husband could buy half Lord Fittleworth’s estate and not miss the money. She said that if only people here would take example…
On that evening they had come thumping on her door. The bell had failed to wake her after all the noise in the street that day…. She had sprung into the middle of the floor and flown to save Mark… from an air-raid. She had forgotten that it was the Armistice…. But the knocking had gone on on the door.
Before it had stood monsieur the brother-in-law and that girl in a dark blue girl-guides’ sort of uniform. Both chalk-white and weary to death. As if they leaned one against another…. She had been for bidding them go away, but Mark had come out of the bedroom; in his nightshirt with his legs bare. And hairy! He had bidden them come in, roughly, and had got back into bed…. That had been the last time he had been on his legs! Now, he having been in bed so long, his legs were no longer hairy, but polished. Like thin glazed bones!
She had recalled his last gesture. He had positively used a gesture, like a man raving…. And indeed he was raving. At Christopher. And dripping with sweat. Twice she had wiped his face whilst they shouted at each other.
It had been difficult to understand what they said because they had spoken a sort of patois. Naturally they returned to the language they spoke in their childhoods — when they were excited, these unexcitable people! It resembled the patois of the Bretons. Harsh…
And, for herself she had been all concerned for the girl. Naturally she had been concerned for the girl. One is a woman…. At first she had taken her for a little piece from the streets…. But even for a little piece from the streets… Then she had noticed that there had been no rouge; no imitation pearl necklace….