Day's End and Other Stories

by H. E. Bates

  He stood watching them, grew cold and then went in for breakfast.

  At breakfast he remarked:

  ‘The wind must have dropped with the snow. It must have done – everywhere’s quiet and as it should be. Yes, there’s not a thing out of place. I never woke at all.’

  He remembered how soundly he had slept and began to eat. Silence fell. He kept sniffing and all the time drew in the smell of cooked bacon, warmth, sourness and felt happy. Then suddenly Henrietta said:

  ‘All the same, there’s a tree down in the orchard.’

  He started. ‘In the orchard? What sort, where?’ he asked.

  ‘Not a fruit-tree – a big one, an elm,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve been out, I never saw it!’

  ‘You stood watching it!’

  ‘I never saw it. They were birds I was watching.’

  Feeling half-ashamed he suddenly rose, went to the window and gazed out. Everywhere was still, the trees never stirred, only the birds still hopped to and fro, like black marionettes, in the snow. In parts the snow had taken the form of great jagged breakers. Elsewhere long graceful drifts stretched. In the orchard the fruit-trees, all lined with snow, were already letting fall soft transparent flakes. Beyond them Israel saw the tree which had fallen and lay like some white, prostrate bird with frozen wings.

  And he said: ‘Yes, right enough, that’s an elm.’

  While saying this he felt his heart grow heavier. The loss of even a tree made him feel resentful, yet helpless, as if cheated of something.

  He went back to the table, shook his head and said: ‘It’s a pity,’ in a slow, meditative voice.

  Then suddenly he began to think of the letter and the tree together. It seemed to him that if the fall of a tree filled him with a sense of sadness and loss, such a sensation could only be multiplied endlessly if he were to give up his land. And immediately he longed desperately to pour into Henrietta’s face appeals for her help and understanding. But he did not do so, did not even look at her. The room grew silent and as he sat there snow began to melt in soft, shining rivers of silver on the window. Beyond this in the sky soft-edged limpid pools of light were beginning to come.

  Henrietta began clearing the table. But he did not move and felt only a desire to sit still, to watch the snow and consider calmly how to act and to gather the courage to act.

  But as she cleared away the cups and saucers, Henrietta said:

  ‘The roof of the hen-house has fallen in. It’s the snow. You might get a pole and prop it up. Only mind, be careful what you’re doing.’

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ he said.

  But he spoke with faint weariness, with the habitual reluctance of a man accustomed to put off things from day to day.

  IV

  A thaw set in and within two days the meadows were blank sheets of water, the trees drenched and black and Israel’s fields drab patches of green and brown again. When this happened Henrietta said to him:

  ‘Soon you ought to begin sawing the smaller arms of that tree. We could do with that.’

  But she looked at him as if she meant: ‘We could do without it. Give it up – remember you’re seventy.’

  But he said nothing.

  After a few delays, however, he went to a barn, found a saw and chopper and walked down to the orchard. Now only patches of snow remained, shining here and there like big mushrooms in the sheltered spots. Blue lakes of changing shape swam about the sky. The wind smelt of a soft dampness and, though the sun was not shining, there was a pale tranquil light, and everything, the grass, the hedges, the trees, and especially as it seemed, the fallen tree, glistened faintly with moisture.

  Israel stood still and looked at the tree. Among the branches a pigeon’s nest was interwoven and he remembered that in summer leaves had concealed this but that the murmur of the pigeons had not been hushed at all.

  He stood still for a long time. At last, when he took off his coat, he felt himself shiver. Sawing did not warm him either. And gradually the sawdust he made began to flutter down intermittently and feebly. The drone of the saw lessened as well. Then suddenly the sawdust, the saw itself and his whole body ceased moving.

  For a minute he held himself arrested. His heart seemed as if gripped by a large, freezing hand. His forehead paled and gave out big drops of wet moisture. A haze floated before his eyes.

  He tried to resist all these things with an odd sort of determination, biting his lips and shaking his head like a dog. And it seemed that after a moment or two the freezing at his heart retreated. The mist cleared and even far-off objects like copses, the floods in the meadows, the church and the clouds became normally clear, and only peculiar, alternate fits of shivering and warmth seized him.

  For the past five or six years of his life Israel had suffered from something which could be called neither a sickness nor a disease. And this was that, as now, the surrounding tissues of his heart would suddenly contract, sap his strength and leave him exhausted. On previous occasions Israel had drunk brandy for these fits and relief had come. Now he walked slowly to the house, waited till Henrietta was out of sight and moving furtively drank brandy again. As before the pain vanished, the cold hand was withdrawn completely from his heart. The only difference was that to do this needed a little more brandy than before.

  Israel never connected one of these attacks with either advancing age, infirmity or strain. But during the attacks themselves he would, every time, find himself recalling Henrietta’s words: ‘Give it up, don’t slave any more.’ But when they had passed the thought of giving up his land never returned to him.

  This time, however, the letter, Henrietta’s anxious insistence on the previous day and the loss of the tree brought on the trouble afresh. Some detail such as a bad deal or the death of a cow would make him think, ‘She is right, we get no profit, we’ve slaved long enough and it will have to come.’ Yet though he thought this, he felt that whatever decision he made must unfold gradually, like summer or a flower. So his thoughts were dull, half-hearted and came to nothing.

  And as he lay in bed that night, rain began to fall, desultorily at first, then with a steady splashing sound. And while listening to it he thought of the fallen tree, Henrietta’s soft face and her appeal to him, the attack at his heart that morning, and what he should do with all the sawdust lying under the tree. When he went to sleep he had intermittent dreams of the letter and repeated phrases of it, and the names of the solicitors who had sent it. But on waking up he did not consider it at all.

  V

  One Sunday morning, when only three days remained in which to act, he fed his pigs and then, telling Henrietta where he was going, walked down through the village to the river. Larks were singing in the pale, tranquil light of spring, and over everything, from one green edge of the horizon to another, a fresher loveliness seemed to have fallen.

  In the village people were on their way to church, the bright hats of the women peeping out like flower-buds at unexpected places. As the street turned down to the river and the houses became older, more huddled and slanting, the bells for church began ringing. Sometimes gay, sometimes solemn, the sound followed him all the way to the river, on the banks of which the willows were masses of silvery blossom, and grew softer as he drew farther and farther away.

  Then as he stood on the bridge it seemed to him the bells ceased altogether. Then in the silence he fancied he heard them again, thinking how high and soft they were. But suddenly he became aware that the sound he heard was not of the bells but of a strange singing inside his head.

  All the things at which he had gazed with such satisfaction and joy, the larks, the green meadows and the reflections in the water of the satin willows, the hawthorn bushes, the young reeds and the sky and the slow-gliding river itself, became suddenly unsteady and dim.

  In a moment his breath became stifled, his brow clammy, and swaying forward in a tumbling stagger, it seemed to him that he was falling endlessly downwards, never stopping. For what seemed a lon
g time with white features and strained lungs he hung over his own ghastly reflection in the water.

  Struggling back up the long slope to the village, regaining his strength in frequent pauses and then losing it all in a second or two, he saw everything as in a sickly dream.

  And when the figure of a man approached, took his hand and spoke to him, it too was blurred and its voice remote.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? You look like death – what you been doing?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ he tried to protest.

  ‘Look as if you’d been scared. What’s amiss? This won’t do, you’ll go wrong way.’

  The figure took his arm and began leading him up towards the village. Still it seemed to Israel that it was a strange and ephemeral figure belonging not to life but half to sickness, half to death.

  ‘Don’t you know me?’ he was asked.

  He only shook his head.

  ‘It’s Sam Houghton. You know Sam!’

  Again he shook his head and then murmured faintly:

  ‘Sam, is it? Sam Houghton? Take me and get some brandy.’

  In the inn and afterwards, as he stood blinking at the sunshine in the village street, he kept impressing upon the other:

  ‘Don’t say anything. Don’t breathe a word. Henrietta, you understand – you’ll frighten her, she’ll be upset.’

  In the afternoon he slept, but it was a poor, pitiful sleep. At the end of it, sitting up, he thought he heard voices, and after listening a moment it seemed to him they were children’s voices. Then he came out and saw Henrietta selling milk to three children at the door.

  He heard these words:

  ‘And please how is Mister Rentshaw?’

  ‘He’s all right. Why? He’s asleep,’ said Henrietta.

  ‘Because my father wants to know, because this morning he wasn’t well.’

  ‘Who wasn’t well?’

  ‘Your dad.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Down by the river, I reckon.’ And another child broke in: ‘Yes, down by the river it was, I heard my dad telling my mother so.’

  And suddenly, hearing all this, Israel went back and sat down again, hating deeply and unreasonably everybody and everything, especially Henrietta, Sam Houghton and his children, despising himself for being ill and failing to keep it secret, loathing the thought of explanations, lies and compromises with Henrietta, and then when some unsatisfactory explanation had been given her, shrinking from her close, mistrustful looks until he felt an aversion for her, just as he had begun to feel, for the first time, an aversion for his wretched land, his thin, worn horses, the grotesque-looking barns smelling of damp and rottenness and for the pond into which the poplars had all his life stood endlessly looking and whispering.

  VI

  One Sunday it was Henrietta’s birthday and at dinner there was a fowl with white sauce, bread stuffing, potatoes and a plum-pudding Henrietta had kept from Christmas; and at tea-time pickled cherries, damson-cheese and a cake with caraway seeds.

  But both at dinner and tea Israel felt no appetite and left pieces of fowl, plum-pudding and caraway cake on his plate. And Henrietta noticed all this and began to appeal to him:

  ‘Think how long you’ve been at it. It’s too much for you. You know yourself everything’s poor, things are always going wrong. There’s no profit. And you’re seventy, you’re not fit for it. Give it up – pay one year’s rent and give it up.’

  Whether because of his sudden dislike for his land, his lack of appetite or his fear of illness he could not tell, but this appeal touched him. And he was silent. And then, after tea, Henrietta, to make it worse, began showing him accounts and notes she had kept, proving the dreariness and ineffectuality of their struggle beyond all doubt.

  He did not know what to do. Each item of expenditure increased his misery and helplessness. He could not look into Henrietta’s face.

  But Henrietta looked at him and said: ‘Sooner or later we shall have to give it up.’

  There was a note of sadness in her voice too. And half against his will he murmured: ‘Yes.’

  By this time he did not mean to say, ‘We will give up at once,’ but to convey something like: ‘I see how things are, I understand.’

  Whether she understood this or not he did not know, but he suddenly could not bear to remain with her any longer and went out, gave his horses a brushing, turned out the cow, set up the pig-troughs to dry in the sun, doing all this with the odd resolution and care which comes after sadness, as a relief.

  Next morning he went to the orchard and began once more sawing, chopping and stacking the little branches of the fallen elm. It was fine. Hazy shapes of blue floated in the sky, puffed by a soft, warm wind. By the house some daffodils in the grass kept nodding, as if going off to sleep. Up above fresh green buds would swing and nudge each other and the smoke from the house shape itself like children’s curls.

  The tree looked no longer like a bird, but a statue which had fallen and smashed itself, face to earth. To Israel the labour of sawing up the wood was already tedious and fatiguing. The sound of the saw, a drone sometimes sharp, then low and mournful, became hard to bear. And then even the sound of larks singing, of the wind bearing the voices of sheep, cows and men over the hill, became sharp too and seemed to penetrate his head, multiply and set up others with no meaning to them. When he stood still an odd whistling in his ears began again, sometimes like an echo of the saw, and then softer and deeper, like the moan of a thresher far away.

  Now he stood still more often, watching the oddest things. On the river, below, puffing dark smoke, a barge appeared, drawn against the stream. Before it vanished nearly half an hour passed, yet he watched solemnly and without moving, the way it turned each bend, negotiated a bridge and pulled itself out of sight at last, and when this had gone he could not resist gazing with an expression of soft, abstract longing at the shining, empty stream, the bank fringed with willows and dark green reeds. And as he did this he remembered how as a boy he had in winter skated on the frozen marshes and in summer bathed there, chased otters and voles, and caught eels before it was dawn.

  Then suddenly the thought of the letter returned and he remembered that he must make an answer to it before night. And he began to go about repeating odd phrases of it, until some strange awful additional ache was formed in his head.

  And at dinner and later in the afternoon Henrietta began to say again: ‘Do give it up – you must live,’ until this became an ache too.

  Now his trouble was not what he must do but only that he must gain courage and do it. And as evening approached and dusk began to fall like the bluish shadow of an enormous leaf unfolding itself overhead, restlessness seized him. He began to wander about the kitchen, looking needlessly in cupboards and drawers, to make purposeless journeys to the barns, taking with him a candle and peering at the horses, the cow, and the hens blinking solemnly at him in the candlelight. And it was as if he were taking a last desperate look at these things before doing the thing which he knew would take them from him.

  He was not conscious of being unhappy or unnerved. Only an odd feeling of dread possessed him, such as if he were about to cause himself a physical injury without knowing how much harm or how much good would follow.

  At last he found himself arguing thus: ‘If I tell Henrietta, she will write the letter. Why haven’t I told her before?’ And he longed so deeply for her guidance that he knew he must tell her.

  Going into the kitchen he found the letter, opened it tremblingly and spread it before her. He fully expected her to rebuke him with expressions like ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? How silly you get!’ but having read the letter Henrietta’s eyes only seemed to shine oddly through her spectacles, and the way she touched her hair, fingered the letter and looked at him seemed to suggest only a sort of shy, unexpected relief.

  He saw, however, that she was waiting for him to speak. So he said, a little huskily:

  ‘Write a letter saying – we’ll let t
hings go, that’s all. Yes, that’ll do.’

  He sat down meekly and with some difficulty to wait until she had finished. He heard the laborious scratch of the pen, the rustle of paper, her breathing and the sound of the clock. There seemed to pass a long hush. Then Henrietta’s dress swished, she rose and said:

  ‘There it is. That’s finished. And thank God.’

  She folded the letter and with a touch in which he felt there to be thankfulness and joy, stroked her hand backwards and forwards across his hair. Then she stopped, and immediately it seemed to him that from henceforth he was a man alone, set apart, simply to await the climax of a certain destiny.

  VII

  It was morning. Israel had done the usual things: lighted a fire, milked his cow and turned her out to graze, unbolted the hens and fed his three sows. At breakfast Henrietta, as if nothing unusual had happened, said:

  ‘I’ve told you already – get a pole and prop the roof of the hen-house up. Any day it might fall down.’

  He only nodded and afterwards went to the henhouse just to see if the corrugated iron roof had sunken. He found it very low. Then he remembered it had happened in the snow-storm and that Henrietta had been telling him of it ever since.

  When he started for the copse a little later sunshine flooded everything, the ground was soft and springy, and all over the hill dandelions, celandines and daisies were looking at the sun with tiny yellow and white eyes. When nearly half-way up the hill, he remembered his axe and had to return for it.

  Going back he hurried more than usual and broke into a sweat. In the copse, while looking for a young sapling to cut down, he suddenly felt tired and sat down on a fallen trunk. Through the trees he watched the river coiling through the meadows, the bluish smoke curling over the village, his white house among the trees. As he sat there Henrietta appeared, hung out some washing in the orchard and then vanished. In an odd way he recognised his shirt on the line. And at this he was filled with a strange pleasure and began smiling to himself.

  Soon afterwards he got to his feet and began to look once again for a sapling. There were saplings of ash, beech, elm and fir in the copse. Now and then he stopped and shook one. Frightened by the noise blackbirds would charge out and, screeching, vanish into undergrowth again.