by H. E. Bates
‘I’ll get something – Yes—’ The words flowed torrentially. ‘In a minute – tell me who you are? Promise you won’t move till I come back? Who are you?’
The woman looked up. A shaft of cordial yellow light fell on her hands, and her lips moved once or twice: ‘I’ll tell you when you come back.’
As she moved away Helena saw scraps of straw on the woman’s back, and thinking instinctively of barns and ditches and that there was some coincidence in the woman coming into the church on Easter Sunday, opened the door and began to run.
Her husband, meeting her on the steps of the house, tried to prevent her brushing past him, and even attempted to kiss her, but she cried out: ‘Let me go! You don’t understand what a hurry I’m in!’
‘The service isn’t due to begin yet,’ he whispered as a reminder. ‘Have you decorated the church? You smell of daffodils.’
She looked at him sharply and because she felt unclean would have been less surprised had he said: ‘You smell of dirt and straw.’
‘The spring’s in your head,’ she suggested and tried to run. ‘You must let me go. You don’t understand. Don’t keep me! There’s a heap of flowers still lying on the altar; the service will begin and I’m late!’
‘I’ll help you bunch them!’
‘No, no!’
‘What’s the matter?’
She replied ‘nothing’ and began wondering first if the woman would stay in the church, then if the strips of straw would drop from her back when she got up, and lastly what made her look so adamant and chastising. With fresh shades of meaning the words ‘I’m hungry and beat’ kept rising up, then the moments when the women had first become aware of each other, when the other had looked like a picture of one of the saints, when the sun had fallen on her wrists and she had looked reproachfully up and said: ‘Haven’t you got anything?’
‘Let me go in! Let me go in!’
‘Not so much hurry! Not so much—’
‘But you don’t understand what a state I’ve left it all in,’ she half-yelled at him. Fiercely struggling she ran into the house at last.
*
But it was already late, and in the foremost seats of the church one or two children and an old woman had gathered, whispering in low tones, when she returned. Beams of sunlight lay on the altar-brasses and seats of the south side. Up and down the altar-steps the figure of the verger, already cassocked, moved busily and noiselessly, clearing away wood-anemones and daffodils.
All this she saw as she crossed the threshold and went quickly to the seat where she had left the woman. But there, except for sunlight and strips of straw, the seat was dark and empty.
She sat down, hid the basket with her dress and feet, and while watching the first stragglers come in for the service thought of the woman and of where she might be. But no conjecture seemed strong enough, and little by little she gave herself up to the contemplation of the woman’s face as she had first seen it. As she did so the church half-filled and the bell began to ring harshly. Those who came in sat looking stupidly at the flowers, and fidgeting impatiently seemed glad when the bell ceased and chants upset the stillness.
She babbled with the rest: ‘Therefore let us keep the feast; not with the old leaven … but with the unleavened bread of sincerity.…’
And she sat still and was silent as if stupefied in the prayers. On occasions she could not bear the darkness, but opened her eyes and stared at the scraps of straw visible as dull-yellow dashes in the shadows. Gloom hung through the church and reminded her of the gloom of the woman’s face under the grey scarf. She fancied she heard a sound close to her face and started violently, then saw the offertory box beneath her nose. It passed on. To-day the offerings were for the priests, she remembered. The service seemed interminable and dull. The hymns were many and tedious, the wood-anemones drooped and the sun did not come out again.
‘And the Holy Ghost, Amen!’
Clouds piled on top of each other and patients kept her husband away all the afternoon. Of the woman she saw nothing and in the solitude thought of her face, then of her wrist-bones and hands and dirty back, and was revolted. In a mood of self-reproach she vexatiously tapped her hands together and fancied she heard some one demanding things to eat. Although it was strange and even ironical that she should shed tears for a woman whose eyes had never for one moment been anything but dry, she felt she must weep. And she did so, and Easter Sunday wore on. At evening, in the church, candles were lit. She saw them and a monotone of voices at prayer seemed to fall oppressively on her head from the bluish sky.
When she was seated at the supper-table, eating nothing, the gardener came in and said it was hailing, and listening she heard the stones on the window. Then foolishly she tried to pray, but the hail fell sharply, drowning the sound of the prayer in the beginning.
Her husband came home at last, looking tired, and she noticed traces of the storm in the shape of hail-stones lying in the brim of his hat. While he sat at the table, grunting and eating, she stirred the fire and sat looking into its heart.
‘A most unfortunate thing,’ her husband soon afterwards began. ‘A suicide in Low Pond. Imagine how I was annoyed to be dragged from one end of the town to the other and then be quite useless.’
‘Yes.’ The voice had no spirit.
‘Yes, it was really not only annoying, but quite nauseating. A woman – starved. Nothing on under her dress and only a bit of a scarf over her head.’
She listened hardest, it seemed, when he paused.
‘We brought her home in the hail. The hail bounced on her face.’
He continued to eat. Helena rose and going to the window gazed out at the hail reposing in uneven lines of white on the dark paths and lawn. Now, however, no more was falling and through the clear air were plainly visible the lighted church-windows, the casts of light on the ground, and the coloured figures of the saints on the glass. She remembered the moment when she had seen the woman in a pinkish glow, and with a sudden flash of horror recollected that while looking like one of the saints she must have been hungry too.
Her husband ate stolidly and for a long time. ‘A nice thing,’ he would declare. ‘A suicide and a hailstorm on Easter Sunday.’
When Helena looked out again the hail still lay over the earth in thin unmelted streaks which were lit to a dazzling purity where the shafts of light fell. The night was frigidly calm and spiritual and suddenly it seemed that the air about the white and yellow lights gave up the soul of the woman and let it soar and disappear soundlessly into the dark sky.
In a minute it was all over, and murmuring ‘Thank God!’ she sank into a chair, and sighed twice.
‘Didn’t you say something to me?’ inquired her husband.
‘Nothing.’
‘I thought you said “Good God.” But that’s not like you.’
She felt sick and harassed and selfish.
‘It’s nothing,’ she falteringly told him. ‘But in the church this morning, in one of the seats—’
‘You’re crying!’ he exclaimed.
‘In the church this morning,’ she tried again, ‘and now you come with this story—’
‘The service has made you tired,’ he said. ‘In the morning it will be all right again. You mustn’t go again this week. I agree, it’s a nauseating thing, and on Easter Sunday, too.’
But seeing that she still cried he turned away, ate something with one hand and with the other patted her neck.
‘I understand. I understand,’ he whispered as she cried again. ‘Now confess and tell me what you’ve been doing all day and that it’s been lonely without me.’
The Spring Song
All day the June sky had stretched out in perfect serenity, like an immense blue pond without a ripple or shadow. Beneath it the earth seemed to tremble like a thirsty animal chained just beyond reach of water, while between the trees sat in a sort of solemn imposing lethargy, like judges presiding over some interminable suit between earth and heaven. I took off my coat as I des
cended the hill. The sweat ran down my nose in a warm trickle. Thick, snowy dust rose up and clouded the brightness of my shoes just as a faint ominous haze had begun to cloud the horizon beyond the reposeful roofs of the town below. One or two people eyed me curiously as they shot past in their traps to market. Sometimes when they had gone I grinned after them with the faintly cynical assurance of a young man having made an impression, and was happy.
As I came to the streets of the town, however, I struggled into my coat again. I had the sensitive pride of a young man, too, and already, besides, the dark haze on the horizon seemed to have shot forward as if under some mysterious urge from beyond the edge of the earth. I didn’t like the look of it, and I began to do my trivial pieces of shopping with an alacrity which brought the sweat running down my nose faster than ever.
Finally, at a bookseller’s in the market-place, I paused abruptly in the act of turning over a page. The proprietor put his face outside the door as if suspicious of something not quite right in the sky. Instinctively I followed his glance. I uttered a cry of stupid amazement which he silenced abruptly with the laconic pronouncement: ‘Thunder.’ We nodded sagaciously at each other like men resolving to share a secret. The next moment he left the shop and began to gather in his trays of books with the air of a conscientious shepherd.
I, too, hastened outside. The grey awnings of the market-stalls were already flapping ominously in the breeze that had sprung up. The sky was three-quarters dark under an oppressive advance of iron-coloured cloud. Beneath the awnings little pools of fruit and confectionery, flowers and cloth began to gleam in that sinister light as if afire.
From the doorway of the book-shop, to which I had hastily retreated again, I watched the market soak rapidly under an incredibly fierce onslaught of thunderous rain. The grey polish of the cobbles gave up the gloom of the sky again. One or two people flitted like dark spirits across the square, hunching their shoulders; little crowds of others clung to the doorways in dark bunches. Now and then an umbrella would spring up like a mushroom in that brief, gloomy night and then vanish abruptly. Colour and movement began to vanish, too, until nothing seemed to exist but grey and a deep thunderous brown, and there was no movement but that of the rain. A clock above me boomed half-past three, like a thing mourning its isolation – then the square was silent.
It was as if all this had happened in preparation for an event – as for the entrance of a principal in a play. I became conscious of colour and movement entering the scene as if by magic. Across the deserted square there advanced slowly a white horse drawing a green trap.
I watched its approach. As it came nearer I saw that the animal’s body was already drenched with rain and was steaming and in places yellow. The reins sagged listlessly up to the head, which drooped a fraction, the tail lay plastered wetly against the quarters, and in spite of its colour it looked no less oppressive than the rest of the square into which it had suddenly come. A yard or two away from me it shuddered stormily and became still. At the sight of that drenched wreck, my interest suddenly became of the most apathetic kind.
Then, from that fit of silent gloom I remember being wrenched with an abruptness against which I wanted to protest with a cry. And in the sudden emotion of surprise at finding myself confronted with that girl in the trap itself, staring out with solemnity from the great umbrella arching over her, I believe I could have done so without a qualm. As it was I only watched her. In her stillness she was like a little pale image in some dark sanctuary. Only her eyes once or twice travelled quickly over the rainy road, the sky and the clusters of people about the shops and then returned to a dreamy contemplation of the horse’s head. I began a contemplation also – only half-conscious of what I did – against the intensity of which her face remained as immobile as if modelled in alabaster.
Gradually I began to wonder all sorts of things about her—her christian name, why she was alone, how old she was, and as to her secret of the naive fascination in her still form. Every moment a new army of impressions besieged me. I remember wanting to say something arresting and fine in order to make her look at me. Yet I believe the slightest suggestion of a glance would have aroused me to a point of demonstrative exultation. The foolish part of it was that I couldn’t explain even my slightest emotion; my brain seemed capable of nothing but one silent, ridiculous demand: ‘Why doesn’t she look at me? Why doesn’t she look at me?’
I must have cut the most ludicrous figure. Had she by any chance become aware of me she must have burst into uncontrollable laughter. Now I am glad she never once looked at me. I don’t believe I could have endured the disturbance of that serene beauty in silence.
Four o’clock struck. I seemed to wake with a shudder and see people crossing the road with upturned faces and palms. I knew the rain must be stopping – but my mind still went on, like the thunder now afar off:
‘Why doesn’t she look at me? Why doesn’t she look at me?’
Above me I saw a yellow slit appear in the sky. I watched it break into great blue wounds among the clouds. Around me the shelterers were beginning to pass off and the thought of being alone on the edge of that shining pavement made me tremble as if I had been on the brink of a precipice. Suddenly the girl in the trap shut up her umbrella and shook her slightly wet hair and smiled at the sky. The sight made me pace up and down before the trap in an ecstasy of despair.
By doing so I caught sight of the name in white letters on the side and I began to repeat its monosyllable like a child at a task: ‘Dean, Dean, Dean.’ I broke into a sweat again. It seemed as if my fingers were burning scars in the covers of my books. As if expecting them both to vanish from me I continued to watch the girl and repeat that name with the pitiful desperation that only youth can summon.
Then suddenly, to end it all, a woman came up and called ‘Thomasin’ twice to the dreamy girl, then got into the trap and drove away. It was done in a moment. There seemed to be a flash of green and white, like the brief unfurling of a banner, then an emptiness in which I remember standing like a dull regretful fool, with a single thought, ‘It’s all over. It’s all over.’
*
A glamorous week and a day went past. Staring up at the sky I lay dreaming away the hot Sunday afternoon in the shadow of a wood outside the village. Everywhere was silent. Only now and then the vast green temple behind me would give up the solitary song of some bird shy of the sunlight, or of another breaking out like an escaping prisoner into the bright air above. The may still splashed the hedges, as if with milk. Deceptively close and loud the cuckoos talked monotonously, only deepening the silence of a world that seemed to be sleeping under the benign dominion of the infinitely blue sky.
My thoughts were all of one thing. Sometimes when they reached a pitch of complete hopelessness or delight I turned and lay chest downwards to the warm earth. I believe I should have hated even the sun to see my face at those moments. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of that incredible passion brought about by an utter stranger, but that I was infinitely jealous about its secret preciousness. And that afternoon something in the spring air itself seemed to be watching me. I didn’t feel alone. It was as if a spirit aroused by some inner cry of my foolishly young heart, had crept out to torment me with all the quiet mysteriousness of its invisible presence.
Then, as I lay there trying to overcome by indifference my strange emotions, I became aware of another presence. A sound of feet, then a rustle of twigs was borne along to me. In a mood of wonderment I lay listening. Then a voice above me called my name.
I turned my astonished face to the glaring sky and blinked at the figure of a girl I saw there. Sitting up I recognised her as a girl named Martha, from the village. Behind her, giggling and nudging each other, were two of her friends, dressed like her, for Sunday. Angry at the intrusion I flung up into her face:
‘What do you want?’
Under the fierce reproach in the words she seemed to cower like a shy animal not comprehending a command. Her mouth looked as if
about to burst into a torrent of weeping. Instead, she held out to me an envelope and asked in a faint voice:
‘Would you give this to Julian Thorley?’
I began to protest. ‘But—but why? I shan’t see him!’
‘It’s Sunday. He always comes this way.’
‘Is it important?’
One of the others broke in shrilly: ‘It’s a love letter!’
‘Sssh. Oh!’
The girl darted pitiful looks here and there like a guilty child. Gazing up into that sensitive face, scarlet in its extreme confusion, I could not refuse its naive request. A week of the most agonising abandonment to that other face hadn’t hardened my heart, and I took the note with a promise. A minute later there was a sound of feet among the undergrowth in the wood and then the stillness of the hot, serene sky seemed to descend and suffocate me.
My alternate fits of gloom and ecstasy began again. The invisible spirit came out and renewed its dispassionate watch over me. Only now and then the naive image of a girl holding a pair of endless reins seemed to rise and briefly annihilate it with its loveliness.
A sound of whistling disturbed me at last. Martha’s note, already crumpled from lying beneath me, was taken out and given to Julian Thorley as he passed. He took it with a smile and went on. As he turned the bend of the path and disappeared behind the wood a little shower of white butterflies seemed to fly from him and settle forlornly in the grass.
After that there seems to have been an immense desert of solitude where the mirage of a pale face constantly arose and tantalised me into pursuit of it, and at the end of which I was thirsty and tired as if from sickness of body and mind. I walked home through the dusky wood as if in a dream. My footsteps made echoes that soared swiftly up to the green roof and ran among the leaves like spirits, mocking me.
Suddenly, on turning a bend in the path, I came upon Martha, the girl whose note I had delivered and already forgotten. Her lips lay parted in a sort of questioning smile which seemed to me utterly hopeless and pathetic. Her eyes were never still as she asked: