Day's End and Other Stories

by H. E. Bates

  ‘I can’t carry two – not how I am,’ declared the other. ‘I can’t!’

  ‘Pah! can’t you send Amos for it to-night?’

  The scorn in her voice seemed to give her impetus enough to stride the ditch, mount the fence on the other side and scramble into the wood before the other opened her mouth again. ‘I ain’t coming,’ she tried to begin. But suddenly, never finishing this half-hearted sort of protest, she set down her sack and crawled laboriously over the fence into the wood. The tall woman pulled her over with impatient hands while the other fat woman waddled across the ditch and stood ready to be helped too. Presently only the girl and the old woman remained outside the wood.

  The eyes of the four women eyed those two for some time in silence, at first expectantly, then suspiciously, and at last with a trace of contempt. Suddenly the big woman leaned over the fence and mouthed:

  ‘What are you standing there for? Ain’t you coming?’

  The old woman, engaged in fumbling among the leaves at her feet, did not hear this sharp demand and did not lift her head. But the girl, very immobile, her eyes wide open, a faint flush on her cheeks, replied instead, in a low voice:

  ‘It’s Rebecca. We’d never get along in there with her.’

  Her eyes lowered themselves to the unconscious head bent near her feet, then suddenly jerked themselves upward at the sound of the tall woman’s voice.

  ‘Take no notice of her!’ she was urged. ‘She won’t know you’ve gone. Your mother’ll want firing bad enough. Don’t your roof leak now, like it used to? Come on!’

  ‘I’ll stay with Rebecca,’ said the girl.

  The tall figure laughed with faint derision. ‘You’re frightened of being caught, perhaps? Your fine Johnny might hear about it, or perhaps you’re too proud to come in the wood and gather sticks with the like of us – and your roof leaking. Come on!’

  An expression of confusion, of injury, of piteousness covered the girl’s face at these words. ‘It’s not that,’ she tried to stammer, ‘only I don’t want to leave Rebecca. And I’ve got enough. My sack’s nearly full. I can just go steady on with Rebecca.’

  ‘Oh! it’s your fine Johnny, that’s all,’ taunted the big woman. ‘It ain’t the wood you’re afraid of. Oh! I saw you come out of the wood last night, didn’t I? You weren’t frightened then, because your fine Johnny had his arm round your neck and was looking at you – ain’t that right?’ She paused, picked up her sack and turning threw over her shoulder the swift parting taunt: ‘You weren’t picking sticks in there with your fine one, were you?’

  She ended all this abruptly on a harsh laugh with which the rest joined in, less loud but with the same air of insensitive derision, before turning and leading them through the fading undergrowth into the gloomy heart of the wood. For a long time after they had disappeared and could be heard only by faint sounds and remote echoes soon lost in the tangled arches of the great trees the girl stood looking after them, a pained flush dying unwillingly on her cheeks, her eyes misty and trembling, her long dark lashes shining and heavy with unfallen tears. Her lips sometimes moved faintly, as if to utter some reproach or protest, but no sound ever came. Suddenly, as if finding this task of watching and reflecting too much for her, she turned away, let her sack slip from her hands and sat on the grass by Rebecca in the sunshine.

  For a long time it seemed that the clear warmth of the autumn air was the only kind and compassionate thing on the hillside. Rebecca did not move except to grope among the leaves and put odd, useless things into her sack, and never looked at the girl. But what the other women had said seemed to fill the silence over and over again, bitterly depressing her. Their hardness of heart for the things very dear to her, their reproaches, the tall woman’s coarse wit and laughter, the moanings of the stout ones, the thin snarl of the little woman, and in all of them the same avariciousness and meanness in some degree, cowed the girl briefly with unhappiness and misery.

  Suddenly, when it seemed to her that her tears must fall instead of drying up in the sunshine, she felt Rebecca put out her hand and touch her. The trembling gaze of the old woman met the eyes of the girl with a kind of dim but very warm assurance and compassion.

  ‘What are you crying for, eh?’ she murmured.

  The girl only blinked her eyes in the sunshine. This movement did not seem to escape the soft gaze of the woman and in a moment she made another murmur.

  ‘You are crying, aren’t you?’ she said.

  This time the young girl, as if instinctively, nodded quickly, parted her lips and tried to smile into Rebecca’s face. This smile fading suddenly she tried to whisper something, but her voice only choked and lost itself. As if knowing what to expect, as if understanding everything to the utmost, the old woman sat silent, watching the girl’s few tears fall and make little silver lines in the red of her cheeks, listening to her faint sobs, and holding in her own unsteady fingers the warm, young hands. At last the sobbing and the tears ended; then Rebecca spoke again.

  ‘How old are you, eh?’ she asked.

  ‘Fifteen,’ whispered the girl. ‘Last spring.’

  ‘You’re Rachel Blackwell’s little un, ain’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ The girl nodded too.

  The woman sat silent for a moment, as if lost again. ‘Yes, yes,’ she began to murmur presently again. ‘I know them all – Rachel, Mary, Till, Lizzie, Jabez – I know all your family – all of them. Don’t you cry any more,’ she urged suddenly. ‘Sit along o’ me. Did they laugh at you? It seemed as if I heard them laughing.’

  The girl, staring into the sunshine, gulped before speaking. ‘Yes. They wanted us to go in there. I didn’t want to go – I don’t like them, none of them – so they laughed at me. They laughed at me about—about—’

  Her voice trailed off, never finishing its last sentence, until her lips trembled and cleared again, and again the old woman, as if understanding everything, as if with perfect insight, knowledge and compassion, kept silent, shaking her head slowly, caressing the girl’s hand, gazing with her shining eyes. She had been conscious of much that had happened in the woodside, of some things the women had said, of their greed, their coarse laughter, and like the girl she had mused on this, stoically, quietly, saying nothing, only gathering together her odd nuts, leaves and grasses, late flowers and fallen feathers in silence except for the rustle of her feet in the grass. The faint emotions she did not speak made themselves felt in tiny tremors across her breast and visible in the pale lustre of her eyes. She knew that she, like the girl, hated and longed to be away from the other women, but to none of their eyes was this hatred or desire visible. To the girl especially it seemed that during her long silences she sat on the grass dreaming of nothing, lost and enchanted simply by the sight of the empty sky. But when she spoke the girl liked the comforting sound of her voice and the trembling, almost as if shy, glances of her nearly transparent eyes.

  These things set her at rest while listening to Rebecca murmuring on and on, sometimes in a curious, disjointed way, sometimes soft and musing, now and then clear and with words which made the girl smile again.

  ‘Don’t you go in the wood if you don’t want,’ she said once. ‘Don’t go after them. They’ll come back. In a little while you can go back to your mother, only wait a little bit more, along o’ me. I shall be going down soon.’

  With these words in her ears the girl seemed to become content to watch the plain below, with its dry, empty cornfields, its houses and trees, with the spire of the church to which she went every Sunday rising brown and gleaming in the sunshine. The old woman fell silent too. Gradually the sun slipped across the plain, slanting long shadows across the green hillside.

  ‘Rebecca,’ said the young girl suddenly, ‘they don’t seem to come back.’

  ‘They’ll come soon.’

  ‘Perhaps they won’t come.’

  Rebecca, without shifting her gaze, said, ‘I shall be going down soon. I shan’t be long.’

  ‘Mother sent me wi
th them. But I don’t care,’ said the girl. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  She waited at the side of the old woman for a long time after saying this, watching the plain with far-off eyes, eating a few beech-nuts and with a faint pain still in her breast thinking, constantly thinking. Sometimes, as if overcome, she shut her eyes, seeing in the darkness the face of a boy and relinquishing this only after a long time, a struggle, a sigh. The other women did not return and under this new influence she ceased to suffer the pain their words had caused her. The face of the boy began to appear in the sunlight, the trees, over the plain. Suddenly she jumped to her feet, staring at the village beneath and cried:

  ‘It’s getting late. I must go home. Let me help you get up.’

  The old woman, motioning with her pale hands, shook her head. ‘It’s early,’ she said, ‘you needn’t go.’

  But the girl, naively eager, watching the village from the corners of her bright eyes, repeated:

  ‘I must go. We’ve sat here a long time.’ She saw that Rebecca did not move. ‘Baint you coming?’ she asked quickly, as if with a sudden, fresh kind of hope.

  Almost as if detecting this new note in her voice the woman shook her head and said, ‘You go, you go. I can come down soon. Your legs are younger than mine. You go.’

  The girl seemed to hesitate, opened her mouth and stood watching her. The woman only repeated:

  ‘Go, go, my dear. I’ll stay a little longer, in the sun.’

  Murmuring some words indistinctly the girl glanced over the hillside, then down at the village again and at the dipping autumn sun. ‘I’ll go then,’ she said suddenly in a louder voice. She picked up her sack. ‘I’ll go – I must go.’

  Watching her depart over the hillside, her form bent under the weight of the sack and casting its long shadow over the green, the old woman’s lips drew themselves slowly into a kind of lifeless immobility. Presently she saw the figures of the other women emerge from far down the woodside and straggle downwards towards the village, resting often with their great bundles, chattering loudly and laughing. The girl had disappeared and suddenly gazing at these other figures the old woman seemed to miss the lightness of her step, her shining eyes, even her tears and the sound of her broken voice. Her head full of a strange numbness, she saw the women take up their sacks and straggle off again, an ungainly line of white and black in the sunshine. The sight of this made her touch her own sack, lying flat on the grass at her side, and after gazing at it briefly, open it and peer at its strange army of contents within. Once again her eyes took on the far-off dreaminess the girl had wondered about. She took out the magpie’s feather, played with it slowly, a smile on her face. This dreaminess, this sort of strange make-believe, went on a long time, deepening, possessing the woman wholly, transforming her. It seemed that nothing, not a call, promise, a sign could move her. Only once she glanced up and saw the last of the women vanishing over the brow of the hill. A faint shadow, so swift as to be either of regret or relief, passed over her face at this. Then again her face settled into immobility, into a peaceful serenity of watchfulness and dreams. Her feathers and flowers and grasses lay forgotten in her lap, her hands spread there also, in an attitude of protection and piety.

  The sun was sinking with autumnal suddenness towards a horizon of blue mist. Still clear and sunlit the sky seemed to try to hold up its yellow orb for the woman to watch with her eager, suddenly greedy eyes. This expression, reminiscent sometimes of those of the women, of the girl with her sudden desire to be gone, gave her eyes a strong, piercing light. Suddenly as if by some mysterious process recognizing this the woman let her eyes travel over the whole sky, thinking of the women, and lastly and more lingeringly of the girl. The memory of her voice, her young eyes, her pain and her own dreaminess, filled her with delight, then sadness.

  Her eyes filled, like the girl’s, with sudden, lingering tears, dimming her vision of the landscape below. Regret and sadness plainly in her face now; in her weakness and loneliness unable to prevent her tears falling on to the contents of her sack, she gazed across the plain for a long time. She nursed herself in her great loneliness. Then suddenly it seemed to her dim vision that there were no longer trees, cornfields, hills and cottages lying there below, but in a moment of mysterious transformation the plain seemed to her as a great bay, utterly serene and still, the dark fields as the shadows of clouds on the water, the spire as the brown sail of some returning ship just at rest, lying there with a kind of serene majesty, never stirring, and the sound of the women retreating down the hillside as no more than the voices of children playing on the shore.

  The Father

  He was a piano-tuner. Snow was falling as he went from house to house, his little blue hands tucked up his sleeves. Already during that morning he had tuned three instruments in rooms where no fires burned and now through bleak streets was making his way to another, walking solemnly, staring with screwed-up eyes at the passing hats, letting the snow cover his fat face as it would.

  Sometimes, hating the snow, the wet soles of his feet, the cold rooms and the icy keys of the pianos, he wished for night to come. Sometimes something like a lump of frozen stone seemed to lie oppressively across his chest. Now and then drops of moisture shivered in his eyes and on the end of his nose, falling on his moustache and the frayed edges of his black bow.

  The knocker of the next house he lifted slowly, as if worn out. It too fell like a stone. In the room where he was admitted there was, as he had expected, no fire and he remembered that for a long time now he had no money from the people who lived there.

  ‘Ah! well!’ he thought simply. ‘That’ll have to be looked into,’ and sighed.

  Sitting down he opened the instrument, and shivering as he touched the keys, began his work.

  ‘Da! – da! – da! – da! – da! – da! – dadaaaa!’ he tested mournfully.

  Suddenly he paused, and then tremblingly from his pocket produced a newspaper of that morning, spread it out on the keys and read slowly and methodically, his lips moving a little:

  ‘An inquest was yesterday held on Selina Bridges, twenty-seven, professional singer, whose body was taken in a decomposed condition from the Thames near Waterloo Bridge, on Tuesday afternoon. Medical evidence was given to show that there were signs of alcohol and neglect. Suicide while of unsound mind.’

  The notice became blurred and as if the printing were to blame he brushed his hand once or twice across the page, but misjudging the distance, striking a discord on the piano instead. He tried to smile, but suddenly tears began to run over his face. His fat shoulders danced sadly in their grief. Gradually, softly, the snow on his hair began to melt in pure blobs on his temples and on his legs and boots changed to streams that curled under the piano like dark snakes.

  In his misery he noticed nothing. At last the woman of the house put in her head and asked:

  ‘What’s the matter, Mr. Bridges? I don’t hear you tunin’!’

  ‘I’m only cold. It’s all right,’ he whispered. He brought a pair of blue hands together in a feeble, demonstrative smack.

  ‘You’ve no business out,’ this woman told him.

  ‘That’s all right! That’s all right,’ he croaked. ‘That’s all—’

  He began to cough, his eyes swelled and became an ugly grey. Suddenly he trembled and wept again.

  ‘You ought to have something,’ the woman suggested.

  While she had gone out his fit of coughing ceased and he fell into a morose state of reflection, shuddering at the thought of the freezing winds, bringing the snow.

  ‘You don’t look well,’ said the woman on returning. ‘Not half you don’t. You’ve no business out. I’ve brought a glass of wine.’

  He drank some wine.

  ‘I’d be well enough,’ he replied. ‘I used to be strong. I never had an illness. But it’s my daughter, Selina, who’s a singer. That’s what’s the matter.’

  He pointed out the notice. As the woman read it he drank more wine and whimpered
quietly. Hearing him, the woman in consolation sniffed and then whimpered too. They wept together. By and by there seemed to come over the woman, the cold piano, and the cheerless room a change and in the place of the great stone across his chest came something soothing and warm. He felt suddenly that he must pour out a long stream of confidences and woes into her soft, kind face.

  ‘She’s my only child,’ he whimpered. ‘When she was young I used to say she’d be a singer. A prima donna, I fancied. It’s nice now to think that I was right. I taught her to read and play – and then after all that—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘After all that she went away,’ he told her and then was silent.

  Because of the pain of all this he did not speak again but sat rubbing his blue hands together, thinking of his daughter, of the poverty of her death, and lastly of what every one knew – that once, years ago, he had quarrelled with her and had not seen her since. On his shaky fingers a tear fell and, looking like a bluish pearl, would not roll off. The woman, observing this, left him and fetched a second glass of wine.

  As he drank it a soft sensation went through his flesh. He suddenly found it an unimaginable pleasure to do nothing but murmur to the woman between his tears, miserable with a warm, comforting misery, softer and easier to bear than the deadly thoughts which had moved leadenly across his brain in the snow.

  He murmured: ‘My only child. I remember I taught her to play. I always said she’d be a singer. I always said so.’

  Now, though he was aware of the poverty and misery of her death, it seemed easy to think of her as successful, artistic and clever, even that she had never despised and left him. In a little while growing warmer and less conscience-stricken, he turned again to work on the piano, permitting himself occasionally the thin luxury of a scale or two, forgetting the snow, the endless list of houses before him, and seeing the death of his daughter as if screened from it by a pleasant rosy cloud. At last he got up, called thanks to the woman of the house and, tucking his hands into his sleeves, stepped into the snow again.