by H. E. Bates
All that time she had been teaching at the school and the singing lessons had been breathless and gay occasions on the basis that when one is happy the desire for something quick and joyful is irresistible. And she would assure herself constantly: ‘In a year or two I shall be married and be able to leave the school. I can’t imagine, even, what it will be like without the lessons!’
Then she had been able to announce: ‘I’m engaged. I became engaged on Sunday,’ and in the common-room had argued about the stone in the ring as zealously as about a chord in a chopin waltz.
‘I shall be married in a year or so!’
In a sort of tempestuous glee she had flung instructions to the gaping classes and chose the most sentimental songs.
Suddenly she found it impossible to conceive life without love, and all at once remembered on one occasion laying her finger-tips on his cheek and kissing him. Now, of course, it meant that she had been unutterably silly to grow thus intimate with a man who had said, ‘I promise on my honour!’ and then had written ‘a deception which has for some time past been painful to me.’
It seemed distant and soulless. What seemed immediate and real was the idea that in all probability she had six or seven, thirteen or fourteen, even nineteen or twenty years of the school to look forward to. Even nine or ten days loomed like an eternity. She was not beautiful, was sometimes even sentimental and in the common-room they thought her a child, though she was nearly thirty, and treated her condescendingly.
She sat there thinking, and her feet, which protruded from the shadows into the sunshine, grew unbearably hot, throbbing like her head. Musing, she tried to be resolute and dispassionate, but felt lonely and thoughtless instead. Somewhere in the distance it seemed the children had begun to clatter down towards her and would be round her in a minute. Half-mechanically she dropped her left hand into her pocket and at the same moment heard a bee and a sparrow begin humming and chirping drowsily against each other.
Before the children came a long time seemed to pass, but they filed in at last, sat like birds, chattered and eyed her curiously and wondered why she did not move.
‘Miss Stephens!’ rang out the voice of Miss Beam, ‘the next lesson, please!’
The bee and the sparrow became suddenly quiet, the long stretches of light on the floor insufferably bright and hot and the children very silent, as if expectant.
‘The next lesson, please!’ half-shouted the Head Mistress. ‘Please!’
‘I’m sorry. Yes.’
She rose and coughed, for a moment stared stonily at the blue sky through the windows, then in a little while began to beat, calling across the rows of singing heads:
‘Higher! Open your mouths. You must have freedom! More freedom! Freedom!’
And the second lesson went on.
The Schoolmistress
Having at last made the decison which had kept her quiet there for the last half-hour, the little schoolmistress rose from the dressing table, her grey hair shining a faint silver under the candle-light and, leaving the room, went downstairs with the candle in her hand.
At the foot of the stairs, after putting her hand on the door-knob, she blew out the light and entered the room. A whitish coil of smoke danced up before her face. She seemed to wait with resignation for it to evaporate, then, when it had done so, and finding herself staring at the figure of her friend Miss Hallett, seated by the fire, became suddenly confused and nervous and could do no more than whisper when she had intended to speak in her firm, habitual voice.
‘We had better begin to get ready, Miss Hallett, hadn’t we?’ she said.
The other little woman, dressed as neatly but more brightly and stylishly than the schoolmistress herself, let a little smile pass across her less faded lips before replying:
‘Yes. We’d better begin. I’m excited already, aren’t you?’
Nodding gently, the schoolmistress went and sat down at her side. Twice she prepared to speak but could get nothing to pass her frail little lips. She moved her head jerkily from side to side and then finally, pressing her hand to her temples, burst out:
‘Miss Hallett, I’ve something to say. You know where we’re going to-night, of course. It’s not often anything happens to us like this. And you know why we’re going to the party, too, don’t you?’
‘It’s because the headmaster has been here twenty-five years, isn’t it? Think of it – twenty-five years. It doesn’t seem possible.’
The schoolmistress lowered her eyes. ‘Yes, but it is. I remember it. I was here when he came.’
‘You were here?’ The other raised her eyebrows. ‘Then you’ve been here twenty-five years too!’
The schoolmistress let a smile pass over her lips also. ‘Not twenty-five – nearly thirty,’ she whispered.
‘Thirty! I didn’t know! Then the party ought to be in your honour too!’ exclaimed the other.
‘No, no!’ The little lips trembled in protest. ‘I was away nearly a year – I was ill. The years aren’t consecutive. Then, besides—’ she hesitated, her voice dropped a little, ‘—I was only a girl when I came – only on probation. Mr. Unwin came officially to be schoolmaster – it’s quite different.’
She begged the other suddenly, with only half-coherent whispers, with little touches and gestures, and lastly with a smile, to say nothing of this. She desired no honour, she said. Then, with the nervous jerkiness which had been so much part of her since entering the room, she produced a little parcel which during all that time she had somehow kept hidden, and gave it into the other’s hands.
‘Open it, open it,’ she whispered. ‘It’s something—something—something to commemorate our long friendship – only a little thing. But I can’t help it.’
The other woman, astonished, unwrapped the parcel slowly. With a rustle the paper fell away from the object within. With wide, very nearly sad eyes the schoolmistress watched this held up to the light, a little comb of tortoiseshell, embellished with silver and studded with a single diamond. It seemed to her like a gleam of deep, uneven gold with another flash, clear and silver, bursting from it. Before the other had time to speak she was whispering again:
‘I’ve had it ever since I came here – ever since I was a girl. I used to wear it then.’ Her voice became tremulous, as if with tears. ‘Now I’m too old – and you can have it. Yes, you have it. We’ve been such friends. It will do to remember me by.’
At this point there were tears in her eyes too. Now and then an unusually heavy sigh would drag its way up her breast, where the lace would flutter, and find her lips in a faint and poignant sound. Suddenly Miss Hallett raised her voice.
‘Oh, Miss Joyce, what can I do to thank you? It’s too good of you. Indeed – I don’t know what to say. It’s I who should give something to you.’
‘It’s nothing.’ The schoolmistress, as she uttered these words, sought the other’s hands, grasped them with unexpected fervour and, still crying a little, rose from her chair and said:
‘Now I’m going to dress for the party. Don’t say anything – keep it, take care of it.’
So simple, so unpretending, yet so difficult for her to say, these words seemed to reach the other woman as a reproach might have done. In another moment as if unable to bear them, she groped for and seized the schoolmistress’s hand and, pressing it against her own, murmured confusedly a long, soft string of thanks and protestations. During all this the comb lay clutched in her hands, imprisoned between their frail, sunken breasts, like some symbol joining or separating them. Suddenly the schoolmistress, as if fearful of breaking down under this, murmured again:
‘Let me go and dress now.’
She gently released her hand and, casting back a single glance at the tortoiseshell comb, seized the candle and went upstairs again, upset but happy.
She remembered while dressing how she had feared this scene, how foolish it had sometimes seemed to her, how painful had been even the thought of giving away the comb which she had not worn for so long. The
n she remembered how long she had lived with Miss Hallett – she thought it must be nearly twenty years. Sunday after Sunday they had been to church together. Every winter they had taken care of each other. They had chosen their clothes together: she had humoured Miss Hallett in her desire for colour, and Miss Hallett had looked kindly on her austere and unpretentious fashions. She found it difficult to dress under the weight of these memories and of the memories of her life at the school, where she had taught for so long. Her hands trembled with the hooks and buttons of her stiff silk dress. Even her hair had a look of trembling when she combed it and the lace at the neck of her dark dress seemed to quiver. When she put on her spectacles the eyes beneath them, in the candle-light, were never still. Her face assumed an expression poised, as it were, between expectancy and regret.
She could see that Miss Hallett was excited too. In the sitting-room, in the passage and the street and finally in the hall where the party was being given in honour of the headmaster, her eyes danced, she could not keep her hands still.
But the schoolmistress’s feeling of half-regret, half-expectancy, did not pass. Something, she could not tell what, kept her from smiling even so much as she habitually did. She would touch her spectacles, finger her breast and stammer when people spoke to her. All the timid, nervous creature in her seemed to rise to the surface, as if the party were being given in her honour.
Together she and Miss Hallett shook hands with the schoolmaster. Unable to say the words which she knew she ought to say, she blushed darkly and pressed her hands together. But Miss Hallett remained self-possessed, talking gaily, extending congratulations, resting her eyes for long moments on the schoolmaster’s face.
‘We were saying it doesn’t seem possible – twenty-five years! I should never dream it. We’re all so proud of you. We know what such a long service means, what troubles and disappointments.’ She went on like this for a long time, then said at last: ‘Ssh! Now they are going to begin – they are beckoning you to sit at the head of the table – at the place of honour, you know. You’ll have to leave us.’
As the schoolmaster walked to the end of the room there was a clapping of hands. He took up his position behind a chair which had been decorated with gold tissue paper and raised a little above the rest. The eyes of the guests followed him deferentially.
Only the schoolmistress was not watching him. All about her, she knew, were the important people of the town and district, the mayor and mayoress, the clergymen, the education authorities and other teachers, the local councillors, the schoolmaster’s closest friends. She knew they must notice her standing with her hands hanging motionless at her sides, as if stupid, and with her eyes on Miss Hallett’s hair.
Yet she did not care. She even moved her lips in a timid but astonished whisper: ‘She is wearing the comb!’
Even after the clapping had ceased and the party had begun, this thought kept repeating itself. For long intervals she could not take her eyes away from Miss Hallett’s head. She tried to cover her confusion by eating, by staring at the festoons on the wall, by listening to the babble of voices about her. But her eyes returned constantly to the comb in Miss Hallett’s hair, flashing and gleaming there with its glossy gold and brown, its silver edge, and its diamond. She tried again and again to regard this as an hallucination, but always without success. The reality of it forcing itself upon her at last she endeavoured to persuade herself into the belief that she had no longer any interest in it. She had given it away! It was hers no longer! Yet the timid, unassuming creature in her was shocked and hurt. She seemed to see suddenly the meaning of Miss Hallett’s excitement, of her assurance, her unfaltering congratulations, of the ease with which she talked to the schoolmaster and looked into his eyes.
She thought of the distress of mind which had taken place in her before she had given up the comb. Every new gleam and flash brought a return of some pang she had suffered while making her decision. She thought of the happiness she had felt when Miss Hallett had seized and caressed her head and hands.
The eating came to an end at last. The mayor and some of the most important people stood up and made speeches. The schoolmistress saw and heard them dimly, as if cut off from them by some impenetrable cloud. Now, more often than ever, her eyes came to rest on Miss Hallett. In her hair the comb seemed to send out ever brighter flashes of tortoiseshell and silver. The diamond gleamed like a cold eye. She seemed to float helplessly in a torrent of memories which each of these things began.
Miss Hallett’s eyes never left the schoolmaster’s face. To the schoolmistress there was something not simply distasteful in this, but something cruel, shocking, and nauseating because cheap and vulgar. She began gradually, as the evening went on, to see in some one else the personification of all those things she had all her life tried to suppress in herself. All Miss Hallett’s protracted gazes, all her excitement, her eagerness to be attracted and noticed by every one, the schoolmaster especially, revolted her. She knew she had seen these things, though in a less degree, in Miss Hallett already – in her love of colour and the finer clothes she wore. To-night they were not only more marked but made sharp and insufferable by the existence of the comb in her hair.
She asked herself again and again what she could do. She pondered deeply while watching Miss Hallett moving among the guests, talking gaily with the mayor, the councillors, and lastly with the schoolmaster himself.
It struck her suddenly, as she watched her desperate attempts to seduce a smile from him, as she saw her white hands fluttering about her breast as she flattered him with her long glances, that all this was pathetic. How pathetic and how desperate too! It seemed as if Miss Hallett were breaking down all her dearest and finest reservations and surrendering everything to him, from her finger-tips to the comb the schoolmistress had given her. And because pathetic as well as cruel and shocking, she felt it defeated her every resolve to remonstrate, to demand, to beseech that it might end.
She moved about slowly, talking listlessly, watching Miss Hallett emerge from one group and another, always with her desperate smiles and gestures, always with the tortoiseshell comb flashing in her hair.
Presently Miss Hallett came across the dazzling floor and spoke quickly:
‘The schoolmaster wants to know just how many years you’ve been at the school,’ she said.
Her eyes were alight, as if with some unspoken because too intense delight. The schoolmistress shook her head.
‘I don’t remember, I don’t remember,’ she stammered.
‘But you must tell him!’
Aware suddenly that she would be forced to say something at this moment, the schoolmistress tried to begin her reproaches, her entreaties.
‘You’re wearing the comb I gave you – you look so—so—’
She gave up in despair. Miss Hallett smiled quietly at this confusion and said:
‘Yes, I know, I know. But what shall I tell him?’
‘Tell him I don’t remember—I don’t remember. I don’t want any honour.’
She felt that she could say nothing else, could utter not the faintest reproach, could not even suggest the horror, the revulsion, the pain and despair which filled her. She brought her hands together and watched Miss Hallett cross the shining floor to where the schoolmaster stood. Suddenly, under the light, the comb flashed its brightest gleam. It covered her suddenly with a feeling of inability to move or speak, a sense of how childish she was, how absurd. Standing quite still she thought of all the years she had spent in the school, of how she had worked diligently, conscientiously, hand in hand with the schoolmaster, until she had had all the infants under her care, of how she had saved her money, contributed every year to the pensions’ fund and had earned the respect of every one.
Now it seemed to her that she had lost this, had lost everything, even the most precious link with her girlhood, even her faith in life itself. Her emotions were so strong she felt she must cry.
‘Now I have nothing, I have nothing!’ she whispered
.
But there was not a sound from her lips. At the far end of the room there was laughter and some one gave out a toast. Expressionless, mute, wondering, she stood there until the wine was brought. Then she took it and responding to the toast, drank it slowly, and standing where she was, her spectacles shining vacantly, her mouth open, as if ready to cry out, clutched her empty glass in her hands.
Fishing
It was summer. The hot, still days were followed by evenings of a lovely sultry peacefulness scented with mown hay, dog-roses and clover. The river, day and night, looked as if it slept between its rows of still, luscious green reeds.
Two old friends since youth, Will and Matthew, would often on such evenings walk out together as far as the woods, across the cornfields, along to the edge of the marshes or by the river. They were widowers and all the time talked tenderly of the past, deploring the present and recalling wistfully memories of early days.
When they walked by the river, sat on the towing-path gates or leaned over the bridge they talked of fishing. They talked, as well, of otter-chasing, of snipe, wild-duck, kingfishers and reed-pipers, of the strange cries of meadow-crakes and owls, of all those things in their lives which were now no more than memories.
On the bridge one evening, as they watched the flies dancing over the clear, dark surface of the stream and the water flapping sleepily against the reeds and willow-roots, Will pointed and said:
‘Under that willow I’ve caught scores of eels.’
‘I’ve been with you,’ said Matthew, shaking his head, ‘often and often.’
‘Used to lay the lines overnight,’ went on the other. ‘Every summer.’
‘And then come in the morning before it was daylight.’
‘Yes, come in the morning before it was daylight, and take the eels.’
This brief, wistful reflection made them silent. It was between sunset and the summer darkness. Under the bridge the water looked already black and oily, but on Matthew’s watch-chain a medal he had won for fishing still gleamed brightly and the air was still intoxicating and full of warmth.