The Black Boxer Tales

by H. E. Bates

  Esther, who had not once stirred while he was speaking, followed all his movements with soft, attentive eyes. She was sitting on a heap of straw, and her limbs were cramped, and she would have liked to follow him, but she sat as if hypnotized and did not stir.

  ‘Have a wet with me, Pike?’ called a thresher, holding up a bottle.

  Pike waved his hand and shook his head and sauntered away with his dog.

  It was quite silent when he had gone. The intense atmosphere of listening vanished. Jasper and two of the threshers dozed off to sleep, one with his chin on his chest and his long red tongue lolling out. Little whirl-winds of chaff flew round and round. The girl herself sat in a kind of dream, in a thrill of meditation, giving herself up wholly to the memory of his lively, handsome face, his faintly mysterious personality and his romantic words.

  Suddenly, when some time had passed, the silence was broken by the loud report of a gunshot. The sleepers opened their eyes and sat up in fright, one of the threshers so violently that he bit his tongue.

  Dead silence fell. At length one of the women slid off her sack and whispered:

  ‘Pike, I’ll gamble.’

  They waited.

  And presently there were footsteps, and Pike appeared, sauntering lazily along, the dog still at his heels, as if nothing had happened.

  ‘You hear a shot, Pike?’ said a thresher.

  ‘I heard something.’

  ‘See any shooters?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see any shooters.’

  He began whistling softly, and very deftly slid a cock-pheasant feather down his sleeve and began brushing it with his fingers.

  ‘Pretty feather,’ said a woman.

  ‘Ah!’ Pike said indifferently, twisting it like a shuttle.

  ‘And it’s come from some pretty bird? I guess it did.’

  ‘You’re clever, ain’t you?’

  ‘Oh! out with it. The luck fair drops into your lap from heaven. A bird would sit on a mole-hill and stare at you while you shot it.’

  ‘Perhaps it would. Yes, perhaps it would.’

  He threw away the feather with a smile. When the threshing began everyone talked of his amazing luck and of the pheasant he had shot while no one was looking, and the girl sat aside on the heap of pine-wood, in the sunshine, alternately rubbing the feather across her cheek and letting the light play on its colours, dazzled by its loveliness.

  • III •

  Evening came on and Esther put the last mushroom, a little silky white button, into her basket with the rest, and hurried through the dewy grass of the paddock in the direction of the farm and the setting sun. The wind had dropped, and the engine had suddenly ceased and the air was silent. The sky was cold and clear as glass except for a flush of lemon and green above the sunset.

  Her heart beat faster when she looked at the mushrooms and she was afraid of being seen in the paddock. Coming to the gate by the stack-yard she saw the Birds drive off, and heard the engineers shouting as they coupled up the jack and the drum ready to go away, and her heart sank in fear.

  The heavy scent of newly threshed corn and smoke and the dampness of evening filled the farmyard. It was already shadowy in the wagon-shed and between the stacks of straw. As she passed the engine, encountering its sudden warmth and looking in all directions for Pike’s white horse, she saw her mother watching from the kitchen door and hid herself quickly in the shed, afraid of being seen.

  After standing there a little, her heart pounding in her throat, she caught sight of the horse. It was already harnessed to the cart, and it was waiting by a stack of barley straw, in the farthest corner of the yard. She could hear the tinkle of its bit as it champed the straw.

  She skirted the stacks and stood tensely still by Pike’s horse and waited: and gradually she heard the rattle of couplings and the heavy grinding of wheels and knew that the engine was departing; she heard many voices, and among them, for the first time since returning, the voice of Pike himself, and the sound of it filled her with an ecstasy of joy and apprehension that was like a sickness. Why was she there, she began to ask herself. What would she do when he came? Hadn’t she better run away and give the mushrooms to her mother before he had time to come? What would he do when he found her there?

  But she did not move, and presently by the louder clanging of wheels and the receding voices and the black smoke floating away over the darkening fields she knew that the engine was leaving the yard. The sounds grew fainter. A woman ran past, waving something above her head, shouting:

  ‘You old fool, left your waistcoat again! You’ll leave yourself next!’

  Her voice faded, too. The yard became silent except for the hens scratching among the straw and Pike’s horse nodding its head. She looked into the cart and saw the gleam of a gun-barrel, and the rabbit and the pheasant lying side by side there in a pool of blood. The clouds above the sunset were turning purple and red, and one of the darker clouds loomed up and resolved itself into a flock of starlings that flew over with a whisper of beating wings.

  She heard a whistle and saw the horse prick up his ears, and she longed desperately for one second to be swallowed up in shadow, but a moment later Pike was there, standing before her.

  It seemed to her that he looked darker and taller in the twilight, and all at once her thoughts and her will subjected themselves to him. The sound of his voice murmuring in astonishment, ‘Esther!’ seemed to her full of an unbelievable tenderness, and she forgot all that she was to have said to him and stood instead in an attitude of solemn adoration, gazing shyly at him with her head thrown back against the straw. A sensation of sublime happiness overcame her merely because he returned this stare, and she felt herself trembling, the desire to explain everything at the same moment vanishing. She told herself that he divined the meaning of her presence there, and the thought passed swiftly through her mind and made her smile.

  He returned her smile, too, and came a step nearer and stood so that he was gazing down at her. Slowly the sensuous, smiling, almost ironical expression in his black eyes began to bewilder her. She saw him raise his arms and felt him seize her own with a gentle eagerness that flooded her with a tumultuous happiness followed by weakness and terror. She tried to lift her arms and push away the dark face bearing slowly down on her, but she felt the pressure on her arms increase, and something began slowly to crush her breast until she closed her eyes. Quickly and impassionately, pressing her head relentlessly farther and farther back against the straw, Pike began to kiss her, kissing her as if he would never release her, until the very life in her seemed to surge up and career away from his touch in a dark flood, leaving her faint and drunken.

  Gradually, after a long time, she felt herself being released, and the pain of being suddenly severed from him, followed by the long, exquisite kiss, seemed to stun her, and she felt her eyes filling with tears.

  She felt ashamed of her tears, and did not know how to face him. She turned and pressed her face against the stack, struggling against her sobs as she struggled against the kiss, weak but happy, feeling as if her soul had been frightened and bruised but transported by some emotion at once too powerful and exquisite for her to comprehend.

  ‘What is it?’ said Pike. ‘Don’t you like being kissed?’

  The half-soft, half-ironical words burned in her mind long after she had heard the last flick of the whip, the horse’s feet rustling through the straw and the sound of wheels retreating farther and farther away.

  She lay down and thrust her face into the straw. The sky grew darker, and a flock of starlings flying overhead with a low whirr of wings could hardly be seen. It comforted her to breathe the sweet scent of the straw. A mouse that had escaped came out in the silence and rustled away, and listening to it her thoughts went back to the early morning, the rats, the story Pike had told under the shed, the pheasant he had shot, and at last the kiss he had given her. The memory of these things filled her soul suddenly with a flood of miraculous, sublime happiness difficult to bear.
She gave a long sigh and slowly the grief on her face faded, and raising her head, she fixed her eyes on the dark sky, already pointed with stars, and smiled.

  No sooner had she begun to smile, however, than it seemed as if her heart would break.

  Bonus Stories

  The Laugh

  First published in 1926, ‘The Laugh’ is one of Bates’s early comic tales set in his trademark rural locale with charming dialect and witty, sensitive prose. The story follows a young man, the pending visit of his rich aunt, and a sweetheart who tests his love.

  The elder brother Doughty, David, jogged along in the ancient high trap with his back to the sunset. To the clatter of hoofs his thoughts went: ‘Not many days like this, what with the sun, and Aunt Julia’s letter, and all!’ And he whipped on the mare, his big body rolling a little more, the fields dancing by more madly. The sun, still warm, caressed the grey-dusted hairs on the back of his neck, and made him think again, to the tune of hoofs, ‘Never was a day like this, what with that letter from Aunt Juley and all!’ And he tickled the under-parts of the mare, the old wheels beneath cuffing up the flints for a shower that fell with faint music behind.

  ‘Never such a day! Never such a day!’ The trap flew on. The music grew to a deep hum, his face redder, his thoughts warm, while the softness of the sky, light-coloured, seemed to float about his head until the eyes looked out on a very bright world indeed. Very good! Fine, indeed.

  And the click of hoofs came, shaping thought for him, ‘six thousand pounds! Six thousand pounds!’

  Everyone knew! Anybody knew! His Aunt Juley was worth six thousand pounds! The trap made speed again. In the distance now appeared his little house, very white, gleaming like an eye from tangled trees. Nearer! Nearer! Everyone knew what Aunt Juley was worth! Anybody knew—six thousand pounds if a penny! Six thousand. His old Aunt Juley!

  The warmth in him, rising suddenly from the region of his stomach, filled his chest with a glow like heartburn, and rose through his neck to his face, purpling it near the cheek-bones and ears. It brought the last stupendous thought, ‘And Aunt Juley’s coming to Low Cross! She’s coming to see us! And she’s worth——’

  Flung suddenly through the air, he never finished the thought, and, alighting on the soft turf of the road-side, forgot for a moment the existence of Aunt Juley, in his puzzled contemplation of a rapidly revolving landscape, of which the off wheel of his trap, whirling on alone a hundred yards down the road, seemed to be axis. He managed to get up, no bones broken, only his confounded hams tingling, damn it! And how could he expect to catch that loose wheel, the damn thing! He’d always said it would happen, damn it, oh damn it!

  Aching, glad that Aunt Juley hadn’t been with him just then, he caught the mare, took her from the shafts, which let him down with a bang, and tied her to a gate post. Nice timing! New trap most likely!… And fretting, he strode down the road to the white house, winking like an eye across the open land.

  Three hours later the trap, loosed wheel and all, lay at his kitchen door. Standing astraddle, contemplating the derelict, he wished for another couple of hours of day in order to finish the business off. For, after all, this business must be finished; or, if not finished, the trap scrapped for a new thing—yellow wheels, he thought, and not so confounded high, this time. He hadn’t come to climb half way to heaven every time he wanted to drive! Not he. Yellow wheels and not so high, this time!

  ‘Abel! Abel!’ he called into the kitchen. His younger brother did not appear. ‘Abel! Abel! Did we ought to have a new trap now she’s coming?’ Abel neither answered nor came. David with a movement of recklessness like that preceding a bather’s plunge, dashed into the house, called once, twice, and reappearing, thought, ‘courting’ and as suddenly sat down in renewed contemplation of the wreck …

  In gathering dust Abel smoothed back his long dark hair, and, relieved of its shadow, looked down into the face of a girl. He whispered something, a phrase built about the word ‘love’ and she replied, equally softly, and let him kiss her lips. In a deep study, arms about each other, they watched the curve of hill above the sunset, Abel thinking, ‘she’ll come along there tomorrow. Six thousand pound!’ He looked down at the girl. She did not see him, and he thought, ‘You don’t know, my Ellen, what’s coming to me and you.’

  And the dusk grew to autumn dark, wet and scented, and they remained there, looked into one black statue with one white blotch where their faces met. Then Abel blurted out to her, ‘My Aunt Juley’s coming. She’s worth six thousand pound.’

  He heard no reply. ‘Six thousand pounds’ he repeated.

  She turned her white face at last. ‘Six thousand pound?’ she echoed softly. ‘Yes. That’s a lot o’ money!’

  He kissed her. ‘A lot o’ money! I should think it is. I should durn well think it is. Ellen! Ellen! It’s—it’s—it’s—’

  ‘It is,’ she said.

  Then the darkness was cut by no sound for a long time. But the owls began at last, a bird stirred in dry leaves, and Abel loosed his tongue.

  ‘How’d you like that?’ he asked. From the depths of his embrace the voice floated up, ‘not much.’

  His embrace slackened, and from it the dark figure escaped and spoke again. ‘It is a sight too much money for any man.’

  Astounded, Abel could not speak. He managed to think, ‘Ellen cape you’re mad. You’re mad. Six thousand pounds is—is—’ And again he couldn’t think what the sum was to him. He edged away from her. Mad! Mad! ‘A sight too much money for any man!’ and at last he spoke, asking her, ‘you don’t care?’

  She turned her face away. ‘I think it’s just main foolish you an’ David should plague an old body’s life out so’s you can grab her money,’ she said.

  ‘Foolish?’

  ‘Aye an’ wicked too.’

  ‘You call me wicked, Ellen Cape?’

  ‘It’s wicked to steal.’

  ‘Steal?’

  ‘Plaguing a body’s life out and then taking her money is stealing.’

  Abel gestured hopelessly. ‘But we’ll be main kind to her, Ellen, and let her sleep in the best feather, and keep her warm, and read the paper to her—coddle her, we will.’

  ‘And wish she were dead, maybe, while you’re doing it.’

  He clutched her fiercely. ‘You’re daft, Ellen Cape,’ he told her. ‘You’re daft.’

  She sprang free, eyes dancing, hands quivering, and backed away. ‘Then Ellen Cape’s no wife for moneyed men,’ she called, and ran down the hill on fierce feet.

  Already the new trap—yellow wheels and not so durned high!—had been bought and driven home and housed with care, when, three days later, young Abel went to meet Aunt Juley. He walked along the white road slowly … No great game, this. Aunt Juley hadn’t been since he was seven! … The train would not be in for years!

  ‘Mebbe,’ David had said, ‘she’d like that liddle walk. It’s all down-hill. Most likely it’s main foolish to harness up a trap for that half mile.’ And Abel walked. Mooning along he recalled his directions … Hat off, a smile, ‘You must be my Aunt Juley! How are you? You look—this way—this way. Far? Oh! No, just down the hill—the white house through the trees—that’s it. We thought mebbe you’d like the walk. My arm, Aunt Juley?…’

  ‘Moneyed men can take the air, it seems,’ he heard, suddenly. He stopped. Up and down the white road he glanced, and saw nothing likely to possess that voice. He listened and heard nothing. He went on.

  ‘Fine weather makes fine birds,’ the same voice called. The voice of Ellen Cape! He stopped and called into the thicket. ‘Skulking in bushes don’t do ’em no good!’

  Silence. More quickly he climbed the white road. Silence still; then, from that thicket a sound, like a bird-note, or a laugh, reached him. A laugh!

  He did not turn, but moodily went on, head down thinking: he’d not be laughed at, he’d bring her round. The years he’d walked with Ellen Cape! Not at all his old Aunt Juley’s money should rob him of a wife. Si
x thousand pounds! ‘It’s a sight too much for any man!’ He’d win her back … ‘Hat off, a smile’ … not another like her hereabout … ‘You must be my Aunt Juley’ … he was sad about this, he hadn’t slept … ‘This way, this way’… he wanted her, she knew it, they knew where they would like to live after the marriage … ‘The white house through the trees, that’s it’ … Oh! Ellen Cape … oh! damn! …

  The train steamed in. Dreamily he watched the smoke and steam, very white, pillowing up softly against the clear autumn sky. The folks alighted—one, two, three—three men. Aunt Juley had not come! He felt the gladness rising in him. Oh!

  From nowhere the little old lady, pinched, acid-faced, came and tweaked his coat. ‘Young man,’ she said, ‘where does David Doughty live?’

  The little old lady herself! … Hat off, a smile …

  ‘You must,’ began young Abel. ‘You must … you must… be mistaken.’

  ‘Mistaken?’

  ‘There’s no Doughty here now.’

  ‘No Doughty? But this is Low Cross?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  The acid-faced shrivelled a little more. ‘No Doughty!’ it said, ‘No Doughty!’

  ‘There’s a Doughty family, mebbe, at Eklor, down the line ten miles,’ young Abel volunteered.

  ‘Young man, how soon does the train return?’

  ‘Twenty minutes.’

  He watched the little black figure disappear.

  He wandered home through the fields, where light lay in long warm bands of yellow. In front of him the thicket, brown and red, made him think with sudden joy. ‘Mebbe Ellen Cape’s in there still. She’d be dying for a look at Aunt Juley.’

  Oh! damn Aunt Juley, and the six thousand pounds! Turning, he saw the train smoke clouding again, and the clear whistle reached his ears. Gone! He didn’t care. He cared only— was Ellen Cape hiding in that thicket, and could he find her and soon, soon? He approached quietly. The air, windless, clear, seemed to magnify the sound of his feet in the grass to thunder. Once or twice he stopped and listened, but Ellen Cape and the birds were quiet together. Going to the spot where she had called, he searched and cried at last, ‘Are you there, Ellen Cape?’