Day's End and Other Stories (11 page)

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:

‘Did you see him?'

‘Yes. I gave it to him.'

She whispered, ‘Thank you.' She looked frightened in the silence which followed her words. Then she broke out:

‘Did he read it?'

‘I think so.'

‘Did he say anything? What did he say? What did he do?'

Her words seemed to confuse each other in their struggle for supremacy. I remained silent. Suddenly she burst out, womanishly, straight to the point:

‘There's something you won't tell me!'

I couldn't answer her. Then a repetition of the words seemed to strike my heart like a blow. I looked once again at that simple, piteous face waiting for me to blurt out a piece of information which I felt she hadn't the courage to endure without weeping. But no longer able to bear her repeated cry I told her with abrupt ingenuousness:

‘He tore it up.'

She started wildly. A few broken sounds escaped from her and fled up among the branches. Then there was no sound but that of the languid leaves and a bird or two among them. On her face a few tears
glistened and dried. The lips opened in their old expectant way, but her eyes were sombre and dilated, as if she hadn't slept for weeks. I had to ask:

‘Doesn't he care about you?'

Her face wore an expression of wonder then of miserable resignation. Then she whispered slowly:

‘They say – in the village they say I haven't a chance against Thomasin Dean.'

In another moment I was conscious of a figure retreating among the trees. Then silence took her place. Until long after I stood gazing at the ground, crushing slowly and earnestly beneath my foot a piece of wood scarlet with ants, as if expecting to gain consolation from that deadly serious task. The sun began to go down as I stood there. A few shadows assembled darkly like a picket ready for patrol. The birds fluttered noisily among the leaves. Suddenly I caught the sweet vanilla scent of may borne in from the hedges on a faint wind. I held up my head and at once all the sensations of all the springs of my life seemed to assail me as I breathed that unexpected fragrance. The next moment I saw, soberly and calmly, that for me the significance and magic of a woman's beauty must likewise lie in a single impression of a face beneath an umbrella in the gloom of a storm. It was like a revelation.

I remember throwing up my arms with a faint sigh as I resigned myself to this soothing thought. As I walked slowly from the wood I wasn't conscious of the faintest tremor of sadness or regret.
Outside the evening was still and quiet, as if at a prayer. Faint and intoxicating the scent of may followed me over the darkening fields until my head was singing with joy.

Somewhere in the east, deceptively close and loud, a cuckoo called on and on, as if it were noon, and I laughed in return.

Sometimes she is actually awakened at four or five by the muffled bumps of his feet on the wooden stairs, but more often than not she sleeps on, only a sigh or the slightest tremor of her body unconsciously marking her recognition of his rising.

She sleeps peaceably enough. Neither the jangle of crocks and spoons nor the hiss of the thick slices of bacon disturbs her. Whatever song her son bellows or whistles out above the frying-pan she does not hear. The clatter of his boots on the red floor has no effect. She hears nothing; sleeps through everything.

But when, three-quarters of an hour later he shuts the door behind his back and stamps or shuffles his way over a yard of embedded stones and mud, she wakes. Her whole body is awake. The nature of the sounds he makes on going out into the morning does not matter. Only the quick, double movement of the door is important, never failing to bring her to consciousness.

From that moment she cannot sleep. In winter she lies staring blankly until day makes slits of light in the blackness and an odd sparrow chirps. In summer he
has no sooner gone than she is at the threshold over which he has a moment before passed. Her body though old, is alight from years of sun. She stands and looks quietly, then disappears to eat and wash, her mind dwelling on him.

Knowing she cannot expect to see him before six in the evening, or in autumn, nine or ten, she keeps some sort of communion, in the cottage in winter, or under the sunlight outside when summer comes. Thus, always, her head full of shy, half-coloured thoughts, she will wait for the return of her son. He is her youngest, the last at home, unmarried and past thirty. His cheeks, brown and level, proclaim his breed no less than his tallness, his black hair, and his trousers tied below the knee with odd, dirty pieces of string.

Her body will scarcely stir through the hot summer hours. Astute, wise in matters of quietness, she is utterly silent. Her face has a strange pallor as she listens to the birds in the wooded hollow or the bees moaning up and down the dark, red-flowered bean rows. Very often she eats nothing. Her strength seems to lie within her, conserved by that quiet wisdom of the very old. With a regularity which does not perturb her, hours of thought, shadows, little noises, great quietnesses, clouds and sun go softly past her.

Evening comes, the currant bushes lie in shadow. She closes her eyes, which, behind their placid feint of sleep, begin to dance with sharp-coloured lights, green, orange and red. Her hands twitch, her body
behaves in a restless, unwise way that sucks her strength. The bees and birds cease to interest her. The light scents of stocks and columbine and the pungent whiffs of dry grasses are lost on her. With eyes shut she inhabits a delicious warm darkness, anticipant, trembling.

‘Abel!' she suddenly calls. Abel!'

He arrives. At the window or her seat in the late sunshine she watches, trembling more than ever, her hands keeping a continual play against each other, nervous and pitiful, and sometimes she will use them to deaden the sudden rise of her shallow bosom that seems to swell up and up, beyond her strength.

Neither a sound nor movement of his escapes her. She is absorbed in the spectacle of his slushing among half a dozen swine, suddenly hungrily rampant after a quiescent day of sun. Every step of his through the dark, dung-wet earth is recorded. Her ears dwell on the sound of his voice. ‘Blast you! Keep still!' and the storm of feet that precedes and follows it. The squeals from the lissom, dirty, pinkish-yellow draws a smile or two from her. Her body feels warm. She sniffs air, scentless to her except for that animal smell she will associate with him for ever. The suck-suck of the pigs seems to have ended. There are no sounds except those of his feet, tramping dully, and of his voice, humming abstractly some tune. On his advancing figure her watch is continuous. He slouches nearer, by no means handsome, and in every way awkward, dull, unclean, reeking thickly
of the sties. But she watches. Again that uprising of her breast asserts itself sharply. But she watches. The warmth rises, delicious, then again painful and heavy.

He comes nearer. The warmth conquers her breast and throat. It assails her head. She is numb. She wonders dully why it is she can no longer see him.

On the horizon three separate thunderstorms talked darkly to each other.

The hut where little Richard and his grandfather had taken shelter was already green with darkness, its air stifling and warm, and the trees that surrounded it purple and heavy with whispers. When the boy heard sounds coming from the wood he would turn upwards a pair of great eyes, faint-yellow with fear, stroke his face, and ask in an awed way:

‘What's the matter, Grandfather? What makes it dark?'

At one time the man would scratch his beard and say nothing, at another grunt and say, ‘Don't you worry yourself,' and at a third, ‘You ain't frightened are you? You're too big a boy to be frightened. You sit still. You'll wear your breeches out.'