Day's End and Other Stories (16 page)

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.

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.

Then gradually as the dreamy sensation of the wine wore off he began to shiver again. The heavy stone dropped back across his chest and bent his ribs inward in great, painful arcs. There were no longer hallucinations and comfortable miseries as in the house. Each piano he tuned grew colder. Between his visits the snow was venomous and froze him into an aching heap.

He turned in, ordered whisky, and drinking it very quickly went on.

Now at the houses the people seemed to know of his grief and pitied him.

‘Yes, it's my daughter,' he would tell them, ‘Selina. She went away to be a singer in London. It's a long time ago. I remember I used to say she'd be a prima donna. It's nice to think that. Yes, it helps.'

And they would shake commiserating heads, give
him tender ‘Good-mornings' and thanks, yet all the time think: ‘That's all right. But he's been drinking again. And they say he used to beat Selina before she left him.'

The snow shot down its white bullets faster than ever. His face began to look no more than a wrinkled blue pea tucked between his hat and shoulders. His feet seemed to die, frozen, beneath him. The desire to drink again was strong.

In the warm bar he became enveloped in reminiscence and there seemed to come back the soothing air that had shrouded the woman who had been generous with wine. From the bright face of the barmaid seemed to shine kindness. His thoughts were glowing, immense in reach. He felt that he must confide in her too.

‘My daughter S'lina. You knew my daughter S'lina?' he muttered.

She looked sharply up. ‘Selina?'

‘She used—used to sing. She's a singer.'

‘Yes, I know. What's the matter?'

He muttered two words in a low voice, then closed his eyes. The barmaid stretched out her warm, soft hands and put them on his. ‘So it's true?' she whispered. ‘I'd heard something.'

‘Yes, it's true.'

The girl's hand crept upwards and touched his bowed head. ‘Don't carry on,' she said. The sound of her voice, the softness of her hands, the warm smell of the room comforted him. It seemed to him
suddenly that Selina was no more than a child in a pink cotton dress, standing on his chest and pulling his hair. And his heart was heavy.

‘I used to say how beautifully she'd sing,' he said.

Tears ran down his cheeks in a soft, unchecked flow. The heavy misery of his heart made him say: ‘I did everything. I made her what she was.'

And though she too knew that he had ill-treated her, quarrelled and parted with her and had not seen her since, and that in misery she had drowned herself at last, the girl went on softly stroking his hair, comforting him. And sometimes, as if in response, tears fell on her hands, sighs would shake his breast, and she would hear him murmur softly, half to himself:

‘I used to say how beautifully she'd sing. I had faith in her. I made her what she was.'

She listened with sadness. Outside the snow kept on falling in soft white flakes, sadly too.

As they were burying Eli Bishop a thunderstorm broke over the graveyard. The rain which fell was fierce and sombre, swishing loudly among the yew-trees, sycamores and firs, beating harshly upon the gravestones, the coffin and the bowed heads of the mourners. All the thick summer foliage seemed colourless and dreary. The thunder was terrible, and near.

In the village, in the house where Eli had lived, little Richard sat with his nose pressed up like a little pink lozenge against the window-pane.

At first, before the thunder began, he listened only to Martha, an old woman, moving about the kitchen, to the kettle singing, and the clatter of tea-cups and spoons, wondering idly where every one had gone. But as soon as the greenish-purple flooded the sky he began to fidget, looking wildly about him and pressed his nose against the window-pane with fear.

Then, just as he felt himself begin to tremble and he heard the rain begin to splash on the street outside, Martha came in and exclaimed:

‘Gracious me, how wet they'll all be!'

Richard drew away his nose from the window. Where his nose had been was a pale little ring of moisture.

‘Who'll be wet?' he asked, rubbing his nose.

But Martha only looked confused, and putting some more wood under the kettle did not answer.

Richard got down from the window-seat and said again:

‘Who'll be wet?'

Suddenly Martha rose, shook her black skirts into order and went into the kitchen again. Richard followed her and, forgetting the thunder and his fear, kept asking:

‘Who'll get wet? Why? Who do you mean?'

But Martha would only say: ‘Don't plague me, don't whittle,' and told him to sit down again.

Then suddenly there was a flash of lightning and from right above the house a peal of thunder leapt out and ran madly across the sky, striking terrifying echoes. After casting one frightened look at the greenish clouds, Richard ran to Martha, buried his face in her black dress, and began to whimper.

But though Martha's black dress was soft against his face, and the way she stroked his hair and whispered to him was kindly and warm, he was not comforted. And kneeling there he thought suddenly of his grandfather, his big, silver watch, his fat old belly, his red neckerchief, his silky white hair, and remembering suddenly that for three whole days he
had not seen the old man, wondered anxiously where he was. And without raising his head he asked: