Day's End and Other Stories (19 page)

‘A-a-a-a-h!'

‘Stop! There's no freedom. You're not in prison. Open wide!'

Thus it had gone on all the morning.

Now, after what seemed an eternity, afternoon had come. Long panels of light lay sleepily across the floor of the room, and into the thick summer air the children's voices soared in dreamy tones. Miss Stephens beat time with a little black baton that was like a bird bobbing up and down in mockery. With her other hand she did nothing and it lay in the left-hand pocket of her skirt as if the wrist were sprained.

Even when she beat frenziedly at the faces of the children and yelled ‘Higher! there's still no freedom!' the other hand remained utterly still and invisible.

But in the drowsiness no one seemed to see it. As if it were too much to notice moving things like the
baton, let alone the still ones, some of the children sang with eyes shut. But she let them go on without reprimand. Sometimes she even forgot they were singing to her and everything suddenly became of the substance and significance of a dream, in which it seemed she was a witch stirring mobs of spirits to madness. She actually imagined she saw them begin a caper, but everything went drowsy again, the faces of the children seemed to shimmer like under great heat and she could think of nothing to do but bawl:

‘Higher! more freedom!' and gesticulate furiously with one hand while the other lay out of sight and still.

At the end of the lessons she no longer bathed her eyes but sat dreamily near the piano, where she drew out her left hand and began to read the note it held. As it flashed a reflection in the dark surface of the piano flank she tried to invest it all with fresh meaning.

The note was hard, its firmly constructed sentences she read in a dazed way: ‘I'm sure you would not wish me to continue a deception which for some time past has been painful to me. I no longer love you. If there is anything you think I could do at any time …'

The letters seemed to shiver from their own coldness and in the polished darkness of the piano the reflections went absolutely still. Some one came in and said, ‘Miss Stephens, I want “Blow, blow thou winter wind!”' but on getting no answer within a
minute went away again. She seemed to shrink into an infinitely small heap even at the thought of being asked to move.

‘A deception painful to me,' rang in her mind.

And she did not move. At one of the windows a sparrow tapped, spoilt her composure and set her thinking. She remembered the years she had known him, the day when he had first said ‘I promise, on my honour, I love no one else,' and running a finger-nail down the parting of her hair had called her Anthea, then Daphne, which she liked more and thought in keeping with her tall figure.

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.

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. Then 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.