Day's End and Other Stories (20 page)

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.

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.

In the heavy stillness their voices were a dull murmur.

‘What times we had! How many times I've been on my belly under that tree!'

They kept glancing up at the willow-tree. A flock of birds went over, heading for the green sky above the sunset. Everywhere was silent.

And then suddenly Matthew exchanged a glance with Will, dropped his gaze to the river again and said:

‘Could we catch eels now?'

Without a pause Will exclaimed: ‘Catch eels! There's nothing in it.'

‘I've been thinking—'

‘You just give me an eel-line and I'll peg it with my eyes shut – and there'd be fish too, mind you.'

Another and even more murmurous, wistful silence came over the river after these words. Then Matthew spoke:

‘I've been wondering whether we shouldn't lay a few lines under that willow-tree,' he said.

‘Give me a line, I say, and I'll peg it and there'll be fish.'

‘Shall we?'

‘You give me a line.'

Will seemed to gaze into the cool sky with longing. Matthew said: ‘Let's go, then. Up in my old loft there's a few lines hanging.'

But for a moment they did not go. In silence they remained watching the twilight creeping over the water, over the meadows, over the sky itself, turning the reeds to black tapers, making the river gleam like quicksilver. And to both the thought of setting eel-lines, coming down before dawn and taking out the fish was for a moment too entrancing to be true.

Presently, however, they did go. In the river, as they crossed the bridge, Matthew's shadow was curved, with a white top, and though Will's was straighter and stiff, like a drumstick, it too was white at the head.

Going up into the village between thick rows of hawthorn and elder, a smell of honeysuckle reached them.

‘It's best to get there by four o'clock,' Matthew kept saying.

‘We will. That's the best time; I know it is.'

‘If only my old lines don't break!'

As they entered the village, came to Matthew's house, got out the lines and examined them, it seemed to both that they were about to do once again something splendid, adventurous and full of joy. They dug out worms.

When they returned it was still not late, though Matthew's watch-chain, the sky, the dog-roses all shone fainter than before. Only the smell of honeysuckle seemed stronger and more intoxicating.

The river looked more like dark oil than ever. The reeds, the water-grass and the willow-tree had turned quite black. Matthew kept stumbling over hoof-marks.

As Will knelt down, stretched on his belly and began to drop the lines into the water, he thought: ‘The grass seems damp.' Matthew, on kneeling beside him, thought so too. But they said nothing to each other.

One after another the lines plopped, sank and were made secure to the edge. With their ears so close, Matthew and Will could hear the rustle of weeds and of water creeping between.

They got up off their knees. Still it seemed to them, as they returned stumbling along the bank, that to set eel-lines at night, wake at four, and in the fresh summer dawn take home their load of fish, was
as pleasant and exciting as it had been in their youth, and they talked of all the longest eels they had ever caught.

At Matthew's gate they reminded each other:

‘At four, sharp. No later than four.'

And as their white old heads bobbed away from each other in the warm dark, Matthew remembered and called:

‘Bring a basket! Don't forget! …'

In the morning, at dawn, a chill hangs over the river, the water looks cold and like steel, and the grass, the dog-roses and the honeysuckle are drenched in dew. From the east to the zenith a cold pink light spreads reluctantly, but there is no warmth and the leaves shiver. Now the reeds droop, looking a dirty, dishevelled green and with a rustling sound shudder and sway.

Among them, in the deep water under the willow-tree, five or six empty eel-lines sway backwards and forwards, first in the grey light, then in the rose, then in the soft early sunshine pouring from the blue sky.

Birds wake, cattle pass across the meadows, in the village a bell rings for an early service. But along the river-path nobody comes.

It was afternoon: great clouds stumbled across the sky. In the drowsy, half-dark room the young girl sat in a heap near the window, scarcely moving herself, as if she expected a certain timed happening, such as a visit, sunset, a command. Slowly she would draw the fingers of one hand across the back of the other, in the little hollows between the guides, and move her lips in the same sad, vexed way in which her brows came together. And like this too, her eyes would shift about, from the near, shadowed fields, to the west hills, where the sun had dropped a strip of light, and to the woods between, looking like black scars one minute, and like friendly sanctuaries the next. It was all confused. There was the room, too. The white keys of the piano would now and then exercise a fascination over her which would keep her whole body perfectly still for perhaps a minute. But when this passed, full of hesitation, her fingers would recommence the slow exploration of her hands, and the restlessness took her again.

It was all confused. She was going away: already she had said a hundred times during the afternoon –
‘I am going away, I am going away. I can't stand it any longer.' But she had made no attempt to go. In this same position, hour after hour had passed her and all she could think was: ‘To-day I'm going away. I'm tired here. I never do anything. It's dead, rotten.'

She said, or thought it all without the slightest trace of exultation and was sometimes even methodical when she began to consider: ‘What shall I take? The blue dress with the rosette? Yes. What else? what else?' And then it would all begin again: ‘Today I'm going away. I never do anything.'

It was true: she never did anything. In the mornings she got up late, was slow over her breakfast, over everything – her reading, her mending, her eating, her playing the piano, cards in the evening, going to bed. It was all slow – purposely done, to fill up the day. And it was true, day succeeded day and she never did anything different.

But to-day something was about to happen: no more cards in the evening, every evening the same, with her father declaring: ‘I never have a decent hand, I thought the ace of trumps had gone! It's too bad!!' and no more: ‘Nellie, it's ten o'clock – Bed!' and the slow unimaginative climb of the stairs. Today she was going away: no one knew, but it was so. She was catching the evening train to London.

‘I'm going away. What shall I take? The blue dress with the rosette? What else?'

She crept upstairs with difficulty, her body stiff
after sitting. The years she must have sat, figuratively speaking, and grown stiff! And as if in order to secure some violent reaction against it all she threw herself into the packing of her things with a nervous vigour, throwing in the blue dress first and after it a score of things she had just remembered. She fastened her bag: it was not heavy. She counted her money a dozen times. It was all right! It was all right. She was going away!

She descended into the now dark room for the last time. In the dining-room some one was rattling teacups, an unbearable, horribly domestic sound! She wasn't hungry: she would be in London by eight – eating now meant making her sick. It was easy to wait. The train went at 6.18. She looked it up again: ‘Elden 6.13, Olde 6.18, London 7.53.'

She began to play a waltz. It was a slow, dreamy tune, ta-tum, tum, ta-tum, tum, ta-tum, tum, of which the notes slipped out in mournful, sentimental succession. The room was quite dark, she could scarcely see the keys, and into the tune itself kept insinuating: ‘Elden 6.13, Olde 6.18,' impossible to mistake or forget.