Day's End and Other Stories (3 page)

And when the figure of a man approached, took his hand and spoke to him, it too was blurred and its voice remote.

‘What's the matter with you? You look like death – what you been doing?'

‘I'm all right,' he tried to protest.

‘Look as if you'd been scared. What's amiss? This won't do, you'll go wrong way.'

The figure took his arm and began leading him up towards the village. Still it seemed to Israel that it
was a strange and ephemeral figure belonging not to life but half to sickness, half to death.

‘Don't you know me?' he was asked.

He only shook his head.

‘It's Sam Houghton. You know Sam!'

Again he shook his head and then murmured faintly:

‘Sam, is it? Sam Houghton? Take me and get some brandy.'

In the inn and afterwards, as he stood blinking at the sunshine in the village street, he kept impressing upon the other:

‘Don't say anything. Don't breathe a word. Henrietta, you understand – you'll frighten her, she'll be upset.'

In the afternoon he slept, but it was a poor, pitiful sleep. At the end of it, sitting up, he thought he heard voices, and after listening a moment it seemed to him they were children's voices. Then he came out and saw Henrietta selling milk to three children at the door.

He heard these words:

‘And please how is Mister Rentshaw?'

‘He's all right. Why? He's asleep,' said Henrietta.

‘Because my father wants to know, because this morning he wasn't well.'

‘Who wasn't well?'

‘Your dad.'

‘Where?'

‘Down by the river, I reckon.' And another child broke in: ‘Yes, down by the river it was, I heard my dad telling my mother so.'

And suddenly, hearing all this, Israel went back and sat down again, hating deeply and unreasonably everybody and everything, especially Henrietta, Sam Houghton and his children, despising himself for being ill and failing to keep it secret, loathing the thought of explanations, lies and compromises with Henrietta, and then when some unsatisfactory explanation had been given her, shrinking from her close, mistrustful looks until he felt an aversion for her, just as he had begun to feel, for the first time, an aversion for his wretched land, his thin, worn horses, the grotesque-looking barns smelling of damp and rottenness and for the pond into which the poplars had all his life stood endlessly looking and whispering.

VI

One Sunday it was Henrietta's birthday and at dinner there was a fowl with white sauce, bread stuffing, potatoes and a plum-pudding Henrietta had kept from Christmas; and at tea-time pickled cherries, damson-cheese and a cake with caraway seeds.

But both at dinner and tea Israel felt no appetite and left pieces of fowl, plum-pudding and caraway cake on his plate. And Henrietta noticed all this and began to appeal to him:

‘Think how long you've been at it. It's too much for
you. You know yourself everything's poor, things are always going wrong. There's no profit. And you're seventy, you're not fit for it. Give it up – pay one year's rent and give it up.'

Whether because of his sudden dislike for his land, his lack of appetite or his fear of illness he could not tell, but this appeal touched him. And he was silent. And then, after tea, Henrietta, to make it worse, began showing him accounts and notes she had kept, proving the dreariness and ineffectuality of their struggle beyond all doubt.

He did not know what to do. Each item of expenditure increased his misery and helplessness. He could not look into Henrietta's face.

But Henrietta looked at him and said: ‘Sooner or later we shall have to give it up.'

There was a note of sadness in her voice too. And half against his will he murmured: ‘Yes.'

By this time he did not mean to say, ‘We will give up at once,' but to convey something like: ‘I see how things are, I understand.'

Whether she understood this or not he did not know, but he suddenly could not bear to remain with her any longer and went out, gave his horses a brushing, turned out the cow, set up the pig-troughs to dry in the sun, doing all this with the odd resolution and care which comes after sadness, as a relief.

Next morning he went to the orchard and began once more sawing, chopping and stacking the little branches of the fallen elm. It was fine. Hazy shapes
of blue floated in the sky, puffed by a soft, warm wind. By the house some daffodils in the grass kept nodding, as if going off to sleep. Up above fresh green buds would swing and nudge each other and the smoke from the house shape itself like children's curls.

The tree looked no longer like a bird, but a statue which had fallen and smashed itself, face to earth. To Israel the labour of sawing up the wood was already tedious and fatiguing. The sound of the saw, a drone sometimes sharp, then low and mournful, became hard to bear. And then even the sound of larks singing, of the wind bearing the voices of sheep, cows and men over the hill, became sharp too and seemed to penetrate his head, multiply and set up others with no meaning to them. When he stood still an odd whistling in his ears began again, sometimes like an echo of the saw, and then softer and deeper, like the moan of a thresher far away.

Now he stood still more often, watching the oddest things. On the river, below, puffing dark smoke, a barge appeared, drawn against the stream. Before it vanished nearly half an hour passed, yet he watched solemnly and without moving, the way it turned each bend, negotiated a bridge and pulled itself out of sight at last, and when this had gone he could not resist gazing with an expression of soft, abstract longing at the shining, empty stream, the bank fringed with willows and dark green reeds. And as he did
this he remembered how as a boy he had in winter skated on the frozen marshes and in summer bathed there, chased otters and voles, and caught eels before it was dawn.

Then suddenly the thought of the letter returned and he remembered that he must make an answer to it before night. And he began to go about repeating odd phrases of it, until some strange awful additional ache was formed in his head.

And at dinner and later in the afternoon Henrietta began to say again: ‘Do give it up – you must live,' until this became an ache too.

Now his trouble was not what he must do but only that he must gain courage and do it. And as evening approached and dusk began to fall like the bluish shadow of an enormous leaf unfolding itself overhead, restlessness seized him. He began to wander about the kitchen, looking needlessly in cupboards and drawers, to make purposeless journeys to the barns, taking with him a candle and peering at the horses, the cow, and the hens blinking solemnly at him in the candlelight. And it was as if he were taking a last desperate look at these things before doing the thing which he knew would take them from him.

He was not conscious of being unhappy or unnerved. Only an odd feeling of dread possessed him, such as if he were about to cause himself a physical injury without knowing how much harm or how much good would follow.

At last he found himself arguing thus: ‘If I tell Henrietta, she will write the letter. Why haven't I told her before?' And he longed so deeply for her guidance that he knew he must tell her.

Going into the kitchen he found the letter, opened it tremblingly and spread it before her. He fully expected her to rebuke him with expressions like ‘Why didn't you tell me before? How silly you get!' but having read the letter Henrietta's eyes only seemed to shine oddly through her spectacles, and the way she touched her hair, fingered the letter and looked at him seemed to suggest only a sort of shy, unexpected relief.

He saw, however, that she was waiting for him to speak. So he said, a little huskily:

‘Write a letter saying – we'll let things go, that's all. Yes, that'll do.'

He sat down meekly and with some difficulty to wait until she had finished. He heard the laborious scratch of the pen, the rustle of paper, her breathing and the sound of the clock. There seemed to pass a long hush. Then Henrietta's dress swished, she rose and said:

‘There it is. That's finished. And thank God.'

She folded the letter and with a touch in which he felt there to be thankfulness and joy, stroked her hand backwards and forwards across his hair. Then she stopped, and immediately it seemed to him that from henceforth he was a man alone, set apart, simply to await the climax of a certain destiny.

VII

It was morning. Israel had done the usual things: lighted a fire, milked his cow and turned her out to graze, unbolted the hens and fed his three sows. At breakfast Henrietta, as if nothing unusual had happened, said:

‘I've told you already – get a pole and prop the roof of the hen-house up. Any day it might fall down.'

He only nodded and afterwards went to the henhouse just to see if the corrugated iron roof had sunken. He found it very low. Then he remembered it had happened in the snow-storm and that Henrietta had been telling him of it ever since.

When he started for the copse a little later sunshine flooded everything, the ground was soft and springy, and all over the hill dandelions, celandines and daisies were looking at the sun with tiny yellow and white eyes. When nearly half-way up the hill, he remembered his axe and had to return for it.

Going back he hurried more than usual and broke into a sweat. In the copse, while looking for a young sapling to cut down, he suddenly felt tired and sat down on a fallen trunk. Through the trees he watched the river coiling through the meadows, the bluish smoke curling over the village, his white house among the trees. As he sat there Henrietta appeared, hung out some washing in the orchard and then
vanished. In an odd way he recognised his shirt on the line. And at this he was filled with a strange pleasure and began smiling to himself.

Soon afterwards he got to his feet and began to look once again for a sapling. There were saplings of ash, beech, elm and fir in the copse. Now and then he stopped and shook one. Frightened by the noise blackbirds would charge out and, screeching, vanish into undergrowth again.

In the heart of the copse Israel came suddenly on a tall young fir-tree, standing alone. The air was still but this tree swayed its head lightly and proudly. Some trees, like the hawthorn and elm, were already in leaf. The blackthorn was still in blossom. The rest of the copse seemed asleep. But this tree seemed neither waking nor sleeping.

Israel ran a hand up its trunk and calculated its height. It was tall but the trunk was slender and strong and of the right thickness. He laid down the axe, took off his coat, and picked up the axe again, and stood looking at the tree.

Then suddenly he dropped the axe, clutched at his heart and grew pale. All this happened suddenly, as if he were trying to seize something before it seized him. But from his pallor, his shrunken features, his difficult breathing and doubled body it was plain it had come too swiftly. He sank to his knees, lay half on his side and clutched himself strongly. But his strength seemed to do nothing but squeeze out of him a deathly perspiration. Yet he kept up this
clutching, as though to wring himself dry, and sank all the time lower and lower.

There suddenly crossed his mind the thought: ‘I shall never get up again.'

He struggled to get up. He was like the weight at the end of a stick. Again he thought: ‘I shall never get up, I shall never get up.' His struggles became desperate. All of a sudden he ceased struggling, fell, and lay stretched on the ground.

Some time passed. The fir-tree, the birds and all the trees kept still. On the dark, loamy earth Israel's head rolled gently to and fro like a ball of paper in a wind, then became still too.

The thought that he would not rise again became separated from him by a chasm of blackness. This blackness revolved and in revolving blew upon him draughts of a ghastly dampness. And the purpose of all his struggles, mental or otherwise, became only to avoid or stop this. Nothing else was visible, audible or sensible to him.

Once the thought raced by: ‘What if I do die here? Does anyone know where I have come? Would they find me?'

At this thought, for no reason at all, a red ball he used to play with as a child rolled past in the darkness. He made efforts to catch it. But these efforts, like all his other struggles, though strenuous, were futile and pathetic, and the ball vanished.

After this he felt twice his previous misery. Then the strange singing he had always connected with
these attacks began in his head again. And simultaneously with this a warm dribble of moisture ran from his lips.

He coughed. This was consciousness. Little by little the revolving darkness ceased. A still darkness, in which he remembered what had happened, took its place. Finally he conquered this also, and opening his eyes, saw the fir-tree, the axe, the undergrowth, the dark earth dotted a little way off with primrose leaves and primrose buds.

He staggered on rising. To him the sunshine was colder and more pitiless than the darkness had been. He suffered pain merely in walking from tree to tree and constantly shivered. Without looking at the half-hewn birch he took up the chopper and then, when out of the copse, let it fall into the grass and did not pick it up again.

He kept shuddering. The meadows, the green corn-fields, the fallow land and the trees now and then swirled sickeningly, like a roundabout. He felt old and kept asking himself: ‘How old am I? What am I doing?'

He never answered these questions, even though, like every sensation, the shuddering, the sickness, the fear of death in the wood, they were repeated again and again.

This was his worst attack. Waiting till Henrietta had gone for some purpose into the orchard he crept into the house and then drank brandy heavily from the bottle in the kitchen. And suddenly without
warning he remembered it needed thirteen days to the sale of the land.

VIII

Nearly a week passed. Israel went about looking older. Now and then he thought of the sale of his land. Yet still he felt that the worst might not come. Nevertheless he caught himself unconsciously looking forward to the date of the sale, and his feeling of being a man set apart to await a fixed event remained with him. He began to feel older.