by H. E. Bates
Absolute silence seized all things. Alexander began to look for something to occupy his mind, and, turning to the house, he caught sight of a double-barrel sporting gun standing by the wall. The gun was very handsome and fascinating, and though he dare not touch it, he remained gazing at it for a long time, imagining himself taking aim. Presently, tiring of the gun, he looked about the room. It had a low, curious aspect and an appearance of being very old. Some tall geraniums, pink and milk in colour, bloomed in the window, their pretty silken petals falling on a lace-cushion, hung with bunches of bobbins, standing beneath. A chain of birds’ eggs was looped over a looking-glass, and a blue enamel bowl of small dark plums stood on the floor.
Presently, as he was scrutinising a photograph of some soldiers and wondering if they had ever fought with Zulus, a curious, rhythmical noise, like that of a purring cat, startled him. It seemed to him to issue from a door standing half-open by the stairs.
He tip-toed towards the door, stood for a moment very still, and then poked in his head. He recoiled with great haste immediately, trembling.
In the room an old woman, an incredibly, astoundingly old woman, with a face like a dried lemon and scarcely any hairs on her head, sat asleep with her hands locked together in her lap, clasping a yellow comb. Her mouth opened regularly the smallest fraction and emitted a strange half-whistling, half-purring sound. His startled mind refused to think who she might be, or what she was doing there, but retained only the awful, haunting impression that her closed eyes were staring at him through their bluish lids.
He turned and retreated hurriedly. As he reached the garden something stirred there also and the hot stillness was broken by the noise of footsteps coming. He waited, a little nervously, and then, without any other hint or warning he found himself face to face with a young girl. He looked at her, but did not move, and again nothing seemed to take place in his mind. Only his eyes did their work, drinking in the impression of her pretty, delicate face, her soft neck and her light hair almost the colour of barley. Each impression smote him sharply, until his breast seemed as if about to burst with its own throbbing. In a strange way, without deliberation, he idealised her at once, thinking that he must be careful how he spoke to her and how he acted before her, and he felt acutely conscious of his physical self and was filled with the impression that everything about her, her large profound blue eyes, the yellow pansy tucked in her hair, the little printed flowerets on her dress and also the plums in her basket, were all staring at him, astonished and unflinching.
After a little silence she began to move in his direction. As she came nearer the look of dumb astonishment on her face increased.
Not knowing what to do, Alexander muttered stupidly:
‘I’m waiting for someone.’
In rather a soft, drawling voice, and looking first towards the road and then at him, she said slowly in reply:
‘Did you come in that cart?’
‘Yes, that’s our cart,’ he said quickly. Then, as if to appear at ease, he added:
‘You didn’t notice if the horse had moved on, I expect, did you?’
‘No, he hadn’t moved.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I only wondered, because he’s a bit restless in summer.’
She remained silent, and feeling this silence acutely, he remarked:
‘They’re nice plums,’ not daring to look into her face, but simply gazing at the dark blue fruit instead.
‘They fall off and I have to pick them up every morning,’ she told him. ‘Look at my hands.’
He cast a brief glance at her stained fingers and felt immediately in some way flattered because she had asked him to do so.
‘They’re eating plums, I suppose,’ he remarked.
Suddenly, without answering, she moved past him, and thinking that he had perhaps offended her and that she was about to disappear irrevocably, he called rather timidly after her:
‘I suppose I could take a look at the garden?’
She called back at once:
‘Wait a moment, I’ll take you down.’
Almost simultaneously with this she re-appeared, now with an empty basket.
‘Perhaps I’d better make certain about the horse, he won’t stand in hot weather,’ remarked Alexander.
He satisfied himself by staring over the wicket at the little horse grazing peacefully by the woodside. As he rejoined the girl he tried to walk slowly and naturally, without eagerness and without excitement. Nevertheless, he was conscious of being filled and overcome by a sensation which in its novelty and wonder seemed to deprive him of something with every step he took with the girl deeper into the garden. And in place of what he lost came a host of strange, unbelievable emotions of which hitherto he had suspected nothing, a sense of pleasure which filled his mind like a sweet smell.
It was a long garden, with not many flowers, but a great number of fruit trees set very thick and close, so that they appeared to be strangling each other. White bee-hives stood here and there in open spaces. Under the trees the same hot, overpowering stillness as ever stifled everything. All the time Alexander longed to make some sensible or amusing remark to the girl, who walked a little ahead of him, bumping the empty basket softly on her knees at each step, but something prevented him, and he became entranced merely by watching her.
He walked behind her as if dreaming. Presently the path turned to the right and he caught a faint, brackish odour of water and saw a small pond appear.
The water was shallow and dingy-looking, the surface sprinkled with countless little yellow sloe-leaves and the edge fringed with coarse grasses. When the girl ran on, however, and reached the far side, it seemed to Alexander as clear as a mirror, reflecting her white figure with strange purity, and he felt an odd desire to jump across the pond in a very romantic fashion and land at her feet.
But suddenly the girl called:
‘Can you climb trees?’
How best to answer this he did not know. But after a second he ventured to ask:
‘What trees are there to climb?’
‘Only the sloe-tree!’ she cried.
She ran towards a large sloe bush overhanging the pond. Climbing trees was an accomplishment of Alexander’s, but the sloe-bush seemed to him dense, prickly and not quite assailable.
‘Do you think the sloes are quite ripe?’ he remarked in a hesitant voice.
‘Don’t you want to climb?’ the girl flashed out at once.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Then shall I climb first or will you?’ she asked, while he hesitated
‘Oh! you first, you go,’ he said.
She immediately made a light spring and climbed easily and quickly to a fork in the trunk, and, squatting there, gave the tree a sudden violent shake which brought sloes pelting down on the grass, in the pond and on Alexander’s head.
‘Bite one, bite one!’ she called in extreme excitement.
But Alexander only shook his head, and dropping into the grass, broke into a slow, almost diplomatic smile, without a word.
All this gave him confidence and he looked up at her light form. In these moments he forgot his uncle, the little horse and the journey which meant so much to him, and felt that his whole existence was bound up in the girl, who never ceased attracting him. Seeing her suddenly leave the tree and take a bound through the grass to his side overcame him with a strange faintness. When she sat down he tried at once to look as if interested in some object in the pond. His quick glance arrested her. She followed his gaze, a silence deepening and falling upon them immediately, a silence he found hard to endure again.
But he could say nothing. He half-closed his eyes against the brilliant sunshine. The thoughts he conceived were unbalanced and spasmodic and he could never work them out. An incredible length of time seemed to pass. .… At last a pair of pigeons broke from just beyond the sloe-bush, and flew over the house. The girl gazed up at them. In a flash, his heart clamouring in his throat, he turned and looked at her
face, upturned to the sunshine, her bright hair and her long sunburnt neck uncovered almost to the delicate bosom having its source in a little shadow. He was carried utterly away. It seemed to him he must lie flat on his face, without speaking or moving, lest he should choke with joy.
‘Pigeons .…’ Her voice floated off, tranquilly. Then in the distance rose suddenly a sound and Alexander imagined he heard voices.
They both sprang to their feet and began instinctively to walk in the direction of the house.
‘I can hear my mother,’ said the girl.
He felt it would be somehow nice and courteous if he said:
‘Is that your mother in the red blouse?’
‘Yes .… only that’s not a blouse,’ she answered in a rather deprecating tone. ‘Are you going a long way?’
‘I don’t know how far it is.’
‘What are all those baskets for?’
And feeling rather important, he answered:
‘They’re fruit baskets. Every one has to be filled before we come back again.’
But although he spoke in a very bold way his excitement never ceased.
When they reached the house his uncle, the girl’s mother, and another woman with fair hair and a pale pink dress and a rather cheerful, pretty face, whom he had not seen before, all stood about a well, the women peering into the well while his uncle turned the windlass. As he approached the bucket rose, swaying and spilling water.
He stood still and watched, trying to assume a very careless appearance, as if nothing had happened and he never moved from that spot.
Then, rather than have his presence noticed with surprise, he ventured to say:
‘Are you going to start?’
The two women and his uncle turned sharply and looked at him.
‘Where in thunder have you sprung from?’
‘He’s been after the plums .… that’s it. I’ll be bound that’s about the drift .…’ and such remarks came from the smiling women.
He only broke into the same slow, almost diplomatic smile as before, without a word.
When he turned the girl had vanished. He felt at once a sickening sensation and a desire, regardless of what his uncle and the women might say, to run and look for her. Uncle Bishop and the two women made off in the direction of the wicket, taking the water for the little horse. Casting hurried glances about him, but without reward, he sauntered after them.
While the horse was drinking, the woman in the pink dress, whom he rather liked, said in such a way that it was difficult to understand if she referred to him or to the horse:
‘Would he like a curd tart, do you think?’
Alexander did not answer. The horse ceased drinking. Suddenly his uncle bellowed in a stentorian voice in his ear:
‘Do you hear? Would you like a curd tart?’
‘Please,’ said Alexander at once, starting.
‘Well then, fathead, listen! Go along with you.’
Alexander followed the pink dress. All the time he was conscious of a vagueness, an unreality in everything. As he stood in the kitchen waiting for the woman to return with the tart he darted glances this way and that, in pursuit of the vanished girl, and even took three steps towards the other door, thinking himself alone, in order to search further for her.
Again a sound startled him. Glancing round, he found himself for the second time face to face with the old, dried-up woman. This time her eyes, wide open, looked to him like two black balls of peppermint. They stared horribly and all of her little black figure huddled soundlessly in the corner seemed to him sinister in its watchfulness and lack of life.
He felt hypnotised and yet revolted and dared not move until the woman in the pink dress returned. And then he turned away quickly, eating with difficulty and conscious of a lump in his throat.
‘Perhaps you’ll remember me to your mother,’ the woman said behind him. ‘Say you saw Cilia .… just Cilia. Then she’ll know. Don’t you forget.’
He made an obedient murmur, and cast a last hasty glance into the garden, hotter and stiller it seemed than ever. But nothing stirred, nothing broke the stillness there.
He climbed into the cart and sat motionless. Uncle Bishop looked at his watch and said, ‘God bless me!’ four or five times over, and after climbing into the cart too, he began to say farewell.
‘Good day, good day,’ he kept repeating. ‘You ought to rub Pollyanna’s legs every day with houndstongue ointment, three or four times. Tell her they’re Bishop’s very words, and she knows I’m right. You can’t go wrong with houndstongue, it’s a cure-all. What? .… Doctors? … They might as well be in Bedlam, with the poor thing’s legs rotting off with pain. What’s that? Ha, ha! God bless me, that’s a fact!’ he burst out, trying to give the girl’s mother a playful poke with the whip, ‘You’re fat enough, too, and no mistake, but I remember what my mother said about you the day you were married. There’s no flesh on her, she says, she’s got neither bosom nor backside. They’re nothing but little apples .…’
The women laughed and Uncle Bishop, in great spirits, suddenly began to shout a great many indiscreet things, saying farewell over and over again, alternately flicking the little horse and reining it tight again.
They began to move off at last. Alexander tried to smile. The wheels turned, a little faster every second. He was overcome by a sensation of being dragged somewhere against his will.
Then all at once, in a most subtle way, he was aware that the girl was watching him. He felt this as certainly as if she had held her finger-tips very close to his cheek. He turned impulsively and beheld her with her chin resting on her hands and her hands resting on the top of the little gate, staring at him. The blood rushed to his cheeks, and filled with all his former joy, he kept turning and seeing her in that same careless, lovely watchful pose, while the cart drew steadily farther and farther away.
Finally he saw her no more. The house, the goat, the hens and at last the wood itself slipped into the distance. An unfamiliar, beautiful valley unfolded itself before his gaze. The dew had vanished and there was a hard brilliance about the sky as if it were a gem.
A clock chimed eleven. Uncle Bishop’s breath smelt sweetly of wine. Alexander fixed his eyes on the distance, hardly knowing what he did, dreaming endlessly.
II
When they had driven a little longer the road made a sudden curve like a sickle, and while his thoughts were still of the girl and all that had taken place in the wood, a square stone house standing alone among dark clumps of trees came suddenly into sight. All other thoughts momentarily at an end, he gazed and asked:
‘Is this where she lives?’
‘Hold hard,’ said his uncle. ‘You’ll see her if you wait a moment. Go along with you and open the gate. Hullo! those damned dogs already! Go along and don’t be frightened.’
As Alexander alighted and began to push back the massive iron gates a furious chorus of barking dogs greeted him, and suddenly six or seven bitches, all of the same black-and-brown breed and each very corpulent, rushed out at him from nowhere, yelping and snapping about his heels and striking terror into him. He hated dogs, and standing stock-still, cast one despairing look at his uncle, who at once leapt up like a fat old jack-in-the-box and began wildly brandishing his whip and shouting:
‘Damn the dogs, get back! Damn the dogs!’
He jerked the reins excitedly. ‘Get out, you scallywags!’ he shouted afresh as the cart moved forward. ‘God bless me, what does a woman want with seven dogs? Get back!’
The cart drove in and the yelping bitches were scattered in all directions. Partly to protect himself, and partly to show that he was not wholly afraid, Alexander seized the little horse’s bridle and led it towards the house. Green lawns and a superb orchard lay before him. His gaze fell fascinated on scores and scores of trees stretching infinitely ahead.
Suddenly his uncle whispered a little excitedly:
‘There’s the old tit herself, yes, there she is. Coming towards us. Do you se
e her?’
And looking up, Alexander saw approaching him a small, frail woman in black, wearing a snuff-brown bonnet and carrying a silver-knobbed walking-stick in her hands. She looked as if got up to match her dogs, who all instantly ceased barking and waddled towards her in a curious apathetic way, snuffing about her skirts. She walked as though on ice, hardly progressing at all, with her head and hands quivering in agitation, as if for ever dispatching little signals of terror and distress. Behind her came a white cat and yet another dog, an aged, weary creature who moved even more slowly than its mistress.
His uncle began to hobble across the lawn to meet her, muttering again, ‘The old tit, the old tit!’ at every step he took.
When he reached the old lady he formed an enormous trumpet with his hands, and bellowed into her ears like thunder:
‘Glad to see you. Nice weather, God bless me. Not very lucky with the dogs again, I see.’
A little plaintive voice piped out, hardly audible, in reply:
‘So you’ve come. No, no … it’s awful. What with the boys stealing the fruit, and then the dogs having litters all the time .… The boys have broken the wall again. It’s dreadful. I don’t know what to do, people rob me right and left. What’s it coming to?’
She turned her doleful, shaking head first to the garden, then to the dogs, half of which were heavy with puppies, and lastly to Uncle Bishop.
‘Damn brutes!’ he began. ‘Not the dogs, I’ve nothing against dogs. The boys I mean .… Not the dogs. Why don’t you do something?’
‘What can I do?’
‘Say your prayers .…’ muttered Uncle Bishop in an undertone. ‘The old tit. Say your prayers.’
‘Wha-a-at? .… Whose boy is that?’
‘My nephew; Fanny’s boy. Alexander, come and shake hands. He’s twelve. He’s a strong lad, isn’t he?’ he bellowed.
And Alexander, trying to bear out this statement, yet afraid of hurting the old woman, shook hands, and her hand seemed to him like a piece of cold fish and her eyes seemed ready to stream with tears as she looked at him.
