The Collected Short Stories

  He considered this.

  "Could you get on a farm?" he asked wistfully.

  "Greenhalgh's was a farm."

  He saw the future brighten: she would be a help to him. She agreed to go to her sister, and to get a place of service--until Spring, he said, when they would sail for Canada. He waited for her assent.

  "You will come with me, then?" he asked.

  "When the time comes," she said.

  Her want of faith made him bow his head: she had reason for it.

  "Shall you walk to Crick, or go from Langley Mill to Ambergate? But it's only ten mile to walk. So we can go together up Hunt's Hill--you'd have to go past our lane-end, then I could easy nip down an' fetch you some money," he said, humbly.

  "I've got half a sovereign by me--it's more than I s'll want."

  "Let's see it," he said.

  After a while, fumbling under the blanket, she brought out the piece of money. He felt she was independent of him. Brooding rather bitterly, he told himself she'd forsake him. His anger gave him courage to ask:

  "Shall you go in service in your maiden name?"

  "No."

  He was bitterly wrathful with her--full of resentment.

  "I bet I s'll niver see you again," he said, with a short, hard laugh. She put her arms round him, pressed him to her bosom, while the tears rose to her eyes. He was reassured, but not satisfied.

  "Shall you write to me to-night?"

  "Yes, I will."

  "And can I write to you--who shall I write to?"

  "Mrs Bredon."

  "'Bredon'!" he repeated bitterly.

  He was exceedingly uneasy.

  The dawn had grown quite wan. He saw the hedges drooping wet down the grey mist. Then he told her about Maurice.

  "Oh, you shouldn't!" she said. "You should ha' put the ladder up for them, you should."

  "Well--I don't care."

  "Go and do it now--and I'll go."

  "No, don't you. Stop an' see our Maurice, go on, stop an' see him--then I s'll be able to tell him."

  She consented in silence. He had her promise she would not go before he returned. She adjusted her dress, found her way to the trough, where she performed her toilet.

  Geoffrey wandered round to the upper field. The stacks looked wet in the mist, the hedge was drenched. Mist rose like steam from the grass, and the near hills were veiled almost to a shadow. In the valley, some peaks of black poplar showed fairly definite, jutting up. He shivered with chill.

  There was no sound from the stacks, and he could see nothing. After all, he wondered, were they up there. But he reared the ladder to the place whence it had been swept, then went down the hedge to gather dry sticks. He was breaking off thin dead twigs under a holly tree when he heard, on the perfectly still air: "Well I'm dashed!"

  He listened intently. Maurice was awake.

  "Sithee here!" the lad's voice exclaimed. Then, after a while, the foreign sound of the girl:

  "What--oh, thair!"

  "Aye, th' ladder's there, right enough."

  "You said it had fall down."

  "Well, I heard it drop--an' I couldna feel it nor see it."

  "You said it had fall down--you lie, you liar."

  "Nay, as true as I'm here--"

  "You tell me lies--make me stay here--you tell me lies--" She was passionately indignant.

  "As true as I'm standing here--" he began.

  "Lies!--lies!--lies!" she cried. "I don't believe you, never. You mean, you mean, mean, mean!"

  "A' raïght, then!" he was now incensed, in his turn.

  "You are bad, mean, mean, mean."

  "Are yer commin' down?" asked Maurice, coldly.

  "No--I will not come with you--mean, to tell me lies."

  "Are ter commin' down?"

  "No, I don't want you."

  "A' raïght, then!"

  Geoffrey, peering through the holly tree, saw Maurice negotiating the ladder. The top rung was below the brim of the stack, and rested on the cloth, so it was dangerous to approach. The Fräulein watched him from the end of the stack, where the cloth thrown back showed the light, dry hay. He slipped slightly, she screamed. When he had got on to the ladder, he pulled the cloth away, throwing it back, making it easy for her to descend.

  "Now are ter comin'?" he asked.

  "No!" she shook her head violently, in a pet.

  Geoffrey felt slightly contemptuous of her. But Maurice waited.

  "Are ter comin'?" he called again.

  "No," she flashed, like a wild cat.

  "All right, then I'm going."

  He descended. At the bottom, he stood holding the ladder.

  "Come on, while I hold it steady," he said.

  There was no reply. For some minutes he stood patiently with his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. He was pale, rather washed-out in his appearance, and he drew himself together with cold.

  "Are ter commin', or aren't ter?" he asked at length. Still there was no reply.

  "Then stop up till tha'rt ready," he muttered, and he went away. Round the other side of the stacks he met Geoffrey.

  "What, are thaïgh here?" he exclaimed.

  "Bin here a' naïght," replied Geoffrey. "I come to help thee wi' th' cloth, but I found it on, an' th' ladder down, so I thowt tha'd gone."

  "Did ter put th' ladder up?"

  "I did a bit sin."

  Maurice brooded over this, Geoffrey struggled with himself to get out his own news. At last he blurted:

  "Tha knows that woman as wor here yis'day dinner--'er come back, an' stopped i' th' shed a' night, out o' th' rain."

  "Oh--ah!" said Maurice, his eye kindling, and a smile crossing his pallor.

  "An' I s'll gi'e her some breakfast."

  "Oh--ah!" repeated Maurice.

  "It's th' man as is good-for-nowt, not her," protested Geoffrey. Maurice did not feel in a position to cast stones.

  "Tha pleases thysen," he said, "what ter does." He was very quiet, unlike himself. He seemed bothered and anxious, as Geoffrey had not seen him before.

  "What's up wi' thee?" asked the elder brother, who in his own heart was glad, and relieved.

  "Nowt," was the reply.

  They went together to the hut. The woman was folding the blanket. She was fresh from washing, and looked very pretty. Her hair, instead of being screwed tightly back, was coiled in a knot low down, partly covering her ears. Before, she had deliberately made herself plain-looking: now she was neat and pretty, with a sweet, womanly gravity.

  "Hello. I didn't think to find you here," said Maurice, very awkwardly, smiling. She watched him gravely without reply. "But it was better in shelter than outside, last night," he added.

  "Yes," she replied.

  "Shall you get a few more sticks?" Geoffrey asked him. It was a new thing for Geoffrey to be leader. Maurice obeyed. He wandered forth into the damp, raw morning. He did not go to the stack, as he shrank from meeting Paula.

  At the mouth of the hut, Geoffrey was making the fire. The woman got out coffee from the box: Geoffrey set the tin to boil. They were arranging breakfast when Paula appeared. She was hatless. Bits of hay stuck in her hair, and she was white-faced--altogether, she did not show to advantage.

  "Ah--you!" she exclaimed, seeing Geoffrey.

  "Hello!" he answered. "You're out early."

  "Where's Maurice?"

  "I dunno, he should be back directly."

  Paula was silent.

  "When have you come?" she asked.

  "I come last night, but I could see nobody about. I got up half an hour sin', an' put th' ladder up ready to take the stack-cloth up."

  Paula understood, and was silent. When Maurice returned with the faggots, she was crouched warming her hands. She looked up at him, but he kept his eyes averted from her. Geoffrey met the eyes of Lydia, and smiled. Maurice put his hands to the fire.

  "You cold?" asked Paula tenderly.

  "A bit," he answered, quite friendly, but reserved. And all the while the four
sat round the fire, drinking their smoked coffee, eating each a small piece of toasted bacon, Paula watched eagerly for the eyes of Maurice, and he avoided her. He was gentle, but would not give his eyes to her looks. And Geoffrey smiled constantly to Lydia, who watched gravely.

  The German girl succeeded in getting safely into the Vicarage, her escapade unknown to anyone save the housemaid. Before a week was out, she was openly engaged to Maurice, and when her month's notice expired, she went to live at the farm.

  Geoffrey and Lydia kept faith one with the other.

  THE OVERTONE

  His wife was talking to two other women. He lay on the lounge pretending to read. The lamps shed a golden light, and, through the open door, the night was lustrous, and a white moon went like a woman, unashamed and naked across the sky. His wife, her dark hair tinged with grey looped low on her white neck, fingered as she talked the pearl that hung in a heavy, naked drop against the bosom of her dress. She was still a beautiful woman, and one who dressed like the night, for harmony. Her gown was of silk lace, all in flakes, as if the fallen, pressed petals of black and faded-red poppies were netted together with gossamer about her. She was fifty-one, and he was fifty-two. It seemed impossible. He felt his love cling round her like her dress, like a garment of dead leaves. She was talking to a quiet woman about the suffrage. The other girl, tall, rather aloof, sat listening in her chair, with the posture of one who neither accepts nor rejects, but who allows things to go on around her, and will know what she thinks only when she must act. She seemed to be looking away into the night. A scent of honeysuckle came through the open door. Then a large grey moth blundered into the light.

  It was very still, almost too silent, inside the room. Mrs. Renshaw's quiet, musical voice continued:

  "But think of a case like Mrs. Mann's now. She is a clever woman. If she had slept in my cradle, and I in hers, she would have looked a greater lady than I do at this minute. But she married Mann, and she has seven children by him, and goes out charring. Her children she can never leave. So she must stay with a dirty, drunken brute like Mann. If she had an income of two pounds a week, she could say to him: 'Sir, good-bye to you,' and she would be well rid. But no, she is tied to him for ever."

  They were discussing the State-endowment of mothers. She and Mrs. Hankin were bitterly keen upon it. Elsa Laskell sat and accepted their talk as she did the scent of the honeysuckle or the blundering adventure of the moth round the silk: it came burdened, not with the meaning of the words, but with the feeling of the woman's heart as she spoke. Perhaps she heard a nightingale in the park outside--perhaps she did. And then this talk inside drifted also to the girl's heart, like a sort of inarticulate music. Then she was vaguely aware of the man sprawled in his homespun suit upon the lounge. He had not changed for dinner: he was called unconventional.

  She knew he was old enough to be her father, and yet he looked young enough to be her lover. They all seemed young, the beautiful hostess, too, but with a meaningless youth that cannot ripen, like an unfertilised flower which lasts a long time. He was a man she classed as a Dane--with fair, almost sandy hair, blue eyes, long loose limbs, and a boyish activity. But he was fifty-two--and he lay looking out on the night, with one of his hands swollen from hanging so long inert, silent. The women bored him.

  Elsa Laskell sat in a sort of dreamy state, and the feelings of her hostess, and the feeling of her host drifted like iridesence upon the quick of her soul, among the white touch of that moon out there, and the exotic heaviness of the honeysuckle, and the strange flapping of the moth. So still, it was, behind the murmur of talk: a silence of being. Of the third woman, Mrs Hankin, the girl had no sensibility. But the night and the moon, the moth, Will Renshaw and Edith Renshaw and herself were all in full being, a harmony.

  To him it was six months after his marriage, and the sky was the same, and the honeysuckle in the air. He was living again his crisis, as we all must, fretting and fretting against our failure, till we have worn away the thread of our life. It was six months after his marriage, and they were down at the little bungalow on the bank of the Soar. They were comparatively poor, though her father was rich, and his was well-to-do. And they were alone in the little two-roomed bungalow that stood on its wild bank over the river, among the honeysuckle bushes. He had cooked the evening meal, they had eaten the omelette and drank the coffee, and all was settling into stillness.

  He sat outside, by the remnants of the fire, looking at the country lying level and lustrous grey opposite him. Trees hung like vapour in a perfect calm under the moonlight. And that was the moon so perfectly naked and unfaltering, going her errand simply through the night. And that was the river faintly rustling. And there, down the darkness, he saw a flashing of activity white betwixt black twigs. It was the water mingling and thrilling with the moon. So! It made him quiver, and reminded him of the starlit rush of a hare. There was vividness then in all this lucid night, things flashing and quivering with being, almost as the soul quivers in the darkness of the eye. He could feel it. The night's great circle was the pupil of an eye, full of the mystery, and the unknown fire of life, that does not burn away, but flickers unquenchable.

  So he rose, and went to look for his wife. She sat with her dark head bent into the light of a reading lamp, in the little hut. She wore a white dress, and he could see her shoulders' softness and curve through the lawn. Yet she did not look up when he moved. He stood in the doorway, knowing that she felt his presence. Yet she gave no sign.

  "Will you come out?" he asked.

  She looked up at him as if to find out what he wanted, and she was rather cold to him. But when he had repeated his request, she had risen slowly to acquiesce, and a tiny shiver had passed down her shoulders. So he unhung from its peg her beautiful Paisley shawl, with its tempered colours that looked as if they had faltered through the years and now were here in their essence, and put it round her. They sat again outside the little hut, under the moonlight. He held both her hands. They were heavy with rings. But one ring was his wedding ring. He had married her, and there was nothing more to own. He owned her, and the night was the pupil of her eye, in which was everything. He kissed her fingers, but she sat and made no sign. It was as he wished. He kissed her fingers again.

  Then a corncrake began to call in the meadow across the river, a strange, dispassionate sound, that made him feel not quite satisfied, not quite sure. It was not all achieved. The moon, in her white and naked candour, was beyond him. He felt a little numbness, as one who has gloves on. He could not feel that clear, clean moon. There was something betwixt him and her, as if he had gloves on. Yet he ached for the clear touch, skin to skin--even of the moonlight. He wanted a further purity, a newer cleanness and nakedness. The corncrake cried too. And he watched the moon, and he watched her light on his hands. It was like a butterfly on his glove, that he could see, but not feel. And he wanted to unglove himself. Quite clear, quite, quite bare to the moon, the touch of everything, he wanted to be. And after all, his wife was everything--moon, vapour of trees, trickling water and drift of perfume--it was all his wife. The moon glistened on her finger-tips as he cherished them, and a flash came out of a diamond, among the darkness. So, even here in the quiet harmony, life was at a flash with itself.

  "Come with me to the top of the red hill," he said to his wife quietly.

  "But why?" she asked.

  "Do come."

  And dumbly she acquiesced, and her shawl hung gleaming above the white flash of her skirt. He wanted to hold her hand, but she was walking apart from him, in her long shawl. So he went to her side, humbly. And he was humble, but he felt it was great. He had looked into the whole of the night, as into the pupil of an eye. And now, he would come perfectly clear out of all his embarrassments of shame and darkness, clean as the moon who walked naked across the night, so that the whole night was as an effluence from her, the whole of it was hers, held in her effluence of moonlight, which was her perfect nakedness, uniting her to everything. Covering was bar
rier, like cloud across the moon.

  The red hill was steep, but there was a tiny path from the bungalow, which he had worn himself. And in the effort of climbing, he felt he was struggling nearer and nearer to himself. Always he looked half round, where, just behind him, she followed, in the lustrous obscurity of her shawl. Her steps came with a little effort up the steep hill, and he loved her feet, he wanted to kiss them as they strove upwards in the gloom. He put aside the twigs and branches. There was a strong scent of honeysuckle like a thick strand of gossamer over his mouth.

  He knew a place on the ledge of the hill, on the lip of the cliff, where the trees stood back and left a little dancing-green, high up above the water, there in the midst of miles of moonlit, lonely country. He parted the boughs, sure as a fox that runs to its lair. And they stood together on this little dancing-green presented towards the moon, with the red cliff cumbered with bushes going down to the river below, and the haze of moon-dust on the meadows, and the trees behind them, and only the moon could look straight into the place he had chosen.

  She stood always a little way behind him. He saw her face all compounded of shadows and moonlight, and he dared not kiss her yet.

  "Will you," he said, "will you take off your things and love me here?"

  "I can't," she said.

  He looked away to the moon. It was difficult to ask her again, yet it meant so much to him. There was not a sound in the night. He put his hand to his throat and began to unfasten his collar.

  "Take off all your things and love me," he pleaded.

  For a moment she was silent.

  "I can't," she said.

  Mechanically, he had taken off his flannel collar and pushed it into his pocket. Then he stood on the edge of the land, looking down into all that gleam, as into the living pupil of an eye. He was bareheaded to the moon. Not a breath of air ruffled his bare throat. Still, in the dropping folds of her shawl, she stood, a thing of dusk and moonlight, a little back. He ached with the earnestness of his desire. All he wanted was to give himself, clean and clear, into this night, this time. Of which she was all, she was everything. He could go to her now, under the white candour of the moon, without shame or shadow, but in his completeness loving her completeness, without a stain, without a shadow between them such as even a flower could cast. For this he yearned as never in his life he could yearn more deeply.