H e bates christmas song analysis

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The central and static character is Clara. A Christmas Song by H E Bates. His limbs moved with the haste of a clockwork doll and he vanished with incredible swiftness from sight. I assume that the reason I have been requested to write this preface to his collected short stories is because the coupling of our two names will seem highly incongruous both to Mr Bates' readers and my own.

He knocked harder again, hard enough to drown any sleepy answer she might have given. They regarded it also, at first with humble solemnity and then with quiet astonishment. The man in the corner 8 The Flame smacked his lips, drank with his mouth full and nearly choked. People who are around her, completely different from her. The repayment for making this song is that every rock star has to be confronted with this video and the Ghost of Hairstyles Past every December 25th. Her reveries are bound to be broken by this actively reprehensible chap - often referred to as like a dog. I ain't going to hurt you, Alice. She is looking for another life but, like the love song, it is floating away. On the two women his rage had not even the slightest effect. They had not seen or heard.

The air was stifling and warm even under the ash tree, and there was no sound in the noon stillness except the clink of the horse's bit as it pulled off the young green leaves of the hawthorn hedge. Its branches were clouded with white blossom and the spring sunlight threw lace-like patterns on the earth that had been trodden bare underneath the tree. They did not even change when Holland spoke, praising her: 'You done this fish all right, Alice.

The Christmas Song - He spread out the sack slowly and carefully on the grass at the foot of the ash trunk and let his squat body sink down upon it heavily.

Bates SPELLA HO FAIR STOOD THE WIND FOR FRANCE THE CRUISE OF THE BREADWINNER THE PURPLE PLAIN THE JACARANDA TREE DEAR LIFE THE SCARLET SWORD COLONEL JULIAN AND OTHER STORIES LOVE FOR LYDIA THE NATURE OF LOVE THE FEAST OF JULY THE SLEEPLESS MOON THE DAFFODIL SKY SUMMER IN SALANDAR THE DARLING BUDS OF MAY A BREATH OF FRENCH AIR THE WATERCRESS GIRL AND OTHER STORIES THE GRAPES OF PARADISE HARK, HARK, THE LARK! THE ENCHANTRESS AND OTHER STORIES THE GOLDEN ORIOLE THE BEST OF H. BATES The Best of H. BATES With a Preface by ENRY MILLER An Atlantic Monthly Press Book LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY BOSTON TORONTO copyright 1928, 1932, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1939, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955 BY H. BATES COPYRIGHT © I956, 1957 BY H. BATES COPYRIGHT © I958, 1959, I961, I963 BY EVENSFORD PRODUC- TIONS, LTD. PREFACE COPYRIGHT © I963 BY HENRY MILLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRO- DUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PAS- SAGES IN A REVIEW TO BE PRINTED IN A MAGAZINE OR NEWSPAPER. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. The intervening thirty-five years, together with the thirty-five stories I have chosen from that period, therefore give this collection its title, Seven by Five. My aim has been to make the book as widely repre- sentative of my work as a short story writer as possible, but I have nevertheless refrained from including any of the war-time stories I wrote under the pseudonym of 'Flying Officer X', any of the stories of Uncle Silas and any novellas, since these all belong, in my view, to quite separate categories. PREFACE BY HENRY MILLER It was only a little over a year ago that I came across H. Bates' work; up until then. I had never even heard his name, strange as this may sound. I blush now when I read that he is the author of forty or more books, has been translated into a dozen or more languages, and that 'his reputation in America, Australia and New Zealand equals, and in some cases surpasses, that in his own country. Hav- ing nothing to read I asked a friend to go to the bookstore in the lobby and select something light, gay, amusing for me. My friend returned with a copy of A Breath of French Air. He said nothing about knowing the author until some days later when I told him how much I had enjoyed the book. A little later, at some airport, I picked up The Darling Buds of May and Fair Stood the Wind for France. The last named impressed me deeply and made me wonder why I had never heard of the author. It struck me as being the only good novel I had read about World War II. In a way Mr Bates is the very opposite of what I look for in an author. There is certainly little relation between his manner of writing and that of Celine or Blaise Cendrars, my favourites among contemporary writers. Both dead now, alas. On the other hand, I do find a kinship between Bates and Jean Giono, whose work I adore. I ought to add - like whom I wish I could write. One of the great joys for a writer is to find a fellow writer who, because he is so different, captivates and enchants him. To find a writer whose work he will read even if he is warned that it is not one of the author's best. In general I must confess that I seldom fall for the work of a popular writer. Had I lived in Dickens' time, for example, I doubt that I would have been one of his devoted readers. As for the successful writers of our own time there is hardly one Preface by Henry Miller I can think of off hand whom I have any desire to read. It de- mands an effort for me to read a modern novel, and an even greater one to read a short story. I make exception for the short stories of I. Singer, the Yiddish writer. And Mr Bates is supremely a novelist and short-story writer. He is, moreover, a rather conventional one. After all that has been written about this author it seems rather unimportant that I add my tribute to him. Certainly he needs no further words of praise, and praise, I am afraid, is all I can summon. I assume that the reason I have been requested to write this preface to his collected short stories is because the coupling of our two names will seem highly incongruous both to Mr Bates' readers and my own. I know that I have a reputa- tion for being highly critical of, perhaps even unfair to British authors. On the other hand, it should not be overlooked that the one author still alive for whom I have an undying admiration is John Cowper Powys, and that I regard his novel, A Glastonbury Romance, as the greatest novel in the English language. If Mr Bates were a painter I think I could express my views about his work much better. Last night I lay awake trying to pick out the painter with whom I sought to identify his writing. No single painter whose work I know seemed suitable. I thought of Renoir and Bonnard, of Breughel the elder and others. I think that if I were to find one it would be a Flemish painter. The reason is obvious. Whether it be the short story or the novel, Mr Bates always finds time for lengthy descriptions of nature, descriptions which in the hands of a lesser writer would seem boring or out of place. He dwells long and lovingly on things which years ago would have driven me mad. I mean such things as flowers, plants, trees, birds, sea, sky, everything in short which meets the eye and which the unskilled writer uses as so much window dressing. Indeed, it is not only the unskilled writer who is guilty of mis- handling description. Some of the greatest novelists of the past were flagrantly guilty of doing just this, and more particularly British writers. With Mr Bates this fault has been made into a virtue. The reader falls upon these lengthy passages like a man athirst. There is another virtue which goes hand in hand with the Preface by Henry Miller above-mentioned one, and that is the author's feeling for women. His women are always females first and foremost. That is to say, they are fully sexed : they have all the charm, the loveliness, the attraction of the flowers he knows so well. With a few deft strokes - like a painter again - we are given their peculiar grace, character and utter femininity. Not all of them, naturally, for he can also render the other kind of woman just as tellingly. And then there is this element which crops up again and again, I find - an obsession with pain. Pain stretched to the breaking point, pain prolonged beyond all seeming endurance. This element is usually called forth in connection with heroic behaviour. Perhaps it is the supreme mark of the hero, this ability to endure pain. With Mr Bates I feel that it goes beyond the point of the heroic; it carries us into some other dimension. Pain takes on the aspects of space and time, a continuum or perpetuum which one finally questions no longer. But no matter how much one is made to suffer, one closes his books with a lasting sensation of beauty. And this sense of beauty, it seems to me, is evoked by the author's unswerving acceptance of life. It is this which makes his flowers, trees, birds, skies, whatever it be, different from those of other writers. They are not merely decorative, they are not showily dramatic: they exist, along with his characters, his thoughts, his observations, in a plenum which is spiritual as well as physical. There is one other quality which must endear him to every reader and that is his sense of humour. It is a full, robust humour, often bawdy, which I must confess the British writer seems to have lost in the last few centuries. It is never a nasty humour, so common to American writers. It is clean and healthy, and absolutely infectious. What surprises me most about this man's work is the fact that only one or two of his books have been made into films. Despite the abundance of descriptive passages which I spoke of, there is drama in all his work. Good, natural dialogue which, if transferred to the screen, would need no adaptation. I realise at this point that I have said little or nothing about the short stories themselves. Aside from a few very short ones I find them all absorbing. Meanwhile I look forward with great relish to eating my way through the thirty odd books of his Preface by Henry Miller which I have yet to read, especially those containing his novellas, a form which clearly suits him best, as it did one of my first idols, Knut Hamsun. But I am sure that whatever Mr Bates gives us will always please me. BATES THE FLAME 'Two ham and tongue, two teas, please, Miss! The order was repeated. She put down the tube, seemed satisfied, even bored, and patted the white frilled cap that kept her black hair in place. Then she stood still, hand on hip, pensively watching the door. The door opened and shut. She thought : 'Them two again! Her face grew pensive again. The first order came on the lift, and the voice up the tube: 'Two 'am an' tongue, two teas! On returning she was idle again, her eye still on the door. Her ear detected the sound of a bronchial wheeze on the floor above, the angry voice of a customer in the next section, and the rumble of the lift coming up. But she watched the door until the last possible second. The tray slid into her hand almost without her knowing it and the nasal voice into her ears: 'One 'am, one tongue, two teas! When she leant against the head of the lift she shut her eyes, then remembered and opened them again to resume her watch on the door and clock. The man in the corner 8 The Flame smacked his lips, drank with his mouth full and nearly choked. A girl in another corner laughed, not at the choking man but at her companion looking cross-eyed. The cash-register linked' sharply. Someone went out: nothing but fog came in, making every one shiver at once. The man in the corner whistled three or four notes to show his discomfort, remembered himself, and began to eat ham. The girl noticed these things mechanically, not troubling to show her disgust. Her eye remained on the door. A customer came in, an uninteresting working girl who stared, hesitated, then went and sat out of the dark girl's section. The dark girl noticed it mechanically. The manageress came: tall, darkly dressed, with long sleeves, like a manageress. I'm due out at half-past. It seemed years before the 'tink' of the register put an end to confusion. The customer went out: fog blew in : people shivered. The couple in the corner sipped their tea, making little storms in their tea-cups. She put her head against the lift. The clock showed a quarter past: another quarter of an hour! As if in consequence her brain seemed doubly sharp and she kept thinking: 'My night out. He said - ' 'Bill! A difficult bill nearly sent her mad, but she wrote mechanically, cleaned away dirty platter, brushed off crumbs - all mechanically. Now and then she watched the clock. Had he said Wednesday? The waitress from the next section, a fair girl, came and said : 'Swap me your night, Lil? Got a flame comin' in. I couldn't The Flame 9 get across to tell you before. A real flame - strite he is - nice, quiet, 'andsome. The clock showed three minutes to go. Every one was eating contentedly. In the shadow near the lift she pulled out his note and read: 'I will come for you, Wednesday evening, 6. Then, he was late! Why should she think half- past? She shut her eyes. Then he wasn't coming! A clock outside struck the half-hour. She waited five minutes before passing down the room, more mechanically than ever. Why hadn't he come? Why hadn't he come? The fair girl met her. He's a real flame - 'struth he is, nice, quiet! The dark girl watched the door. It was all over. The door opened often now, the fog was thicker, she moved busily. She thought of him when a man ordered a brandy and spilt it over her hand because his own shivered with cold. He wasn't like that, she thought, as she sucked her fingers dry. For the first time in five minutes she looked at the door. She felt her heart leap. He had come at last. Yes, there he was. He was talking to the fair girl. The little doll was close to him. Yes, there he was, nice, quiet handsome. Their voices crept across to her. The door shut hard. She was sad, hungry, tired. Two teas, two tongues. A FLOWER PIECE The blackthorn tree stooped over the high bank above the road. Its branches were clouded with white blossom and the spring sunlight threw lace-like patterns on the earth that had been trodden bare underneath the tree. The grass of the bank was scattered with big, pale-blue violets and stars of coltsfoot and daisies very like chance blackthorn blossoms that the wind had shaken down. In the hedge behind the blackthorn were com- panies of pale-green lords-and-ladies that had thrust up their unfurled hoods through a thicket of dog's-mercury. They looked cold and stately. The sunlight was sharp and brilliant and against the blue of the sky the blackthorn tree was whiter than a summer cloud. On the road below stood a row of cottages and in the back gardens wives were beating carpets and gossiping. A clergyman rode by on a bicycle, carrying The Times and a bunch of daffodils. A blackbird squawked and dipped across the road and vanished into a spinney of hazels as he passed. A girl of seven or eight was sitting under the blackthorn. The tree was so twisted and stooping that she sat there in a kind of room, shut in by a roof and walls of blossoming branches. It was very sweet and snug there on the dry floor in the freckling sunlight. She had taken off her pinafore and had spread it across the earth and had set in the centre of it a tin that had once held peaches. In the tin she was arranging flowers among ivy leaves and grasses. She had put in celandines and dog- violets and coltsfoot and a single dandelion, with a spray or two of blackthorn. She arched her fingers very elegantly and sat back to admire the effects. She had fair, smooth hair, and she had made a daisy chain to bind round her forehead. It gave her a very superior and ladylike air which was not lost on her. Presently she ceased arranging the flowers and began to smooth her dress and polish her finger-nails on her palms, lingering over them for a long time. At last there was a move- 11 12 A Flower Piece ment in a hawthorn bush a little distance away and a voice called quietly: 'Do I have to come in now? And then in a totally strange voice, very high-pitched and affected, like the voice of a stage duchess, she sang out: Tm at my toilet, my dear. I'm still in my deshabille. Finally she undid two buttons at the bodice of her dress and turned back the bodice of her dress, revealing her naked chest. She looked down at herself in admiration, breathing heavily once or twice, so that her bosom rose and fell very languidly and softly. She gave one last touch to the flowers in the peach-tin and then whispered: 'You can come in now. She was a brown, shy, unassuming creature, about six or seven, with beautiful dark eyes that reflected the dazzling whiteness of the sloe blossom so perfectly that they took fresh light from it. Her voice was curiously soft and timid and whispering. You look at the flowers and then you ring and the servant comes. It was very sweet and she sighed. She acted very charmingly, and finally she rang the bell and the servant came. The fair child for a moment did not notice her. She had broken off a thorn and she was absorbed in stitching imaginary embroideries very delicately. Suddenly she glanced up with a most perfect exclamation of well-mannered surprise. It is Mrs Lane, isn't it? Won't you sit down? I'll ring for tea. You must be tired. Jane, will you bring tea at once, please? Instantly the fair child was furious. She looked very meek and solemn and embarrassed, as though she were really in a drawing-room and did not know what to do with her hands. The fair child was acting superbly, not one accent or gesture out of place. The maid arrived with the tea and the fair one said with perfect sweetness: 'Milk and sugar? The fair-haired child took one look at her and became furious again. I want some new elastic' 'But you mustn't do it. Not in the drawing-room. Ladies have to sit nice and talk nice and behave themselves. She looked as though she 14 A Flower Piece were bored and bewildered by the affectations of the fair child and by the prospect of being a lady. She was constantly glanc- ing with an expression of quiet longing at the blackthorn blossom, the blue sky and the flowers arranged in the peach-tin. The brown child sat with a stone in her hand. The other took a cake between her finger-tips and made elegant bites and munched with a sweetish smile. She made small talk to perfection, and when she drank her tea she extended her little finger. Finally she observed that the dark child was neither eating nor drinking. She looked at her as if she had committed unpardonable sins in etiquette. The brown-eyed child looked startled and then declared timidly : 'I don't want to play this game. All the dignity of the fair child at once vanished. She made a gesture as though it were difficult to bear all the shortcomings of the younger child. You play so silly. You aren't old enough to understand. Suddenly she dropped the stone and began to creep out disconsolately from under the blackthorn tree. The fair child adopted a new, cajoling tone. We can start again and you can be a duchess. The other child sniffed and tossed her head with fierce pride and called out : 'You needn't think you can come back here now you've gone. She A Flower Piece 15 became lost in a world of dog's-mercury and budding hawthorn and pale violets. She came upon primrose buds and finally a cluster of opened primroses and a bed of white anemones. Talking to herself, she gathered flowers and leaves and put them in her hair, as the fair girl had done. The fair child crept out from under the blackthorn tree. She had tucked her frock in her pale blue knickers and she stood upright on her toes, like a ballet-dancer. She broke off a spray of blackthorn and held it with both hands above her head and then twirled on her toes and did high kicks and waltzed majestically round and round the blackthorn tree. Now and then she broke out and sang to herself. She introduced a stage vibrato into her voice and she danced about the blackthorn tree to the tune she made, acting perfectly. Finally the brown-haired child came down the bank again. She saw the fair child dancing and she suddenly conceived a desire to dance too. She stood by the tree and waited. The fair girl saw her. A spasm of sadness crossed the face of the dark child. She turned and descended the bank very slowly, sometimes pausing and looking backward and then edging unwillingly away. Finally, with the primroses and the single anemone still shining in her hair, she reached the road and walked slowly away and disappeared. When she had gone there was nothing left to interrupt the gaiety of the dancing child, the flowers about the earth and the blackthorn tree scattering its shower of lovely stars. THE MOWER In the midday heat of a June day a farm-boy was riding down a deserted meadow-lane, straddling a fat white pony. The blossoms of hawthorn had shrivelled to brown on the tall hedges flanking the lane and wild pink and white roses were beginning to open like stars among the thick green leaves. The air was heavy with the scent of early summer, the odour of the dying hawthorn bloom, the perfume of the dog-roses, the breath of ripening grass. The boy had taken off his jacket and had hooked it over the straw victual-bag hanging from the saddle. There were bottles of beer in the bag and the jacket shaded them from the heat of the sun. The pony moved at walking-pace and the boy rode cautiously, never letting it break into a trot. As though it was necessary to be careful with the beer, he sometimes halted the pony and touched the necks of the bottles with his fingers. The bottlenecks were cool, but the cloth of his jacket was burning against his hand. He presently steered the pony through a white gate leading from the lane to a meadow beyond. The gate was standing open and he rode the pony straight across the curving swathes of hay which lay drying in the sun. It was a field of seven or eight acres and a third of the grass had already been mown. The hay was crisp and dry under the pony's feet and the flowers that had been growing in the grass lay white and shrivelled in the sunshine. Over on the far side of the field a man was mowing and a woman was turning the rows of grass with a hay rake. The figure of the man was nondescript and dark, and the woman was dressed in a white blouse and an old green skirt that had faded to the yellowish colour of the grass the man was mowing. The boy rode the pony towards them. The sunshine blazed down fierce and perpendicular, and there was no shade in the field except for the shadow of an ash tree in one corner and a group of willows by a cattle-pond in another. The woman straightened her back and, leaning on her rake, shaded her face with her hand and looked across at the boy as she heard him coming. The man went on mowing, swinging the scythe slowly and methodically, his back towards her. The woman was dark and good-looking, with a sleek swarthy face and very high, soft red cheek-bones, like a gipsy, and a long pigtail of thick black hair which she wore twisted over her head like a snake coiled up asleep. She herself was rather like a snake also, her long body slim and supple, her black eyes liquid and bright. The boy rode up to her and dismounted. She dropped her rake and held the pony's head and ran her fingers up and down its nose while he slipped from the saddle. The boy had not time to answer before the man approached, wiping the sweat from his face and neck with a dirty red handkerchief. His face was broad and thick-lipped and pon- derous, his eyes were grey and simple, and the skin of his face and neck and hands was dried and tawny as an Indian's with sun and weather. He was about forty, and he walked with a slight stoop of his shoulders and a limp of his left leg, very slowly and deliberately. What did he say? He's got to have his own way,' said the man. He'll come all right. He does things just when he thinks he will - and not until. He'll come if he says he'll come,' she said. The boy began to lead the pony across the field towards the ash tree. The woman stood aside for him and then kicked her rake on a heap of hay and followed him. The sun had crossed the zenith. The man went back to his scythe and slipped his whetstone from his pocket and laid it carefully on the mown grass. As he put on his jacket he turned and gazed at the white gate of the field. He could see no one there, and he followed the woman and the boy across the field to the ash tree. Under the ash tree the boy was tethering the horse in the shade and the woman was unpacking bread and cold potatoes and a meat pie. The boy had finished tethering the horse as the man came up and he was covering over the bottles of beer with a heap of hay. The sight of the beer reminded the man of some- thing. He spread out the sack slowly and carefully on the grass at the foot of the ash trunk and let his squat body sink down upon it heavily. The boy and the woman seated them- selves on the grass at his side. He unhooked the heavy soldier's knife hanging from his belt, and unclasped it and wiped it on his trousers knee. The women sliced the pie. The man took his plateful of pie and bread and potatoes on his knee, and spitting his sucking-pebble from his mouth began spearing the food with the point of his knife, eating ravenously. When he did not eat with his knife he ate with his fingers, grunting and belching happily. The woman finished serving the pie, and sucking a smear of gravy from her long fingers, began to eat too. During the eating no one spoke. The three people stared at the half-mown field. The curves of the scythed grass were beginning to whiten in the blazing sunshine. The heat shimmered and danced above the earth in the distance in little waves. Before long the man wiped his plate with a piece of bread and swilled down his food with long drinks of cold tea from a blue The Mower 19 can. When he had finished drinking, his head lolled back against the ash tree and he closed his eyes. The boy lay flat on his belly, reading a sporting paper while he ate. The air was stifling and warm even under the ash tree, and there was no sound in the noon stillness except the clink of the horse's bit as it pulled off the young green leaves of the hawthorn hedge. But suddenly the woman sat up a little and the drowsy look on her face began to clear away. A figure of a man had appeared at the white gate and was walking across the field. He walked with a kind of swaggering uncertainty and now and then he stopped and took up a handful of mown grass and dropped it again. He was carrying a scythe on his shoulder. She watched him intently as he skirted the standing grass and came towards the ash tree. He halted at last within the shade of the tree and took a long look at the expanse of grass, thick with buttercups and tall bull- daises, scattered everywhere like a white and yellow mass of stars. His voice was jocular and tipsy. The woman stood up. What's the matter, Ponto? He was a tall, thin, black-haired fellow, about thirty, lean and supple as a stoat; his sharp, dark-brown eyes were filled with a roving expression, half dissolute and half cunning; the light in them was sombre with drinking. His soft red lips were full and pouting, and there was something about his face altogether conceited, easy-going and devilish. He had a curious habit of looking at things with one eye half closed in a kind of sleepy wink that was marvellously knowing and attractive. He was wearing a dark slouch hat which he had tilted back from his forehead and which gave him an air of being a little wild but sublimely happy. Suddenly he grinned at the woman and walked over to where the man lay sleeping. He bent down and put his mouth close to his face. The man woke with a start. Where did you spring from? I wanna get this grass knocked down afore dark. When I mow I do mow, I do. You don't know what mowin' is. He was slightly unsteady on his feet and the jacket bothered him as he pulled it off and he swore softly. He was wearing a blue- and- white shirt and a pair of dark moleskin trousers held up by a wide belt of plaited leather thongs. His whetstone rested in a leather socket hanging from the belt. He spat on his hands and slipped the whetstone from the socket and picked up his scythe and with easy, careless rhythmical swings began to whet the long blade. The woman gazed at the stroke of his arm and listened to the sharp ring of the stone against the blade with a look of unconscious admiration and pleasure on her face. The blade of the scythe was very long, tapering and slender, and it shone like silver in the freckles of sunlight coming through the ash leaves. He ceased sharpening the blade and took a swing at a tuft of bull-daisies. The blade cut the stalks crisply and the white flowers fell evenly together, like a fallen nosegay. His swing was beautiful and with the scythe in his hand the balance of his body seemed to become perfect and he himself suddenly sober, dignified, and composed. The boy went up on the nag and fetched it. You can't mow without beer. Twenty pints a day. He was a bloody champion. You can't mow without beer. Ponto took it from her mechanically, hardly looking at her. He un- The Mower 21 corked the bottle, covered the white froth with his mouth and drank eagerly, the muscles of his neck rippling like those of a horse. He drank all the beer at one draught and threw the empty bottle into the hedge, scaring the pony. The pony tossed his head and quietened again. Ponto wiped his lips, and taking a step or two towards the boy, aimed the point of the scythe jocularly at his backside. The boy ran off and Ponto grinned tipsily at the woman. He looked her up and down, from the arch of her hips to the clear shape of the breasts in her blouse and the coil of her black pigtail. Her husband was walking across the field to fetch his scythe. She smiled drowsily at Ponto and he smiled in return. His smile broadened and he stretched out his hand and let his fingers run down her bare brown throat. She quivered and breathed quickly and laughed softly in return. His eyes rested on her face with mysterious admiration and delight and he seemed suddenly very pleased about something. He walked past her and crossed the field to the expanse of unmown grass. He winked solemnly and his fingers ran lightly against her thigh as he passed her. The woman followed him out into the sunshine and took up her rake and began to turn the rows that had been cut since early morning. When she glanced up again the men were mow- ing. They seemed to be mowing at the same even, methodical pace, but Ponto was already ahead. He swung his scythe with a long light caressing sweep, smoothly and masterfully, as though his limbs had been born to mow. The grass was shaved off very close to the earth and was laid in a tidy swathe that curved gently behind him like a thick rope. On the backward stroke the grass and the butter-cups and the bull-daisies were pressed gently backwards, bent in readiness to meet the forward swing that came through the grass with a soft swishing sound like the sound of indrawn breath. The boy came and raked in the row next to the woman. To- gether they turned the rows and the men mowed in silence for a 22 The Mower long time. Every time the woman looked up she looked at Ponto. He was always ahead of her husband and he moved with a kind of lusty insistence, as though he were intent on moving the whole field before darkness fell. Her husband mowed in a stiff, awkward fashion, always limping and often whetting his scythe. The boy had taken some beer to Ponto, who often stopped to drink. She would catch the flash of the bottle tilted up in the brilliant sunshine and she would look at him meditatively as though remembering something. As the afternoon went on, Ponto mowed far ahead of her husband, working across the field towards the pond and the willows. He began at last to mow a narrow space of grass behind the pond. She saw the swing of his bare arms through the branches and then lost them again. Suddenly he appeared and waved a bottle and shouted some- thing. Til go,' she said to the boy. She dropped her rake and walked over to the ash tree and found a bottle of beer. The flies were tormenting the horse and she broke off an ash bough and slipped it in the bridle. The sun seemed hotter than ever as she crossed the field with the beer, and the earth was cracked and dry under her feet. She picked up a stalk of buttercups and swung it against her skirt. The scent of the freshly-mown grass was strong and sweet in the sunshine. She carried the beer close by her side, in the shadow. Ponto was mowing a stretch of grass thirty or forty yards wide behind the pond. The grass was richer and taller than in the rest of the field and the single swathes he had cut lay as thick as corn. She sat down on the bank of the pond under a willow until he had finished his bout of mowing. She had come up silently, and he was mowing with his back towards her, and it was not until he turned that he knew she was there. He laid his scythe in the grass and came sidling up to her. His face was drenched in sweat and in his mouth was a stalk of totter-grass and the dark red seeds trembled as he walked. He looked at Anna with a kind of sleepy surprise. He smiled and sat down at her side. The Mower 23 She too smiled with a flash of her black eyes. He took the bottle from her hand and put one hand on her knee and caressed it gently. She watched the hand with a smile of strange, wicked, ironical amusement. He put the bottle between his knees and unscrewed the stopper. She drank and gave him the bottle. He shrugged his shoulders and took a long drink. His hand was still on her knee and as she played idly with the stalk of buttercups, her dark face concealed its rising passion in a look of wonderful preoccupation, as though she had forgotten him com- pletely. He wetted his lips with his tongue and ran his hand swiftly and caressingly from her knees to her waist. Her body was stiff for one moment and then it relaxed and sank backwards into the long grass. She shut her eyes and slipped into his embrace like a snake, her face blissfully happy, her hand still clasping the stalk of buttercups, her whole body trembling. Presently across the field came the sound of a scythe being sharpened. She whispered something quickly and struggled and Ponto got to his feet. She sat up and buttoned the neck of her blouse. She was flushed and panting, and her eyes rested on Ponto with a soft, almost beseeching look of adoration. Ponto walked away to his scythe and picked it up and began mowing again. He mowed smoothly and with a sort of aloof in- difference as though nothing had happened, and she let him mow for five or six paces before she too stood up. She remained for a moment in an attitude of expectancy, but he did not speak or cease the swing of his arms, and very slowly she turned away and went back across the field. She walked back to where she had left her rake. She picked up the rake and began to turn the swathes of hay again, follow- ing the boy. She worked for a long time without looking up. When at last she lifted her head and looked over towards the pond, she saw that Ponto had ceased mowing behind the pond and was cutting the grass in the open field again. He was mow- ing with the same easy, powerful insistence and with the same 24 The Mower beautiful swaggering rhythm of his body, as though he could never grow tired. They worked steadily on and the sun began to swing round behind the ash tree and the heat began to lessen and twilight began to fall. While the two men were mowing side by side on the last strip of grass, the woman began to pack the victual-bags and put the saddle on the horse under the ash tree. She was strapping the girth of the saddle when she heard feet in the grass and a voice said softly : 'Anymore beer? A bottle of beer was left in the bag and she brought it out for him. He began drinking, and while he was drinking she gazed at him with rapt admiration, as though she had been mysteriously attracted out of herself by the sight of his subtle, conceited, devilish face, the memory of his embrace by the pond and the beautiful untiring motion of his arms swinging the scythe throughout the afternoon. There was something altogether trustful, foolish and abandoned about her, as though she was sublimely eager to do whatever he asked. He looked at her with a kind of careless, condescending stare, half smiling. She stood perfectly still, her eyes filled with half-happy, half-frightened submissiveness. He suddenly wiped the beer from his lips with the back of his hand and put out his arm and caught her waist and tried to kiss her. She went on packing the victual-bags, the expression on her face lost and expectant. The outlines of the field and the figures of the mowers became softer and darker in the twilight. The evening air was warm and heavy with the scent of the hay. The men ceased mowing at last. The boy had gone home and the woman led the horse across the field to where the men were waiting. Her husband was tying the sack about the blade of his The Mower 25 scythe. She looked at Ponto with a dark, significant flash of her eyes, but he took no notice. He took the bottle and drank to the dregs and then hurled the bottle across the field. She tried to catch his eye, but he was already walking away over the field, as though he had never seen her. She followed him with her husband and the horse. They came to the gate of the field and Ponto was waiting. A look of antici- pation and joy shot up in her eyes. Why should I damn well walk up this lane when I can sit on your old hoss? She let her hand touch his knee and fixed her eyes on him with a look of inquiring eagerness, but he suddenly urged the horse forward and began to ride away up the lane. She followed her husband out of the field. He shut the gate and looked back over the darkening field at the long black swathes of hay lying pale yellow in the dusk. He seemed pleased and he called to Ponto : 'I don't know what the Hanover we should ha' done without you, Ponto. God damn it, that's nothing. All in the day's work. The woman followed him with her husband. He walked slowly, limping, and now and then she walked on a few paces ahead, as though trying to catch up with the retreating horse. Sometimes the horse would slow down into a walk and she would come almost to within speaking distance of Ponto, but each time the horse would break into a fresh trot and leave her 26 The Mower as far behind again. The lane was dusky with twilight and Ponto burst into a song about a girl and a sailor. The woman did not speak: but as she listened her dark face was filled with the conflicting expression of many emotions, exasperation, perplexity, jealousy, longing, hope, anger. TIME Sitting on an iron seat fixed about the body of a great chestnut tree breaking into pink-flushed blossom, two old men gazed dumbly at the sunlit emptiness of a town square. The morning sun burned in a sky of marvellous blue serenity, making the drooping leaves of the tree most brilliant and the pale blossoms expand to fullest beauty. The eyes of the old men were also blue, but the brilliance of the summer sky made a mockery of the dim and somnolent light in them. Their thin white hair and drooping skin, their faltering lips and rusted clothes, the huddled bones of their bodies had come to winter. Their hands tottered, their lips were wet and dribbling, and they stared with a kind of earnest vacancy, seeing the world as a stillness of amber mist. They were perpetually silent. The deafness of one made speech a ghastly effort of shouting and mis-interpretation. With their worn sticks between their knees and their worn hands knotted over their sticks they sat as though time had ceased to exist for them. Nevertheless every movement across the square was an event. Their eyes missed nothing that came within sight. It was as if the passing of every vehicle held for them the possibility of catas- trophe; the appearance of a strange face was a revolution; the apparitions of young ladies in light summer dresses gliding on legs of shell- pink silk had on them something of the effect of goddesses on the minds of young heroes. There were, sometimes, subtle changes of light in their eyes. Across the square they observed an approaching figure. They watched it with a new intensity, exchanging also, for the first time, a glance with one another. For the first time also they spoke. He, too, was old. Beside 27 28 Time him, indeed, it was as if they were adolescent. He was patriar- chal. He resembled a biblical prophet, bearded and white and immemorial. But though he looked like a patriarch he came across the square with the haste of a man in a walking race. He moved with a nimbleness and airiness that were miraculous. Seeing the old men on the seat he waved his stick with an amazing gaiety at them. It was like the brandishing of a youthful sword. Ten yards away he bellowed their names lustily in greeting. He shouted stentoriously about the weather, wagging his white beard strongly. They shifted along the seat and he sat down. A look of secret relief came over their dim faces, for he had towered above them like a statue in silver and bronze. With relief they saw him fumble in his pockets and bring out a bag of peppermints, black-and- white balls sticky and strong from the heat of his strenuous body, and having one by one popped peppermints into their mouths they sucked for a long time with toothless and dumb solemnity, contemplating the sunshine. As they sucked, the two old men waited for Duke to speak, and they waited like men awaiting an oracle, since he was, in their eyes, a masterpiece of a man. Long ago, when they had been napkinned and at the breast, he had been a man with a beard, and before they had reached their youth he had passed into a lusty maturity. All their lives they had felt infantile beside him. Now, in old age, he persisted in shaming them by the lustiness of his achievements and his vitality. He had the secret of a devilish perpetual youth. To them the world across the square was veiled in sunny mistiness, but Duke could detect the swift- ness of a rabbit on a hillside a mile away. They heard the sounds of the world as though through a stone wall, but he could hear the crisp bark of a fox in another parish. They were Time 29 condemned to an existence of memory because they could not read, but Duke devoured the papers. He had an infinite know- ledge of the world and the freshest affairs of men. He brought them, every morning, news of earthquakes in Peru, of wars in China, of assassinations in Spain, of scandals among the clergy. He understood the obscurest movements of politicians and ex- plained to them the newest laws of the land. They listened to him with the devoutness of worshippers listening to a preacher, regarding him with awe and believing in him with humble astonishment. There were times when he lied to them blatantly. As they sat there, blissfully sucking, the shadow of the chest- nut-tree began to shorten, its westward edge creeping up, like a tide, towards their feet. Beyond, the sun continued to blaze with unbroken brilliance on the white square. Swallowing the last smooth grain of peppermint Reuben wondered aloud what time it could be. They watched his hand solemnly uplift itself and vanish into his breast. They had no watches. Duke alone could tell them the passage of time while appearing to mock at it himself. Very slowly he drew out an immense watch, held it out at length on its silver chain, and regarded it steadfastly. They regarded it also, at first with humble solemnity and then with quiet astonishment. They leaned forward to stare at it. Their eyes were filled with a great light of unbelief. The watch had stopped. The three old men continued to stare at the watch in silence. The stopping of this watch was like the stopping of some perfect automaton. It resembled almost the stopping of time itself. Duke shook the watch urgently. The hand moved onward for a second or two from half-past three and then was dead again. He lifted the watch to his ear and listened. For a moment or two longer the old man sat in lugubrious contemplation. The watch, like Duke, was a masterpiece, in- credibly ancient, older even than Duke himself. They did not know how often he had boasted to them of its age and efficiency, its beauty and pricelessness. They remembered that it had once belonged to his father, that he had been offered incredible sums for it, that it had never stopped since the battle of Waterloo. He spoke with the mysterious air of a man about to unravel a mystery. They could not know. Duke made an ominous gesture, almost a flourish, with the hand that held the watch. The oracle spoke at last, repeating with one hand the ominous gesture that was like a flourish. Stopped in the middle of me dinner,' he said. He was briefly silent. And then stopped like that, all of a sudden, just at pudden-time. Couldn't understand it for the life of me. This watch is older'n me, I said, and it's never stopped as long as I can remember. So he squinted at it and poked it and that's what he said. It's the lectric - the lectric in your body. That's what he said. The lectric' 'Lectric light? You're full o' lectric, he says. You go home and leave your watch on the shelf and it'll go again. There was an ominous silence. Finally, with the watch still in his hand, Duke made an immense flourish, a gesture of serene triumph. Right as a cricket! The fickleness of the watch was beyond the weakness of their ancient comprehension. They groped for understanding as they might have searched with their dim eyes for a balloon far up in the sky. Time 3 1 Staring and murmuring they could only pretend to understand. Bursting with glory, he feigned humility. His white beard wagged lustily with pride, but the hand still bearing the watch seemed to droop with modesty. They accepted the words in silence. It was as though they began to understand at last the lustiness of Duke's life, the nimbleness of his mind, the amazing youthfulness of his patriarchal limbs. The shadow of the chestnut-tree had dwindled to a small dark circle about their seat. The rays of the sun were brilliantly per- pendicular. On the chestnut-tree itself the countless candelabra of blossoms were a pure blaze of white and rose. A clock began to chime for noon. Duke, at that moment, looked at his watch, still lying in his hand. He started with instant guilt. The hands had moved miracu- lously to four o'clock and in the stillness of the summer air he could hear the tick of wheels. With hasty gesture of resignation he dropped the watch into his pocket again. He looked quickly at the old men, but they were sunk in sombre meditation. They had not seen or heard. He retreated nimbly across the square in the hot sunshine and the old men sat staring after him with the innocence of solemn wonder. His limbs moved with the haste of a clockwork doll and he vanished with incredible swiftness from sight. The sun had crept beyond the zenith and the feet of the old men were bathed in sunshine. THE MILL A Ford motor-van, old and repainted green with Jos. Hartop, greengrocer, rabbits, scratched in streaky white lettering on a flattened-out biscuit tin nailed to the side, was slowly travelling across a high treeless stretch of country in squally November half-darkness. Rain hailed on the windscreen and periodically swished like a sea-wave on the sheaves of pink chrysanthemums strung on the van roof. Hartop was driving : a thin angular man, starved-faced. He seemed to occupy almost all the seat, sprawling awkwardly; so that his wife and their daughter Alice sat squeezed up, the girl with her arms flat as though ironed against her side, her thin legs pressed tight together into the size of one. The Hartops' faces seemed moulded in clay and in the light from the van-lamps were a flat swede-colour. Like the man, the two women were thin, with a screwed-up thinness that made them look both hard and frightened. Hartop drove with great caution, grasping the wheel tightly, braking hard at the bends, his big yellowish eyes fixed ahead, protuberantly, with vigilance and fear. His hands, visible in the faint dashboard light, were marked on the backs with dark smears of dried rabbits' blood. The van fussed and rattled, the chrysanthemums always swish- ing, rain-soaked, in the sudden high wind-squalls. And the two women sat in a state of silent apprehension, their bodies not moving except to lurch with the van their clayish faces con- tinuously intent, almost scared, in the lamp-gloom. And after some time Hartop gave a slight start, and then drew the van to the roadside and stopped it. But the engine still ticked, and they could hear nothing beyond it but the wind and rain squalling in the dead grass along the roadside. It was raining furiously. The darkness seemed solid with rain. We'll stop at Drake's Turn. I know something dropped. Soon, to Alice, it seemed to be moving very rapidly. In the rain and the darkness all she could see was the tail-light, smoothly receding. She watched it for a moment and then began to walk back along the road. The wind was behind her; but repeatedly it seemed to veer and smash her, with the rain, full in the face. She walked without hurrying. She seemed to accept the journey as she accepted the rain and her father's words, quite stoically. She walked in the middle of the road, looking directly ahead, as though she had a long journey before her. She could see nothing. And then, after a time, she stumbled against something in the road. She stooped and picked up a bunch of pink chrysanthe- mums. She gave them a single shake. The flower-odour and the rain seemed to be released together, and then she began to walk back with them along the road. It was as though the chrysanthe- mums were what she had expected to find above all things. She showed no surprise. Before very long she could see the red tail-light of the van again. She could see also the lights of houses, little squares of yellow which the recurrent rain on her lashes transformed into sudden stars. When she reached the van the back-board had been un- 34 The Mill hooked. Her mother was weighing out potatoes. An oil lamp hung from the van roof, and again the faces of the girl and her mother had the appearance of swede-coloured clay, only the girl's bleaker than before. The girl laid the flowers on the back-board. What d'ye mean by only? Might have been a sack of potatoes. Her pose and her face meant nothing, had no quality except a complete lack of all surprise: as though she had expected her father to speak like that. Then Hartop raised his voice : 'Well, don't stand there! Go and see who wants a bunch o' chrysanthemums. She picked up the flowers, walked away and vanished, all without a word or a change of that expression of unsurprised serenity. But she was back in a moment. She began to say that there were chrysanthemums in the gardens of all the houses. Her voice was flat. It was like a pressed flower, a flat faint impression of a voice. And it seemed suddenly to madden her father: 'All right, all right. Without a word the girl and her mother chained and hooked up the back-board, climbed up into the driving seat, and sat there with the old intent apprehension, staring through the rain-beaded windscreen, until the woman spoke in a voice of religious negation, with a kind of empty gentleness : 'You must do what your father tells you. Before they could speak again Hartop returned, and in a moment the van was travelling on. When it stopped again the same solitary row of house-lights as before seemed to appear on the roadside and the Hartops seemed to go through the same ritual of action : the woman unhooking the back-board, the man relighting the oil lamp, and then the girl and the woman going off in the rain to the backways of the The Mill 35 houses. And always, as they returned to the van, Hartop grous- ing, nagging: Why the 'ell don't you speak up? Well, say it then, say it! Take the whole bloody show and let 'em sample. I've had a packet. On the two women his rage had not even the slightest effect. Moving about in the rain, slowly, they were like two shabby ducks, his rage rolling off the silent backs of their minds like water. And then the engine, chilled by the driving rain, refused to start. Furious, Hartop gave mad jerks at the starting handle. The two women, silently staring through the windscreen, never moved. They might even have been in another world, asleep or dead. Swinging viciously at the starting handle Hartop shouted: When I swing, shove that little switch forward. I never seen anything to touch it. Can't you bloody well hear? God, they say there's no peace for the wicked. No peace for the wicked. No bloody peace at all. What with one thing - Christ, what was the use of talking to folks who were deaf and dumb? Better by half to jack up. No darn peace for the wicked. And suddenly, listening gloomily to him, the woman realized that the road was strange to her. She saw trees, then turns and gates and hedges that she did not know. The mystery comforted him. And when at 36 The Mill last he stopped the van and switched off the engine it gave him great satisfaction to prolong the mystery, to get down from the van and disappear without a word. Free of his presence, the two women came to life. Alice half rose from the seat and shook her mackintosh and skirt and said, 'Where have we stopped? She could see noth- ing. The world outside, cut off by blackness and rain, was strange and unknown. Then when Mrs Hartop sat down again the old state of negation and silence returned for a moment until Alice spoke. It seemed to Alice that she could hear something, a new sound, quite apart from the squalling of wind and rain; a deeper sound, quieter, and more distant. The two women listened. Then they could hear the sound distinctly, continuously, a roar of water. Suddenly Mrs Hartop remembered. She got up to look through the window again. Whatever it was seemed to subdue her again, sealing over her little break of loquacity, making her silent once more. But now her silence had a new quality. It was very near anxiety. She would look quickly at Alice and then quickly away again. Mrs Hartop bent down at once and looked under the seat. She took out a thermos flask two tea-cups and an orange. Then Alice held the cups while her mother filled them with milky tea. Then Mrs Hartop peeled and quartered the orange and they ate and drank, warming their fingers on the tea-cups. They were wiping their juice-covered fingers and putting away the tea-cups when Hartop returned. He climbed into the cab, slammed the door, and sat down. Hartop pressed the self-starter. It buzzed, but the engine was silent. The two women waited. He told me last Wednesday he wanted a gal about to help. Five shillin' a week and all found. And as the van moved on she and Alice sat in silence, without a sound of protest or aquiescence, staring at the rain. II At night, though so near, Alice had seen nothing of the mill, not even a light. On Monday morning, from across the flat and almost treeless meadows, she could see it clearly. It was a very white three- storey ed building, the whitewash dazzling, almost in- candescent, against the wintry fields in the morning sunshine. Going along the little by-roads across the valley she felt extra- ordinarily alone, yet not lonely. She felt saved from loneliness by her little leather bag; there was comfort in the mere changing of it from hand to hand. The bag contained her work-apron and her nightgown, and she carried it close to her side as she walked slowly along, not thinking. The walk'll do you good. She had a con- stant feeling of sharp expectancy, not quite apprehension, every time she looked up and saw the mill. But the feeling never re- solved itself into thought. She felt also a slight relief. She had never been, by herself, so far from home. And every now and then she found herself looking back, seeing the house she had left behind, the blank side-wall gas-tarred, the wooden shack in the back-yard where Hartop kept the motor-van, the kitchen where she and her mother bunched the chrysanthemums or sorted the oranges. It seemed strange not to be doing those things: she had sorted oranges and had bunched whatever flowers were in season for as long as she could remember. She had done it all without question, with instinctive obedience. Now, suddenly, she was to do something else. And whatever it was she knew without thinking that she must do it with the same unprotesting obedience. She had been brought up to it. It was going to be a relief to her father, a help. Things were bad and her going might better them. And then - five shillings a week. She thought of that with recurrent spasms of wonder and incredulity. Could it be true? The question crossed 38 The Mill her mind more often than her bag crossed from hand to hand, until it was mechanical and unconscious also. She was still thinking of it when she rapped at the back door of the mill. The yard was deserted. She could hear no sound of life at all except the mill-race. And then, this time, as she stood waiting, she looked at the yard more closely. It was a chaos of derelict things. Everything was derelict : dere- lict machinery, old iron, derelict motor cars, bedsteads, wire, harrows, binders, perambulators, tractors, bicycles, corrugated iron. The junk was piled up in a wild heap in the space between the mill-race and the backwater. Iron had fallen into the water. Rusty, indefinable skeletons of it had washed up against the bank- reeds. She saw rust and iron everywhere, and when some- thing made her look up to the mill-windows she saw there the rusted fly-wheels and crane-arms of the mill machinery, the whitewashed wall stained as though with rusty reflections of it. When she rapped on the door again, harder, flakes of rust, little reddish wafers, were shaken off the knocker. She stared at the door as she waited. Her eyes were large, colourless, fixed in vague penetration. She seemed to be listening with them. They were responsive to sound. And they remained still, as though of glass, when she heard nothing. And hearing nothing she walked across the yard. Beyond the piles of rusted iron a sluice tore down past the mill-wall on a glacier of green slime. She stooped and peered down over the stone parapet at the water. Beyond the sluice a line of willows were shedding their last leaves, and the leaves came floating down the current like little yellow fish. She watched them come and surge through the grating, and then vanish under the water- arch. Then, watching the fish-like leaves, she saw a real fish, dead, caught in the rusted grating, thrown there by the force of descending water. Then she saw another, and another. Her eyes registered no surprise. She walked round the parapet, and then, leaning over and stretching, she picked up one of the fish. It was cold, and very stiff, like a fish of celluloid, and its eyes were like her own, round and glassy. Then she walked along the path, still holding the fish and occasionally looking at it. The path circled the mill pond and vanished, farther on, into a bed of osiers. The mill-pond was covered in duck-weed, the green crust split into blackness here and there by chance currents of wind or water. The Mill 39 The osiers were leafless, but quite still in the windless air. And standing still, she looked at the tall osiers for a moment, her eyes reflecting their stillness and the strange persistent absence of all sound. And then suddenly she heard a sound. It came from the osiers. A shout: 'You lookin' for Mus' Holland? Round the other side. A stretch of grass, once a lawn and now no more than a waste of dead grass and sedge, went down to the back- water from what she saw now was the front door. At the door she paused for a moment. Why was the front door open and not the back? Then she saw why. Pushing upen the door she saw that it had no lock; only the rusty skeleton pattern of it remained imprinted on the brown sun-scorched paint. Inside, she stood still in the brick-flagged passage. It seemed extraordinarily cold; the damp coldness of the river air seemed to have saturated the place. Finally she walked along the passage. Her lace-up boots were heavy on the bricks, setting up a clatter of echoes. When she stopped her eyes were a little wider and almost white in the lightless passage. And again, as outside, they registered the quiet- ness of the place, until it was broken by a voice : 'Somebody there? Alice stood still, listening with wide eyes. Then the voice again: 'Who is it? The wooden stairs were steep and carpetless. She tramped up them. The banister, against which she rubbed her sleeve, was misted over with winter wetness. She could smell the dampness everywhere. It seemed to rise and follow her. On the top stairs she halted. She went at once along the wide half-light landing in the direction of the voice. The panelled doors had at one time been painted white and blue, but now the white was blue and the blue the colour of greenish water. The doors had old-fashioned latches of iron and when she lifted the end latch she could feel the first thin leaf of rust on it ready to crumble and fall. She hesitated a moment before touching the latch, but as she stood there the voice called again and she opened the door. Then, when she walked into the bedroom, she was almost sur- prised. She had expected to see Mrs Holland in bed. But the woman was kneeling on the floor, by the fireplace. She was in her nightgown. The gown had come unbuttoned and Alice could see Mrs Holland's drooping breasts. They were curiously swollen, as though by pregnancy or some dropsical complaint. The girl saw that Mrs Holland was trying to light a fire. Faint acrid paper-smoke hung about the room and stung her eyes. She could hear the tin-crackle of burnt paper. There was no flame. The smoke rose up the chimney and then, in a moment, puthered down again, the paper burning with little running sparks that extinguished themselves and then ran on again. Her very largeness, her soft dropsical largeness, and the colour of that thick pigtail were somehow comforting. Mrs Holland had burst out laughing. The girl stood vacant, at a loss, her mouth fallen open. The woman The Mill 41 gathered her nightgown in her hands and held it tight against her breasts, as though she feared that the laughter might suddenly flow out of them like milk. And the girl stared until the woman could speak : 'In your hand! She still had the fish in her hand. She was clutching it like a little silver-scaled purse. She spoke the words as one word : a single word of unsurprised comment on the unconscious folly of her own act. Even as she said it Mrs Holland burst out laughing again. And as before the laughter seemed as if it must burst liquidly or fall and run over her breasts and hands and her nightgown. The girl had never heard such laughter. It was far stranger than the fish in her own hand. It was almost too strange. It had a strangeness that was only a shade removed from hysteria, and only a little further from inanity. And almost simultaneously Mrs Holland echoed her thought: 'Oh! If anybody was funny it was Mrs Holland, laughing in that rich, almost mad voice. So she continued to stare. She still had the fish in her hand. It added to her manner of uncomprehending vacancy. Then suddenly a change came over her. She saw Mrs Holland shiver and this brought back at once her sense of almost subservient duty. I've got to get back into bed. Mrs Holland tried at the same moment to get up. She straightened herself until she was kneeling upright. Then she tried to raise herself. She clutched the bedrail. Her fat, almost transparent-fleshed fingers would not close. They were like thick sausages, fat jointless lengths of flesh which could not bend. And there she remained in her helplessness, until Alice put her arms about her and took the weight of her body. M The Mill 'Yes, Alice, you'll have to help me. I can't do it myself any longer. You'll have to help me. And Alice, as she helped her, could feel the curious swollen texture of Mrs Hol- land's flesh. The distended breasts fell out of her unbuttoned nightgown, her heavy thighs lumbered their weight against her own, by contrast so weak and thin and straight. And then when Mrs Holland was in bed, at last, propped up by pillows, Alice had time to look at her face. It had that same heavy water-blown brightness of flesh under the eyes and in the cheeks and in the soft parts of the neck. The gentle dark brown eyes were sick. They looked out with a kind of gentle sick envy on Alice's young movements as she straightened the bed- clothes and then cleaned the fireplace and finally as she laid and lighted the fire itself. And then when her eyes had satisfied themselves Mrs Holland began to talk again, to ask questions. Like cold mutton, Alice? What Fred buys and sells. The mill ain't been worked since his father died. That's been ten year. Fred's out all day buying up iron like that, and selling it. Most of it he never touches, but what he don't sell straight off comes back here. He's gone off this morning. He won't be back till night-time. You'll have to get his tea when he comes back. I ain't much good to him now. The kitchen window looked out on the mill-stream. The water foamed and eddied and kept up a gentle bubbling roar against the wet stone walls out- side. The water- smell was everywhere. From the window she could see across the flat valley: bare willow branches against bare sky, and between them the bare water. Then as she finished the potatoes she saw the time by the blue tin alarum clock standing on the high smoke-stained mantel- piece. It was past eleven. Time seemed to have flown by her faster than the water was flowing under the window. Dark- ness began to settle over the river and the valley in the middle afternoon : damp, still November darkness preceded by an hour of watery half-light. From Mrs Holland's bedroom Alice watched the willow trees, dark and skeleton-like, the only objects raised up above the flat fields, hanging half-dissolved by the winter mist, then utterly dissolved by the winter darkness. The after- noon was very still; the mist moved and thickened without wind. She could hear nothing but the mill-race, the everlasting almost mournful machine-like roar of perpetual water, and then, high above it, shrieking, the solitary cries of sea-gulls, more mournful even than the monotone of water. They were sounds she had heard all day, but had heard unconsciously. She had had no time for listening, except to Mrs Holland's voice calling downstairs its friendly advice and desires through the open bedroom door: 'Alice, have you put the salt in the taters? You'll find the onions in the shed, Alice. The oil-man calls to-day, ask him to leave the usual. When you've washed up you can bring the paper up, Alice, and read bits out to me for five minutes. Has the oil- man been? Alice, I want you a minute, I want you. And the girl, gradually, began to like Mrs Hoi- 44 The Mill land; and the woman, in turn, seemed to be transported into a state of new and stranger volatility by Alice's presence. She was garrulous with joy. Since I've been bad I ain't seen nobody, only Fred, one week's end to another. It's been about as much as I could stan'. She had someone to confide in at last. And nobody to do nothing for me. I had to wet the bed one day. I was so weak I couldn't get out. That's what made Fred speak to your dad. I couldn't go on no longer. And the afternoon was gone and the damp moving darkness was shutting out the river and the bare fields and barer trees before she could realise it. So you git some hot water ready about a quarter to. He alius has fish for his tea. Cod or some- thing. You can fry it while he's shaving. Mrs Holland and Alice had already had a cup of tea in the bedroom. That seemed unbelievably luxurious to Alice, who for nearly five years had drunk her tea from a thermos flask in her father's van. It brought home to her that she was very well off : five shillings a week, tea by the fire in the bedroom, Mrs Holland so cheerful and nice, and an end at last to her father's ironic grousing and the feeling the she was a dead weight on his hands. It gave her great satisfaction. Yet she never registered the emotion by looks or words or a change in her demeanour. She went about quietly and a trifle vaguely, almost in a trance of detachment. The light in her large flat pellucid eyes never varied. Her mouth would break into a smile, but the smile never tele- graphed itself to her eyes. And so with words. She spoke, but the The Mill 45 words never changed that expression of dumb content, that wide and in some way touching and attractive stare straight before her into space. And when she heard the rattling of a motor-van in the mill- yard just before six o'clock she looked suddenly up, but her ex- pression did not change. She showed no flicker of apprehension or surprise. About five minutes later Holland walked into the kitchen. Alice was standing at the sink, wiping the frying pan with a dishcloth. When Holland spoke and she looked round at him her eyes blinked with a momentary flash of something like surprise. Holland's voice was very deep and it seemed to indicate that Holland himself would be physically very large and powerful. Then she saw that he was a little man, no taller than herself, and rather stocky, without being stiff or muscular. His trousers hung loose and wide, like sacks. His overcoat, undone, was also like a sack. The only unloose thing about him was his collar. It was a narrow stiff celluloid collar fixed with a patent ready-made tie. The collar was oilstained and the tie, once blue, was soaked by oil and dirt to the appearance of old crepe. The rest of Holland was loose and careless and drooping. A bit of an old shack, Alice thought. Even his little tobacco-yellowed mou- stache drooped raggedly. Like his felt hat, stuck carelessly on the back of his head, it looked as though it did not belong to him. I see your dad. D'ye think you're going to like it? You make yourself at 'ome. The brown paper flapped open and Alice saw the tail-cut of a cod. She went at once to the plate-rack, took a plate and laid the fish on it. You fry it while I git shaved. Holland took off his overcoat, then his jacket, and finally his collar and tie. Then he turned back the greasy neck-band of his shirt and began to make his shaving lather in a wooden bowl at 46 The Mill the sink, working the brush and bowl like a pestle and mortar. Alice put the cod into the frying-pan and then the pan on the oil-stove. Then as Holland began to lather his face, Mrs Holland called downstairs: 'Fred. After the warm kitchen she could feel the air damper than ever. Mrs Holland was lying down in bed and a candle in a tin holder was burning on the chest of drawers. Alice,' Mrs Holland said, 'you do all you can for Mr Holland, won't you? He's had a long day. I want him to go about decent. It won't get done if you don't do it,' 'All right. Sounds of Holland's razor scrap- ing his day-old beard and of the cod hissing in the pan filled the kitchen. She turned the cod with a fork and then took up Hol- land's collar and sponged it with the wetted fringe of her pina- fore. The collar came up bright and fresh as ivory, and when finally Holland had finished shaving at the sink and had put on the collar again it was as though a small miracle had been per- formed. Holland was middle-aged, about fifty, and looked older in the shabby overcoat and oily collar. Now, shaved and with the collar cleaned again, he looked younger than he was. He looked no longer shabby, a shack, and a bit nondescript, but rather homely and essentially decent. He had a tired, rather stunted and subservient look. His flesh was coarse, with deep pores, and his greyish hair came down stiff over his forehead. His eyes were dull and a little bulging. When Alice put the fried fish before him he sat low over the plate, scooped up the white flakes of fish with his knife and then sucked them into his mouth. He spat out the bones. Every time he spat out a bone he drank his tea, and when his cup was empty, Alice, standing by, filled it up again. The Mill 47 None of these things surprised the girl. She had never seen anyone eat except like that, with the knife, low over the plate, greedily. Her father and mother ate like it and she ate like it her- self. So as she stood by the sink, waiting to fill up Holland's cup, her eyes stared with the same abstract preoccupation as ever. They did not even change when Holland spoke, praising her: 'You done this fish all right, Alice. Yes, you done that fish very nice, Alice. It was not deep: but it was enough to counteract the strangeness of her surroundings, to help deaden the perpetual sense of the mill-race, to drive away some of the eternal dampness about the place. But it was not enough to drive away her tiredness. She went to bed very early, as soon as she had washed Holland's supper things and had eaten her own supper of bread and cheese. Her room was at the back of the mill. It had not been used for a long time; its dampness rose up in a musty cloud. Then when she lit her candle and set it on the washstand she saw that the wall- paper, rotten with dampness, was peeling off and hanging in ragged petals, showing the damp-green plaster beneath. Then she took her nightgown out of her case, undressed and stood for a moment naked, her body as thin as a boy's and her little lemon- shaped breasts barely formed, before dropping the nightgown over her shoulders. A moment later she had put out the candle and was lying in the little iron bed. Then, as she lay there, curling up her legs for warmth in the damp sheets, she remembered something. She had said no prayers. She got out of bed at once and knelt down by the bed and words of mechanical supplication and thankfulness began to run at once through her mind : 'Dear Lord, bless us and keep us. Dear Lord, help me to keep my heart pure,' little impromptu gentle prayers of which she only half-understood the meaning. And all the time she was kneeling she could hear a background of other sounds: the mill-race roaring in the night, the wild occasional cries of birds from up the river, and the rumblings of Holland and his wife talking in their bedroom. And she told Holland of how Alice had brought up the roach in her hand, and as she told him her rather strange rich laughter broke out again and Holland laughed with her. As long as she's all right. It took less than a week for Holland to see that, although he distrusted a little Alice's first showing with his fish. It seemed too good. He knew what servant girls could be like : all docile, punctual and anxious to please until they got the feeling of things, and then haughty and slovenly and sulky before you could turn round. He wasn't having that sort of thing. The minute Alice was surly or had too much lip she could go. Easy get somebody else. Plenty more kids be glad of the job. So for the first few nights after Alice's arrival he would watch her reflection in the soap-flecked shaving-mirror hanging over the sink while he scraped his beard. He watched her critically, tried to detect some flaw, some change, in her meek servitude. The mirror was a big round iron-framed concave mirror, so that Alice, as she moved slowly about with the fish-pan over the oil- stove, looked physically a little larger, and also vaguer and softer, than she really was. The mirror put flesh on her bony arms and filled out her pinafore. And looking for faults, Holland saw only this softening and magnifying of her instead. Then when he had dried the soap out of his ears and had put on the collar Alice had sponged for him he would sit down to the fish, ready to pounce on some fault in it. But the fish, like Alice, never seemed to vary. Nothing wrong with the fish. He tried bringing home different sorts of fish, untried sorts, tricky for Alice to cook; witch, whit- ing, sole and halibut, instead of his usual cod and hake. But it made no difference. The fish was always good. And he judged The Mill 49 Alice by the fish: if the fish was all right Alice was all right. Upstairs, after supper, he would ask Mrs Holland: 'Alice all right to-day? And gradually he saw that he had no need for suspicion. No need to be hard on the kid. She was all right. Leave the kid alone. Let her go on her own sweet way. Not interfere with her. And so he swung round from the suspicious attitude to one almost of solicitude. Didn't cost no more to be nice to the kid than it did to be miserable. Nice to be back home in the dry, Alice. He would knock on it to wake her. He got up in darkness, running downstairs in his stockinged feet, with his jacket and collar and tie slung over his arm. And pausing at Alice's door he would say 'Quart' t' seven, Alice. You gittin' up, Alice? If the room were in darkness and she did not answer he would knock and call again. He knocked harder again, hard enough to drown any sleepy answer she might have given. Then, hearing nothing and seeing nothing, he opened the door. At the very moment he opened the door Alice was bending over the washstand, with a match in her hands, lighting her candle. Sorry, Alice, I din't hear you. The light shone straight down on them, the deep shadow of her lower body heightening their shape and colour, and they looked for a moment like the breasts of a larger and more mature girl than Holland fancied Alice to be. As he went downstairs in the winter darkness he kept seeing the mirage of Alice's breasts in the candlelight. A memory of Mrs Holland's large dropsical body threw the young girl's breasts into tender relief. And time seemed to 50 The Mill sharpen the comparison. He saw Alice bending over the candle, her nightgown undone, at recurrent intervals throughout the day. Then in the evening, looking at her reflection in the shav- ing-mirror, the magnifying effect of the mirror magnified his excitement. And upstairs he forgot to ask if Alice was all right. In the morning he was awake a little earlier than usual. The morning was still like night. Black mist shut out the river. He went along the dark landing and tapped at Alice's door. When there was no answer he tapped again and called, but nothing happened. Then he put his hand on the latch and pressed it. He was so surprised that he did not know for a moment what to do. He was in his shirt and trousers, with the celluloid collar and patent tie and jacket in his hand, and no shoes on his feet. He stood for a moment by the bed and then he stretched out his hand and shook Alice. She did not wake. Then he put his hand on her chest and let it rest there. He could feel the breasts unexpectedly soft and alive, through the nightgown. He touched one and then the other. Alice had been at the mill almost a week. Only it means cold dinner for Fred a' Sundays if you go. The gas-tarred house, the end one of a row on the edge of the town, seemed cramped and a little strange after the big rooms at the mill and the bare empty fields and the river. The Mill 51 'It's all right. What shall I do about the money? No shops, is they? I ain't been out. You keep it and we'll call for it a' Friday. We can come round that way. And I'll bring another Friday. It's just a bit rotten on the side there. It ain't gone much. She spoke from the gloom of the van seat. Alice could just see her vague clay- coloured face. Raw half -mist from the river was coming across the yard in sodden swirls and Alice, frozen, half-ran into the house. Then, in the kitchen, she sat by the fire with her skirt drawn up above her knees, to warm herself. She sat there for almost a full minute longer, trying to warm her legs, before getting up to cook Holland's fish. All the time she sat there Holland was looking at her legs, with the skirt pulled up away from them. The knees and the slim thighs were rounded and soft, and the knees and the legs themselves a rosy flame-colour in the firelight. Holland felt a sudden agitation as he gazed at them. Then abruptly Alice got up to cook the fish, and the vision of her rose-coloured legs vanished. But Holland, shaving before the mirror, could still see in his mind the soft firelight on Alice's knees. And the mirror, as before, seemed to magnify Alice's vague form as it moved about the kitchen, putting some flesh on her body. Then when Holland sat down to his fish Alice again sat down before the fire and he saw her pull her skirt above her knees again as though he did not exist. And all through the meal he sat looking at her. Then suddenly he got tired of merely look- ing at her. He wanted to be closer to her. Tour yourself a cup out. Holland picked up the orange. Here, I'm going to throw it. It fell into Alice's lap. And it seemed to Holland that its fall drew her dress a little higher above her knees. He ran his hands over her shoulders and arms, and then over her thighs and knees. Her knees were beautifully warm, like hard warm apples. Your knees are like ice. She felt his fingers harsh on her bloodless hands and then on her shoulders. The girl shook her head. He kept his hands on her chest. If you git cold on your chest. They were so small that he could hold them easily in his hands. Then suddenly he was squeezing her breasts, in a bungling effort of tenderness. The motion hurt her. I shan't do nothing. Let's have a look at you, Alice. I don't want to do nothing, Alice. I don't want to hurt you. Undo your dress, Alice. As they came undone he put his hands on her chest and then on her bare breasts in clumsy and agitated efforts to caress her. She sat rigid, staring, not fully understanding. Every time Holland squeezed her he hurt her. But the mute and fixed look on her face and the grey flat as though motionless stare in her eyes never changed. She listened only vaguely to what Holland said. You lay down on the couch. I ain't going to hurt you, Alice. I don't want to hurt you. Then she remembered, flatly, Mrs Holland's injunction: 'You do all you can for Mr Holland,' and she got up and went over to the American leather couch. Don't you go and tell nobody. And standing there, with the bowl empty in her hands, or with a scattering of grain in it or the full mixture of wheat and maize, she stared and thought of the words Holland said to her almost every night. The loft windows were hung with skeins of spider- webs, and the webs in turn were powdered with pale and dark grey dust, pale flour-dust never swept away since the mill had 54 The Mill ceased to work, and a dark mouse-coloured dust that showered constantly down from the rafters. The loft was always cold. The walls were clammy with river damp and the windows misty with wet. But Alice always stood there in the early afternoons and stared through the dirty windows across the wet flat valley. Seagulls flew wildly above the floods that filled the meadows after rain. Strings of wild swans flew over and sometimes came down to rest with the gulls on the waters or the islands of grass. They were the only moving things in the valley. But Alice stared at them blankly, hardly seeing them. She saw Holland instead; Holland turning out the lamp, fumbling with his trousers, getting up and relighting the lamp with a tight scared look on his face. And she returned his words over and over in her mind. Don't you say nothing. Don't you go and tell nobody. But she did not see it. She turned his words slowly over and over in her mind as she might have turned a ball or an orange over and over in her hands, over and over, round and round, the surface always the same, the shape the same, for ever recurring, a circle with no end to it. She reviewed them with- out surprise and without malice. She never refused Holland. Once only she said, suddenly scared: 'I don't want to, not to- night. I don't want to. I'll give you something. I'll give y' extra six- pence with your money, Friday, Alice.