Day's End and Other Stories by H. E. Bates Page B

As if expecting them both to vanish from me I continued to watch the girl and repeat that name with the pitiful desperation that only youth can summon.
    Then suddenly, to end it all, a woman came up and called ‘Thomasin’ twice to the dreamy girl, then got into the trap and drove away. It was done in a moment. There seemed to be a flash of green andwhite, like the brief unfurling of a banner, then an emptiness in which I remember standing like a dull regretful fool, with a single thought, ‘It’s all over. It’s all over.’
    *
    A glamorous week and a day went past. Staring up at the sky I lay dreaming away the hot Sunday afternoon in the shadow of a wood outside the village. Everywhere was silent. Only now and then the vast green temple behind me would give up the solitary song of some bird shy of the sunlight, or of another breaking out like an escaping prisoner into the bright air above. The may still splashed the hedges, as if with milk. Deceptively close and loud the cuckoos talked monotonously, only deepening the silence of a world that seemed to be sleeping under the benign dominion of the infinitely blue sky.
    My thoughts were all of one thing. Sometimes when they reached a pitch of complete hopelessness or delight I turned and lay chest downwards to the warm earth. I believe I should have hated even the sun to see my face at those moments. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of that incredible passion brought about by an utter stranger, but that I was infinitely jealous about its secret preciousness. And that afternoon something in the spring air itself seemed to be watching me. I didn’t feel alone. It was as if a spirit aroused by some inner cry of my foolishly young heart, had crept out to torment me with all the quiet mysteriousness of its invisible presence.
    Then, as I lay there trying to overcome by indifference my strange emotions, I became aware of another presence. A sound of feet, then a rustle of twigs was borne along to me. In a mood of wonderment I lay listening. Then a voice above me called my name.
    I turned my astonished face to the glaring sky and blinked at the figure of a girl I saw there. Sitting up I recognised her as a girl named Martha, from the village. Behind her, giggling and nudging each other, were two of her friends, dressed like her, for Sunday. Angry at the intrusion I flung up into her face:
    â€˜What do you want?’
    Under the fierce reproach in the words she seemed to cower like a shy animal not comprehending a command. Her mouth looked as if about to burst into a torrent of weeping. Instead, she held out to me an envelope and asked in a faint voice:
    â€˜Would you give this to Julian Thorley?’
    I began to protest. ‘But—but why? I shan’t see him!’
    â€˜It’s Sunday. He always comes this way.’
    â€˜Is it important?’
    One of the others broke in shrilly: ‘It’s a love letter!’
    â€˜Sssh. Oh!’
    The girl darted pitiful looks here and there like a guilty child. Gazing up into that sensitive face, scarlet in its extreme confusion, I could not refuseits naive request. A week of the most agonising abandonment to that other face hadn’t hardened my heart, and I took the note with a promise. A minute later there was a sound of feet among the undergrowth in the wood and then the stillness of the hot, serene sky seemed to descend and suffocate me.
    My alternate fits of gloom and ecstasy began again. The invisible spirit came out and renewed its dispassionate watch over me. Only now and then the naive image of a girl holding a pair of endless reins seemed to rise and briefly annihilate it with its loveliness.
    A sound of whistling disturbed me at last. Martha’s note, already crumpled from lying beneath me, was taken out and given to Julian Thorley as he passed. He took it with a smile and went on. As he turned the bend of the path and disappeared behind the wood a little shower of white