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

doesn’t mean anything. You mustn’t take notice.’
    â€˜No, no,’ she persisted. ‘It means something is going to happen to me. Perhaps I’m going—’
    â€˜Oh! it’s all nonsense,’ he said. ‘It means nothing. It’s all nonsense, really.’
    â€˜No. It means something,’ she repeated. ‘Why should it fall off, unless?’
    He made no answer and all the time he was silent imagined she looked on him as a boy. He wanted to tell her this but dare not. In the room behind the violin ceased, a dreary silence fell, and in the silence a moth brushed noisily against the lamp. Another lay with wings pressed like death on the window. Nicoll heard it raining outside, the leaves whispering and somewhere a tap dripping.
    â€˜I ought to go back,’ she said.
    â€˜Not yet!’
    She went to the lamp. By its light he saw her fingers tremble and asked:
    â€˜What’s the matter, Irene?’
    â€˜Nothing!’ she said; and then, ‘You’ve forgotten a candle fell off the cake. That means something.’
    With three angry puffs she put the room in darkness. He groped about saying, ‘Where are you? Irene! Where are you?’ Then he heard the swish of her dress and a laugh. The next moment he ran his hands against the wall and then on to her breast. It so happened she was pinioned by his arms and looked up at him reproachfully. In contrast with the hardness of the wall behind, her neck seemed unearthly and soft. And without a word of warning he kissed her twice.
    Nothing was said. The birthday party went on noisily behind them, Nicoll heard the rain, the tap dripping and a moth booming somewhere fiercely. He thought of the candle which had fallen from the cake, wondered if it betokened anything, and then felt her suddenly squeeze his hand, saw her run away and disappear through a flash of light at the other door.
    Soon afterwards he followed her, the violin began again, whist by the men went on in the corner, he was ogled by the girl in red and saw that nothing in the room had changed.
    He sought out Irene and watched her. But little by little her spiritual and fresh beauty seemed to undergo a change and no longer impress him. Suddenly, the talk, the laughter, the rain, the violin and the lights were changed too. The idea of beauty was itself transient. The thought of this and that Irenewould never be sixteen again and appear to him as she had appeared in the dark kitchen, made him tired and sad, too.
    And whether because of this or not, he had a desire not to look at her again, but to go home, not speak and only by silence impress everything upon himself.
    He did so, and after thinking of her for two hours fell asleep and dreamed of moths, an old woman, running water and a violin.
    But for Irene it was different. She slept little, and when not sleeping thought as to why he had gone without a word, of the future, his looks, the dark kitchen, his two kisses, and the candle which had fallen off the cake.

The Shepherd
    All day the February earth had lain under an immense lid of cloud. The woods, full of green saplings and shaggy older trees, laboured futilely against a fast-driven rain which soaked them steadily. Down the trunks rivulets of water rushed continuously, ending in dark pools at the feet of the trees. From the summit of the hill where the cottage stood, sodden and dark but for a square of light under its north eave, the road wound like a shallow yellow stream.
    Night, which had come early, brought a dash of snow with the rain. In the hollows the woods tossed and moaned like a pile of wounded bodies thrown in a pit to die. The light in the cottage seemed the only thing unmoved. Over all stretched a bitter coldness, like a blanket of steel.
    In the kitchen of the cottage a young shepherd now and then disturbed the red-hot mass of the fire and threw in a handful of wood. As the greenish smoke curled upward he would blow fiercely on the lower