Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

It was past four o’clock and the church was nearly dark, the windows being only visible as patches of semi-opaque brightness. But there was a light which shone with a dull red glow, a burning circle hanging in the air a foot or two from the ground. It looked like a drum that had caught fire within, but it was not truly luminous; it seemed to attract the darkness rather than repel it. For a moment Mr. Greenstream could not make out what the strange light was. But when he took a step or two towards it and felt the heat on his face and hands he knew at once. It was the stove. The zealous sacristan, mindful of the chilly day, had stoked it up until it was red hot.

Mr. Greenstream was grateful for the warmth, for his hands were cold and his teeth chattering. He would have liked to approach the stove and bend over it. But the heat was too fierce for that, it beat him back. So he withdrew to the outer radius of its influence. Soon he was kneeling, and soon—the effect of the warmth on a tired mind and a tired body, asleep.

It must have been the cold that woke him, cold, piercing cold, that seemed solid, like a slab of ice pressing against his back. The stove still glared red in front of him, but it had no more power to warm him physically than has a friendly look or a smiling face. Whence did it come, this deadly chill? Ah! He looked over his left shoulder and saw that the doors, which he remembered shutting, were now open to the sky and the north wind. To shut them again was the work of a moment. But why were they open? he wondered, turning back into the church. Why, of course, of course, the clergyman had opened them, the Rector of Aston Highchurch, who was coming at his request to hear his confession. But where was he, and why did he not speak? And what was the reddish outline that moved towards him in the darkness? For a moment his fancy confused it with the stove, or it might be the stove’s reflection, thrown on one of the pillars. But on it came, bearing before it that icy breath he now knew had nothing to do with the north wind.

‘Mr. Ripley, Mr. Ripley,’ he murmured, falling back into the warmth of the stove, feeling upon his neck its fierce assault. Then he heard a voice like no voice he had ever heard, as if the darkness spoke with the volume of a thousand tongues.

‘I am your confessor. What have you to say?’

‘My death must be my answer,’ he replied, the consciousness of annihilation on him.

When Mr. Greenstream’s chauffeur learned that the Rector was not at home he left a message and then returned to the car, for he knew from experience that his master’s unaccountable church-going often kept him a long time. But when an hour had gone by he felt vaguely anxious and decided to see if anything was the matter. To his surprise he found the church door open, and noticed a smell coming from it which he had never associated with a church. Moving gingerly in the dark, he advanced towards where a sound of hissing made itself heard. Then he struck a match, and what he saw caused him to turn and run in terror for the door. On the threshold he almost collided with Mr. Ripley, hastening from the Rectory on his errand of mercy. Together they overcame the repugnance which either of them would have felt singly, lifted Mr. Greenstream’s body from the stove across which it hung and laid it reverently on the pavement.

The newspapers at first gave out that Mr. Greenstream had been burned to death, but the medical authorities took a different view.

‘In my opinion,’ one doctor said, ‘he was dead before he even touched the stove, and paradoxical as it may seem, the physical signs indicate that he was frozen, not burned to death.

‘He was perhaps trying to warm himself—why, we shall never know.’

Once upon a time there was a boy who lived with his mother and father in a country five day’s journey beyond the boundaries of Europe. As he was only twelve years old when this story begins, he did not have to work for his living, but played about in the woods in which his house was, generally by himself. But sometimes he would stand and watch his two brothers felling trees and sawing them up, for, like his father, they were foresters, and every now and then they would let him ride home astride a tree-trunk, jogging up and down above the horses. This he enjoyed, when once he got over the fear of falling off, and he would have joined them oftener, but he was afraid lest Leo might say, ‘Now, Conrad, it’s your turn to do something; just mind those horses for ten minutes,’ or ‘Conrad, come here and lean your heavy weight against this sapling, so that I can get the axe to it.’ Then Conrad would have to go; unless Rudolph chimed in with, ‘Oh, let the boy alone, Leo, he’s more hindrance than help.’ Conrad would be half glad and half sorry at Rudolph’s intervention; he wanted to lend a hand, but he was afraid the horse might tread on his toes, or the sapling spring up and hit him. He was very fond of his brothers, especially the younger, Rudolph, and he admired them, they were so strong and capable; he did not believe he would ever be able to do what they did, even when he grew up. ‘I am not meant to be a forester,’ he told himself.

It so happened that one afternoon Leo put the axe in his hands, and tried more persistently than ever to teach him how to use it. Conrad had been only half attending; he swung the axe clumsily, and it glanced off the tree on to his foot, making a deep gash in his boot. Leo spoke sharply to him for his awkwardness, and Conrad, without waiting to hear what Rudolph might say in his defence, dropped the axe and ran away, crying, nor did he pause for breath until the sounds that came from the clearing had ceased altogether.

Here the forest was very thick and silent, and though there seemed to be plenty of little paths going hither and thither, a stranger to the wood would have found that they led nowhere in particular, to an abandoned clearing, perhaps, or just into the undergrowth. But Conrad, who knew this part of the wood by heart, was not at all alarmed. He was feeling too hurt and angry with his brothers to be sorry that he had damaged his boot, though it would mean his father buying another pair; what he dreaded was that the axe might have cut his foot, in which case he would have to swallow his pride and go back to his brothers to beg a ride, for he was a long way from home.

He examined the gash as well as the dim light permitted, but there was no sign of blood; and when he took off his boot to look closer he found that the stocking was lightly cut, but the skin below it was unharmed. What a lucky escape! It must be magic, Conrad thought, white magic, much rarer than the black kind which he had been warned against, and which was all too common in this part of the world. How nice if he could meet, in some dell or coppice, the good fairy who, at the critical moment, had turned the axe’s edge! He peered about; he kissed the air, hoping to attract her; but if she was there she remained invisible. But Conrad, encouraged by the discovery that he was unhurt, felt twice the boy he was; so far from running back to his brothers, he would prove to them that he did not need their protection; he would press on through the forest further than he had ever gone before, and would not be home till nightfall. He had some food in his satchel and, as it was early autumn, there were plenty of berries on the trees. He started off.

Soon the wood changed its character. Instead of being flat, it turned into a succession of narrow valleys which Conrad always seemed to have to cross at their deepest point, scrambling up and down as best he could, for path there was none. He began to feel tired, and the sharp, hard leather of his damaged boot stuck into him and hurt him. He kept on meaning to turn back, but whenever he reached the crest of a ridge, it looked such a little way to the next that he always decided to cross just one more valley. They were long and empty, lit up their whole length by the sun which, away on Conrad’s right, was now so low that he could see it without lifting his eyes. It would soon be night. Suddenly he lost heart and made up his mind to stop at the next hilltop. It was only a few yards’ climb.