The Garden Party

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Title: The Garden Party
Author: Katherine Mansfield
Release Date: August 20, 2008 [EBook #1429]
Last Updated: November 29, 2019
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GARDEN PARTY ***
Produced by Sue Asscher, and David Widger
The Garden Party
AND OTHER STORIES
by Katherine Mansfield
_Montaigne dit que les hommes vont béant
aux choses futures; j’ai la manie de béer
aux choses passées_
To John Middleton Murry
Contents
At the Bay
The Garden-Party
The Daughters of the Late Colonel
Mr. and Mrs. Dove
The Young Girl
Life of Ma Parker
Marriage à la Mode
The Voyage
Miss Brill
Her First Ball
The Singing Lesson
The Stranger
Bank Holiday
An Ideal Family
The Lady’s Maid
At the Bay
I
Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of
Crescent Bay was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered
hills at the back were smothered. You could not see where they ended
and the paddocks and bungalows began. The sandy road was gone and the
paddocks and bungalows the other side of it; there were no white dunes
covered with reddish grass beyond them; there was nothing to mark which
was beach and where was the sea. A heavy dew had fallen. The grass was
blue. Big drops hung on the bushes and just did not fall; the silvery,
fluffy toi-toi was limp on its long stalks, and all the marigolds and
the pinks in the bungalow gardens were bowed to the earth with wetness.
Drenched were the cold fuchsias, round pearls of dew lay on the flat
nasturtium leaves. It looked as though the sea had beaten up softly in
the darkness, as though one immense wave had come rippling,
rippling—how far? Perhaps if you had waked up in the middle of the
night you might have seen a big fish flicking in at the window and gone
again....
Ah-Aah! sounded the sleepy sea. And from the bush there came the sound
of little streams flowing, quickly, lightly, slipping between the
smooth stones, gushing into ferny basins and out again; and there was
the splashing of big drops on large leaves, and something else—what was
it?—a faint stirring and shaking, the snapping of a twig and then such
silence that it seemed some one was listening.
Round the corner of Crescent Bay, between the piled-up masses of broken
rock, a flock of sheep came pattering. They were huddled together, a
small, tossing, woolly mass, and their thin, stick-like legs trotted
along quickly as if the cold and the quiet had frightened them. Behind
them an old sheep-dog, his soaking paws covered with sand, ran along
with his nose to the ground, but carelessly, as if thinking of
something else. And then in the rocky gateway the shepherd himself
appeared. He was a lean, upright old man, in a frieze coat that was
covered with a web of tiny drops, velvet trousers tied under the knee,
and a wide-awake with a folded blue handkerchief round the brim. One
hand was crammed into his belt, the other grasped a beautifully smooth
yellow stick. And as he walked, taking his time, he kept up a very soft
light whistling, an airy, far-away fluting that sounded mournful and
tender. The old dog cut an ancient caper or two and then drew up sharp,
ashamed of his levity, and walked a few dignified paces by his master’s
side. The sheep ran forward in little pattering rushes; they began to
bleat, and ghostly flocks and herds answered them from under the sea.
“Baa! Baaa!” For a time they seemed to be always on the same piece of
ground. There ahead was stretched the sandy road with shallow puddles;
the same soaking bushes showed on either side and the same shadowy
palings. Then something immense came into view; an enormous
shock-haired giant with his arms stretched out. It was the big gum-tree
outside Mrs. Stubbs’ shop, and as they passed by there was a strong
whiff of eucalyptus. And now big spots of light gleamed in the mist.
The shepherd stopped whistling; he rubbed his red nose and wet beard on
his wet sleeve and, screwing up his eyes, glanced in the direction of
the sea. The sun was rising. It was marvellous how quickly the mist
thinned, sped away, dissolved from the shallow plain, rolled up from
the bush and was gone as if in a hurry to escape; big twists and curls
jostled and shouldered each other as the silvery beams broadened. The
far-away sky—a bright, pure blue—was reflected in the puddles, and the
drops, swimming along the telegraph poles, flashed into points of
light. Now the leaping, glittering sea was so bright it made one’s eyes
ache to look at it. The shepherd drew a pipe, the bowl as small as an
acorn, out of his breast pocket, fumbled for a chunk of speckled
tobacco, pared off a few shavings and stuffed the bowl. He was a grave,
fine-looking old man. As he lit up and the blue smoke wreathed his
head, the dog, watching, looked proud of him.
“Baa! Baaa!” The sheep spread out into a fan. They were just clear of
the summer colony before the first sleeper turned over and lifted a
drowsy head; their cry sounded in the dreams of little children... who
lifted their arms to drag down, to cuddle the darling little woolly
lambs of sleep. Then the first inhabitant appeared; it was the
Burnells’ cat Florrie, sitting on the gatepost, far too early as usual,
looking for their milk-girl. When she saw the old sheep-dog she sprang
up quickly, arched her back, drew in her tabby head, and seemed to give
a little fastidious shiver. “Ugh! What a coarse, revolting creature!”
said Florrie. But the old sheep-dog, not looking up, waggled past,
flinging out his legs from side to side. Only one of his ears twitched
to prove that he saw, and thought her a silly young female.
The breeze of morning lifted in the bush and the smell of leaves and
wet black earth mingled with the sharp smell of the sea. Myriads of
birds were singing. A goldfinch flew over the shepherd’s head and,
perching on the tiptop of a spray, it turned to the sun, ruffling its
small breast feathers. And now they had passed the fisherman’s hut,
passed the charred-looking little _whare_ where Leila the milk-girl
lived with her old Gran. The sheep strayed over a yellow swamp and Wag,
the sheep-dog, padded after, rounded them up and headed them for the
steeper, narrower rocky pass that led out of Crescent Bay and towards
Daylight Cove. “Baa! Baa!” Faint the cry came as they rocked along the
fast-drying road. The shepherd put away his pipe, dropping it into his
breast-pocket so that the little bowl hung over. And straightway the
soft airy whistling began again. Wag ran out along a ledge of rock
after something that smelled, and ran back again disgusted. Then
pushing, nudging, hurrying, the sheep rounded the bend and the shepherd
followed after out of sight.
II
A few moments later the back door of one of the bungalows opened, and a
figure in a broad-striped bathing suit flung down the paddock, cleared
the stile, rushed through the tussock grass into the hollow, staggered
up the sandy hillock, and raced for dear life over the big porous
stones, over the cold, wet pebbles, on to the hard sand that gleamed
like oil. Splish-Splosh! Splish-Splosh! The water bubbled round his
legs as Stanley Burnell waded out exulting. First man in as usual! He’d
beaten them all again. And he swooped down to souse his head and neck.
“Hail, brother! All hail, Thou Mighty One!” A velvety bass voice came
booming over the water.
Great Scott! Damnation take it! Stanley lifted up to see a dark head
bobbing far out and an arm lifted. It was Jonathan Trout—there before
him! “Glorious morning!” sang the voice.
“Yes, very fine!” said Stanley briefly. Why the dickens didn’t the
fellow stick to his part of the sea? Why should he come barging over to
this exact spot? Stanley gave a kick, a lunge and struck out, swimming
overarm. But Jonathan was a match for him. Up he came, his black hair
sleek on his forehead, his short beard sleek.
“I had an extraordinary dream last night!” he shouted.
What was the matter with the man? This mania for conversation irritated
Stanley beyond words. And it was always the same—always some piffle
about a dream he’d had, or some cranky idea he’d got hold of, or some
rot he’d been reading. Stanley turned over on his back and kicked with
his legs till he was a living waterspout. But even then.... “I dreamed
I was hanging over a terrifically high cliff, shouting to some one
below.” You would be! thought Stanley. He could stick no more of it. He
stopped splashing. “Look here, Trout,” he said, “I’m in rather a hurry
this morning.”
“You’re WHAT?” Jonathan was so surprised—or pretended to be—that he
sank under the water, then reappeared again blowing.
“All I mean is,” said Stanley, “I’ve no time to—to—to fool about. I
want to get this over. I’m in a hurry. I’ve work to do this
morning—see?”
Jonathan was gone before Stanley had finished. “Pass, friend!” said the
bass voice gently, and he slid away through the water with scarcely a
ripple.... But curse the fellow! He’d ruined Stanley’s bathe. What an
unpractical idiot the man was! Stanley struck out to sea again, and
then as quickly swam in again, and away he rushed up the beach. He felt
cheated.
Jonathan stayed a little longer in the water. He floated, gently moving
his hands like fins, and letting the sea rock his long, skinny body. It
was curious, but in spite of everything he was fond of Stanley Burnell.
True, he had a fiendish desire to tease him sometimes, to poke fun at
him, but at bottom he was sorry for the fellow. There was something
pathetic in his determination to make a job of everything. You couldn’t
help feeling he’d be caught out one day, and then what an almighty
cropper he’d come! At that moment an immense wave lifted Jonathan, rode
past him, and broke along the beach with a joyful sound. What a beauty!
And now there came another. That was the way to live—carelessly,
recklessly, spending oneself. He got on to his feet and began to wade
towards the shore, pressing his toes into the firm, wrinkled sand. To
take things easy, not to fight against the ebb and flow of life, but to
give way to it—that was what was needed. It was this tension that was
all wrong. To live—to live! And the perfect morning, so fresh and fair,
basking in the light, as though laughing at its own beauty, seemed to
whisper, “Why not?”
But now he was out of the water Jonathan turned blue with cold. He
ached all over; it was as though some one was wringing the blood out of
him. And stalking up the beach, shivering, all his muscles tight, he
too felt his bathe was spoilt. He’d stayed in too long.
III
Beryl was alone in the living-room when Stanley appeared, wearing a
blue serge suit, a stiff collar and a spotted tie. He looked almost
uncannily clean and brushed; he was going to town for the day. Dropping
into his chair, he pulled out his watch and put it beside his plate.
“I’ve just got twenty-five minutes,” he said. “You might go and see if
the porridge is ready, Beryl?”
“Mother’s just gone for it,” said Beryl. She sat down at the table and
poured out his tea.
“Thanks!” Stanley took a sip. “Hallo!” he said in an astonished voice,
“you’ve forgotten the sugar.”
“Oh, sorry!” But even then Beryl didn’t help him; she pushed the basin
across. What did this mean? As Stanley helped himself his blue eyes
widened; they seemed to quiver. He shot a quick glance at his
sister-in-law and leaned back.
“Nothing wrong, is there?” he asked carelessly, fingering his collar.
Beryl’s head was bent; she turned her plate in her fingers.
“Nothing,” said her light voice. Then she too looked up, and smiled at
Stanley. “Why should there be?”
“O-oh! No reason at all as far as I know. I thought you seemed rather—”
At that moment the door opened and the three little girls appeared,
each carrying a porridge plate. They were dressed alike in blue jerseys
and knickers; their brown legs were bare, and each had her hair plaited
and pinned up in what was called a horse’s tail. Behind them came Mrs.
Fairfield with the tray.
“Carefully, children,” she warned. But they were taking the very
greatest care. They loved being allowed to carry things. “Have you said
good morning to your father?”
“Yes, grandma.” They settled themselves on the bench opposite Stanley
and Beryl.
“Good morning, Stanley!” Old Mrs. Fairfield gave him his plate.
“Morning, mother! How’s the boy?”
“Splendid! He only woke up once last night. What a perfect morning!”
The old woman paused, her hand on the loaf of bread, to gaze out of the
open door into the garden. The sea sounded. Through the wide-open
window streamed the sun on to the yellow varnished walls and bare
floor. Everything on the table flashed and glittered. In the middle
there was an old salad bowl filled with yellow and red nasturtiums. She
smiled, and a look of deep content shone in her eyes.
“You might _cut_ me a slice of that bread, mother,” said Stanley. “I’ve
only twelve and a half minutes before the coach passes. Has anyone
given my shoes to the servant girl?”
“Yes, they’re ready for you.” Mrs. Fairfield was quite unruffled.
“Oh, Kezia! Why are you such a messy child!” cried Beryl despairingly.
“Me, Aunt Beryl?” Kezia stared at her. What had she done now? She had
only dug a river down the middle of her porridge, filled it, and was
eating the banks away. But she did that every single morning, and no
one had said a word up till now.
“Why can’t you eat your food properly like Isabel and Lottie?” How
unfair grown-ups are!
“But Lottie always makes a floating island, don’t you, Lottie?”
“I don’t,” said Isabel smartly. “I just sprinkle mine with sugar and
put on the milk and finish it. Only babies play with their food.”
Stanley pushed back his chair and got up.
“Would you get me those shoes, mother? And, Beryl, if you’ve finished,
I wish you’d cut down to the gate and stop the coach. Run in to your
mother, Isabel, and ask her where my bowler hat’s been put. Wait a
minute—have you children been playing with my stick?”
“No, father!”
“But I put it here.” Stanley began to bluster. “I remember distinctly
putting it in this corner. Now, who’s had it? There’s no time to lose.
Look sharp! The stick’s got to be found.”
Even Alice, the servant-girl, was drawn into the chase. “You haven’t
been using it to poke the kitchen fire with by any chance?”
Stanley dashed into the bedroom where Linda was lying. “Most
extraordinary thing. I can’t keep a single possession to myself.
They’ve made away with my stick, now!”
“Stick, dear? What stick?” Linda’s vagueness on these occasions could
not be real, Stanley decided. Would nobody sympathize with him?
“Coach! Coach, Stanley!” Beryl’s voice cried from the gate.
Stanley waved his arm to Linda. “No time to say good-bye!” he cried.
And he meant that as a punishment to her.
He snatched his bowler hat, dashed out of the house, and swung down the
garden path. Yes, the coach was there waiting, and Beryl, leaning over
the open gate, was laughing up at somebody or other just as if nothing
had happened. The heartlessness of women! The way they took it for
granted it was your job to slave away for them while they didn’t even
take the trouble to see that your walking-stick wasn’t lost. Kelly
trailed his whip across the horses.
“Good-bye, Stanley,” called Beryl, sweetly and gaily. It was easy
enough to say good-bye! And there she stood, idle, shading her eyes
with her hand. The worst of it was Stanley had to shout good-bye too,
for the sake of appearances. Then he saw her turn, give a little skip
and run back to the house. She was glad to be rid of him!
Yes, she was thankful. Into the living-room she ran and called “He’s
gone!” Linda cried from her room: “Beryl! Has Stanley gone?” Old Mrs.
Fairfield appeared, carrying the boy in his little flannel coatee.
“Gone?”
“Gone!”
Oh, the relief, the difference it made to have the man out of the
house. Their very voices were changed as they called to one another;
they sounded warm and loving and as if they shared a secret. Beryl went
over to the table. “Have another cup of tea, mother. It’s still hot.”
She wanted, somehow, to celebrate the fact that they could do what they
liked now. There was no man to disturb them; the whole perfect day was
theirs.
“No, thank you, child,” said old Mrs. Fairfield, but the way at that
moment she tossed the boy up and said “a-goos-a-goos-a-ga!” to him
meant that she felt the same. The little girls ran into the paddock
like chickens let out of a coop.
Even Alice, the servant-girl, washing up the dishes in the kitchen,
caught the infection and used the precious tank water in a perfectly
reckless fashion.
“Oh, these men!” said she, and she plunged the teapot into the bowl and
held it under the water even after it had stopped bubbling, as if it
too was a man and drowning was too good for them.
IV
“Wait for me, Isa-bel! Kezia, wait for me!”
There was poor little Lottie, left behind again, because she found it
so fearfully hard to get over the stile by herself. When she stood on
the first step her knees began to wobble; she grasped the post. Then
you had to put one leg over. But which leg? She never could decide. And
when she did finally put one leg over with a sort of stamp of
despair—then the feeling was awful. She was half in the paddock still
and half in the tussock grass. She clutched the post desperately and
lifted up her voice. “Wait for me!”
“No, don’t you wait for her, Kezia!” said Isabel. “She’s such a little
silly. She’s always making a fuss. Come on!” And she tugged Kezia’s
jersey. “You can use my bucket if you come with me,” she said kindly.
“It’s bigger than yours.” But Kezia couldn’t leave Lottie all by
herself. She ran back to her. By this time Lottie was very red in the
face and breathing heavily.
“Here, put your other foot over,” said Kezia.
“Where?”
Lottie looked down at Kezia as if from a mountain height.
“Here where my hand is.” Kezia patted the place.
“Oh, _there_ do you mean!” Lottie gave a deep sigh and put the second
foot over.
“Now—sort of turn round and sit down and slide,” said Kezia.
“But there’s nothing to sit down _on_, Kezia,” said Lottie.
She managed it at last, and once it was over she shook herself and
began to beam.
“I’m getting better at climbing over stiles, aren’t I, Kezia?”
Lottie’s was a very hopeful nature.
The pink and the blue sunbonnet followed Isabel’s bright red sunbonnet
up that sliding, slipping hill. At the top they paused to decide where
to go and to have a good stare at who was there already. Seen from
behind, standing against the skyline, gesticulating largely with their
spades, they looked like minute puzzled explorers.
The whole family of Samuel Josephs was there already with their
lady-help, who sat on a camp-stool and kept order with a whistle that
she wore tied round her neck, and a small cane with which she directed
operations. The Samuel Josephs never played by themselves or managed
their own game. If they did, it ended in the boys pouring water down
the girls’ necks or the girls trying to put little black crabs into the
boys’ pockets. So Mrs. S. J. and the poor lady-help drew up what she
called a “brogramme” every morning to keep them “abused and out of
bischief.” It was all competitions or races or round games. Everything
began with a piercing blast of the lady-help’s whistle and ended with
another. There were even prizes—large, rather dirty paper parcels which
the lady-help with a sour little smile drew out of a bulging string
kit. The Samuel Josephs fought fearfully for the prizes and cheated and
pinched one another’s arms—they were all expert pinchers. The only time
the Burnell children ever played with them Kezia had got a prize, and
when she undid three bits of paper she found a very small rusty
button-hook. She couldn’t understand why they made such a fuss....
But they never played with the Samuel Josephs now or even went to their
parties. The Samuel Josephs were always giving children’s parties at
the Bay and there was always the same food. A big washhand basin of
very brown fruit-salad, buns cut into four and a washhand jug full of
something the lady-help called “Limmonadear.” And you went away in the
evening with half the frill torn off your frock or something spilled
all down the front of your open-work pinafore, leaving the Samuel
Josephs leaping like savages on their lawn. No! They were too awful.
On the other side of the beach, close down to the water, two little
boys, their knickers rolled up, twinkled like spiders. One was digging,
the other pattered in and out of the water, filling a small bucket.
They were the Trout boys, Pip and Rags. But Pip was so busy digging and
Rags was so busy helping that they didn’t see their little cousins
until they were quite close.
“Look!” said Pip. “Look what I’ve discovered.” And he showed them an
old wet, squashed-looking boot. The three little girls stared.
“Whatever are you going to do with it?” asked Kezia.
“Keep it, of course!” Pip was very scornful. “It’s a find—see?”
Yes, Kezia saw that. All the same....
“There’s lots of things buried in the sand,” explained Pip. “They get
chucked up from wrecks. Treasure. Why—you might find—”
“But why does Rags have to keep on pouring water in?” asked Lottie.
“Oh, that’s to moisten it,” said Pip, “to make the work a bit easier.
Keep it up, Rags.”
And good little Rags ran up and down, pouring in the water that turned
brown like cocoa.
“Here, shall I show you what I found yesterday?” said Pip mysteriously,
and he stuck his spade into the sand. “Promise not to tell.”
They promised.
“Say, cross my heart straight dinkum.”
The little girls said it.
Pip took something out of his pocket, rubbed it a long time on the
front of his jersey, then breathed on it and rubbed it again.
“Now turn round!” he ordered.
They turned round.
“All look the same way! Keep still! Now!”
And his hand opened; he held up to the light something that flashed,
that winked, that was a most lovely green.
“It’s a nemeral,” said Pip solemnly.
“Is it really, Pip?” Even Isabel was impressed.
The lovely green thing seemed to dance in Pip’s fingers. Aunt Beryl had
a nemeral in a ring, but it was a very small one. This one was as big
as a star and far more beautiful.
V
As the morning lengthened whole parties appeared over the sand-hills
and came down on the beach to bathe. It was understood that at eleven
o’clock the women and children of the summer colony had the sea to
themselves. First the women undressed, pulled on their bathing dresses
and covered their heads in hideous caps like sponge bags; then the
children were unbuttoned. The beach was strewn with little heaps of
clothes and shoes; the big summer hats, with stones on them to keep
them from blowing away, looked like immense shells. It was strange that
even the sea seemed to sound differently when all those leaping,
laughing figures ran into the waves. Old Mrs. Fairfield, in a lilac
cotton dress and a black hat tied under the chin, gathered her little
brood and got them ready. The little Trout boys whipped their shirts
over their heads, and away the five sped, while their grandma sat with
one hand in her knitting-bag ready to draw out the ball of wool when
she was satisfied they were safely in.
The firm compact little girls were not half so brave as the tender,
delicate-looking little boys. Pip and Rags, shivering, crouching down,
slapping the water, never hesitated. But Isabel, who could swim twelve
strokes, and Kezia, who could nearly swim eight, only followed on the
strict understanding they were not to be splashed. As for Lottie, she
didn’t follow at all. She liked to be left to go in her own way,
please. And that way was to sit down at the edge of the water, her legs
straight, her knees pressed together, and to make vague motions with
her arms as if she expected to be wafted out to sea. But when a bigger
wave than usual, an old whiskery one, came lolloping along in her
direction, she scrambled to her feet with a face of horror and flew up
the beach again.
“Here, mother, keep those for me, will you?”
Two rings and a thin gold chain were dropped into Mrs Fairfield’s lap.
“Yes, dear. But aren’t you going to bathe here?”
“No-o,” Beryl drawled. She sounded vague. “I’m undressing farther
along. I’m going to bathe with Mrs. Harry Kember.”
“Very well.” But Mrs. Fairfield’s lips set. She disapproved of Mrs
Harry Kember. Beryl knew it.
Poor old mother, she smiled, as she skimmed over the stones. Poor old
mother! Old! Oh, what joy, what bliss it was to be young....
“You look very pleased,” said Mrs. Harry Kember. She sat hunched up on
the stones, her arms round her knees, smoking.
“It’s such a lovely day,” said Beryl, smiling down at her.
“Oh my _dear_!” Mrs. Harry Kember’s voice sounded as though she knew
better than that. But then her voice always sounded as though she knew
something better about you than you did yourself. She was a long,
strange-looking woman with narrow hands and feet. Her face, too, was
long and narrow and exhausted-looking; even her fair curled fringe
looked burnt out and withered. She was the only woman at the Bay who
smoked, and she smoked incessantly, keeping the cigarette between her
lips while she talked, and only taking it out when the ash was so long
you could not understand why it did not fall. When she was not playing
bridge—she played bridge every day of her life—she spent her time lying
in the full glare of the sun. She could stand any amount of it; she
never had enough. All the same, it did not seem to warm her. Parched,
withered, cold, she lay stretched on the stones like a piece of
tossed-up driftwood. The women at the Bay thought she was very, very
fast. Her lack of vanity, her slang, the way she treated men as though
she was one of them, and the fact that she didn’t care twopence about
her house and called the servant Gladys “Glad-eyes,” was disgraceful.
Standing on the veranda steps Mrs. Kember would call in her
indifferent, tired voice, “I say, Glad-eyes, you might heave me a
handkerchief if I’ve got one, will you?” And Glad-eyes, a red bow in
her hair instead of a cap, and white shoes, came running with an
impudent smile. It was an absolute scandal! True, she had no children,
and her husband.... Here the voices were always raised; they became
fervent. How can he have married her? How can he, how can he? It must
have been money, of course, but even then!
Mrs. Kember’s husband was at least ten years younger than she was, and
so incredibly handsome that he looked like a mask or a most perfect
illustration in an American novel rather than a man. Black hair, dark
blue eyes, red lips, a slow sleepy smile, a fine tennis player, a
perfect dancer, and with it all a mystery. Harry Kember was like a man
walking in his sleep. Men couldn’t stand him, they couldn’t get a word
out of the chap; he ignored his wife just as she ignored him. How did
he live? Of course there were stories, but such stories! They simply
couldn’t be told. The women he’d been seen with, the places he’d been
seen in... but nothing was ever certain, nothing definite. Some of the
women at the Bay privately thought he’d commit a murder one day. Yes,
even while they talked to Mrs. Kember and took in the awful concoction
she was wearing, they saw her, stretched as she lay on the beach; but
cold, bloody, and still with a cigarette stuck in the corner of her
mouth.
Mrs. Kember rose, yawned, unsnapped her belt buckle, and tugged at the
tape of her blouse. And Beryl stepped out of her skirt and shed her
jersey, and stood up in her short white petticoat, and her camisole
with ribbon bows on the shoulders.
“Mercy on us,” said Mrs. Harry Kember, “what a little beauty you are!”
“Don’t!” said Beryl softly; but, drawing off one stocking and then the
other, she felt a little beauty.
“My dear—why not?” said Mrs. Harry Kember, stamping on her own
petticoat. Really—her underclothes! A pair of blue cotton knickers and
a linen bodice that reminded one somehow of a pillow-case.... “And you
don’t wear stays, do you?” She touched Beryl’s waist, and Beryl sprang
away with a small affected cry. Then “Never!” she said firmly.
“Lucky little creature,” sighed Mrs. Kember, unfastening her own.
Beryl turned her back and began the complicated movements of some one
who is trying to take off her clothes and to pull on her bathing-dress
all at one and the same time.
“Oh, my dear—don’t mind me,” said Mrs. Harry Kember. “Why be shy? I
shan’t eat you. I shan’t be shocked like those other ninnies.” And she
gave her strange neighing laugh and grimaced at the other women.
But Beryl was shy. She never undressed in front of anybody. Was that
silly? Mrs. Harry Kember made her feel it was silly, even something to
be ashamed of. Why be shy indeed! She glanced quickly at her friend
standing so boldly in her torn chemise and lighting a fresh cigarette;
and a quick, bold, evil feeling started up in her breast. Laughing
recklessly, she drew on the limp, sandy-feeling bathing-dress that was
not quite dry and fastened the twisted buttons.
“That’s better,” said Mrs. Harry Kember. They began to go down the
beach together. “Really, it’s a sin for you to wear clothes, my dear.
Somebody’s got to tell you some day.”
The water was quite warm. It was that marvellous transparent blue,
flecked with silver, but the sand at the bottom looked gold; when you
kicked with your toes there rose a little puff of gold-dust. Now the
waves just reached her breast. Beryl stood, her arms outstretched,
gazing out, and as each wave came she gave the slightest little jump,
so that it seemed it was the wave which lifted her so gently.
“I believe in pretty girls having a good time,” said Mrs. Harry Kember.
“Why not? Don’t you make a mistake, my dear. Enjoy yourself.” And
suddenly she turned turtle, disappeared, and swam away quickly,
quickly, like a rat. Then she flicked round and began swimming back.
She was going to say something else. Beryl felt that she was being
poisoned by this cold woman, but she longed to hear. But oh, how
strange, how horrible! As Mrs. Harry Kember came up close she looked,
in her black waterproof bathing-cap, with her sleepy face lifted above
the water, just her chin touching, like a horrible caricature of her
husband.
VI
In a steamer chair, under a manuka tree that grew in the middle of the
front grass patch, Linda Burnell dreamed the morning away. She did
nothing. She looked up at the dark, close, dry leaves of the manuka, at
the chinks of blue between, and now and again a tiny yellowish flower
dropped on her. Pretty—yes, if you held one of those flowers on the
palm of your hand and looked at it closely, it was an exquisite small
thing. Each pale yellow petal shone as if each was the careful work of
a loving hand. The tiny tongue in the centre gave it the shape of a
bell. And when you turned it over the outside was a deep bronze colour.
But as soon as they flowered, they fell and were scattered. You brushed
them off your frock as you talked; the horrid little things got caught
in one’s hair. Why, then, flower at all? Who takes the trouble—or the
joy—to make all these things that are wasted, wasted.... It was
uncanny.
On the grass beside her, lying between two pillows, was the boy. Sound
asleep he lay, his head turned away from his mother. His fine dark hair
looked more like a shadow than like real hair, but his ear was a
bright, deep coral. Linda clasped her hands above her head and crossed
her feet. It was very pleasant to know that all these bungalows were
empty, that everybody was down on the beach, out of sight, out of
hearing. She had the garden to herself; she was alone.
Dazzling white the picotees shone; the golden-eyed marigold glittered;
the nasturtiums wreathed the veranda poles in green and gold flame. If
only one had time to look at these flowers long enough, time to get
over the sense of novelty and strangeness, time to know them! But as
soon as one paused to part the petals, to discover the under-side of
the leaf, along came Life and one was swept away. And, lying in her
cane chair, Linda felt so light; she felt like a leaf. Along came Life
like a wind and she was seized and shaken; she had to go. Oh dear,
would it always be so? Was there no escape?
... Now she sat on the veranda of their Tasmanian home, leaning against
her father’s knee. And he promised, “As soon as you and I are old
enough, Linny, we’ll cut off somewhere, we’ll escape. Two boys
together. I have a fancy I’d like to sail up a river in China.” Linda
saw that river, very wide, covered with little rafts and boats. She saw
the yellow hats of the boatmen and she heard their high, thin voices as
they called....
“Yes, papa.”
But just then a very broad young man with bright ginger hair walked
slowly past their house, and slowly, solemnly even, uncovered. Linda’s
father pulled her ear teasingly, in the way he had.
“Linny’s beau,” he whispered.
“Oh, papa, fancy being married to Stanley Burnell!”
Well, she was married to him. And what was more she loved him. Not the
Stanley whom every one saw, not the everyday one; but a timid,
sensitive, innocent Stanley who knelt down every night to say his
prayers, and who longed to be good. Stanley was simple. If he believed
in people—as he believed in her, for instance—it was with his whole
heart. He could not be disloyal; he could not tell a lie. And how
terribly he suffered if he thought anyone—she—was not being dead
straight, dead sincere with him! “This is too subtle for me!” He flung
out the words, but his open, quivering, distraught look was like the
look of a trapped beast.
But the trouble was—here Linda felt almost inclined to laugh, though
Heaven knows it was no laughing matter—she saw _her_ Stanley so seldom.
There were glimpses, moments, breathing spaces of calm, but all the
rest of the time it was like living in a house that couldn’t be cured
of the habit of catching on fire, on a ship that got wrecked every day.
And it was always Stanley who was in the thick of the danger. Her whole
time was spent in rescuing him, and restoring him, and calming him
down, and listening to his story. And what was left of her time was
spent in the dread of having children.
Linda frowned; she sat up quickly in her steamer chair and clasped her
ankles. Yes, that was her real grudge against life; that was what she
could not understand. That was the question she asked and asked, and
listened in vain for the answer. It was all very well to say it was the
common lot of women to bear children. It wasn’t true. She, for one,
could prove that wrong. She was broken, made weak, her courage was
gone, through child-bearing. And what made it doubly hard to bear was,
she did not love her children. It was useless pretending. Even if she
had had the strength she never would have nursed and played with the
little girls. No, it was as though a cold breath had chilled her
through and through on each of those awful journeys; she had no warmth
left to give them. As to the boy—well, thank Heaven, mother had taken
him; he was mother’s, or Beryl’s, or anybody’s who wanted him. She had
hardly held him in her arms. She was so indifferent about him that as
he lay there... Linda glanced down.
The boy had turned over. He lay facing her, and he was no longer
asleep. His dark-blue, baby eyes were open; he looked as though he was
peeping at his mother. And suddenly his face dimpled; it broke into a
wide, toothless smile, a perfect beam, no less.
“I’m here!” that happy smile seemed to say. “Why don’t you like me?”
There was something so quaint, so unexpected about that smile that
Linda smiled herself. But she checked herself and said to the boy
coldly, “I don’t like babies.”
“Don’t like babies?” The boy couldn’t believe her. “Don’t like _me_?”
He waved his arms foolishly at his mother.
Linda dropped off her chair on to the grass.
“Why do you keep on smiling?” she said severely. “If you knew what I
was thinking about, you wouldn’t.”
But he only squeezed up his eyes, slyly, and rolled his head on the
pillow. He didn’t believe a word she said.
“We know all about that!” smiled the boy.
Linda was so astonished at the confidence of this little creature....
Ah no, be sincere. That was not what she felt; it was something far
different, it was something so new, so.... The tears danced in her
eyes; she breathed in a small whisper to the boy, “Hallo, my funny!”
But by now the boy had forgotten his mother. He was serious again.
Something pink, something soft waved in front of him. He made a grab at
it and it immediately disappeared. But when he lay back, another, like
the first, appeared. This time he determined to catch it. He made a
tremendous effort and rolled right over.
VII
The tide was out; the beach was deserted; lazily flopped the warm sea.
The sun beat down, beat down hot and fiery on the fine sand, baking the
grey and blue and black and white-veined pebbles. It sucked up the
little drop of water that lay in the hollow of the curved shells; it
bleached the pink convolvulus that threaded through and through the
sand-hills. Nothing seemed to move but the small sand-hoppers.
Pit-pit-pit! They were never still.
Over there on the weed-hung rocks that looked at low tide like shaggy
beasts come down to the water to drink, the sunlight seemed to spin
like a silver coin dropped into each of the small rock pools. They
danced, they quivered, and minute ripples laved the porous shores.
Looking down, bending over, each pool was like a lake with pink and
blue houses clustered on the shores; and oh! the vast mountainous
country behind those houses—the ravines, the passes, the dangerous
creeks and fearful tracks that led to the water’s edge. Underneath
waved the sea-forest—pink thread-like trees, velvet anemones, and
orange berry-spotted weeds. Now a stone on the bottom moved, rocked,
and there was a glimpse of a black feeler; now a thread-like creature
wavered by and was lost. Something was happening to the pink, waving
trees; they were changing to a cold moonlight blue. And now there
sounded the faintest “plop.” Who made that sound? What was going on
down there? And how strong, how damp the seaweed smelt in the hot
sun....
The green blinds were drawn in the bungalows of the summer colony. Over
the verandas, prone on the paddock, flung over the fences, there were
exhausted-looking bathing-dresses and rough striped towels. Each back
window seemed to have a pair of sand-shoes on the sill and some lumps
of rock or a bucket or a collection of pawa shells. The bush quivered
in a haze of heat; the sandy road was empty except for the Trouts’ dog
Snooker, who lay stretched in the very middle of it. His blue eye was
turned up, his legs stuck out stiffly, and he gave an occasional
desperate-sounding puff, as much as to say he had decided to make an
end of it and was only waiting for some kind cart to come along.
“What are you looking at, my grandma? Why do you keep stopping and sort
of staring at the wall?”
Kezia and her grandmother were taking their siesta together. The little
girl, wearing only her short drawers and her under-bodice, her arms and
legs bare, lay on one of the puffed-up pillows of her grandma’s bed,
and the old woman, in a white ruffled dressing-gown, sat in a rocker at
the window, with a long piece of pink knitting in her lap. This room
that they shared, like the other rooms of the bungalow, was of light
varnished wood and the floor was bare. The furniture was of the
shabbiest, the simplest. The dressing-table, for instance, was a
packing-case in a sprigged muslin petticoat, and the mirror above was
very strange; it was as though a little piece of forked lightning was
imprisoned in it. On the table there stood a jar of sea-pinks, pressed
so tightly together they looked more like a velvet pincushion, and a
special shell which Kezia had given her grandma for a pin-tray, and
another even more special which she had thought would make a very nice
place for a watch to curl up in.
“Tell me, grandma,” said Kezia.
The old woman sighed, whipped the wool twice round her thumb, and drew
the bone needle through. She was casting on.
“I was thinking of your Uncle William, darling,” she said quietly.
“My Australian Uncle William?” said Kezia. She had another.
“Yes, of course.”
“The one I never saw?”
“That was the one.”
“Well, what happened to him?” Kezia knew perfectly well, but she wanted
to be told again.
“He went to the mines, and he got a sunstroke there and died,” said old
Mrs. Fairfield.
Kezia blinked and considered the picture again.... A little man fallen
over like a tin soldier by the side of a big black hole.
“Does it make you sad to think about him, grandma?” She hated her
grandma to be sad.
It was the old woman’s turn to consider. Did it make her sad? To look
back, back. To stare down the years, as Kezia had seen her doing. To
look after _them_ as a woman does, long after _they_ were out of sight.
Did it make her sad? No, life was like that.
“No, Kezia.”
“But why?” asked Kezia. She lifted one bare arm and began to draw
things in the air. “Why did Uncle William have to die? He wasn’t old.”
Mrs. Fairfield began counting the stitches in threes. “It just
happened,” she said in an absorbed voice.
“Does everybody have to die?” asked Kezia.
“Everybody!”
“_Me?_” Kezia sounded fearfully incredulous.
“Some day, my darling.”
“But, grandma.” Kezia waved her left leg and waggled the toes. They
felt sandy. “What if I just won’t?”
The old woman sighed again and drew a long thread from the ball.
“We’re not asked, Kezia,” she said sadly. “It happens to all of us
sooner or later.”
Kezia lay still thinking this over. She didn’t want to die. It meant
she would have to leave here, leave everywhere, for ever, leave—leave
her grandma. She rolled over quickly.
“Grandma,” she said in a startled voice.
“What, my pet!”
“_You’re_ not to die.” Kezia was very decided.
“Ah, Kezia”—her grandma looked up and smiled and shook her head—“don’t
let’s talk about it.”
“But you’re not to. You couldn’t leave me. You couldn’t not be there.”
This was awful. “Promise me you won’t ever do it, grandma,” pleaded
Kezia.
The old woman went on knitting.
“Promise me! Say never!”
But still her grandma was silent.
Kezia rolled off her bed; she couldn’t bear it any longer, and lightly
she leapt on to her grandma’s knees, clasped her hands round the old
woman’s throat and began kissing her, under the chin, behind the ear,
and blowing down her neck.
“Say never... say never... say never—” She gasped between the kisses.
And then she began, very softly and lightly, to tickle her grandma.
“Kezia!” The old woman dropped her knitting. She swung back in the
rocker. She began to tickle Kezia. “Say never, say never, say never,”
gurgled Kezia, while they lay there laughing in each other’s arms.
“Come, that’s enough, my squirrel! That’s enough, my wild pony!” said
old Mrs. Fairfield, setting her cap straight. “Pick up my knitting.”
Both of them had forgotten what the “never” was about.
VIII
The sun was still full on the garden when the back door of the
Burnells’ shut with a bang, and a very gay figure walked down the path
to the gate. It was Alice, the servant-girl, dressed for her afternoon
out. She wore a white cotton dress with such large red spots on it and
so many that they made you shudder, white shoes and a leghorn turned up
under the brim with poppies. Of course she wore gloves, white ones,
stained at the fastenings with iron-mould, and in one hand she carried
a very dashed-looking sunshade which she referred to as her
“_perishall_.”
Beryl, sitting in the window, fanning her freshly-washed hair, thought
she had never seen such a guy. If Alice had only blacked her face with
a piece of cork before she started out, the picture would have been
complete. And where did a girl like that go to in a place like this?
The heart-shaped Fijian fan beat scornfully at that lovely bright mane.
She supposed Alice had picked up some horrible common larrikin and
they’d go off into the bush together. Pity to have made herself so
conspicuous; they’d have hard work to hide with Alice in that rig-out.
But no, Beryl was unfair. Alice was going to tea with Mrs Stubbs, who’d
sent her an “invite” by the little boy who called for orders. She had
taken ever such a liking to Mrs. Stubbs ever since the first time she
went to the shop to get something for her mosquitoes.
“Dear heart!” Mrs. Stubbs had clapped her hand to her side. “I never
seen anyone so eaten. You might have been attacked by canningbals.”
Alice did wish there’d been a bit of life on the road though. Made her
feel so queer, having nobody behind her. Made her feel all weak in the
spine. She couldn’t believe that some one wasn’t watching her. And yet
it was silly to turn round; it gave you away. She pulled up her gloves,
hummed to herself and said to the distant gum-tree, “Shan’t be long
now.” But that was hardly company.
Mrs. Stubbs’s shop was perched on a little hillock just off the road.
It had two big windows for eyes, a broad veranda for a hat, and the
sign on the roof, scrawled MRS. STUBBS’S, was like a little card stuck
rakishly in the hat crown.
On the veranda there hung a long string of bathing-dresses, clinging
together as though they’d just been rescued from the sea rather than
waiting to go in, and beside them there hung a cluster of sandshoes so
extraordinarily mixed that to get at one pair you had to tear apart and
forcibly separate at least fifty. Even then it was the rarest thing to
find the left that belonged to the right. So many people had lost
patience and gone off with one shoe that fitted and one that was a
little too big.... Mrs. Stubbs prided herself on keeping something of
everything. The two windows, arranged in the form of precarious
pyramids, were crammed so tight, piled so high, that it seemed only a
conjurer could prevent them from toppling over. In the left-hand corner
of one window, glued to the pane by four gelatine lozenges, there
was—and there had been from time immemorial—a notice.
LOST! HANSOME GOLE BROOCH
SOLID GOLD
ON OR NEAR BEACH
REWARD OFFERED
Alice pressed open the door. The bell jangled, the red serge curtains
parted, and Mrs. Stubbs appeared. With her broad smile and the long
bacon knife in her hand, she looked like a friendly brigand. Alice was
welcomed so warmly that she found it quite difficult to keep up her
“manners.” They consisted of persistent little coughs and hems, pulls
at her gloves, tweaks at her skirt, and a curious difficulty in seeing
what was set before her or understanding what was said.
Tea was laid on the parlour table—ham, sardines, a whole pound of
butter, and such a large johnny cake that it looked like an
advertisement for somebody’s baking-powder. But the Primus stove roared
so loudly that it was useless to try to talk above it. Alice sat down
on the edge of a basket-chair while Mrs. Stubbs pumped the stove still
higher. Suddenly Mrs. Stubbs whipped the cushion off a chair and
disclosed a large brown-paper parcel.
“I’ve just had some new photers taken, my dear,” she shouted cheerfully
to Alice. “Tell me what you think of them.”
In a very dainty, refined way Alice wet her finger and put the tissue
back from the first one. Life! How many there were! There were three
dozzing at least. And she held it up to the light.
Mrs. Stubbs sat in an arm-chair, leaning very much to one side. There
was a look of mild astonishment on her large face, and well there might
be. For though the arm-chair stood on a carpet, to the left of it,
miraculously skirting the carpet-border, there was a dashing
water-fall. On her right stood a Grecian pillar with a giant fern-tree
on either side of it, and in the background towered a gaunt mountain,
pale with snow.
“It is a nice style, isn’t it?” shouted Mrs. Stubbs; and Alice had just
screamed “Sweetly” when the roaring of the Primus stove died down,
fizzled out, ceased, and she said “Pretty” in a silence that was
frightening.
“Draw up your chair, my dear,” said Mrs. Stubbs, beginning to pour out.
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully, as she handed the tea, “but I don’t care
about the size. I’m having an enlargemint. All very well for Christmas
cards, but I never was the one for small photers myself. You get no
comfort out of them. To say the truth, I find them dis’eartening.”
Alice quite saw what she meant.
“Size,” said Mrs. Stubbs. “Give me size. That was what my poor dear
husband was always saying. He couldn’t stand anything small. Gave him
the creeps. And, strange as it may seem, my dear”—here Mrs. Stubbs
creaked and seemed to expand herself at the memory—“it was dropsy that
carried him off at the larst. Many’s the time they drawn one and a half
pints from ’im at the ’ospital... It seemed like a judgmint.”
Alice burned to know exactly what it was that was drawn from him. She
ventured, “I suppose it was water.”
But Mrs. Stubbs fixed Alice with her eyes and replied meaningly, “It
was _liquid_, my dear.”
Liquid! Alice jumped away from the word like a cat and came back to it,
nosing and wary.
“That’s ’im!” said Mrs. Stubbs, and she pointed dramatically to the
life-size head and shoulders of a burly man with a dead white rose in
the buttonhole of his coat that made you think of a curl of cold
mutting fat. Just below, in silver letters on a red cardboard ground,
were the words, “Be not afraid, it is I.”
“It’s ever such a fine face,” said Alice faintly.
The pale-blue bow on the top of Mrs. Stubbs’s fair frizzy hair
quivered. She arched her plump neck. What a neck she had! It was bright
pink where it began and then it changed to warm apricot, and that faded
to the colour of a brown egg and then to a deep creamy.
“All the same, my dear,” she said surprisingly, “freedom’s best!” Her
soft, fat chuckle sounded like a purr. “Freedom’s best,” said Mrs.
Stubbs again.
Freedom! Alice gave a loud, silly little titter. She felt awkward. Her
mind flew back to her own kitching. Ever so queer! She wanted to be
back in it again.
IX
A strange company assembled in the Burnells’ washhouse after tea. Round
the table there sat a bull, a rooster, a donkey that kept forgetting it
was a donkey, a sheep and a bee. The washhouse was the perfect place
for such a meeting because they could make as much noise as they liked,
and nobody ever interrupted. It was a small tin shed standing apart
from the bungalow. Against the wall there was a deep trough and in the
corner a copper with a basket of clothes-pegs on top of it. The little
window, spun over with cobwebs, had a piece of candle and a mouse-trap
on the dusty sill. There were clotheslines criss-crossed overhead and,
hanging from a peg on the wall, a very big, a huge, rusty horseshoe.
The table was in the middle with a form at either side.
“You can’t be a bee, Kezia. A bee’s not an animal. It’s a ninseck.”
“Oh, but I do want to be a bee frightfully,” wailed Kezia.... A tiny
bee, all yellow-furry, with striped legs. She drew her legs up under
her and leaned over the table. She felt she was a bee.
“A ninseck must be an animal,” she said stoutly. “It makes a noise.
It’s not like a fish.”
“I’m a bull, I’m a bull!” cried Pip. And he gave such a tremendous
bellow—how did he make that noise?—that Lottie looked quite alarmed.
“I’ll be a sheep,” said little Rags. “A whole lot of sheep went past
this morning.”
“How do you know?”
“Dad heard them. Baa!” He sounded like the little lamb that trots
behind and seems to wait to be carried.
“Cock-a-doodle-do!” shrilled Isabel. With her red cheeks and bright
eyes she looked like a rooster.
“What’ll I be?” Lottie asked everybody, and she sat there smiling,
waiting for them to decide for her. It had to be an easy one.
“Be a donkey, Lottie.” It was Kezia’s suggestion. “Hee-haw! You can’t
forget that.”
“Hee-haw!” said Lottie solemnly. “When do I have to say it?”
“I’ll explain, I’ll explain,” said the bull. It was he who had the
cards. He waved them round his head. “All be quiet! All listen!” And he
waited for them. “Look here, Lottie.” He turned up a card. “It’s got
two spots on it—see? Now, if you put that card in the middle and
somebody else has one with two spots as well, you say ‘Hee-haw,’ and
the card’s yours.”
“Mine?” Lottie was round-eyed. “To keep?”
“No, silly. Just for the game, see? Just while we’re playing.” The bull
was very cross with her.
“Oh, Lottie, you _are_ a little silly,” said the proud rooster.
Lottie looked at both of them. Then she hung her head; her lip
quivered. “I don’t want to play,” she whispered. The others glanced at
one another like conspirators. All of them knew what that meant. She
would go away and be discovered somewhere standing with her pinny
thrown over her head, in a corner, or against a wall, or even behind a
chair.
“Yes, you _do_, Lottie. It’s quite easy,” said Kezia.
And Isabel, repentant, said exactly like a grown-up, “Watch _me_,
Lottie, and you’ll soon learn.”
“Cheer up, Lot,” said Pip. “There, I know what I’ll do. I’ll give you
the first one. It’s mine, really, but I’ll give it to you. Here you
are.” And he slammed the card down in front of Lottie.
Lottie revived at that. But now she was in another difficulty. “I
haven’t got a hanky,” she said; “I want one badly, too.”
“Here, Lottie, you can use mine.” Rags dipped into his sailor blouse
and brought up a very wet-looking one, knotted together. “Be very
careful,” he warned her. “Only use that corner. Don’t undo it. I’ve got
a little starfish inside I’m going to try and tame.”
“Oh, come on, you girls,” said the bull. “And mind—you’re not to look
at your cards. You’ve got to keep your hands under the table till I say
‘Go.’”
Smack went the cards round the table. They tried with all their might
to see, but Pip was too quick for them. It was very exciting, sitting
there in the washhouse; it was all they could do not to burst into a
little chorus of animals before Pip had finished dealing.
“Now, Lottie, you begin.”
Timidly Lottie stretched out a hand, took the top card off her pack,
had a good look at it—it was plain she was counting the spots—and put
it down.
“No, Lottie, you can’t do that. You mustn’t look first. You must turn
it the other way over.”
“But then everybody will see it the same time as me,” said Lottie.
The game proceeded. Mooe-ooo-er! The bull was terrible. He charged over
the table and seemed to eat the cards up.
Bss-ss! said the bee.
Cock-a-doodle-do! Isabel stood up in her excitement and moved her
elbows like wings.
Baa! Little Rags put down the King of Diamonds and Lottie put down the
one they called the King of Spain. She had hardly any cards left.
“Why don’t you call out, Lottie?”
“I’ve forgotten what I am,” said the donkey woefully.
“Well, change! Be a dog instead! Bow-wow!”
“Oh yes. That’s _much_ easier.” Lottie smiled again. But when she and
Kezia both had a one Kezia waited on purpose. The others made signs to
Lottie and pointed. Lottie turned very red; she looked bewildered, and
at last she said, “Hee-haw! Ke-zia.”
“Ss! Wait a minute!” They were in the very thick of it when the bull
stopped them, holding up his hand. “What’s that? What’s that noise?”
“What noise? What do you mean?” asked the rooster.
“Ss! Shut up! Listen!” They were mouse-still. “I thought I heard a—a
sort of knocking,” said the bull.
“What was it like?” asked the sheep faintly.
No answer.
The bee gave a shudder. “Whatever did we shut the door for?” she said
softly. Oh, why, why had they shut the door?
While they were playing, the day had faded; the gorgeous sunset had
blazed and died. And now the quick dark came racing over the sea, over
the sand-hills, up the paddock. You were frightened to look in the
corners of the washhouse, and yet you had to look with all your might.
And somewhere, far away, grandma was lighting a lamp. The blinds were
being pulled down; the kitchen fire leapt in the tins on the
mantelpiece.
“It would be awful now,” said the bull, “if a spider was to fall from
the ceiling on to the table, wouldn’t it?”
“Spiders don’t fall from ceilings.”
“Yes, they do. Our Min told us she’d seen a spider as big as a saucer,
with long hairs on it like a gooseberry.”
Quickly all the little heads were jerked up; all the little bodies drew
together, pressed together.
“Why doesn’t somebody come and call us?” cried the rooster.
Oh, those grown-ups, laughing and snug, sitting in the lamp-light,
drinking out of cups! They’d forgotten about them. No, not really
forgotten. That was what their smile meant. They had decided to leave
them there all by themselves.
Suddenly Lottie gave such a piercing scream that all of them jumped off
the forms, all of them screamed too. “A face—a face looking!” shrieked
Lottie.
It was true, it was real. Pressed against the window was a pale face,
black eyes, a black beard.
“Grandma! Mother! Somebody!”
But they had not got to the door, tumbling over one another, before it
opened for Uncle Jonathan. He had come to take the little boys home.
X
He had meant to be there before, but in the front garden he had come
upon Linda walking up and down the grass, stopping to pick off a dead
pink or give a top-heavy carnation something to lean against, or to
take a deep breath of something, and then walking on again, with her
little air of remoteness. Over her white frock she wore a yellow,
pink-fringed shawl from the Chinaman’s shop.
“Hallo, Jonathan!” called Linda. And Jonathan whipped off his shabby
panama, pressed it against his breast, dropped on one knee, and kissed
Linda’s hand.
“Greeting, my Fair One! Greeting, my Celestial Peach Blossom!” boomed
the bass voice gently. “Where are the other noble dames?”
“Beryl’s out playing bridge and mother’s giving the boy his bath....
Have you come to borrow something?”
The Trouts were for ever running out of things and sending across to
the Burnells’ at the last moment.
But Jonathan only answered, “A little love, a little kindness;” and he
walked by his sister-in-law’s side.
Linda dropped into Beryl’s hammock under the manuka-tree, and Jonathan
stretched himself on the grass beside her, pulled a long stalk and
began chewing it. They knew each other well. The voices of children
cried from the other gardens. A fisherman’s light cart shook along the
sandy road, and from far away they heard a dog barking; it was muffled
as though the dog had its head in a sack. If you listened you could
just hear the soft swish of the sea at full tide sweeping the pebbles.
The sun was sinking.
“And so you go back to the office on Monday, do you, Jonathan?” asked
Linda.
“On Monday the cage door opens and clangs to upon the victim for
another eleven months and a week,” answered Jonathan.
Linda swung a little. “It must be awful,” she said slowly.
“Would ye have me laugh, my fair sister? Would ye have me weep?”
Linda was so accustomed to Jonathan’s way of talking that she paid no
attention to it.
“I suppose,” she said vaguely, “one gets used to it. One gets used to
anything.”
“Does one? Hum!” The “Hum” was so deep it seemed to boom from
underneath the ground. “I wonder how it’s done,” brooded Jonathan;
“I’ve never managed it.”
Looking at him as he lay there, Linda thought again how attractive he
was. It was strange to think that he was only an ordinary clerk, that
Stanley earned twice as much money as he. What was the matter with
Jonathan? He had no ambition; she supposed that was it. And yet one
felt he was gifted, exceptional. He was passionately fond of music;
every spare penny he had went on books. He was always full of new
ideas, schemes, plans. But nothing came of it all. The new fire blazed
in Jonathan; you almost heard it roaring softly as he explained,
described and dilated on the new thing; but a moment later it had
fallen in and there was nothing but ashes, and Jonathan went about with
a look like hunger in his black eyes. At these times he exaggerated his
absurd manner of speaking, and he sang in church—he was the leader of
the choir—with such fearful dramatic intensity that the meanest hymn
put on an unholy splendour.
“It seems to me just as imbecile, just as infernal, to have to go to
the office on Monday,” said Jonathan, “as it always has done and always
will do. To spend all the best years of one’s life sitting on a stool
from nine to five, scratching in somebody’s ledger! It’s a queer use to
make of one’s... one and only life, isn’t it? Or do I fondly dream?” He
rolled over on the grass and looked up at Linda. “Tell me, what is the
difference between my life and that of an ordinary prisoner. The only
difference I can see is that I put myself in jail and nobody’s ever
going to let me out. That’s a more intolerable situation than the
other. For if I’d been—pushed in, against my will—kicking, even—once
the door was locked, or at any rate in five years or so, I might have
accepted the fact and begun to take an interest in the flight of flies
or counting the warder’s steps along the passage with particular
attention to variations of tread and so on. But as it is, I’m like an
insect that’s flown into a room of its own accord. I dash against the
walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do
everything on God’s earth, in fact, except fly out again. And all the
while I’m thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it
is, ‘The shortness of life! The shortness of life!’ I’ve only one night
or one day, and there’s this vast dangerous garden, waiting out there,
undiscovered, unexplored.”
“But, if you feel like that, why—” began Linda quickly.
“_Ah!_” cried Jonathan. And that “ah!” was somehow almost exultant.
“There you have me. Why? Why indeed? There’s the maddening, mysterious
question. Why don’t I fly out again? There’s the window or the door or
whatever it was I came in by. It’s not hopelessly shut—is it? Why don’t
I find it and be off? Answer me that, little sister.” But he gave her
no time to answer.
“I’m exactly like that insect again. For some reason”—Jonathan paused
between the words—“it’s not allowed, it’s forbidden, it’s against the
insect law, to stop banging and flopping and crawling up the pane even
for an instant. Why don’t I leave the office? Why don’t I seriously
consider, this moment, for instance, what it is that prevents me
leaving? It’s not as though I’m tremendously tied. I’ve two boys to
provide for, but, after all, they’re boys. I could cut off to sea, or
get a job up-country, or—” Suddenly he smiled at Linda and said in a
changed voice, as if he were confiding a secret, “Weak... weak. No
stamina. No anchor. No guiding principle, let us call it.” But then the
dark velvety voice rolled out:
Would ye hear the story
How it unfolds itself. . .
and they were silent.
The sun had set. In the western sky there were great masses of
crushed-up rose-coloured clouds. Broad beams of light shone through the
clouds and beyond them as if they would cover the whole sky. Overhead
the blue faded; it turned a pale gold, and the bush outlined against it
gleamed dark and brilliant like metal. Sometimes when those beams of
light show in the sky they are very awful. They remind you that up
there sits Jehovah, the jealous God, the Almighty, Whose eye is upon
you, ever watchful, never weary. You remember that at His coming the
whole earth will shake into one ruined graveyard; the cold, bright
angels will drive you this way and that, and there will be no time to
explain what could be explained so simply.... But to-night it seemed to
Linda there was something infinitely joyful and loving in those silver
beams. And now no sound came from the sea. It breathed softly as if it
would draw that tender, joyful beauty into its own bosom.
“It’s all wrong, it’s all wrong,” came the shadowy voice of Jonathan.
“It’s not the scene, it’s not the setting for... three stools, three
desks, three inkpots and a wire blind.”
Linda knew that he would never change, but she said, “Is it too late,
even now?”
“I’m old—I’m old,” intoned Jonathan. He bent towards her, he passed his
hand over his head. “Look!” His black hair was speckled all over with
silver, like the breast plumage of a black fowl.
Linda was surprised. She had no idea that he was grey. And yet, as he
stood up beside her and sighed and stretched, she saw him, for the
first time, not resolute, not gallant, not careless, but touched
already with age. He looked very tall on the darkening grass, and the
thought crossed her mind, “He is like a weed.”
Jonathan stooped again and kissed her fingers.
“Heaven reward thy sweet patience, lady mine,” he murmured. “I must go
seek those heirs to my fame and fortune....” He was gone.
XI
Light shone in the windows of the bungalow. Two square patches of gold
fell upon the pinks and the peaked marigolds. Florrie, the cat, came
out on to the veranda, and sat on the top step, her white paws close
together, her tail curled round. She looked content, as though she had
been waiting for this moment all day.
“Thank goodness, it’s getting late,” said Florrie. “Thank goodness, the
long day is over.” Her greengage eyes opened.
Presently there sounded the rumble of the coach, the crack of Kelly’s
whip. It came near enough for one to hear the voices of the men from
town, talking loudly together. It stopped at the Burnells’ gate.
Stanley was half-way up the path before he saw Linda. “Is that you,
darling?”
“Yes, Stanley.”
He leapt across the flower-bed and seized her in his arms. She was
enfolded in that familiar, eager, strong embrace.
“Forgive me, darling, forgive me,” stammered Stanley, and he put his
hand under her chin and lifted her face to him.
“Forgive you?” smiled Linda. “But whatever for?”
“Good God! You can’t have forgotten,” cried Stanley Burnell. “I’ve
thought of nothing else all day. I’ve had the hell of a day. I made up
my mind to dash out and telegraph, and then I thought the wire mightn’t
reach you before I did. I’ve been in tortures, Linda.”
“But, Stanley,” said Linda, “what must I forgive you for?”
“Linda!”—Stanley was very hurt—“didn’t you realize—you must have
realized—I went away without saying good-bye to you this morning? I
can’t imagine how I can have done such a thing. My confounded temper,
of course. But—well”—and he sighed and took her in his arms again—“I’ve
suffered for it enough to-day.”
“What’s that you’ve got in your hand?” asked Linda. “New gloves? Let me
see.”
“Oh, just a cheap pair of wash-leather ones,” said Stanley humbly. “I
noticed Bell was wearing some in the coach this morning, so, as I was
passing the shop, I dashed in and got myself a pair. What are you
smiling at? You don’t think it was wrong of me, do you?”
“On the _con_-trary, darling,” said Linda, “I think it was most
sensible.”
She pulled one of the large, pale gloves on her own fingers and looked
at her hand, turning it this way and that. She was still smiling.
Stanley wanted to say, “I was thinking of you the whole time I bought
them.” It was true, but for some reason he couldn’t say it. “Let’s go
in,” said he.
XII
Why does one feel so different at night? Why is it so exciting to be
awake when everybody else is asleep? Late—it is very late! And yet
every moment you feel more and more wakeful, as though you were slowly,
almost with every breath, waking up into a new, wonderful, far more
thrilling and exciting world than the daylight one. And what is this
queer sensation that you’re a conspirator? Lightly, stealthily you move
about your room. You take something off the dressing-table and put it
down again without a sound. And everything, even the bed-post, knows
you, responds, shares your secret....
You’re not very fond of your room by day. You never think about it.
You’re in and out, the door opens and slams, the cupboard creaks. You
sit down on the side of your bed, change your shoes and dash out again.
A dive down to the glass, two pins in your hair, powder your nose and
off again. But now—it’s suddenly dear to you. It’s a darling little
funny room. It’s yours. Oh, what a joy it is to own things! Mine—my
own!
“My very own for ever?”
“Yes.” Their lips met.
No, of course, that had nothing to do with it. That was all nonsense
and rubbish. But, in spite of herself, Beryl saw so plainly two people
standing in the middle of her room. Her arms were round his neck; he
held her. And now he whispered, “My beauty, my little beauty!” She
jumped off her bed, ran over to the window and kneeled on the
window-seat, with her elbows on the sill. But the beautiful night, the
garden, every bush, every leaf, even the white palings, even the stars,
were conspirators too. So bright was the moon that the flowers were
bright as by day; the shadow of the nasturtiums, exquisite lily-like
leaves and wide-open flowers, lay across the silvery veranda. The
manuka-tree, bent by the southerly winds, was like a bird on one leg
stretching out a wing.
But when Beryl looked at the bush, it seemed to her the bush was sad.
“We are dumb trees, reaching up in the night, imploring we know not
what,” said the sorrowful bush.
It is true when you are by yourself and you think about life, it is
always sad. All that excitement and so on has a way of suddenly leaving
you, and it’s as though, in the silence, somebody called your name, and
you heard your name for the first time. “Beryl!”
“Yes, I’m here. I’m Beryl. Who wants me?”
“Beryl!”
“Let me come.”
It is lonely living by oneself. Of course, there are relations,
friends, heaps of them; but that’s not what she means. She wants some
one who will find the Beryl they none of them know, who will expect her
to be that Beryl always. She wants a lover.
“Take me away from all these other people, my love. Let us go far away.
Let us live our life, all new, all ours, from the very beginning. Let
us make our fire. Let us sit down to eat together. Let us have long
talks at night.”
And the thought was almost, “Save me, my love. Save me!”
... “Oh, go on! Don’t be a prude, my dear. You enjoy yourself while
you’re young. That’s my advice.” And a high rush of silly laughter
joined Mrs. Harry Kember’s loud, indifferent neigh.
You see, it’s so frightfully difficult when you’ve nobody. You’re so at
the mercy of things. You can’t just be rude. And you’ve always this
horror of seeming inexperienced and stuffy like the other ninnies at
the Bay. And—and it’s fascinating to know you’ve power over people.
Yes, that is fascinating....
Oh why, oh why doesn’t “he” come soon?
If I go on living here, thought Beryl, anything may happen to me.
“But how do you know he is coming at all?” mocked a small voice within
her.
But Beryl dismissed it. She couldn’t be left. Other people, perhaps,
but not she. It wasn’t possible to think that Beryl Fairfield never
married, that lovely fascinating girl.
“Do you remember Beryl Fairfield?”
“Remember her! As if I could forget her! It was one summer at the Bay
that I saw her. She was standing on the beach in a blue”—no,
pink—“muslin frock, holding on a big cream”—no, black—“straw hat. But
it’s years ago now.”
“She’s as lovely as ever, more so if anything.”
Beryl smiled, bit her lip, and gazed over the garden. As she gazed, she
saw somebody, a man, leave the road, step along the paddock beside
their palings as if he was coming straight towards her. Her heart beat.
Who was it? Who could it be? It couldn’t be a burglar, certainly not a
burglar, for he was smoking and he strolled lightly. Beryl’s heart
leapt; it seemed to turn right over, and then to stop. She recognized
him.
“Good evening, Miss Beryl,” said the voice softly.
“Good evening.”
“Won’t you come for a little walk?” it drawled.
Come for a walk—at that time of night! “I couldn’t. Everybody’s in bed.
Everybody’s asleep.”
“Oh,” said the voice lightly, and a whiff of sweet smoke reached her.
“What does everybody matter? Do come! It’s such a fine night. There’s
not a soul about.”
Beryl shook her head. But already something stirred in her, something
reared its head.
The voice said, “Frightened?” It mocked, “Poor little girl!”
“Not in the least,” said she. As she spoke that weak thing within her
seemed to uncoil, to grow suddenly tremendously strong; she longed to
go!
And just as if this was quite understood by the other, the voice said,
gently and softly, but finally, “Come along!”
Beryl stepped over her low window, crossed the veranda, ran down the
grass to the gate. He was there before her.
“That’s right,” breathed the voice, and it teased, “You’re not
frightened, are you? You’re not frightened?”
She was; now she was here she was terrified, and it seemed to her
everything was different. The moonlight stared and glittered; the
shadows were like bars of iron. Her hand was taken.
“Not in the least,” she said lightly. “Why should I be?”
Her hand was pulled gently, tugged. She held back.
“No, I’m not coming any farther,” said Beryl.
“Oh, rot!” Harry Kember didn’t believe her. “Come along! We’ll just go
as far as that fuchsia bush. Come along!”
The fuchsia bush was tall. It fell over the fence in a shower. There
was a little pit of darkness beneath.
“No, really, I don’t want to,” said Beryl.
For a moment Harry Kember didn’t answer. Then he came close to her,
turned to her, smiled and said quickly, “Don’t be silly! Don’t be
silly!”
His smile was something she’d never seen before. Was he drunk? That
bright, blind, terrifying smile froze her with horror. What was she
doing? How had she got here? the stern garden asked her as the gate
pushed open, and quick as a cat Harry Kember came through and snatched
her to him.
“Cold little devil! Cold little devil!” said the hateful voice.
But Beryl was strong. She slipped, ducked, wrenched free.
“You are vile, vile,” said she.
“Then why in God’s name did you come?” stammered Harry Kember.
Nobody answered him.
A cloud, small, serene, floated across the moon. In that moment of
darkness the sea sounded deep, troubled. Then the cloud sailed away,
and the sound of the sea was a vague murmur, as though it waked out of
a dark dream. All was still.
The Garden-Party
And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more
perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm,
the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light
gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The gardener had been up
since dawn, mowing the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the
dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine. As
for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses
are the only flowers that impress people at garden-parties; the only
flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes, literally
hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down
as though they had been visited by archangels.
Breakfast was not yet over before the men came to put up the marquee.
“Where do you want the marquee put, mother?”
“My dear child, it’s no use asking me. I’m determined to leave
everything to you children this year. Forget I am your mother. Treat me
as an honoured guest.”
But Meg could not possibly go and supervise the men. She had washed her
hair before breakfast, and she sat drinking her coffee in a green
turban, with a dark wet curl stamped on each cheek. Jose, the
butterfly, always came down in a silk petticoat and a kimono jacket.
“You’ll have to go, Laura; you’re the artistic one.”
Away Laura flew, still holding her piece of bread-and-butter. It’s so
delicious to have an excuse for eating out of doors, and besides, she
loved having to arrange things; she always felt she could do it so much
better than anybody else.
Four men in their shirt-sleeves stood grouped together on the garden
path. They carried staves covered with rolls of canvas, and they had
big tool-bags slung on their backs. They looked impressive. Laura
wished now that she had not got the bread-and-butter, but there was
nowhere to put it, and she couldn’t possibly throw it away. She blushed
and tried to look severe and even a little bit short-sighted as she
came up to them.
“Good morning,” she said, copying her mother’s voice. But that sounded
so fearfully affected that she was ashamed, and stammered like a little
girl, “Oh—er—have you come—is it about the marquee?”
“That’s right, miss,” said the tallest of the men, a lanky, freckled
fellow, and he shifted his tool-bag, knocked back his straw hat and
smiled down at her. “That’s about it.”
His smile was so easy, so friendly that Laura recovered. What nice eyes
he had, small, but such a dark blue! And now she looked at the others,
they were smiling too. “Cheer up, we won’t bite,” their smile seemed to
say. How very nice workmen were! And what a beautiful morning! She
mustn’t mention the morning; she must be business-like. The marquee.
“Well, what about the lily-lawn? Would that do?”
And she pointed to the lily-lawn with the hand that didn’t hold the
bread-and-butter. They turned, they stared in the direction. A little
fat chap thrust out his under-lip, and the tall fellow frowned.
“I don’t fancy it,” said he. “Not conspicuous enough. You see, with a
thing like a marquee,” and he turned to Laura in his easy way, “you
want to put it somewhere where it’ll give you a bang slap in the eye,
if you follow me.”
Laura’s upbringing made her wonder for a moment whether it was quite
respectful of a workman to talk to her of bangs slap in the eye. But
she did quite follow him.
“A corner of the tennis-court,” she suggested. “But the band’s going to
be in one corner.”
“H’m, going to have a band, are you?” said another of the workmen. He
was pale. He had a haggard look as his dark eyes scanned the
tennis-court. What was he thinking?
“Only a very small band,” said Laura gently. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind
so much if the band was quite small. But the tall fellow interrupted.
“Look here, miss, that’s the place. Against those trees. Over there.
That’ll do fine.”
Against the karakas. Then the karaka-trees would be hidden. And they
were so lovely, with their broad, gleaming leaves, and their clusters
of yellow fruit. They were like trees you imagined growing on a desert
island, proud, solitary, lifting their leaves and fruits to the sun in
a kind of silent splendour. Must they be hidden by a marquee?
They must. Already the men had shouldered their staves and were making
for the place. Only the tall fellow was left. He bent down, pinched a
sprig of lavender, put his thumb and forefinger to his nose and snuffed
up the smell. When Laura saw that gesture she forgot all about the
karakas in her wonder at him caring for things like that—caring for the
smell of lavender. How many men that she knew would have done such a
thing? Oh, how extraordinarily nice workmen were, she thought. Why
couldn’t she have workmen for her friends rather than the silly boys
she danced with and who came to Sunday night supper? She would get on
much better with men like these.
It’s all the fault, she decided, as the tall fellow drew something on
the back of an envelope, something that was to be looped up or left to
hang, of these absurd class distinctions. Well, for her part, she
didn’t feel them. Not a bit, not an atom.... And now there came the
chock-chock of wooden hammers. Some one whistled, some one sang out,
“Are you right there, matey?” “Matey!” The friendliness of it,
the—the—Just to prove how happy she was, just to show the tall fellow
how at home she felt, and how she despised stupid conventions, Laura
took a big bite of her bread-and-butter as she stared at the little
drawing. She felt just like a work-girl.
“Laura, Laura, where are you? Telephone, Laura!” a voice cried from the
house.
“Coming!” Away she skimmed, over the lawn, up the path, up the steps,
across the veranda, and into the porch. In the hall her father and
Laurie were brushing their hats ready to go to the office.
“I say, Laura,” said Laurie very fast, “you might just give a squiz at
my coat before this afternoon. See if it wants pressing.”
“I will,” said she. Suddenly she couldn’t stop herself. She ran at
Laurie and gave him a small, quick squeeze. “Oh, I do love parties,
don’t you?” gasped Laura.
“Ra-ther,” said Laurie’s warm, boyish voice, and he squeezed his sister
too, and gave her a gentle push. “Dash off to the telephone, old girl.”
The telephone. “Yes, yes; oh yes. Kitty? Good morning, dear. Come to
lunch? Do, dear. Delighted of course. It will only be a very scratch
meal—just the sandwich crusts and broken meringue-shells and what’s
left over. Yes, isn’t it a perfect morning? Your white? Oh, I certainly
should. One moment—hold the line. Mother’s calling.” And Laura sat
back. “What, mother? Can’t hear.”
Mrs. Sheridan’s voice floated down the stairs. “Tell her to wear that
sweet hat she had on last Sunday.”
“Mother says you’re to wear that _sweet_ hat you had on last Sunday.
Good. One o’clock. Bye-bye.”
Laura put back the receiver, flung her arms over her head, took a deep
breath, stretched and let them fall. “Huh,” she sighed, and the moment
after the sigh she sat up quickly. She was still, listening. All the
doors in the house seemed to be open. The house was alive with soft,
quick steps and running voices. The green baize door that led to the
kitchen regions swung open and shut with a muffled thud. And now there
came a long, chuckling absurd sound. It was the heavy piano being moved
on its stiff castors. But the air! If you stopped to notice, was the
air always like this? Little faint winds were playing chase, in at the
tops of the windows, out at the doors. And there were two tiny spots of
sun, one on the inkpot, one on a silver photograph frame, playing too.
Darling little spots. Especially the one on the inkpot lid. It was
quite warm. A warm little silver star. She could have kissed it.
The front door bell pealed, and there sounded the rustle of Sadie’s
print skirt on the stairs. A man’s voice murmured; Sadie answered,
careless, “I’m sure I don’t know. Wait. I’ll ask Mrs Sheridan.”
“What is it, Sadie?” Laura came into the hall.
“It’s the florist, Miss Laura.”
It was, indeed. There, just inside the door, stood a wide, shallow tray
full of pots of pink lilies. No other kind. Nothing but lilies—canna
lilies, big pink flowers, wide open, radiant, almost frighteningly
alive on bright crimson stems.
“O-oh, Sadie!” said Laura, and the sound was like a little moan. She
crouched down as if to warm herself at that blaze of lilies; she felt
they were in her fingers, on her lips, growing in her breast.
“It’s some mistake,” she said faintly. “Nobody ever ordered so many.
Sadie, go and find mother.”
But at that moment Mrs. Sheridan joined them.
“It’s quite right,” she said calmly. “Yes, I ordered them. Aren’t they
lovely?” She pressed Laura’s arm. “I was passing the shop yesterday,
and I saw them in the window. And I suddenly thought for once in my
life I shall have enough canna lilies. The garden-party will be a good
excuse.”
“But I thought you said you didn’t mean to interfere,” said Laura.
Sadie had gone. The florist’s man was still outside at his van. She put
her arm round her mother’s neck and gently, very gently, she bit her
mother’s ear.
“My darling child, you wouldn’t like a logical mother, would you? Don’t
do that. Here’s the man.”
He carried more lilies still, another whole tray.
“Bank them up, just inside the door, on both sides of the porch,
please,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “Don’t you agree, Laura?”
“Oh, I _do_, mother.”
In the drawing-room Meg, Jose and good little Hans had at last
succeeded in moving the piano.
“Now, if we put this chesterfield against the wall and move everything
out of the room except the chairs, don’t you think?”
“Quite.”
“Hans, move these tables into the smoking-room, and bring a sweeper to
take these marks off the carpet and—one moment, Hans—” Jose loved
giving orders to the servants, and they loved obeying her. She always
made them feel they were taking part in some drama. “Tell mother and
Miss Laura to come here at once.
“Very good, Miss Jose.”
She turned to Meg. “I want to hear what the piano sounds like, just in
case I’m asked to sing this afternoon. Let’s try over ‘This life is
Weary.’”
_Pom!_ Ta-ta-ta _Tee_-ta! The piano burst out so passionately that
Jose’s face changed. She clasped her hands. She looked mournfully and
enigmatically at her mother and Laura as they came in.
This Life is _Wee_-ary,
A Tear—a Sigh.
A Love that _Chan_-ges,
This Life is _Wee_-ary,
A Tear—a Sigh.
A Love that _Chan_-ges,
And then. . . Good-bye!
But at the word “Good-bye,” and although the piano sounded more
desperate than ever, her face broke into a brilliant, dreadfully
unsympathetic smile.
“Aren’t I in good voice, mummy?” she beamed.
This Life is _Wee_-ary,
Hope comes to Die.
A Dream—a _Wa_-kening.
But now Sadie interrupted them. “What is it, Sadie?”
“If you please, m’m, cook says have you got the flags for the
sandwiches?”
“The flags for the sandwiches, Sadie?” echoed Mrs. Sheridan dreamily.
And the children knew by her face that she hadn’t got them. “Let me
see.” And she said to Sadie firmly, “Tell cook I’ll let her have them
in ten minutes.”
Sadie went.
“Now, Laura,” said her mother quickly, “come with me into the
smoking-room. I’ve got the names somewhere on the back of an envelope.
You’ll have to write them out for me. Meg, go upstairs this minute and
take that wet thing off your head. Jose, run and finish dressing this
instant. Do you hear me, children, or shall I have to tell your father
when he comes home to-night? And—and, Jose, pacify cook if you do go
into the kitchen, will you? I’m terrified of her this morning.”
The envelope was found at last behind the dining-room clock, though how
it had got there Mrs. Sheridan could not imagine.
“One of you children must have stolen it out of my bag, because I
remember vividly—cream-cheese and lemon-curd. Have you done that?”
“Yes.”
“Egg and—” Mrs. Sheridan held the envelope away from her. “It looks
like mice. It can’t be mice, can it?”
“Olive, pet,” said Laura, looking over her shoulder.
“Yes, of course, olive. What a horrible combination it sounds. Egg and
olive.”
They were finished at last, and Laura took them off to the kitchen. She
found Jose there pacifying the cook, who did not look at all
terrifying.
“I have never seen such exquisite sandwiches,” said Jose’s rapturous
voice. “How many kinds did you say there were, cook? Fifteen?”
“Fifteen, Miss Jose.”
“Well, cook, I congratulate you.”
Cook swept up crusts with the long sandwich knife, and smiled broadly.
“Godber’s has come,” announced Sadie, issuing out of the pantry. She
had seen the man pass the window.
That meant the cream puffs had come. Godber’s were famous for their
cream puffs. Nobody ever thought of making them at home.
“Bring them in and put them on the table, my girl,” ordered cook.
Sadie brought them in and went back to the door. Of course Laura and
Jose were far too grown-up to really care about such things. All the
same, they couldn’t help agreeing that the puffs looked very
attractive. Very. Cook began arranging them, shaking off the extra
icing sugar.
“Don’t they carry one back to all one’s parties?” said Laura.
“I suppose they do,” said practical Jose, who never liked to be carried
back. “They look beautifully light and feathery, I must say.”
“Have one each, my dears,” said cook in her comfortable voice. “Yer ma
won’t know.”
Oh, impossible. Fancy cream puffs so soon after breakfast. The very
idea made one shudder. All the same, two minutes later Jose and Laura
were licking their fingers with that absorbed inward look that only
comes from whipped cream.
“Let’s go into the garden, out by the back way,” suggested Laura. “I
want to see how the men are getting on with the marquee. They’re such
awfully nice men.”
But the back door was blocked by cook, Sadie, Godber’s man and Hans.
Something had happened.
“Tuk-tuk-tuk,” clucked cook like an agitated hen. Sadie had her hand
clapped to her cheek as though she had toothache. Hans’s face was
screwed up in the effort to understand. Only Godber’s man seemed to be
enjoying himself; it was his story.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?”
“There’s been a horrible accident,” said Cook. “A man killed.”
“A man killed! Where? How? When?”
But Godber’s man wasn’t going to have his story snatched from under his
very nose.
“Know those little cottages just below here, miss?” Know them? Of
course, she knew them. “Well, there’s a young chap living there, name
of Scott, a carter. His horse shied at a traction-engine, corner of
Hawke Street this morning, and he was thrown out on the back of his
head. Killed.”
“Dead!” Laura stared at Godber’s man.
“Dead when they picked him up,” said Godber’s man with relish. “They
were taking the body home as I come up here.” And he said to the cook,
“He’s left a wife and five little ones.”
“Jose, come here.” Laura caught hold of her sister’s sleeve and dragged
her through the kitchen to the other side of the green baize door.
There she paused and leaned against it. “Jose!” she said, horrified,
“however are we going to stop everything?”
“Stop everything, Laura!” cried Jose in astonishment. “What do you
mean?”
“Stop the garden-party, of course.” Why did Jose pretend?
But Jose was still more amazed. “Stop the garden-party? My dear Laura,
don’t be so absurd. Of course we can’t do anything of the kind. Nobody
expects us to. Don’t be so extravagant.”
“But we can’t possibly have a garden-party with a man dead just outside
the front gate.”
That really was extravagant, for the little cottages were in a lane to
themselves at the very bottom of a steep rise that led up to the house.
A broad road ran between. True, they were far too near. They were the
greatest possible eyesore, and they had no right to be in that
neighbourhood at all. They were little mean dwellings painted a
chocolate brown. In the garden patches there was nothing but cabbage
stalks, sick hens and tomato cans. The very smoke coming out of their
chimneys was poverty-stricken. Little rags and shreds of smoke, so
unlike the great silvery plumes that uncurled from the Sheridans’
chimneys. Washerwomen lived in the lane and sweeps and a cobbler, and a
man whose house-front was studded all over with minute bird-cages.
Children swarmed. When the Sheridans were little they were forbidden to
set foot there because of the revolting language and of what they might
catch. But since they were grown up, Laura and Laurie on their prowls
sometimes walked through. It was disgusting and sordid. They came out
with a shudder. But still one must go everywhere; one must see
everything. So through they went.
“And just think of what the band would sound like to that poor woman,”
said Laura.
“Oh, Laura!” Jose began to be seriously annoyed. “If you’re going to
stop a band playing every time some one has an accident, you’ll lead a
very strenuous life. I’m every bit as sorry about it as you. I feel
just as sympathetic.” Her eyes hardened. She looked at her sister just
as she used to when they were little and fighting together. “You won’t
bring a drunken workman back to life by being sentimental,” she said
softly.
“Drunk! Who said he was drunk?” Laura turned furiously on Jose. She
said, just as they had used to say on those occasions, “I’m going
straight up to tell mother.”
“Do, dear,” cooed Jose.
“Mother, can I come into your room?” Laura turned the big glass
door-knob.
“Of course, child. Why, what’s the matter? What’s given you such a
colour?” And Mrs. Sheridan turned round from her dressing-table. She
was trying on a new hat.
“Mother, a man’s been killed,” began Laura.
“_Not_ in the garden?” interrupted her mother.
“No, no!”
“Oh, what a fright you gave me!” Mrs. Sheridan sighed with relief, and
took off the big hat and held it on her knees.
“But listen, mother,” said Laura. Breathless, half-choking, she told
the dreadful story. “Of course, we can’t have our party, can we?” she
pleaded. “The band and everybody arriving. They’d hear us, mother;
they’re nearly neighbours!”
To Laura’s astonishment her mother behaved just like Jose; it was
harder to bear because she seemed amused. She refused to take Laura
seriously.
“But, my dear child, use your common sense. It’s only by accident we’ve
heard of it. If some one had died there normally—and I can’t understand
how they keep alive in those poky little holes—we should still be
having our party, shouldn’t we?”
Laura had to say “yes” to that, but she felt it was all wrong. She sat
down on her mother’s sofa and pinched the cushion frill.
“Mother, isn’t it terribly heartless of us?” she asked.
“Darling!” Mrs. Sheridan got up and came over to her, carrying the hat.
Before Laura could stop her she had popped it on. “My child!” said her
mother, “the hat is yours. It’s made for you. It’s much too young for
me. I have never seen you look such a picture. Look at yourself!” And
she held up her hand-mirror.
“But, mother,” Laura began again. She couldn’t look at herself; she
turned aside.
This time Mrs. Sheridan lost patience just as Jose had done.
“You are being very absurd, Laura,” she said coldly. “People like that
don’t expect sacrifices from us. And it’s not very sympathetic to spoil
everybody’s enjoyment as you’re doing now.”
“I don’t understand,” said Laura, and she walked quickly out of the
room into her own bedroom. There, quite by chance, the first thing she
saw was this charming girl in the mirror, in her black hat trimmed with
gold daisies, and a long black velvet ribbon. Never had she imagined
she could look like that. Is mother right? she thought. And now she
hoped her mother was right. Am I being extravagant? Perhaps it was
extravagant. Just for a moment she had another glimpse of that poor
woman and those little children, and the body being carried into the
house. But it all seemed blurred, unreal, like a picture in the
newspaper. I’ll remember it again after the party’s over, she decided.
And somehow that seemed quite the best plan....
Lunch was over by half-past one. By half-past two they were all ready
for the fray. The green-coated band had arrived and was established in
a corner of the tennis-court.
“My dear!” trilled Kitty Maitland, “aren’t they too like frogs for
words? You ought to have arranged them round the pond with the
conductor in the middle on a leaf.”
Laurie arrived and hailed them on his way to dress. At the sight of him
Laura remembered the accident again. She wanted to tell him. If Laurie
agreed with the others, then it was bound to be all right. And she
followed him into the hall.
“Laurie!”
“Hallo!” He was half-way upstairs, but when he turned round and saw
Laura he suddenly puffed out his cheeks and goggled his eyes at her.
“My word, Laura! You do look stunning,” said Laurie. “What an
absolutely topping hat!”
Laura said faintly “Is it?” and smiled up at Laurie, and didn’t tell
him after all.
Soon after that people began coming in streams. The band struck up; the
hired waiters ran from the house to the marquee. Wherever you looked
there were couples strolling, bending to the flowers, greeting, moving
on over the lawn. They were like bright birds that had alighted in the
Sheridans’ garden for this one afternoon, on their way to—where? Ah,
what happiness it is to be with people who all are happy, to press
hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.
“Darling Laura, how well you look!”
“What a becoming hat, child!”
“Laura, you look quite Spanish. I’ve never seen you look so striking.”
And Laura, glowing, answered softly, “Have you had tea? Won’t you have
an ice? The passion-fruit ices really are rather special.” She ran to
her father and begged him. “Daddy darling, can’t the band have
something to drink?”
And the perfect afternoon slowly ripened, slowly faded, slowly its
petals closed.
“Never a more delightful garden-party....” “The greatest success....”
“Quite the most....”
Laura helped her mother with the good-byes. They stood side by side in
the porch till it was all over.
“All over, all over, thank heaven,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “Round up the
others, Laura. Let’s go and have some fresh coffee. I’m exhausted. Yes,
it’s been very successful. But oh, these parties, these parties! Why
will you children insist on giving parties!” And they all of them sat
down in the deserted marquee.
“Have a sandwich, daddy dear. I wrote the flag.”
“Thanks.” Mr. Sheridan took a bite and the sandwich was gone. He took
another. “I suppose you didn’t hear of a beastly accident that happened
to-day?” he said.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Sheridan, holding up her hand, “we did. It nearly
ruined the party. Laura insisted we should put it off.”
“Oh, mother!” Laura didn’t want to be teased about it.
“It was a horrible affair all the same,” said Mr. Sheridan. “The chap
was married too. Lived just below in the lane, and leaves a wife and
half a dozen kiddies, so they say.”
An awkward little silence fell. Mrs. Sheridan fidgeted with her cup.
Really, it was very tactless of father....
Suddenly she looked up. There on the table were all those sandwiches,
cakes, puffs, all uneaten, all going to be wasted. She had one of her
brilliant ideas.
“I know,” she said. “Let’s make up a basket. Let’s send that poor
creature some of this perfectly good food. At any rate, it will be the
greatest treat for the children. Don’t you agree? And she’s sure to
have neighbours calling in and so on. What a point to have it all ready
prepared. Laura!” She jumped up. “Get me the big basket out of the
stairs cupboard.”
“But, mother, do you really think it’s a good idea?” said Laura.
Again, how curious, she seemed to be different from them all. To take
scraps from their party. Would the poor woman really like that?
“Of course! What’s the matter with you to-day? An hour or two ago you
were insisting on us being sympathetic, and now—”
Oh well! Laura ran for the basket. It was filled, it was heaped by her
mother.
“Take it yourself, darling,” said she. “Run down just as you are. No,
wait, take the arum lilies too. People of that class are so impressed
by arum lilies.”
“The stems will ruin her lace frock,” said practical Jose.
So they would. Just in time. “Only the basket, then. And, Laura!”—her
mother followed her out of the marquee—“don’t on any account—”
“What mother?”
No, better not put such ideas into the child’s head! “Nothing! Run
along.”
It was just growing dusky as Laura shut their garden gates. A big dog
ran by like a shadow. The road gleamed white, and down below in the
hollow the little cottages were in deep shade. How quiet it seemed
after the afternoon. Here she was going down the hill to somewhere
where a man lay dead, and she couldn’t realize it. Why couldn’t she?
She stopped a minute. And it seemed to her that kisses, voices,
tinkling spoons, laughter, the smell of crushed grass were somehow
inside her. She had no room for anything else. How strange! She looked
up at the pale sky, and all she thought was, “Yes, it was the most
successful party.”
Now the broad road was crossed. The lane began, smoky and dark. Women
in shawls and men’s tweed caps hurried by. Men hung over the palings;
the children played in the doorways. A low hum came from the mean
little cottages. In some of them there was a flicker of light, and a
shadow, crab-like, moved across the window. Laura bent her head and
hurried on. She wished now she had put on a coat. How her frock shone!
And the big hat with the velvet streamer—if only it was another hat!
Were the people looking at her? They must be. It was a mistake to have
come; she knew all along it was a mistake. Should she go back even now?
No, too late. This was the house. It must be. A dark knot of people
stood outside. Beside the gate an old, old woman with a crutch sat in a
chair, watching. She had her feet on a newspaper. The voices stopped as
Laura drew near. The group parted. It was as though she was expected,
as though they had known she was coming here.
Laura was terribly nervous. Tossing the velvet ribbon over her
shoulder, she said to a woman standing by, “Is this Mrs. Scott’s
house?” and the woman, smiling queerly, said, “It is, my lass.”
Oh, to be away from this! She actually said, “Help me, God,” as she
walked up the tiny path and knocked. To be away from those staring
eyes, or to be covered up in anything, one of those women’s shawls
even. I’ll just leave the basket and go, she decided. I shan’t even
wait for it to be emptied.
Then the door opened. A little woman in black showed in the gloom.
Laura said, “Are you Mrs. Scott?” But to her horror the woman answered,
“Walk in please, miss,” and she was shut in the passage.
“No,” said Laura, “I don’t want to come in. I only want to leave this
basket. Mother sent—”
The little woman in the gloomy passage seemed not to have heard her.
“Step this way, please, miss,” she said in an oily voice, and Laura
followed her.
She found herself in a wretched little low kitchen, lighted by a smoky
lamp. There was a woman sitting before the fire.
“Em,” said the little creature who had let her in. “Em! It’s a young
lady.” She turned to Laura. She said meaningly, “I’m ’er sister, miss.
You’ll excuse ’er, won’t you?”
“Oh, but of course!” said Laura. “Please, please don’t disturb her. I—I
only want to leave—”
But at that moment the woman at the fire turned round. Her face, puffed
up, red, with swollen eyes and swollen lips, looked terrible. She
seemed as though she couldn’t understand why Laura was there. What did
it mean? Why was this stranger standing in the kitchen with a basket?
What was it all about? And the poor face puckered up again.
“All right, my dear,” said the other. “I’ll thenk the young lady.”
And again she began, “You’ll excuse her, miss, I’m sure,” and her face,
swollen too, tried an oily smile.
Laura only wanted to get out, to get away. She was back in the passage.
The door opened. She walked straight through into the bedroom, where
the dead man was lying.
“You’d like a look at ’im, wouldn’t you?” said Em’s sister, and she
brushed past Laura over to the bed. “Don’t be afraid, my lass,”—and now
her voice sounded fond and sly, and fondly she drew down the sheet—“’e
looks a picture. There’s nothing to show. Come along, my dear.”
Laura came.
There lay a young man, fast asleep—sleeping so soundly, so deeply, that
he was far, far away from them both. Oh, so remote, so peaceful. He was
dreaming. Never wake him up again. His head was sunk in the pillow, his
eyes were closed; they were blind under the closed eyelids. He was
given up to his dream. What did garden-parties and baskets and lace
frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things. He was
wonderful, beautiful. While they were laughing and while the band was
playing, this marvel had come to the lane. Happy... happy.... All is
well, said that sleeping face. This is just as it should be. I am
content.
But all the same you had to cry, and she couldn’t go out of the room
without saying something to him. Laura gave a loud childish sob.
“Forgive my hat,” she said.
And this time she didn’t wait for Em’s sister. She found her way out of
the door, down the path, past all those dark people. At the corner of
the lane she met Laurie.
He stepped out of the shadow. “Is that you, Laura?”
“Yes.”
“Mother was getting anxious. Was it all right?”
“Yes, quite. Oh, Laurie!” She took his arm, she pressed up against him.
“I say, you’re not crying, are you?” asked her brother.
Laura shook her head. She was.
Laurie put his arm round her shoulder. “Don’t cry,” he said in his
warm, loving voice. “Was it awful?”
“No,” sobbed Laura. “It was simply marvellous. But Laurie—” She
stopped, she looked at her brother. “Isn’t life,” she stammered, “isn’t
life—” But what life was she couldn’t explain. No matter. He quite
understood.
“_Isn’t_ it, darling?” said Laurie.
The Daughters of the Late Colonel
I
The week after was one of the busiest weeks of their lives. Even when
they went to bed it was only their bodies that lay down and rested;
their minds went on, thinking things out, talking things over,
wondering, deciding, trying to remember where....
Constantia lay like a statue, her hands by her sides, her feet just
overlapping each other, the sheet up to her chin. She stared at the
ceiling.
“Do you think father would mind if we gave his top-hat to the porter?”
“The porter?” snapped Josephine. “Why ever the porter? What a very
extraordinary idea!”
“Because,” said Constantia slowly, “he must often have to go to
funerals. And I noticed at—at the cemetery that he only had a bowler.”
She paused. “I thought then how very much he’d appreciate a top-hat. We
ought to give him a present, too. He was always very nice to father.”
“But,” cried Josephine, flouncing on her pillow and staring across the
dark at Constantia, “father’s head!” And suddenly, for one awful
moment, she nearly giggled. Not, of course, that she felt in the least
like giggling. It must have been habit. Years ago, when they had stayed
awake at night talking, their beds had simply heaved. And now the
porter’s head, disappearing, popped out, like a candle, under father’s
hat.... The giggle mounted, mounted; she clenched her hands; she fought
it down; she frowned fiercely at the dark and said “Remember” terribly
sternly.
“We can decide to-morrow,” she said.
Constantia had noticed nothing; she sighed.
“Do you think we ought to have our dressing-gowns dyed as well?”
“Black?” almost shrieked Josephine.
“Well, what else?” said Constantia. “I was thinking—it doesn’t seem
quite sincere, in a way, to wear black out of doors and when we’re
fully dressed, and then when we’re at home—”
“But nobody sees us,” said Josephine. She gave the bedclothes such a
twitch that both her feet became uncovered, and she had to creep up the
pillows to get them well under again.
“Kate does,” said Constantia. “And the postman very well might.”
Josephine thought of her dark-red slippers, which matched her
dressing-gown, and of Constantia’s favourite indefinite green ones
which went with hers. Black! Two black dressing-gowns and two pairs of
black woolly slippers, creeping off to the bathroom like black cats.
“I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary,” said she.
Silence. Then Constantia said, “We shall have to post the papers with
the notice in them to-morrow to catch the Ceylon mail.... How many
letters have we had up till now?”
“Twenty-three.”
Josephine had replied to them all, and twenty-three times when she came
to “We miss our dear father so much” she had broken down and had to use
her handkerchief, and on some of them even to soak up a very light-blue
tear with an edge of blotting-paper. Strange! She couldn’t have put it
on—but twenty-three times. Even now, though, when she said over to
herself sadly “We miss our dear father _so_ much,” she could have cried
if she’d wanted to.
“Have you got enough stamps?” came from Constantia.
“Oh, how can I tell?” said Josephine crossly. “What’s the good of
asking me that now?”
“I was just wondering,” said Constantia mildly.
Silence again. There came a little rustle, a scurry, a hop.
“A mouse,” said Constantia.
“It can’t be a mouse because there aren’t any crumbs,” said Josephine.
“But it doesn’t know there aren’t,” said Constantia.
A spasm of pity squeezed her heart. Poor little thing! She wished she’d
left a tiny piece of biscuit on the dressing-table. It was awful to
think of it not finding anything. What would it do?
“I can’t think how they manage to live at all,” she said slowly.
“Who?” demanded Josephine.
And Constantia said more loudly than she meant to, “Mice.”
Josephine was furious. “Oh, what nonsense, Con!” she said. “What have
mice got to do with it? You’re asleep.”
“I don’t think I am,” said Constantia. She shut her eyes to make sure.
She was.
Josephine arched her spine, pulled up her knees, folded her arms so
that her fists came under her ears, and pressed her cheek hard against
the pillow.
II
Another thing which complicated matters was they had Nurse Andrews
staying on with them that week. It was their own fault; they had asked
her. It was Josephine’s idea. On the morning—well, on the last morning,
when the doctor had gone, Josephine had said to Constantia, “Don’t you
think it would be rather nice if we asked Nurse Andrews to stay on for
a week as our guest?”
“Very nice,” said Constantia.
“I thought,” went on Josephine quickly, “I should just say this
afternoon, after I’ve paid her, ‘My sister and I would be very pleased,
after all you’ve done for us, Nurse Andrews, if you would stay on for a
week as our guest.’ I’d have to put that in about being our guest in
case—”
“Oh, but she could hardly expect to be paid!” cried Constantia.
“One never knows,” said Josephine sagely.
Nurse Andrews had, of course, jumped at the idea. But it was a bother.
It meant they had to have regular sit-down meals at the proper times,
whereas if they’d been alone they could just have asked Kate if she
wouldn’t have minded bringing them a tray wherever they were. And
meal-times now that the strain was over were rather a trial.
Nurse Andrews was simply fearful about butter. Really they couldn’t
help feeling that about butter, at least, she took advantage of their
kindness. And she had that maddening habit of asking for just an inch
more of bread to finish what she had on her plate, and then, at the
last mouthful, absent-mindedly—of course it wasn’t
absent-mindedly—taking another helping. Josephine got very red when
this happened, and she fastened her small, bead-like eyes on the
tablecloth as if she saw a minute strange insect creeping through the
web of it. But Constantia’s long, pale face lengthened and set, and she
gazed away—away—far over the desert, to where that line of camels
unwound like a thread of wool....
“When I was with Lady Tukes,” said Nurse Andrews, “she had such a
dainty little contrayvance for the buttah. It was a silvah Cupid
balanced on the—on the bordah of a glass dish, holding a tayny fork.
And when you wanted some buttah you simply pressed his foot and he bent
down and speared you a piece. It was quite a gayme.”
Josephine could hardly bear that. But “I think those things are very
extravagant” was all she said.
“But whey?” asked Nurse Andrews, beaming through her eyeglasses. “No
one, surely, would take more buttah than one wanted—would one?”
“Ring, Con,” cried Josephine. She couldn’t trust herself to reply.
And proud young Kate, the enchanted princess, came in to see what the
old tabbies wanted now. She snatched away their plates of mock
something or other and slapped down a white, terrified blancmange.
“Jam, please, Kate,” said Josephine kindly.
Kate knelt and burst open the sideboard, lifted the lid of the jam-pot,
saw it was empty, put it on the table, and stalked off.
“I’m afraid,” said Nurse Andrews a moment later, “there isn’t any.”
“Oh, what a bother!” said Josephine. She bit her lip. “What had we
better do?”
Constantia looked dubious. “We can’t disturb Kate again,” she said
softly.
Nurse Andrews waited, smiling at them both. Her eyes wandered, spying
at everything behind her eyeglasses. Constantia in despair went back to
her camels. Josephine frowned heavily—concentrated. If it hadn’t been
for this idiotic woman she and Con would, of course, have eaten their
blancmange without. Suddenly the idea came.
“I know,” she said. “Marmalade. There’s some marmalade in the
sideboard. Get it, Con.”
“I hope,” laughed Nurse Andrews—and her laugh was like a spoon tinkling
against a medicine-glass—“I hope it’s not very bittah marmalayde.”
III
But, after all, it was not long now, and then she’d be gone for good.
And there was no getting over the fact that she had been very kind to
father. She had nursed him day and night at the end. Indeed, both
Constantia and Josephine felt privately she had rather overdone the not
leaving him at the very last. For when they had gone in to say good-bye
Nurse Andrews had sat beside his bed the whole time, holding his wrist
and pretending to look at her watch. It couldn’t have been necessary.
It was so tactless, too. Supposing father had wanted to say
something—something private to them. Not that he had. Oh, far from it!
He lay there, purple, a dark, angry purple in the face, and never even
looked at them when they came in. Then, as they were standing there,
wondering what to do, he had suddenly opened one eye. Oh, what a
difference it would have made, what a difference to their memory of
him, how much easier to tell people about it, if he had only opened
both! But no—one eye only. It glared at them a moment and then... went
out.
IV
It had made it very awkward for them when Mr. Farolles, of St. John’s,
called the same afternoon.
“The end was quite peaceful, I trust?” were the first words he said as
he glided towards them through the dark drawing-room.
“Quite,” said Josephine faintly. They both hung their heads. Both of
them felt certain that eye wasn’t at all a peaceful eye.
“Won’t you sit down?” said Josephine.
“Thank you, Miss Pinner,” said Mr. Farolles gratefully. He folded his
coat-tails and began to lower himself into father’s arm-chair, but just
as he touched it he almost sprang up and slid into the next chair
instead.
He coughed. Josephine clasped her hands; Constantia looked vague.
“I want you to feel, Miss Pinner,” said Mr. Farolles, “and you, Miss
Constantia, that I’m trying to be helpful. I want to be helpful to you
both, if you will let me. These are the times,” said Mr Farolles, very
simply and earnestly, “when God means us to be helpful to one another.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Farolles,” said Josephine and Constantia.
“Not at all,” said Mr. Farolles gently. He drew his kid gloves through
his fingers and leaned forward. “And if either of you would like a
little Communion, either or both of you, here _and_ now, you have only
to tell me. A little Communion is often very help—a great comfort,” he
added tenderly.
But the idea of a little Communion terrified them. What! In the
drawing-room by themselves—with no—no altar or anything! The piano
would be much too high, thought Constantia, and Mr. Farolles could not
possibly lean over it with the chalice. And Kate would be sure to come
bursting in and interrupt them, thought Josephine. And supposing the
bell rang in the middle? It might be somebody important—about their
mourning. Would they get up reverently and go out, or would they have
to wait... in torture?
“Perhaps you will send round a note by your good Kate if you would care
for it later,” said Mr. Farolles.
“Oh yes, thank you very much!” they both said.
Mr. Farolles got up and took his black straw hat from the round table.
“And about the funeral,” he said softly. “I may arrange that—as your
dear father’s old friend and yours, Miss Pinner—and Miss Constantia?”
Josephine and Constantia got up too.
“I should like it to be quite simple,” said Josephine firmly, “and not
too expensive. At the same time, I should like—”
“A good one that will last,” thought dreamy Constantia, as if Josephine
were buying a nightgown. But, of course, Josephine didn’t say that.
“One suitable to our father’s position.” She was very nervous.
“I’ll run round to our good friend Mr. Knight,” said Mr. Farolles
soothingly. “I will ask him to come and see you. I am sure you will
find him very helpful indeed.”
V
Well, at any rate, all that part of it was over, though neither of them
could possibly believe that father was never coming back. Josephine had
had a moment of absolute terror at the cemetery, while the coffin was
lowered, to think that she and Constantia had done this thing without
asking his permission. What would father say when he found out? For he
was bound to find out sooner or later. He always did. “Buried. You two
girls had me _buried_!” She heard his stick thumping. Oh, what would
they say? What possible excuse could they make? It sounded such an
appallingly heartless thing to do. Such a wicked advantage to take of a
person because he happened to be helpless at the moment. The other
people seemed to treat it all as a matter of course. They were
strangers; they couldn’t be expected to understand that father was the
very last person for such a thing to happen to. No, the entire blame
for it all would fall on her and Constantia. And the expense, she
thought, stepping into the tight-buttoned cab. When she had to show him
the bills. What would he say then?
She heard him absolutely roaring. “And do you expect me to pay for this
gimcrack excursion of yours?”
“Oh,” groaned poor Josephine aloud, “we shouldn’t have done it, Con!”
And Constantia, pale as a lemon in all that blackness, said in a
frightened whisper, “Done what, Jug?”
“Let them bu-bury father like that,” said Josephine, breaking down and
crying into her new, queer-smelling mourning handkerchief.
“But what else could we have done?” asked Constantia wonderingly. “We
couldn’t have kept him, Jug—we couldn’t have kept him unburied. At any
rate, not in a flat that size.”
Josephine blew her nose; the cab was dreadfully stuffy.
“I don’t know,” she said forlornly. “It is all so dreadful. I feel we
ought to have tried to, just for a time at least. To make perfectly
sure. One thing’s certain”—and her tears sprang out again—“father will
never forgive us for this—never!”
VI
Father would never forgive them. That was what they felt more than ever
when, two mornings later, they went into his room to go through his
things. They had discussed it quite calmly. It was even down on
Josephine’s list of things to be done. “_Go through father’s things and
settle about them._” But that was a very different matter from saying
after breakfast:
“Well, are you ready, Con?”
“Yes, Jug—when you are.”
“Then I think we’d better get it over.”
It was dark in the hall. It had been a rule for years never to disturb
father in the morning, whatever happened. And now they were going to
open the door without knocking even.... Constantia’s eyes were enormous
at the idea; Josephine felt weak in the knees.
“You—you go first,” she gasped, pushing Constantia.
But Constantia said, as she always had said on those occasions, “No,
Jug, that’s not fair. You’re the eldest.”
Josephine was just going to say—what at other times she wouldn’t have
owned to for the world—what she kept for her very last weapon, “But
you’re the tallest,” when they noticed that the kitchen door was open,
and there stood Kate....
“Very stiff,” said Josephine, grasping the doorhandle and doing her
best to turn it. As if anything ever deceived Kate!
It couldn’t be helped. That girl was.... Then the door was shut behind
them, but—but they weren’t in father’s room at all. They might have
suddenly walked through the wall by mistake into a different flat
altogether. Was the door just behind them? They were too frightened to
look. Josephine knew that if it was it was holding itself tight shut;
Constantia felt that, like the doors in dreams, it hadn’t any handle at
all. It was the coldness which made it so awful. Or the
whiteness—which? Everything was covered. The blinds were down, a cloth
hung over the mirror, a sheet hid the bed; a huge fan of white paper
filled the fireplace. Constantia timidly put out her hand; she almost
expected a snowflake to fall. Josephine felt a queer tingling in her
nose, as if her nose was freezing. Then a cab klop-klopped over the
cobbles below, and the quiet seemed to shake into little pieces.
“I had better pull up a blind,” said Josephine bravely.
“Yes, it might be a good idea,” whispered Constantia.
They only gave the blind a touch, but it flew up and the cord flew
after, rolling round the blind-stick, and the little tassel tapped as
if trying to get free. That was too much for Constantia.
“Don’t you think—don’t you think we might put it off for another day?”
she whispered.
“Why?” snapped Josephine, feeling, as usual, much better now that she
knew for certain that Constantia was terrified. “It’s got to be done.
But I do wish you wouldn’t whisper, Con.”
“I didn’t know I was whispering,” whispered Constantia.
“And why do you keep staring at the bed?” said Josephine, raising her
voice almost defiantly. “There’s nothing _on_ the bed.”
“Oh, Jug, don’t say so!” said poor Connie. “At any rate, not so
loudly.”
Josephine felt herself that she had gone too far. She took a wide
swerve over to the chest of drawers, put out her hand, but quickly drew
it back again.
“Connie!” she gasped, and she wheeled round and leaned with her back
against the chest of drawers.
“Oh, Jug—what?”
Josephine could only glare. She had the most extraordinary feeling that
she had just escaped something simply awful. But how could she explain
to Constantia that father was in the chest of drawers? He was in the
top drawer with his handkerchiefs and neckties, or in the next with his
shirts and pyjamas, or in the lowest of all with his suits. He was
watching there, hidden away—just behind the door-handle—ready to
spring.
She pulled a funny old-fashioned face at Constantia, just as she used
to in the old days when she was going to cry.
“I can’t open,” she nearly wailed.
“No, don’t, Jug,” whispered Constantia earnestly. “It’s much better not
to. Don’t let’s open anything. At any rate, not for a long time.”
“But—but it seems so weak,” said Josephine, breaking down.
“But why not be weak for once, Jug?” argued Constantia, whispering
quite fiercely. “If it is weak.” And her pale stare flew from the
locked writing-table—so safe—to the huge glittering wardrobe, and she
began to breathe in a queer, panting away. “Why shouldn’t we be weak
for once in our lives, Jug? It’s quite excusable. Let’s be weak—be
weak, Jug. It’s much nicer to be weak than to be strong.”
And then she did one of those amazingly bold things that she’d done
about twice before in their lives: she marched over to the wardrobe,
turned the key, and took it out of the lock. Took it out of the lock
and held it up to Josephine, showing Josephine by her extraordinary
smile that she knew what she’d done—she’d risked deliberately father
being in there among his overcoats.
If the huge wardrobe had lurched forward, had crashed down on
Constantia, Josephine wouldn’t have been surprised. On the contrary,
she would have thought it the only suitable thing to happen. But
nothing happened. Only the room seemed quieter than ever, and the
bigger flakes of cold air fell on Josephine’s shoulders and knees. She
began to shiver.
“Come, Jug,” said Constantia, still with that awful callous smile, and
Josephine followed just as she had that last time, when Constantia had
pushed Benny into the round pond.
VII
But the strain told on them when they were back in the dining-room.
They sat down, very shaky, and looked at each other.
“I don’t feel I can settle to anything,” said Josephine, “until I’ve
had something. Do you think we could ask Kate for two cups of hot
water?”
“I really don’t see why we shouldn’t,” said Constantia carefully. She
was quite normal again. “I won’t ring. I’ll go to the kitchen door and
ask her.”
“Yes, do,” said Josephine, sinking down into a chair. “Tell her, just
two cups, Con, nothing else—on a tray.”
“She needn’t even put the jug on, need she?” said Constantia, as though
Kate might very well complain if the jug had been there.
“Oh no, certainly not! The jug’s not at all necessary. She can pour it
direct out of the kettle,” cried Josephine, feeling that would be a
labour-saving indeed.
Their cold lips quivered at the greenish brims. Josephine curved her
small red hands round the cup; Constantia sat up and blew on the wavy
steam, making it flutter from one side to the other.
“Speaking of Benny,” said Josephine.
And though Benny hadn’t been mentioned Constantia immediately looked as
though he had.
“He’ll expect us to send him something of father’s, of course. But it’s
so difficult to know what to send to Ceylon.”
“You mean things get unstuck so on the voyage,” murmured Constantia.
“No, lost,” said Josephine sharply. “You know there’s no post. Only
runners.”
Both paused to watch a black man in white linen drawers running through
the pale fields for dear life, with a large brown-paper parcel in his
hands. Josephine’s black man was tiny; he scurried along glistening
like an ant. But there was something blind and tireless about
Constantia’s tall, thin fellow, which made him, she decided, a very
unpleasant person indeed.... On the veranda, dressed all in white and
wearing a cork helmet, stood Benny. His right hand shook up and down,
as father’s did when he was impatient. And behind him, not in the least
interested, sat Hilda, the unknown sister-in-law. She swung in a cane
rocker and flicked over the leaves of the _Tatler_.
“I think his watch would be the most suitable present,” said Josephine.
Constantia looked up; she seemed surprised.
“Oh, would you trust a gold watch to a native?”
“But of course, I’d disguise it,” said Josephine. “No one would know it
was a watch.” She liked the idea of having to make a parcel such a
curious shape that no one could possibly guess what it was. She even
thought for a moment of hiding the watch in a narrow cardboard
corset-box that she’d kept by her for a long time, waiting for it to
come in for something. It was such beautiful, firm cardboard. But, no,
it wouldn’t be appropriate for this occasion. It had lettering on it:
_Medium Women’s_ 28. _Extra Firm Busks._ It would be almost too much of
a surprise for Benny to open that and find father’s watch inside.
“And of course it isn’t as though it would be going—ticking, I mean,”
said Constantia, who was still thinking of the native love of
jewellery. “At least,” she added, “it would be very strange if after
all that time it was.”
VIII
Josephine made no reply. She had flown off on one of her tangents. She
had suddenly thought of Cyril. Wasn’t it more usual for the only
grandson to have the watch? And then dear Cyril was so appreciative,
and a gold watch meant so much to a young man. Benny, in all
probability, had quite got out of the habit of watches; men so seldom
wore waistcoats in those hot climates. Whereas Cyril in London wore
them from year’s end to year’s end. And it would be so nice for her and
Constantia, when he came to tea, to know it was there. “I see you’ve
got on grandfather’s watch, Cyril.” It would be somehow so
satisfactory.
Dear boy! What a blow his sweet, sympathetic little note had been! Of
course they quite understood; but it was most unfortunate.
“It would have been such a point, having him,” said Josephine.
“And he would have enjoyed it so,” said Constantia, not thinking what
she was saying.
However, as soon as he got back he was coming to tea with his aunties.
Cyril to tea was one of their rare treats.
“Now, Cyril, you mustn’t be frightened of our cakes. Your Auntie Con
and I bought them at Buszard’s this morning. We know what a man’s
appetite is. So don’t be ashamed of making a good tea.”
Josephine cut recklessly into the rich dark cake that stood for her
winter gloves or the soling and heeling of Constantia’s only
respectable shoes. But Cyril was most unmanlike in appetite.
“I say, Aunt Josephine, I simply can’t. I’ve only just had lunch, you
know.”
“Oh, Cyril, that can’t be true! It’s after four,” cried Josephine.
Constantia sat with her knife poised over the chocolate-roll.
“It is, all the same,” said Cyril. “I had to meet a man at Victoria,
and he kept me hanging about till... there was only time to get lunch
and to come on here. And he gave me—phew”—Cyril put his hand to his
forehead—“a terrific blow-out,” he said.
It was disappointing—to-day of all days. But still he couldn’t be
expected to know.
“But you’ll have a meringue, won’t you, Cyril?” said Aunt Josephine.
“These meringues were bought specially for you. Your dear father was so
fond of them. We were sure you are, too.”
“I _am_, Aunt Josephine,” cried Cyril ardently. “Do you mind if I take
half to begin with?”
“Not at all, dear boy; but we mustn’t let you off with that.”
“Is your dear father still so fond of meringues?” asked Auntie Con
gently. She winced faintly as she broke through the shell of hers.
“Well, I don’t quite know, Auntie Con,” said Cyril breezily.
At that they both looked up.
“Don’t know?” almost snapped Josephine. “Don’t know a thing like that
about your own father, Cyril?”
“Surely,” said Auntie Con softly.
Cyril tried to laugh it off. “Oh, well,” he said, “it’s such a long
time since—” He faltered. He stopped. Their faces were too much for
him.
“Even _so_,” said Josephine.
And Auntie Con looked.
Cyril put down his teacup. “Wait a bit,” he cried. “Wait a bit, Aunt
Josephine. What am I thinking of?”
He looked up. They were beginning to brighten. Cyril slapped his knee.
“Of course,” he said, “it was meringues. How could I have forgotten?
Yes, Aunt Josephine, you’re perfectly right. Father’s most frightfully
keen on meringues.”
They didn’t only beam. Aunt Josephine went scarlet with pleasure;
Auntie Con gave a deep, deep sigh.
“And now, Cyril, you must come and see father,” said Josephine. “He
knows you were coming to-day.”
“Right,” said Cyril, very firmly and heartily. He got up from his
chair; suddenly he glanced at the clock.
“I say, Auntie Con, isn’t your clock a bit slow? I’ve got to meet a man
at—at Paddington just after five. I’m afraid I shan’t be able to stay
very long with grandfather.”
“Oh, he won’t expect you to stay _very_ long!” said Aunt Josephine.
Constantia was still gazing at the clock. She couldn’t make up her mind
if it was fast or slow. It was one or the other, she felt almost
certain of that. At any rate, it had been.
Cyril still lingered. “Aren’t you coming along, Auntie Con?”
“Of course,” said Josephine, “we shall all go. Come on, Con.”
IX
They knocked at the door, and Cyril followed his aunts into
grandfather’s hot, sweetish room.
“Come on,” said Grandfather Pinner. “Don’t hang about. What is it?
What’ve you been up to?”
He was sitting in front of a roaring fire, clasping his stick. He had a
thick rug over his knees. On his lap there lay a beautiful pale yellow
silk handkerchief.
“It’s Cyril, father,” said Josephine shyly. And she took Cyril’s hand
and led him forward.
“Good afternoon, grandfather,” said Cyril, trying to take his hand out
of Aunt Josephine’s. Grandfather Pinner shot his eyes at Cyril in the
way he was famous for. Where was Auntie Con? She stood on the other
side of Aunt Josephine; her long arms hung down in front of her; her
hands were clasped. She never took her eyes off grandfather.
“Well,” said Grandfather Pinner, beginning to thump, “what have you got
to tell me?”
What had he, what had he got to tell him? Cyril felt himself smiling
like a perfect imbecile. The room was stifling, too.
But Aunt Josephine came to his rescue. She cried brightly, “Cyril says
his father is still very fond of meringues, father dear.”
“Eh?” said Grandfather Pinner, curving his hand like a purple
meringue-shell over one ear.
Josephine repeated, “Cyril says his father is still very fond of
meringues.”
“Can’t hear,” said old Colonel Pinner. And he waved Josephine away with
his stick, then pointed with his stick to Cyril. “Tell me what she’s
trying to say,” he said.
(My God!) “Must I?” said Cyril, blushing and staring at Aunt Josephine.
“Do, dear,” she smiled. “It will please him so much.”
“Come on, out with it!” cried Colonel Pinner testily, beginning to
thump again.
And Cyril leaned forward and yelled, “Father’s still very fond of
meringues.”
At that Grandfather Pinner jumped as though he had been shot.
“Don’t shout!” he cried. “What’s the matter with the boy? _Meringues!_
What about ’em?”
“Oh, Aunt Josephine, must we go on?” groaned Cyril desperately.
“It’s quite all right, dear boy,” said Aunt Josephine, as though he and
she were at the dentist’s together. “He’ll understand in a minute.” And
she whispered to Cyril, “He’s getting a bit deaf, you know.” Then she
leaned forward and really bawled at Grandfather Pinner, “Cyril only
wanted to tell you, father dear, that _his_ father is still very fond
of meringues.”
Colonel Pinner heard that time, heard and brooded, looking Cyril up and
down.
“What an esstrordinary thing!” said old Grandfather Pinner. “What an
esstrordinary thing to come all this way here to tell me!”
And Cyril felt it _was_.
“Yes, I shall send Cyril the watch,” said Josephine.
“That would be very nice,” said Constantia. “I seem to remember last
time he came there was some little trouble about the time.”
X
They were interrupted by Kate bursting through the door in her usual
fashion, as though she had discovered some secret panel in the wall.
“Fried or boiled?” asked the bold voice.
Fried or boiled? Josephine and Constantia were quite bewildered for the
moment. They could hardly take it in.
“Fried or boiled what, Kate?” asked Josephine, trying to begin to
concentrate.
Kate gave a loud sniff. “Fish.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so immediately?” Josephine reproached her
gently. “How could you expect us to understand, Kate? There are a great
many things in this world you know, which are fried or boiled.” And
after such a display of courage she said quite brightly to Constantia,
“Which do you prefer, Con?”
“I think it might be nice to have it fried,” said Constantia. “On the
other hand, of course, boiled fish is very nice. I think I prefer both
equally well.... Unless you.... In that case—”
“I shall fry it,” said Kate, and she bounced back, leaving their door
open and slamming the door of her kitchen.
Josephine gazed at Constantia; she raised her pale eyebrows until they
rippled away into her pale hair. She got up. She said in a very lofty,
imposing way, “Do you mind following me into the drawing-room,
Constantia? I’ve got something of great importance to discuss with
you.”
For it was always to the drawing-room they retired when they wanted to
talk over Kate.
Josephine closed the door meaningly. “Sit down, Constantia,” she said,
still very grand. She might have been receiving Constantia for the
first time. And Con looked round vaguely for a chair, as though she
felt indeed quite a stranger.
“Now the question is,” said Josephine, bending forward, “whether we
shall keep her or not.”
“That is the question,” agreed Constantia.
“And this time,” said Josephine firmly, “we must come to a definite
decision.”
Constantia looked for a moment as though she might begin going over all
the other times, but she pulled herself together and said, “Yes, Jug.”
“You see, Con,” explained Josephine, “everything is so changed now.”
Constantia looked up quickly. “I mean,” went on Josephine, “we’re not
dependent on Kate as we were.” And she blushed faintly. “There’s not
father to cook for.”
“That is perfectly true,” agreed Constantia. “Father certainly doesn’t
want any cooking now, whatever else—”
Josephine broke in sharply, “You’re not sleepy, are you, Con?”
“Sleepy, Jug?” Constantia was wide-eyed.
“Well, concentrate more,” said Josephine sharply, and she returned to
the subject. “What it comes to is, if we did”—and this she barely
breathed, glancing at the door—“give Kate notice”—she raised her voice
again—“we could manage our own food.”
“Why not?” cried Constantia. She couldn’t help smiling. The idea was so
exciting. She clasped her hands. “What should we live on, Jug?”
“Oh, eggs in various forms!” said Jug, lofty again. “And, besides,
there are all the cooked foods.”
“But I’ve always heard,” said Constantia, “they are considered so very
expensive.”
“Not if one buys them in moderation,” said Josephine. But she tore
herself away from this fascinating bypath and dragged Constantia after
her.
“What we’ve got to decide now, however, is whether we really do trust
Kate or not.”
Constantia leaned back. Her flat little laugh flew from her lips.
“Isn’t it curious, Jug,” said she, “that just on this one subject I’ve
never been able to quite make up my mind?”
XI
She never had. The whole difficulty was to prove anything. How did one
prove things, how could one? Suppose Kate had stood in front of her and
deliberately made a face. Mightn’t she very well have been in pain?
Wasn’t it impossible, at any rate, to ask Kate if she was making a face
at her? If Kate answered “No”—and, of course, she would say “No”—what a
position! How undignified! Then again Constantia suspected, she was
almost certain that Kate went to her chest of drawers when she and
Josephine were out, not to take things but to spy. Many times she had
come back to find her amethyst cross in the most unlikely places, under
her lace ties or on top of her evening Bertha. More than once she had
laid a trap for Kate. She had arranged things in a special order and
then called Josephine to witness.
“You see, Jug?”
“Quite, Con.”
“Now we shall be able to tell.”
But, oh dear, when she did go to look, she was as far off from a proof
as ever! If anything was displaced, it might so very well have happened
as she closed the drawer; a jolt might have done it so easily.
“You come, Jug, and decide. I really can’t. It’s too difficult.”
But after a pause and a long glare Josephine would sigh, “Now you’ve
put the doubt into my mind, Con, I’m sure I can’t tell myself.”
“Well, we can’t postpone it again,” said Josephine. “If we postpone it
this time—”
XII
But at that moment in the street below a barrel-organ struck up.
Josephine and Constantia sprang to their feet together.
“Run, Con,” said Josephine. “Run quickly. There’s sixpence on the—”
Then they remembered. It didn’t matter. They would never have to stop
the organ-grinder again. Never again would she and Constantia be told
to make that monkey take his noise somewhere else. Never would sound
that loud, strange bellow when father thought they were not hurrying
enough. The organ-grinder might play there all day and the stick would
not thump.
It never will thump again,
It never will thump again,
played the barrel-organ.
What was Constantia thinking? She had such a strange smile; she looked
different. She couldn’t be going to cry.
“Jug, Jug,” said Constantia softly, pressing her hands together. “Do
you know what day it is? It’s Saturday. It’s a week to-day, a whole
week.”
A week since father died,
A week since father died,
cried the barrel-organ. And Josephine, too, forgot to be practical and
sensible; she smiled faintly, strangely. On the Indian carpet there
fell a square of sunlight, pale red; it came and went and came—and
stayed, deepened—until it shone almost golden.
“The sun’s out,” said Josephine, as though it really mattered.
A perfect fountain of bubbling notes shook from the barrel-organ,
round, bright notes, carelessly scattered.
Constantia lifted her big, cold hands as if to catch them, and then her
hands fell again. She walked over to the mantelpiece to her favourite
Buddha. And the stone and gilt image, whose smile always gave her such
a queer feeling, almost a pain and yet a pleasant pain, seemed to-day
to be more than smiling. He knew something; he had a secret. “I know
something that you don’t know,” said her Buddha. Oh, what was it, what
could it be? And yet she had always felt there was... something.
The sunlight pressed through the windows, thieved its way in, flashed
its light over the furniture and the photographs. Josephine watched it.
When it came to mother’s photograph, the enlargement over the piano, it
lingered as though puzzled to find so little remained of mother, except
the earrings shaped like tiny pagodas and a black feather boa. Why did
the photographs of dead people always fade so? wondered Josephine. As
soon as a person was dead their photograph died too. But, of course,
this one of mother was very old. It was thirty-five years old.
Josephine remembered standing on a chair and pointing out that feather
boa to Constantia and telling her that it was a snake that had killed
their mother in Ceylon.... Would everything have been different if
mother hadn’t died? She didn’t see why. Aunt Florence had lived with
them until they had left school, and they had moved three times and had
their yearly holiday and... and there’d been changes of servants, of
course.
Some little sparrows, young sparrows they sounded, chirped on the
window-ledge. _Yeep—eyeep—yeep._ But Josephine felt they were not
sparrows, not on the window-ledge. It was inside her, that queer little
crying noise. _Yeep—eyeep—yeep._ Ah, what was it crying, so weak and
forlorn?
If mother had lived, might they have married? But there had been nobody
for them to marry. There had been father’s Anglo-Indian friends before
he quarrelled with them. But after that she and Constantia never met a
single man except clergymen. How did one meet men? Or even if they’d
met them, how could they have got to know men well enough to be more
than strangers? One read of people having adventures, being followed,
and so on. But nobody had ever followed Constantia and her. Oh yes,
there had been one year at Eastbourne a mysterious man at their
boarding-house who had put a note on the jug of hot water outside their
bedroom door! But by the time Connie had found it the steam had made
the writing too faint to read; they couldn’t even make out to which of
them it was addressed. And he had left next day. And that was all. The
rest had been looking after father, and at the same time keeping out of
father’s way. But now? But now? The thieving sun touched Josephine
gently. She lifted her face. She was drawn over to the window by gentle
beams....
Until the barrel-organ stopped playing Constantia stayed before the
Buddha, wondering, but not as usual, not vaguely. This time her wonder
was like longing. She remembered the times she had come in here, crept
out of bed in her nightgown when the moon was full, and lain on the
floor with her arms outstretched, as though she was crucified. Why? The
big, pale moon had made her do it. The horrible dancing figures on the
carved screen had leered at her and she hadn’t minded. She remembered
too how, whenever they were at the seaside, she had gone off by herself
and got as close to the sea as she could, and sung something, something
she had made up, while she gazed all over that restless water. There
had been this other life, running out, bringing things home in bags,
getting things on approval, discussing them with Jug, and taking them
back to get more things on approval, and arranging father’s trays and
trying not to annoy father. But it all seemed to have happened in a
kind of tunnel. It wasn’t real. It was only when she came out of the
tunnel into the moonlight or by the sea or into a thunderstorm that she
really felt herself. What did it mean? What was it she was always
wanting? What did it all lead to? Now? Now?
She turned away from the Buddha with one of her vague gestures. She
went over to where Josephine was standing. She wanted to say something
to Josephine, something frightfully important, about—about the future
and what....
“Don’t you think perhaps—” she began.
But Josephine interrupted her. “I was wondering if now—” she murmured.
They stopped; they waited for each other.
“Go on, Con,” said Josephine.
“No, no, Jug; after you,” said Constantia.
“No, say what you were going to say. You began,” said Josephine.
“I... I’d rather hear what you were going to say first,” said
Constantia.
“Don’t be absurd, Con.”
“Really, Jug.”
“Connie!”
“Oh, _Jug_!”
A pause. Then Constantia said faintly, “I can’t say what I was going to
say, Jug, because I’ve forgotten what it was... that I was going to
say.”
Josephine was silent for a moment. She stared at a big cloud where the
sun had been. Then she replied shortly, “I’ve forgotten too.”
Mr. and Mrs. Dove
Of course he knew—no man better—that he hadn’t a ghost of a chance, he
hadn’t an earthly. The very idea of such a thing was preposterous. So
preposterous that he’d perfectly understand it if her father—well,
whatever her father chose to do he’d perfectly understand. In fact,
nothing short of desperation, nothing short of the fact that this was
positively his last day in England for God knows how long, would have
screwed him up to it. And even now.... He chose a tie out of the chest
of drawers, a blue and cream check tie, and sat on the side of his bed.
Supposing she replied, “What impertinence!” would he be surprised? Not
in the least, he decided, turning up his soft collar and turning it
down over the tie. He expected her to say something like that. He
didn’t see, if he looked at the affair dead soberly, what else she
could say.
Here he was! And nervously he tied a bow in front of the mirror, jammed
his hair down with both hands, pulled out the flaps of his jacket
pockets. Making between £500 and £600 a year on a fruit farm in—of all
places—Rhodesia. No capital. Not a penny coming to him. No chance of
his income increasing for at least four years. As for looks and all
that sort of thing, he was completely out of the running. He couldn’t
even boast of top-hole health, for the East Africa business had knocked
him out so thoroughly that he’d had to take six months’ leave. He was
still fearfully pale—worse even than usual this afternoon, he thought,
bending forward and peering into the mirror. Good heavens! What had
happened? His hair looked almost bright green. Dash it all, he hadn’t
green hair at all events. That was a bit too steep. And then the green
light trembled in the glass; it was the shadow from the tree outside.
Reggie turned away, took out his cigarette case, but remembering how
the mater hated him to smoke in his bedroom, put it back again and
drifted over to the chest of drawers. No, he was dashed if he could
think of one blessed thing in his favour, while she.... Ah!... He
stopped dead, folded his arms, and leaned hard against the chest of
drawers.
And in spite of her position, her father’s wealth, the fact that she
was an only child and far and away the most popular girl in the
neighbourhood; in spite of her beauty and her cleverness—cleverness!—it
was a great deal more than that, there was really nothing she couldn’t
do; he fully believed, had it been necessary, she would have been a
genius at anything—in spite of the fact that her parents adored her,
and she them, and they’d as soon let her go all that way as.... In
spite of every single thing you could think of, so terrific was his
love that he couldn’t help hoping. Well, was it hope? Or was this
queer, timid longing to have the chance of looking after her, of making
it his job to see that she had everything she wanted, and that nothing
came near her that wasn’t perfect—just love? How he loved her! He
squeezed hard against the chest of drawers and murmured to it, “I love
her, I love her!” And just for the moment he was with her on the way to
Umtali. It was night. She sat in a corner asleep. Her soft chin was
tucked into her soft collar, her gold-brown lashes lay on her cheeks.
He doted on her delicate little nose, her perfect lips, her ear like a
baby’s, and the gold-brown curl that half covered it. They were passing
through the jungle. It was warm and dark and far away. Then she woke up
and said, “Have I been asleep?” and he answered, “Yes. Are you all
right? Here, let me—” And he leaned forward to.... He bent over her.
This was such bliss that he could dream no further. But it gave him the
courage to bound downstairs, to snatch his straw hat from the hall, and
to say as he closed the front door, “Well, I can only try my luck,
that’s all.”
But his luck gave him a nasty jar, to say the least, almost
immediately. Promenading up and down the garden path with Chinny and
Biddy, the ancient Pekes, was the mater. Of course Reginald was fond of
the mater and all that. She—she meant well, she had no end of grit, and
so on. But there was no denying it, she was rather a grim parent. And
there had been moments, many of them, in Reggie’s life, before Uncle
Alick died and left him the fruit farm, when he was convinced that to
be a widow’s only son was about the worst punishment a chap could have.
And what made it rougher than ever was that she was positively all that
he had. She wasn’t only a combined parent, as it were, but she had
quarrelled with all her own and the governor’s relations before Reggie
had won his first trouser pockets. So that whenever Reggie was homesick
out there, sitting on his dark veranda by starlight, while the
gramophone cried, “Dear, what is Life but Love?” his only vision was of
the mater, tall and stout, rustling down the garden path, with Chinny
and Biddy at her heels....
The mater, with her scissors outspread to snap the head of a dead
something or other, stopped at the sight of Reggie.
“You are not going out, Reginald?” she asked, seeing that he was.
“I’ll be back for tea, mater,” said Reggie weakly, plunging his hands
into his jacket pockets.
Snip. Off came a head. Reggie almost jumped.
“I should have thought you could have spared your mother your last
afternoon,” said she.
Silence. The Pekes stared. They understood every word of the mater’s.
Biddy lay down with her tongue poked out; she was so fat and glossy she
looked like a lump of half-melted toffee. But Chinny’s porcelain eyes
gloomed at Reginald, and he sniffed faintly, as though the whole world
were one unpleasant smell. Snip, went the scissors again. Poor little
beggars; they were getting it!
“And where are you going, if your mother may ask?” asked the mater.
It was over at last, but Reggie did not slow down until he was out of
sight of the house and half-way to Colonel Proctor’s. Then only he
noticed what a top-hole afternoon it was. It had been raining all the
morning, late summer rain, warm, heavy, quick, and now the sky was
clear, except for a long tail of little clouds, like duckings, sailing
over the forest. There was just enough wind to shake the last drops off
the trees; one warm star splashed on his hand. Ping!—another drummed on
his hat. The empty road gleamed, the hedges smelled of briar, and how
big and bright the hollyhocks glowed in the cottage gardens. And here
was Colonel Proctor’s—here it was already. His hand was on the gate,
his elbow jogged the syringa bushes, and petals and pollen scattered
over his coat sleeve. But wait a bit. This was too quick altogether.
He’d meant to think the whole thing out again. Here, steady. But he was
walking up the path, with the huge rose bushes on either side. It can’t
be done like this. But his hand had grasped the bell, given it a pull,
and started it pealing wildly, as if he’d come to say the house was on
fire. The housemaid must have been in the hall, too, for the front door
flashed open, and Reggie was shut in the empty drawing-room before that
confounded bell had stopped ringing. Strangely enough, when it did, the
big room, shadowy, with some one’s parasol lying on top of the grand
piano, bucked him up—or rather, excited him. It was so quiet, and yet
in one moment the door would open, and his fate be decided. The feeling
was not unlike that of being at the dentist’s; he was almost reckless.
But at the same time, to his immense surprise, Reggie heard himself
saying, “Lord, Thou knowest, Thou hast not done _much_ for me....” That
pulled him up; that made him realize again how dead serious it was. Too
late. The door handle turned. Anne came in, crossed the shadowy space
between them, gave him her hand, and said, in her small, soft voice,
“I’m so sorry, father is out. And mother is having a day in town,
hat-hunting. There’s only me to entertain you, Reggie.”
Reggie gasped, pressed his own hat to his jacket buttons, and stammered
out, “As a matter of fact, I’ve only come... to say good-bye.”
“Oh!” cried Anne softly—she stepped back from him and her grey eyes
danced—“what a _very_ short visit!”
Then, watching him, her chin tilted, she laughed outright, a long, soft
peal, and walked away from him over to the piano, and leaned against
it, playing with the tassel of the parasol.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “to be laughing like this. I don’t know why I
do. It’s just a bad ha-habit.” And suddenly she stamped her grey shoe,
and took a pocket-handkerchief out of her white woolly jacket. “I
really must conquer it, it’s too absurd,” said she.
“Good heavens, Anne,” cried Reggie, “I love to hear you laughing! I
can’t imagine anything more—”
But the truth was, and they both knew it, she wasn’t always laughing;
it wasn’t really a habit. Only ever since the day they’d met, ever
since that very first moment, for some strange reason that Reggie
wished to God he understood, Anne had laughed at him. Why? It didn’t
matter where they were or what they were talking about. They might
begin by being as serious as possible, dead serious—at any rate, as far
as he was concerned—but then suddenly, in the middle of a sentence,
Anne would glance at him, and a little quick quiver passed over her
face. Her lips parted, her eyes danced, and she began laughing.
Another queer thing about it was, Reggie had an idea she didn’t herself
know why she laughed. He had seen her turn away, frown, suck in her
cheeks, press her hands together. But it was no use. The long, soft
peal sounded, even while she cried, “I don’t know why I’m laughing.” It
was a mystery....
Now she tucked the handkerchief away.
“Do sit down,” said she. “And smoke, won’t you? There are cigarettes in
that little box beside you. I’ll have one too.” He lighted a match for
her, and as she bent forward he saw the tiny flame glow in the pearl
ring she wore. “It is to-morrow that you’re going, isn’t it?” said
Anne.
“Yes, to-morrow as ever was,” said Reggie, and he blew a little fan of
smoke. Why on earth was he so nervous? Nervous wasn’t the word for it.
“It’s—it’s frightfully hard to believe,” he added.
“Yes—isn’t it?” said Anne softly, and she leaned forward and rolled the
point of her cigarette round the green ash-tray. How beautiful she
looked like that!—simply beautiful—and she was so small in that immense
chair. Reginald’s heart swelled with tenderness, but it was her voice,
her soft voice, that made him tremble. “I feel you’ve been here for
years,” she said.
Reginald took a deep breath of his cigarette. “It’s ghastly, this idea
of going back,” he said.
“_Coo-roo-coo-coo-coo_,” sounded from the quiet.
“But you’re fond of being out there, aren’t you?” said Anne. She hooked
her finger through her pearl necklace. “Father was saying only the
other night how lucky he thought you were to have a life of your own.”
And she looked up at him. Reginald’s smile was rather wan. “I don’t
feel fearfully lucky,” he said lightly.
“_Roo-coo-coo-coo_,” came again. And Anne murmured, “You mean it’s
lonely.”
“Oh, it isn’t the loneliness I care about,” said Reginald, and he
stumped his cigarette savagely on the green ash-tray. “I could stand
any amount of it, used to like it even. It’s the idea of—” Suddenly, to
his horror, he felt himself blushing.
“_Roo-coo-coo-coo! Roo-coo-coo-coo!_”
Anne jumped up. “Come and say good-bye to my doves,” she said. “They’ve
been moved to the side veranda. You do like doves, don’t you, Reggie?”
“Awfully,” said Reggie, so fervently that as he opened the French
window for her and stood to one side, Anne ran forward and laughed at
the doves instead.
To and fro, to and fro over the fine red sand on the floor of the dove
house, walked the two doves. One was always in front of the other. One
ran forward, uttering a little cry, and the other followed, solemnly
bowing and bowing. “You see,” explained Anne, “the one in front, she’s
Mrs. Dove. She looks at Mr. Dove and gives that little laugh and runs
forward, and he follows her, bowing and bowing. And that makes her
laugh again. Away she runs, and after her,” cried Anne, and she sat
back on her heels, “comes poor Mr. Dove, bowing and bowing... and
that’s their whole life. They never do anything else, you know.” She
got up and took some yellow grains out of a bag on the roof of the dove
house. “When you think of them, out in Rhodesia, Reggie, you can be
sure that is what they will be doing....”
Reggie gave no sign of having seen the doves or of having heard a word.
For the moment he was conscious only of the immense effort it took to
tear his secret out of himself and offer it to Anne. “Anne, do you
think you could ever care for me?” It was done. It was over. And in the
little pause that followed Reginald saw the garden open to the light,
the blue quivering sky, the flutter of leaves on the veranda poles, and
Anne turning over the grains of maize on her palm with one finger. Then
slowly she shut her hand, and the new world faded as she murmured
slowly, “No, never in that way.” But he had scarcely time to feel
anything before she walked quickly away, and he followed her down the
steps, along the garden path, under the pink rose arches, across the
lawn. There, with the gay herbaceous border behind her, Anne faced
Reginald. “It isn’t that I’m not awfully fond of you,” she said. “I am.
But”—her eyes widened—“not in the way”—a quiver passed over her
face—“one ought to be fond of—” Her lips parted, and she couldn’t stop
herself. She began laughing. “There, you see, you see,” she cried,
“it’s your check t-tie. Even at this moment, when one would think one
really would be solemn, your tie reminds me fearfully of the bow-tie
that cats wear in pictures! Oh, please forgive me for being so horrid,
please!”
Reggie caught hold of her little warm hand. “There’s no question of
forgiving you,” he said quickly. “How could there be? And I do believe
I know why I make you laugh. It’s because you’re so far above me in
every way that I am somehow ridiculous. I see that, Anne. But if I were
to—”
“No, no.” Anne squeezed his hand hard. “It’s not that. That’s all
wrong. I’m not far above you at all. You’re much better than I am.
You’re marvellously unselfish and... and kind and simple. I’m none of
those things. You don’t know me. I’m the most awful character,” said
Anne. “Please don’t interrupt. And besides, that’s not the point. The
point is”—she shook her head—“I couldn’t possibly marry a man I laughed
at. Surely you see that. The man I marry—” breathed Anne softly. She
broke off. She drew her hand away, and looking at Reggie she smiled
strangely, dreamily. “The man I marry—”
And it seemed to Reggie that a tall, handsome, brilliant stranger
stepped in front of him and took his place—the kind of man that Anne
and he had seen often at the theatre, walking on to the stage from
nowhere, without a word catching the heroine in his arms, and after one
long, tremendous look, carrying her off to anywhere....
Reggie bowed to his vision. “Yes, I see,” he said huskily.
“Do you?” said Anne. “Oh, I do hope you do. Because I feel so horrid
about it. It’s so hard to explain. You know I’ve never—” She stopped.
Reggie looked at her. She was smiling. “Isn’t it funny?” she said. “I
can say anything to you. I always have been able to from the very
beginning.”
He tried to smile, to say “I’m glad.” She went on. “I’ve never known
anyone I like as much as I like you. I’ve never felt so happy with
anyone. But I’m sure it’s not what people and what books mean when they
talk about love. Do you understand? Oh, if you only knew how horrid I
feel. But we’d be like... like Mr. and Mrs. Dove.”
That did it. That seemed to Reginald final, and so terribly true that
he could hardly bear it. “Don’t drive it home,” he said, and he turned
away from Anne and looked across the lawn. There was the gardener’s
cottage, with the dark ilex-tree beside it. A wet, blue thumb of
transparent smoke hung above the chimney. It didn’t look real. How his
throat ached! Could he speak? He had a shot. “I must be getting along
home,” he croaked, and he began walking across the lawn. But Anne ran
after him. “No, don’t. You can’t go yet,” she said imploringly. “You
can’t possibly go away feeling like that.” And she stared up at him
frowning, biting her lip.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Reggie, giving himself a shake. “I’ll...
I’ll—” And he waved his hand as much to say “get over it.”
“But this is awful,” said Anne. She clasped her hands and stood in
front of him. “Surely you do see how fatal it would be for us to marry,
don’t you?”
“Oh, quite, quite,” said Reggie, looking at her with haggard eyes.
“How wrong, how wicked, feeling as I do. I mean, it’s all very well for
Mr. and Mrs. Dove. But imagine that in real life—imagine it!”
“Oh, absolutely,” said Reggie, and he started to walk on. But again
Anne stopped him. She tugged at his sleeve, and to his astonishment,
this time, instead of laughing, she looked like a little girl who was
going to cry.
“Then why, if you understand, are you so un-unhappy?” she wailed. “Why
do you mind so fearfully? Why do you look so aw-awful?”
Reggie gulped, and again he waved something away. “I can’t help it,” he
said, “I’ve had a blow. If I cut off now, I’ll be able to—”
“How can you talk of cutting off now?” said Anne scornfully. She
stamped her foot at Reggie; she was crimson. “How can you be so cruel?
I can’t let you go until I know for certain that you are just as happy
as you were before you asked me to marry you. Surely you must see that,
it’s so simple.”
But it did not seem at all simple to Reginald. It seemed impossibly
difficult.
“Even if I can’t marry you, how can I know that you’re all that way
away, with only that awful mother to write to, and that you’re
miserable, and that it’s all my fault?”
“It’s not your fault. Don’t think that. It’s just fate.” Reggie took
her hand off his sleeve and kissed it. “Don’t pity me, dear little
Anne,” he said gently. And this time he nearly ran, under the pink
arches, along the garden path.
“_Roo-coo-coo-coo! Roo-coo-coo-coo!_” sounded from the veranda.
“Reggie, Reggie,” from the garden.
He stopped, he turned. But when she saw his timid, puzzled look, she
gave a little laugh.
“Come back, Mr. Dove,” said Anne. And Reginald came slowly across the
lawn.
The Young Girl
In her blue dress, with her cheeks lightly flushed, her blue, blue
eyes, and her gold curls pinned up as though for the first time—pinned
up to be out of the way for her flight—Mrs. Raddick’s daughter might
have just dropped from this radiant heaven. Mrs. Raddick’s timid,
faintly astonished, but deeply admiring glance looked as if she
believed it, too; but the daughter didn’t appear any too pleased—why
should she?—to have alighted on the steps of the Casino. Indeed, she
was bored—bored as though Heaven had been full of casinos with snuffy
old saints for _croupiers_ and crowns to play with.
“You don’t mind taking Hennie?” said Mrs. Raddick. “Sure you don’t?
There’s the car, and you’ll have tea and we’ll be back here on this
step—right here—in an hour. You see, I want her to go in. She’s not
been before, and it’s worth seeing. I feel it wouldn’t be fair to her.”
“Oh, shut up, mother,” said she wearily. “Come along. Don’t talk so
much. And your bag’s open; you’ll be losing all your money again.”
“I’m sorry, darling,” said Mrs. Raddick.
“Oh, _do_ come in! I want to make money,” said the impatient voice.
“It’s all jolly well for you—but I’m broke!”
“Here—take fifty francs, darling, take a hundred!” I saw Mrs. Raddick
pressing notes into her hand as they passed through the swing doors.
Hennie and I stood on the steps a minute, watching the people. He had a
very broad, delighted smile.
“I say,” he cried, “there’s an English bulldog. Are they allowed to
take dogs in there?”
“No, they’re not.”
“He’s a ripping chap, isn’t he? I wish I had one. They’re such fun.
They frighten people so, and they’re never fierce with their—the people
they belong to.” Suddenly he squeezed my arm. “I say, _do_ look at that
old woman. Who is she? Why does she look like that? Is she a gambler?”
The ancient, withered creature, wearing a green satin dress, a black
velvet cloak and a white hat with purple feathers, jerked slowly,
slowly up the steps as though she were being drawn up on wires. She
stared in front of her, she was laughing and nodding and cackling to
herself; her claws clutched round what looked like a dirty boot-bag.
But just at that moment there was Mrs. Raddick again with—_her_—and
another lady hovering in the background. Mrs. Raddick rushed at me. She
was brightly flushed, gay, a different creature. She was like a woman
who is saying “good-bye” to her friends on the station platform, with
not a minute to spare before the train starts.
“Oh, you’re here, still. Isn’t that lucky! You’ve not gone. Isn’t that
fine! I’ve had the most dreadful time with—her,” and she waved to her
daughter, who stood absolutely still, disdainful, looking down,
twiddling her foot on the step, miles away. “They won’t let her in. I
swore she was twenty-one. But they won’t believe me. I showed the man
my purse; I didn’t dare to do more. But it was no use. He simply
scoffed.... And now I’ve just met Mrs. MacEwen from New York, and she
just won thirteen thousand in the _Salle Privée_—and she wants me to go
back with her while the luck lasts. Of course I can’t leave—her. But if
you’d—”
At that “she” looked up; she simply withered her mother. “Why can’t you
leave me?” she said furiously. “What utter rot! How dare you make a
scene like this? This is the last time I’ll come out with you. You
really are too awful for words.” She looked her mother up and down.
“Calm yourself,” she said superbly.
Mrs. Raddick was desperate, just desperate. She was “wild” to go back
with Mrs. MacEwen, but at the same time....
I seized my courage. “Would you—do you care to come to tea with—us?”
“Yes, yes, she’ll be delighted. That’s just what I wanted, isn’t it,
darling? Mrs. MacEwen... I’ll be back here in an hour... or less...
I’ll—”
Mrs. R. dashed up the steps. I saw her bag was open again.
So we three were left. But really it wasn’t my fault. Hennie looked
crushed to the earth, too. When the car was there she wrapped her dark
coat round her—to escape contamination. Even her little feet looked as
though they scorned to carry her down the steps to us.
“I am so awfully sorry,” I murmured as the car started.
“Oh, I don’t _mind_,” said she. “I don’t _want_ to look twenty-one. Who
would—if they were seventeen! It’s”—and she gave a faint shudder—“the
stupidity I loathe, and being stared at by old fat men. Beasts!”
Hennie gave her a quick look and then peered out of the window.
We drew up before an immense palace of pink-and-white marble with
orange-trees outside the doors in gold-and-black tubs.
“Would you care to go in?” I suggested.
She hesitated, glanced, bit her lip, and resigned herself. “Oh well,
there seems nowhere else,” said she. “Get out, Hennie.”
I went first—to find the table, of course—she followed. But the worst
of it was having her little brother, who was only twelve, with us. That
was the last, final straw—having that child, trailing at her heels.
There was one table. It had pink carnations and pink plates with little
blue tea-napkins for sails.
“Shall we sit here?”
She put her hand wearily on the back of a white wicker chair.
“We may as well. Why not?” said she.
Hennie squeezed past her and wriggled on to a stool at the end. He felt
awfully out of it. She didn’t even take her gloves off. She lowered her
eyes and drummed on the table. When a faint violin sounded she winced
and bit her lip again. Silence.
The waitress appeared. I hardly dared to ask her. “Tea—coffee? China
tea—or iced tea with lemon?”
Really she didn’t mind. It was all the same to her. She didn’t really
want anything. Hennie whispered, “Chocolate!”
But just as the waitress turned away she cried out carelessly, “Oh, you
may as well bring me a chocolate, too.”
While we waited she took out a little, gold powder-box with a mirror in
the lid, shook the poor little puff as though she loathed it, and
dabbed her lovely nose.
“Hennie,” she said, “take those flowers away.” She pointed with her
puff to the carnations, and I heard her murmur, “I can’t bear flowers
on a table.” They had evidently been giving her intense pain, for she
positively closed her eyes as I moved them away.
The waitress came back with the chocolate and the tea. She put the big,
frothing cups before them and pushed across my clear glass. Hennie
buried his nose, emerged, with, for one dreadful moment, a little
trembling blob of cream on the tip. But he hastily wiped it off like a
little gentleman. I wondered if I should dare draw her attention to her
cup. She didn’t notice it—didn’t see it—until suddenly, quite by
chance, she took a sip. I watched anxiously; she faintly shuddered.
“Dreadfully sweet!” said she.
A tiny boy with a head like a raisin and a chocolate body came round
with a tray of pastries—row upon row of little freaks, little
inspirations, little melting dreams. He offered them to her. “Oh, I’m
not at all hungry. Take them away.”
He offered them to Hennie. Hennie gave me a swift look—it must have
been satisfactory—for he took a chocolate cream, a coffee éclair, a
meringue stuffed with chestnut and a tiny horn filled with fresh
strawberries. She could hardly bear to watch him. But just as the boy
swerved away she held up her plate.
“Oh well, give me _one_,” said she.
The silver tongs dropped one, two, three—and a cherry tartlet. “I don’t
know why you’re giving me all these,” she said, and nearly smiled. “I
shan’t eat them; I couldn’t!”
I felt much more comfortable. I sipped my tea, leaned back, and even
asked if I might smoke. At that she paused, the fork in her hand,
opened her eyes, and really did smile. “Of course,” said she. “I always
expect people to.”
But at that moment a tragedy happened to Hennie. He speared his pastry
horn too hard, and it flew in two, and one half spilled on the table.
Ghastly affair! He turned crimson. Even his ears flared, and one
ashamed hand crept across the table to take what was left of the body
away.
“You _utter_ little beast!” said she.
Good heavens! I had to fly to the rescue. I cried hastily, “Will you be
abroad long?”
But she had already forgotten Hennie. I was forgotten, too. She was
trying to remember something.... She was miles away.
“I—don’t—know,” she said slowly, from that far place.
“I suppose you prefer it to London. It’s more—more—”
When I didn’t go on she came back and looked at me, very puzzled.
“More—?”
“_Enfin_—gayer,” I cried, waving my cigarette.
But that took a whole cake to consider. Even then, “Oh well, that
depends!” was all she could safely say.
Hennie had finished. He was still very warm.
I seized the butterfly list off the table. “I say—what about an ice,
Hennie? What about tangerine and ginger? No, something cooler. What
about a fresh pineapple cream?”
Hennie strongly approved. The waitress had her eye on us. The order was
taken when she looked up from her crumbs.
“Did you say tangerine and ginger? I like ginger. You can bring me
one.” And then quickly, “I wish that orchestra wouldn’t play things
from the year One. We were dancing to that all last Christmas. It’s too
sickening!”
But it was a charming air. Now that I noticed it, it warmed me.
“I think this is rather a nice place, don’t you, Hennie?” I said.
Hennie said: “Ripping!” He meant to say it very low, but it came out
very high in a kind of squeak.
Nice? This place? Nice? For the first time she stared about her, trying
to see what there was.... She blinked; her lovely eyes wondered. A very
good-looking elderly man stared back at her through a monocle on a
black ribbon. But him she simply couldn’t see. There was a hole in the
air where he was. She looked through and through him.
Finally the little flat spoons lay still on the glass plates. Hennie
looked rather exhausted, but she pulled on her white gloves again. She
had some trouble with her diamond wrist-watch; it got in her way. She
tugged at it—tried to break the stupid little thing—it wouldn’t break.
Finally, she had to drag her glove over. I saw, after that, she
couldn’t stand this place a moment longer, and, indeed, she jumped up
and turned away while I went through the vulgar act of paying for the
tea.
And then we were outside again. It had grown dusky. The sky was
sprinkled with small stars; the big lamps glowed. While we waited for
the car to come up she stood on the step, just as before, twiddling her
foot, looking down.
Hennie bounded forward to open the door and she got in and sank back
with—oh—such a sigh!
“Tell him,” she gasped, “to drive as fast as he can.”
Hennie grinned at his friend the chauffeur. “_Allie veet!_” said he.
Then he composed himself and sat on the small seat facing us.
The gold powder-box came out again. Again the poor little puff was
shaken; again there was that swift, deadly-secret glance between her
and the mirror.
We tore through the black-and-gold town like a pair of scissors tearing
through brocade. Hennie had great difficulty not to look as though he
were hanging on to something.
And when we reached the Casino, of course Mrs. Raddick wasn’t there.
There wasn’t a sign of her on the steps—not a sign.
“Will you stay in the car while I go and look?”
But no—she wouldn’t do that. Good heavens, no! Hennie could stay. She
couldn’t bear sitting in a car. She’d wait on the steps.
“But I scarcely like to leave you,” I murmured. “I’d very much rather
not leave you here.”
At that she threw back her coat; she turned and faced me; her lips
parted. “Good heavens—why! I—I don’t mind it a bit. I—I like waiting.”
And suddenly her cheeks crimsoned, her eyes grew dark—for a moment I
thought she was going to cry. “L—let me, please,” she stammered, in a
warm, eager voice. “I like it. I love waiting! Really—really I do! I’m
always waiting—in all kinds of places....”
Her dark coat fell open, and her white throat—all her soft young body
in the blue dress—was like a flower that is just emerging from its dark
bud.
Life of Ma Parker
When the literary gentleman, whose flat old Ma Parker cleaned every
Tuesday, opened the door to her that morning, he asked after her
grandson. Ma Parker stood on the doormat inside the dark little hall,
and she stretched out her hand to help her gentleman shut the door
before she replied. “We buried ’im yesterday, sir,” she said quietly.
“Oh, dear me! I’m sorry to hear that,” said the literary gentleman in a
shocked tone. He was in the middle of his breakfast. He wore a very
shabby dressing-gown and carried a crumpled newspaper in one hand. But
he felt awkward. He could hardly go back to the warm sitting-room
without saying something—something more. Then because these people set
such store by funerals he said kindly, “I hope the funeral went off all
right.”
“Beg parding, sir?” said old Ma Parker huskily.
Poor old bird! She did look dashed. “I hope the funeral was
a—a—success,” said he. Ma Parker gave no answer. She bent her head and
hobbled off to the kitchen, clasping the old fish bag that held her
cleaning things and an apron and a pair of felt shoes. The literary
gentleman raised his eyebrows and went back to his breakfast.
“Overcome, I suppose,” he said aloud, helping himself to the marmalade.
Ma Parker drew the two jetty spears out of her toque and hung it behind
the door. She unhooked her worn jacket and hung that up too. Then she
tied her apron and sat down to take off her boots. To take off her
boots or to put them on was an agony to her, but it had been an agony
for years. In fact, she was so accustomed to the pain that her face was
drawn and screwed up ready for the twinge before she’d so much as
untied the laces. That over, she sat back with a sigh and softly rubbed
her knees....
“Gran! Gran!” Her little grandson stood on her lap in his button boots.
He’d just come in from playing in the street.
“Look what a state you’ve made your gran’s skirt into—you wicked boy!”
But he put his arms round her neck and rubbed his cheek against hers.
“Gran, gi’ us a penny!” he coaxed.
“Be off with you; Gran ain’t got no pennies.”
“Yes, you ’ave.”
“No, I ain’t.”
“Yes, you ’ave. Gi’ us one!”
Already she was feeling for the old, squashed, black leather purse.
“Well, what’ll you give your gran?”
He gave a shy little laugh and pressed closer. She felt his eyelid
quivering against her cheek. “I ain’t got nothing,” he murmured....
The old woman sprang up, seized the iron kettle off the gas stove and
took it over to the sink. The noise of the water drumming in the kettle
deadened her pain, it seemed. She filled the pail, too, and the
washing-up bowl.
It would take a whole book to describe the state of that kitchen.
During the week the literary gentleman “did” for himself. That is to
say, he emptied the tea leaves now and again into a jam jar set aside
for that purpose, and if he ran out of clean forks he wiped over one or
two on the roller towel. Otherwise, as he explained to his friends, his
“system” was quite simple, and he couldn’t understand why people made
all this fuss about housekeeping.
“You simply dirty everything you’ve got, get a hag in once a week to
clean up, and the thing’s done.”
The result looked like a gigantic dustbin. Even the floor was littered
with toast crusts, envelopes, cigarette ends. But Ma Parker bore him no
grudge. She pitied the poor young gentleman for having no one to look
after him. Out of the smudgy little window you could see an immense
expanse of sad-looking sky, and whenever there were clouds they looked
very worn, old clouds, frayed at the edges, with holes in them, or dark
stains like tea.
While the water was heating, Ma Parker began sweeping the floor. “Yes,”
she thought, as the broom knocked, “what with one thing and another
I’ve had my share. I’ve had a hard life.”
Even the neighbours said that of her. Many a time, hobbling home with
her fish bag she heard them, waiting at the corner, or leaning over the
area railings, say among themselves, “She’s had a hard life, has Ma
Parker.” And it was so true she wasn’t in the least proud of it. It was
just as if you were to say she lived in the basement-back at Number 27.
A hard life!...
At sixteen she’d left Stratford and come up to London as kitching-maid.
Yes, she was born in Stratford-on-Avon. Shakespeare, sir? No, people
were always arsking her about him. But she’d never heard his name until
she saw it on the theatres.
Nothing remained of Stratford except that “sitting in the fire-place of
a evening you could see the stars through the chimley,” and “Mother
always ’ad ’er side of bacon, ’anging from the ceiling.” And there was
something—a bush, there was—at the front door, that smelt ever so nice.
But the bush was very vague. She’d only remembered it once or twice in
the hospital, when she’d been taken bad.
That was a dreadful place—her first place. She was never allowed out.
She never went upstairs except for prayers morning and evening. It was
a fair cellar. And the cook was a cruel woman. She used to snatch away
her letters from home before she’d read them, and throw them in the
range because they made her dreamy.... And the beedles! Would you
believe it?—until she came to London she’d never seen a black beedle.
Here Ma always gave a little laugh, as though—not to have seen a black
beedle! Well! It was as if to say you’d never seen your own feet.
When that family was sold up she went as “help” to a doctor’s house,
and after two years there, on the run from morning till night, she
married her husband. He was a baker.
“A baker, Mrs. Parker!” the literary gentleman would say. For
occasionally he laid aside his tomes and lent an ear, at least, to this
product called Life. “It must be rather nice to be married to a baker!”
Mrs. Parker didn’t look so sure.
“Such a clean trade,” said the gentleman.
Mrs. Parker didn’t look convinced.
“And didn’t you like handing the new loaves to the customers?”
“Well, sir,” said Mrs. Parker, “I wasn’t in the shop above a great
deal. We had thirteen little ones and buried seven of them. If it
wasn’t the ’ospital it was the infirmary, you might say!”
“You might, _indeed_, Mrs. Parker!” said the gentleman, shuddering, and
taking up his pen again.
Yes, seven had gone, and while the six were still small her husband was
taken ill with consumption. It was flour on the lungs, the doctor told
her at the time.... Her husband sat up in bed with his shirt pulled
over his head, and the doctor’s finger drew a circle on his back.
“Now, if we were to cut him open _here_, Mrs. Parker,” said the doctor,
“you’d find his lungs chock-a-block with white powder. Breathe, my good
fellow!” And Mrs. Parker never knew for certain whether she saw or
whether she fancied she saw a great fan of white dust come out of her
poor dead husband’s lips....
But the struggle she’d had to bring up those six little children and
keep herself to herself. Terrible it had been! Then, just when they
were old enough to go to school her husband’s sister came to stop with
them to help things along, and she hadn’t been there more than two
months when she fell down a flight of steps and hurt her spine. And for
five years Ma Parker had another baby—and such a one for crying!—to
look after. Then young Maudie went wrong and took her sister Alice with
her; the two boys emigrated, and young Jim went to India with the army,
and Ethel, the youngest, married a good-for-nothing little waiter who
died of ulcers the year little Lennie was born. And now little
Lennie—my grandson....
The piles of dirty cups, dirty dishes, were washed and dried. The
ink-black knives were cleaned with a piece of potato and finished off
with a piece of cork. The table was scrubbed, and the dresser and the
sink that had sardine tails swimming in it....
He’d never been a strong child—never from the first. He’d been one of
those fair babies that everybody took for a girl. Silvery fair curls he
had, blue eyes, and a little freckle like a diamond on one side of his
nose. The trouble she and Ethel had had to rear that child! The things
out of the newspapers they tried him with! Every Sunday morning Ethel
would read aloud while Ma Parker did her washing.
“Dear Sir,—Just a line to let you know my little Myrtil was laid out
for dead.... After four bottils... gained 8 lbs. in 9 weeks, _and is
still putting it on_.”
And then the egg-cup of ink would come off the dresser and the letter
would be written, and Ma would buy a postal order on her way to work
next morning. But it was no use. Nothing made little Lennie put it on.
Taking him to the cemetery, even, never gave him a colour; a nice
shake-up in the bus never improved his appetite.
But he was gran’s boy from the first....
“Whose boy are you?” said old Ma Parker, straightening up from the
stove and going over to the smudgy window. And a little voice, so warm,
so close, it half stifled her—it seemed to be in her breast under her
heart—laughed out, and said, “I’m gran’s boy!”
At that moment there was a sound of steps, and the literary gentleman
appeared, dressed for walking.
“Oh, Mrs. Parker, I’m going out.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And you’ll find your half-crown in the tray of the inkstand.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Oh, by the way, Mrs. Parker,” said the literary gentleman quickly,
“you didn’t throw away any cocoa last time you were here—did you?”
“No, sir.”
“_Very_ strange. I could have sworn I left a teaspoonful of cocoa in
the tin.” He broke off. He said softly and firmly, “You’ll always tell
me when you throw things away—won’t you, Mrs. Parker?” And he walked
off very well pleased with himself, convinced, in fact, he’d shown Mrs.
Parker that under his apparent carelessness he was as vigilant as a
woman.
The door banged. She took her brushes and cloths into the bedroom. But
when she began to make the bed, smoothing, tucking, patting, the
thought of little Lennie was unbearable. Why did he have to suffer so?
That’s what she couldn’t understand. Why should a little angel child
have to arsk for his breath and fight for it? There was no sense in
making a child suffer like that.
... From Lennie’s little box of a chest there came a sound as though
something was boiling. There was a great lump of something bubbling in
his chest that he couldn’t get rid of. When he coughed the sweat sprang
out on his head; his eyes bulged, his hands waved, and the great lump
bubbled as a potato knocks in a saucepan. But what was more awful than
all was when he didn’t cough he sat against the pillow and never spoke
or answered, or even made as if he heard. Only he looked offended.
“It’s not your poor old gran’s doing it, my lovey,” said old Ma Parker,
patting back the damp hair from his little scarlet ears. But Lennie
moved his head and edged away. Dreadfully offended with her he
looked—and solemn. He bent his head and looked at her sideways as
though he couldn’t have believed it of his gran.
But at the last... Ma Parker threw the counterpane over the bed. No,
she simply couldn’t think about it. It was too much—she’d had too much
in her life to bear. She’d borne it up till now, she’d kept herself to
herself, and never once had she been seen to cry. Never by a living
soul. Not even her own children had seen Ma break down. She’d kept a
proud face always. But now! Lennie gone—what had she? She had nothing.
He was all she’d got from life, and now he was took too. Why must it
all have happened to me? she wondered. “What have I done?” said old Ma
Parker. “What have I done?”
As she said those words she suddenly let fall her brush. She found
herself in the kitchen. Her misery was so terrible that she pinned on
her hat, put on her jacket and walked out of the flat like a person in
a dream. She did not know what she was doing. She was like a person so
dazed by the horror of what has happened that he walks away—anywhere,
as though by walking away he could escape....
It was cold in the street. There was a wind like ice. People went
flitting by, very fast; the men walked like scissors; the women trod
like cats. And nobody knew—nobody cared. Even if she broke down, if at
last, after all these years, she were to cry, she’d find herself in the
lock-up as like as not.
But at the thought of crying it was as though little Lennie leapt in
his gran’s arms. Ah, that’s what she wants to do, my dove. Gran wants
to cry. If she could only cry now, cry for a long time, over
everything, beginning with her first place and the cruel cook, going on
to the doctor’s, and then the seven little ones, death of her husband,
the children’s leaving her, and all the years of misery that led up to
Lennie. But to have a proper cry over all these things would take a
long time. All the same, the time for it had come. She must do it. She
couldn’t put it off any longer; she couldn’t wait any more.... Where
could she go?
“She’s had a hard life, has Ma Parker.” Yes, a hard life, indeed! Her
chin began to tremble; there was no time to lose. But where? Where?
She couldn’t go home; Ethel was there. It would frighten Ethel out of
her life. She couldn’t sit on a bench anywhere; people would come
arsking her questions. She couldn’t possibly go back to the gentleman’s
flat; she had no right to cry in strangers’ houses. If she sat on some
steps a policeman would speak to her.
Oh, wasn’t there anywhere where she could hide and keep herself to
herself and stay as long as she liked, not disturbing anybody, and
nobody worrying her? Wasn’t there anywhere in the world where she could
have her cry out—at last?
Ma Parker stood, looking up and down. The icy wind blew out her apron
into a balloon. And now it began to rain. There was nowhere.
Marriage à la Mode
On his way to the station William remembered with a fresh pang of
disappointment that he was taking nothing down to the kiddies. Poor
little chaps! It was hard lines on them. Their first words always were
as they ran to greet him, “What have you got for me, daddy?” and he had
nothing. He would have to buy them some sweets at the station. But that
was what he had done for the past four Saturdays; their faces had
fallen last time when they saw the same old boxes produced again.
And Paddy had said, “I had red ribbing on mine _bee_-fore!”
And Johnny had said, “It’s always pink on mine. I hate pink.”
But what was William to do? The affair wasn’t so easily settled. In the
old days, of course, he would have taken a taxi off to a decent toyshop
and chosen them something in five minutes. But nowadays they had
Russian toys, French toys, Serbian toys—toys from God knows where. It
was over a year since Isabel had scrapped the old donkeys and engines
and so on because they were so “dreadfully sentimental” and “so
appallingly bad for the babies’ sense of form.”
“It’s so important,” the new Isabel had explained, “that they should
like the right things from the very beginning. It saves so much time
later on. Really, if the poor pets have to spend their infant years
staring at these horrors, one can imagine them growing up and asking to
be taken to the Royal Academy.”
And she spoke as though a visit to the Royal Academy was certain
immediate death to anyone....
“Well, I don’t know,” said William slowly. “When I was their age I used
to go to bed hugging an old towel with a knot in it.”
The new Isabel looked at him, her eyes narrowed, her lips apart.
“_Dear_ William! I’m sure you did!” She laughed in the new way.
Sweets it would have to be, however, thought William gloomily, fishing
in his pocket for change for the taxi-man. And he saw the kiddies
handing the boxes round—they were awfully generous little chaps—while
Isabel’s precious friends didn’t hesitate to help themselves....
What about fruit? William hovered before a stall just inside the
station. What about a melon each? Would they have to share that, too?
Or a pineapple, for Pad, and a melon for Johnny? Isabel’s friends could
hardly go sneaking up to the nursery at the children’s meal-times. All
the same, as he bought the melon William had a horrible vision of one
of Isabel’s young poets lapping up a slice, for some reason, behind the
nursery door.
With his two very awkward parcels he strode off to his train. The
platform was crowded, the train was in. Doors banged open and shut.
There came such a loud hissing from the engine that people looked dazed
as they scurried to and fro. William made straight for a first-class
smoker, stowed away his suit-case and parcels, and taking a huge wad of
papers out of his inner pocket, he flung down in the corner and began
to read.
“Our client moreover is positive.... We are inclined to reconsider...
in the event of—” Ah, that was better. William pressed back his
flattened hair and stretched his legs across the carriage floor. The
familiar dull gnawing in his breast quietened down. “With regard to our
decision—” He took out a blue pencil and scored a paragraph slowly.
Two men came in, stepped across him, and made for the farther corner. A
young fellow swung his golf clubs into the rack and sat down opposite.
The train gave a gentle lurch, they were off. William glanced up and
saw the hot, bright station slipping away. A red-faced girl raced along
by the carriages, there was something strained and almost desperate in
the way she waved and called. “Hysterical!” thought William dully. Then
a greasy, black-faced workman at the end of the platform grinned at the
passing train. And William thought, “A filthy life!” and went back to
his papers.
When he looked up again there were fields, and beasts standing for
shelter under the dark trees. A wide river, with naked children
splashing in the shallows, glided into sight and was gone again. The
sky shone pale, and one bird drifted high like a dark fleck in a jewel.
“We have examined our client’s correspondence files....” The last
sentence he had read echoed in his mind. “We have examined....” William
hung on to that sentence, but it was no good; it snapped in the middle,
and the fields, the sky, the sailing bird, the water, all said,
“Isabel.” The same thing happened every Saturday afternoon. When he was
on his way to meet Isabel there began those countless imaginary
meetings. She was at the station, standing just a little apart from
everybody else; she was sitting in the open taxi outside; she was at
the garden gate; walking across the parched grass; at the door, or just
inside the hall.
And her clear, light voice said, “It’s William,” or “Hillo, William!”
or “So William has come!” He touched her cool hand, her cool cheek.
The exquisite freshness of Isabel! When he had been a little boy, it
was his delight to run into the garden after a shower of rain and shake
the rose-bush over him. Isabel was that rose-bush, petal-soft,
sparkling and cool. And he was still that little boy. But there was no
running into the garden now, no laughing and shaking. The dull,
persistent gnawing in his breast started again. He drew up his legs,
tossed the papers aside, and shut his eyes.
“What is it, Isabel? What is it?” he said tenderly. They were in their
bedroom in the new house. Isabel sat on a painted stool before the
dressing-table that was strewn with little black and green boxes.
“What is what, William?” And she bent forward, and her fine light hair
fell over her cheeks.
“Ah, you know!” He stood in the middle of the room and he felt a
stranger. At that Isabel wheeled round quickly and faced him.
“Oh, William!” she cried imploringly, and she held up the hair-brush:
“Please! Please don’t be so dreadfully stuffy and—tragic. You’re always
saying or looking or hinting that I’ve changed. Just because I’ve got
to know really congenial people, and go about more, and am frightfully
keen on—on everything, you behave as though I’d—” Isabel tossed back
her hair and laughed—“killed our love or something. It’s so awfully
absurd”—she bit her lip—“and it’s so maddening, William. Even this new
house and the servants you grudge me.”
“Isabel!”
“Yes, yes, it’s true in a way,” said Isabel quickly. “You think they
are another bad sign. Oh, I know you do. I feel it,” she said softly,
“every time you come up the stairs. But we couldn’t have gone on living
in that other poky little hole, William. Be practical, at least! Why,
there wasn’t enough room for the babies even.”
No, it was true. Every morning when he came back from chambers it was
to find the babies with Isabel in the back drawing-room. They were
having rides on the leopard skin thrown over the sofa back, or they
were playing shops with Isabel’s desk for a counter, or Pad was sitting
on the hearthrug rowing away for dear life with a little brass fire
shovel, while Johnny shot at pirates with the tongs. Every evening they
each had a pick-a-back up the narrow stairs to their fat old Nanny.
Yes, he supposed it was a poky little house. A little white house with
blue curtains and a window-box of petunias. William met their friends
at the door with “Seen our petunias? Pretty terrific for London, don’t
you think?”
But the imbecile thing, the absolutely extraordinary thing was that he
hadn’t the slightest idea that Isabel wasn’t as happy as he. God, what
blindness! He hadn’t the remotest notion in those days that she really
hated that inconvenient little house, that she thought the fat Nanny
was ruining the babies, that she was desperately lonely, pining for new
people and new music and pictures and so on. If they hadn’t gone to
that studio party at Moira Morrison’s—if Moira Morrison hadn’t said as
they were leaving, “I’m going to rescue your wife, selfish man. She’s
like an exquisite little Titania”—if Isabel hadn’t gone with Moira to
Paris—if—if....
The train stopped at another station. Bettingford. Good heavens! They’d
be there in ten minutes. William stuffed that papers back into his
pockets; the young man opposite had long since disappeared. Now the
other two got out. The late afternoon sun shone on women in cotton
frocks and little sunburnt, barefoot children. It blazed on a silky
yellow flower with coarse leaves which sprawled over a bank of rock.
The air ruffling through the window smelled of the sea. Had Isabel the
same crowd with her this week-end, wondered William?
And he remembered the holidays they used to have, the four of them,
with a little farm girl, Rose, to look after the babies. Isabel wore a
jersey and her hair in a plait; she looked about fourteen. Lord! how
his nose used to peel! And the amount they ate, and the amount they
slept in that immense feather bed with their feet locked together....
William couldn’t help a grim smile as he thought of Isabel’s horror if
she knew the full extent of his sentimentality.
“Hillo, William!” She was at the station after all, standing just as he
had imagined, apart from the others, and—William’s heart leapt—she was
alone.
“Hallo, Isabel!” William stared. He thought she looked so beautiful
that he had to say something, “You look very cool.”
“Do I?” said Isabel. “I don’t feel very cool. Come along, your horrid
old train is late. The taxi’s outside.” She put her hand lightly on his
arm as they passed the ticket collector. “We’ve all come to meet you,”
she said. “But we’ve left Bobby Kane at the sweet shop, to be called
for.”
“Oh!” said William. It was all he could say for the moment.
There in the glare waited the taxi, with Bill Hunt and Dennis Green
sprawling on one side, their hats tilted over their faces, while on the
other, Moira Morrison, in a bonnet like a huge strawberry, jumped up
and down.
“No ice! No ice! No ice!” she shouted gaily.
And Dennis chimed in from under his hat. “_Only_ to be had from the
fishmonger’s.”
And Bill Hunt, emerging, added, “With _whole_ fish in it.”
“Oh, what a bore!” wailed Isabel. And she explained to William how they
had been chasing round the town for ice while she waited for him.
“Simply everything is running down the steep cliffs into the sea,
beginning with the butter.”
“We shall have to anoint ourselves with butter,” said Dennis. “May thy
head, William, lack not ointment.”
“Look here,” said William, “how are we going to sit? I’d better get up
by the driver.”
“No, Bobby Kane’s by the driver,” said Isabel. “You’re to sit between
Moira and me.” The taxi started. “What have you got in those mysterious
parcels?”
“De-cap-it-ated heads!” said Bill Hunt, shuddering beneath his hat.
“Oh, fruit!” Isabel sounded very pleased. “Wise William! A melon and a
pineapple. How too nice!”
“No, wait a bit,” said William, smiling. But he really was anxious. “I
brought them down for the kiddies.”
“Oh, my dear!” Isabel laughed, and slipped her hand through his arm.
“They’d be rolling in agonies if they were to eat them. No”—she patted
his hand—“you must bring them something next time. I refuse to part
with my pineapple.”
“Cruel Isabel! Do let me smell it!” said Moira. She flung her arms
across William appealingly. “Oh!” The strawberry bonnet fell forward:
she sounded quite faint.
“A Lady in Love with a Pineapple,” said Dennis, as the taxi drew up
before a little shop with a striped blind. Out came Bobby Kane, his
arms full of little packets.
“I do hope they’ll be good. I’ve chosen them because of the colours.
There are some round things which really look too divine. And just look
at this nougat,” he cried ecstatically, “just look at it! It’s a
perfect little ballet!”
But at that moment the shopman appeared. “Oh, I forgot. They’re none of
them paid for,” said Bobby, looking frightened. Isabel gave the shopman
a note, and Bobby was radiant again. “Hallo, William! I’m sitting by
the driver.” And bareheaded, all in white, with his sleeves rolled up
to the shoulders, he leapt into his place. “Avanti!” he cried....
After tea the others went off to bathe, while William stayed and made
his peace with the kiddies. But Johnny and Paddy were asleep, the
rose-red glow had paled, bats were flying, and still the bathers had
not returned. As William wandered downstairs, the maid crossed the hall
carrying a lamp. He followed her into the sitting-room. It was a long
room, coloured yellow. On the wall opposite William some one had
painted a young man, over life-size, with very wobbly legs, offering a
wide-eyed daisy to a young woman who had one very short arm and one
very long, thin one. Over the chairs and sofa there hung strips of
black material, covered with big splashes like broken eggs, and
everywhere one looked there seemed to be an ash-tray full of cigarette
ends. William sat down in one of the arm-chairs. Nowadays, when one
felt with one hand down the sides, it wasn’t to come upon a sheep with
three legs or a cow that had lost one horn, or a very fat dove out of
the Noah’s Ark. One fished up yet another little paper-covered book of
smudged-looking poems.... He thought of the wad of papers in his
pocket, but he was too hungry and tired to read. The door was open;
sounds came from the kitchen. The servants were talking as if they were
alone in the house. Suddenly there came a loud screech of laughter and
an equally loud “Sh!” They had remembered him. William got up and went
through the French windows into the garden, and as he stood there in
the shadow he heard the bathers coming up the sandy road; their voices
rang through the quiet.
“I think its up to Moira to use her little arts and wiles.”
A tragic moan from Moira.
“We ought to have a gramophone for the week-ends that played ‘The Maid
of the Mountains.’”
“Oh no! Oh no!” cried Isabel’s voice. “That’s not fair to William. Be
nice to him, my children! He’s only staying until to-morrow evening.”
“Leave him to me,” cried Bobby Kane. “I’m awfully good at looking after
people.”
The gate swung open and shut. William moved on the terrace; they had
seen him. “Hallo, William!” And Bobby Kane, flapping his towel, began
to leap and pirouette on the parched lawn. “Pity you didn’t come,
William. The water was divine. And we all went to a little pub
afterwards and had sloe gin.”
The others had reached the house. “I say, Isabel,” called Bobby, “would
you like me to wear my Nijinsky dress to-night?”
“No,” said Isabel, “nobody’s going to dress. We’re all starving.
William’s starving, too. Come along, _mes amis_, let’s begin with
sardines.”
“I’ve found the sardines,” said Moira, and she ran into the hall,
holding a box high in the air.
“A Lady with a Box of Sardines,” said Dennis gravely.
“Well, William, and how’s London?” asked Bill Hunt, drawing the cork
out of a bottle of whisky.
“Oh, London’s not much changed,” answered William.
“Good old London,” said Bobby, very hearty, spearing a sardine.
But a moment later William was forgotten. Moira Morrison began
wondering what colour one’s legs really were under water.
“Mine are the palest, palest mushroom colour.”
Bill and Dennis ate enormously. And Isabel filled glasses, and changed
plates, and found matches, smiling blissfully. At one moment, she said,
“I do wish, Bill, you’d paint it.”
“Paint what?” said Bill loudly, stuffing his mouth with bread.
“Us,” said Isabel, “round the table. It would be so fascinating in
twenty years’ time.”
Bill screwed up his eyes and chewed. “Light’s wrong,” he said rudely,
“far too much yellow”; and went on eating. And that seemed to charm
Isabel, too.
But after supper they were all so tired they could do nothing but yawn
until it was late enough to go to bed....
It was not until William was waiting for his taxi the next afternoon
that he found himself alone with Isabel. When he brought his suit-case
down into the hall, Isabel left the others and went over to him. She
stooped down and picked up the suit-case. “What a weight!” she said,
and she gave a little awkward laugh. “Let me carry it! To the gate.”
“No, why should you?” said William. “Of course, not. Give it to me.”
“Oh, please, do let me,” said Isabel. “I want to, really.” They walked
together silently. William felt there was nothing to say now.
“There,” said Isabel triumphantly, setting the suit-case down, and she
looked anxiously along the sandy road. “I hardly seem to have seen you
this time,” she said breathlessly. “It’s so short, isn’t it? I feel
you’ve only just come. Next time—” The taxi came into sight. “I hope
they look after you properly in London. I’m so sorry the babies have
been out all day, but Miss Neil had arranged it. They’ll hate missing
you. Poor William, going back to London.” The taxi turned. “Good-bye!”
She gave him a little hurried kiss; she was gone.
Fields, trees, hedges streamed by. They shook through the empty,
blind-looking little town, ground up the steep pull to the station.
The train was in. William made straight for a first-class smoker, flung
back into the corner, but this time he let the papers alone. He folded
his arms against the dull, persistent gnawing, and began in his mind to
write a letter to Isabel.
The post was late as usual. They sat outside the house in long chairs
under coloured parasols. Only Bobby Kane lay on the turf at Isabel’s
feet. It was dull, stifling; the day drooped like a flag.
“Do you think there will be Mondays in Heaven?” asked Bobby childishly.
And Dennis murmured, “Heaven will be one long Monday.”
But Isabel couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the salmon they
had for supper last night. She had meant to have fish mayonnaise for
lunch and now....
Moira was asleep. Sleeping was her latest discovery. “It’s _so_
wonderful. One simply shuts one’s eyes, that’s all. It’s _so_
delicious.”
When the old ruddy postman came beating along the sandy road on his
tricycle one felt the handle-bars ought to have been oars.
Bill Hunt put down his book. “Letters,” he said complacently, and they
all waited. But, heartless postman—O malignant world! There was only
one, a fat one for Isabel. Not even a paper.
“And mine’s only from William,” said Isabel mournfully.
“From William—already?”
“He’s sending you back your marriage lines as a gentle reminder.”
“Does everybody have marriage lines? I thought they were only for
servants.”
“Pages and pages! Look at her! A Lady reading a Letter,” said Dennis.
“_My darling, precious Isabel_.” Pages and pages there were. As Isabel
read on her feeling of astonishment changed to a stifled feeling. What
on earth had induced William...? How extraordinary it was.... What
could have made him...? She felt confused, more and more excited, even
frightened. It was just like William. Was it? It was absurd, of course,
it must be absurd, ridiculous. “Ha, ha, ha! Oh dear!” What was she to
do? Isabel flung back in her chair and laughed till she couldn’t stop
laughing.
“Do, do tell us,” said the others. “You must tell us.”
“I’m longing to,” gurgled Isabel. She sat up, gathered the letter, and
waved it at them. “Gather round,” she said. “Listen, it’s too
marvellous. A love-letter!”
“A love-letter! But how divine!” _Darling, precious Isabel._ But she
had hardly begun before their laughter interrupted her.
“Go on, Isabel, it’s perfect.”
“It’s the most marvellous find.”
“Oh, do go on, Isabel!”
_God forbid, my darling, that I should be a drag on your happiness._
“Oh! oh! oh!”
“Sh! sh! sh!”
And Isabel went on. When she reached the end they were hysterical:
Bobby rolled on the turf and almost sobbed.
“You must let me have it just as it is, entire, for my new book,” said
Dennis firmly. “I shall give it a whole chapter.”
“Oh, Isabel,” moaned Moira, “that wonderful bit about holding you in
his arms!”
“I always thought those letters in divorce cases were made up. But they
pale before this.”
“Let me hold it. Let me read it, mine own self,” said Bobby Kane.
But, to their surprise, Isabel crushed the letter in her hand. She was
laughing no longer. She glanced quickly at them all; she looked
exhausted. “No, not just now. Not just now,” she stammered.
And before they could recover she had run into the house, through the
hall, up the stairs into her bedroom. Down she sat on the side of the
bed. “How vile, odious, abominable, vulgar,” muttered Isabel. She
pressed her eyes with her knuckles and rocked to and fro. And again she
saw them, but not four, more like forty, laughing, sneering, jeering,
stretching out their hands while she read them William’s letter. Oh,
what a loathsome thing to have done. How could she have done it! _God
forbid, my darling, that I should be a drag on your happiness._
William! Isabel pressed her face into the pillow. But she felt that
even the grave bedroom knew her for what she was, shallow, tinkling,
vain....
Presently from the garden below there came voices.
“Isabel, we’re all going for a bathe. Do come!”
“Come, thou wife of William!”
“Call her once before you go, call once yet!”
Isabel sat up. Now was the moment, now she must decide. Would she go
with them, or stay here and write to William. Which, which should it
be? “I must make up my mind.” Oh, but how could there be any question?
Of course she would stay here and write.
“Titania!” piped Moira.
“Isa-bel?”
No, it was too difficult. “I’ll—I’ll go with them, and write to William
later. Some other time. Later. Not now. But I shall _certainly_ write,”
thought Isabel hurriedly.
And, laughing, in the new way, she ran down the stairs.
The Voyage
The Picton boat was due to leave at half-past eleven. It was a
beautiful night, mild, starry, only when they got out of the cab and
started to walk down the Old Wharf that jutted out into the harbour, a
faint wind blowing off the water ruffled under Fenella’s hat, and she
put up her hand to keep it on. It was dark on the Old Wharf, very dark;
the wool sheds, the cattle trucks, the cranes standing up so high, the
little squat railway engine, all seemed carved out of solid darkness.
Here and there on a rounded wood-pile, that was like the stalk of a
huge black mushroom, there hung a lantern, but it seemed afraid to
unfurl its timid, quivering light in all that blackness; it burned
softly, as if for itself.
Fenella’s father pushed on with quick, nervous strides. Beside him her
grandma bustled along in her crackling black ulster; they went so fast
that she had now and again to give an undignified little skip to keep
up with them. As well as her luggage strapped into a neat sausage,
Fenella carried clasped to her her grandma’s umbrella, and the handle,
which was a swan’s head, kept giving her shoulder a sharp little peck
as if it too wanted her to hurry.... Men, their caps pulled down, their
collars turned up, swung by; a few women all muffled scurried along;
and one tiny boy, only his little black arms and legs showing out of a
white woolly shawl, was jerked along angrily between his father and
mother; he looked like a baby fly that had fallen into the cream.
Then suddenly, so suddenly that Fenella and her grandma both leapt,
there sounded from behind the largest wool shed, that had a trail of
smoke hanging over it, “_Mia-oo-oo-O-O!_”
“First whistle,” said her father briefly, and at that moment they came
in sight of the Picton boat. Lying beside the dark wharf, all strung,
all beaded with round golden lights, the Picton boat looked as if she
was more ready to sail among stars than out into the cold sea. People
pressed along the gangway. First went her grandma, then her father,
then Fenella. There was a high step down on to the deck, and an old
sailor in a jersey standing by gave her his dry, hard hand. They were
there; they stepped out of the way of the hurrying people, and standing
under a little iron stairway that led to the upper deck they began to
say good-bye.
“There, mother, there’s your luggage!” said Fenella’s father, giving
grandma another strapped-up sausage.
“Thank you, Frank.”
“And you’ve got your cabin tickets safe?”
“Yes, dear.”
“And your other tickets?”
Grandma felt for them inside her glove and showed him the tips.
“That’s right.”
He sounded stern, but Fenella, eagerly watching him, saw that he looked
tired and sad. “_Mia-oo-oo-O-O!_” The second whistle blared just above
their heads, and a voice like a cry shouted, “Any more for the
gangway?”
“You’ll give my love to father,” Fenella saw her father’s lips say. And
her grandma, very agitated, answered, “Of course I will, dear. Go now.
You’ll be left. Go now, Frank. Go now.”
“It’s all right, mother. I’ve got another three minutes.” To her
surprise Fenella saw her father take off his hat. He clasped grandma in
his arms and pressed her to him. “God bless you, mother!” she heard him
say.
And grandma put her hand, with the black thread glove that was worn
through on her ring finger, against his cheek, and she sobbed, “God
bless you, my own brave son!”
This was so awful that Fenella quickly turned her back on them,
swallowed once, twice, and frowned terribly at a little green star on a
mast head. But she had to turn round again; her father was going.
“Good-bye, Fenella. Be a good girl.” His cold, wet moustache brushed
her cheek. But Fenella caught hold of the lapels of his coat.
“How long am I going to stay?” she whispered anxiously. He wouldn’t
look at her. He shook her off gently, and gently said, “We’ll see about
that. Here! Where’s your hand?” He pressed something into her palm.
“Here’s a shilling in case you should need it.”
A shilling! She must be going away for ever! “Father!” cried Fenella.
But he was gone. He was the last off the ship. The sailors put their
shoulders to the gangway. A huge coil of dark rope went flying through
the air and fell “thump” on the wharf. A bell rang; a whistle shrilled.
Silently the dark wharf began to slip, to slide, to edge away from
them. Now there was a rush of water between. Fenella strained to see
with all her might. “Was that father turning round?”—or waving?—or
standing alone?—or walking off by himself? The strip of water grew
broader, darker. Now the Picton boat began to swing round steady,
pointing out to sea. It was no good looking any longer. There was
nothing to be seen but a few lights, the face of the town clock hanging
in the air, and more lights, little patches of them, on the dark hills.
The freshening wind tugged at Fenella’s skirts; she went back to her
grandma. To her relief grandma seemed no longer sad. She had put the
two sausages of luggage one on top of the other, and she was sitting on
them, her hands folded, her head a little on one side. There was an
intent, bright look on her face. Then Fenella saw that her lips were
moving and guessed that she was praying. But the old woman gave her a
bright nod as if to say the prayer was nearly over. She unclasped her
hands, sighed, clasped them again, bent forward, and at last gave
herself a soft shake.
“And now, child,” she said, fingering the bow of her bonnet-strings, “I
think we ought to see about our cabins. Keep close to me, and mind you
don’t slip.”
“Yes, grandma!”
“And be careful the umbrellas aren’t caught in the stair rail. I saw a
beautiful umbrella broken in half like that on my way over.”
“Yes, grandma.”
Dark figures of men lounged against the rails. In the glow of their
pipes a nose shone out, or the peak of a cap, or a pair of
surprised-looking eyebrows. Fenella glanced up. High in the air, a
little figure, his hands thrust in his short jacket pockets, stood
staring out to sea. The ship rocked ever so little, and she thought the
stars rocked too. And now a pale steward in a linen coat, holding a
tray high in the palm of his hand, stepped out of a lighted doorway and
skimmed past them. They went through that doorway. Carefully over the
high brass-bound step on to the rubber mat and then down such a
terribly steep flight of stairs that grandma had to put both feet on
each step, and Fenella clutched the clammy brass rail and forgot all
about the swan-necked umbrella.
At the bottom grandma stopped; Fenella was rather afraid she was going
to pray again. But no, it was only to get out the cabin tickets. They
were in the saloon. It was glaring bright and stifling; the air smelled
of paint and burnt chop-bones and indiarubber. Fenella wished her
grandma would go on, but the old woman was not to be hurried. An
immense basket of ham sandwiches caught her eye. She went up to them
and touched the top one delicately with her finger.
“How much are the sandwiches?” she asked.
“Tuppence!” bawled a rude steward, slamming down a knife and fork.
Grandma could hardly believe it.
“Twopence _each_?” she asked.
“That’s right,” said the steward, and he winked at his companion.
Grandma made a small, astonished face. Then she whispered primly to
Fenella. “What wickedness!” And they sailed out at the further door and
along a passage that had cabins on either side. Such a very nice
stewardess came to meet them. She was dressed all in blue, and her
collar and cuffs were fastened with large brass buttons. She seemed to
know grandma well.
“Well, Mrs. Crane,” said she, unlocking their washstand. “We’ve got you
back again. It’s not often you give yourself a cabin.”
“No,” said grandma. “But this time my dear son’s thoughtfulness—”
“I hope—” began the stewardess. Then she turned round and took a long,
mournful look at grandma’s blackness and at Fenella’s black coat and
skirt, black blouse, and hat with a crape rose.
Grandma nodded. “It was God’s will,” said she.
The stewardess shut her lips and, taking a deep breath, she seemed to
expand.
“What I always say is,” she said, as though it was her own discovery,
“sooner or later each of us has to go, and that’s a certingty.” She
paused. “Now, can I bring you anything, Mrs Crane? A cup of tea? I know
it’s no good offering you a little something to keep the cold out.”
Grandma shook her head. “Nothing, thank you. We’ve got a few wine
biscuits, and Fenella has a very nice banana.”
“Then I’ll give you a look later on,” said the stewardess, and she went
out, shutting the door.
What a very small cabin it was! It was like being shut up in a box with
grandma. The dark round eye above the washstand gleamed at them dully.
Fenella felt shy. She stood against the door, still clasping her
luggage and the umbrella. Were they going to get undressed in here?
Already her grandma had taken off her bonnet, and, rolling up the
strings, she fixed each with a pin to the lining before she hung the
bonnet up. Her white hair shone like silk; the little bun at the back
was covered with a black net. Fenella hardly ever saw her grandma with
her head uncovered; she looked strange.
“I shall put on the woollen fascinator your dear mother crocheted for
me,” said grandma, and, unstrapping the sausage, she took it out and
wound it round her head; the fringe of grey bobbles danced at her
eyebrows as she smiled tenderly and mournfully at Fenella. Then she
undid her bodice, and something under that, and something else
underneath that. Then there seemed a short, sharp tussle, and grandma
flushed faintly. Snip! Snap! She had undone her stays. She breathed a
sigh of relief, and sitting on the plush couch, she slowly and
carefully pulled off her elastic-sided boots and stood them side by
side.
By the time Fenella had taken off her coat and skirt and put on her
flannel dressing-gown grandma was quite ready.
“Must I take off my boots, grandma? They’re lace.”
Grandma gave them a moment’s deep consideration. “You’d feel a great
deal more comfortable if you did, child,” said she. She kissed Fenella.
“Don’t forget to say your prayers. Our dear Lord is with us when we are
at sea even more than when we are on dry land. And because I am an
experienced traveller,” said grandma briskly, “I shall take the upper
berth.”
“But, grandma, however will you get up there?”
Three little spider-like steps were all Fenella saw. The old woman gave
a small silent laugh before she mounted them nimbly, and she peered
over the high bunk at the astonished Fenella.
“You didn’t think your grandma could do that, did you?” said she. And
as she sank back Fenella heard her light laugh again.
The hard square of brown soap would not lather, and the water in the
bottle was like a kind of blue jelly. How hard it was, too, to turn
down those stiff sheets; you simply had to tear your way in. If
everything had been different, Fenella might have got the giggles....
At last she was inside, and while she lay there panting, there sounded
from above a long, soft whispering, as though some one was gently,
gently rustling among tissue paper to find something. It was grandma
saying her prayers....
A long time passed. Then the stewardess came in; she trod softly and
leaned her hand on grandma’s bunk.
“We’re just entering the Straits,” she said.
“Oh!”
“It’s a fine night, but we’re rather empty. We may pitch a little.”
And indeed at that moment the Picton Boat rose and rose and hung in the
air just long enough to give a shiver before she swung down again, and
there was the sound of heavy water slapping against her sides. Fenella
remembered she had left the swan-necked umbrella standing up on the
little couch. If it fell over, would it break? But grandma remembered
too, at the same time.
“I wonder if you’d mind, stewardess, laying down my umbrella,” she
whispered.
“Not at all, Mrs. Crane.” And the stewardess, coming back to grandma,
breathed, “Your little granddaughter’s in such a beautiful sleep.”
“God be praised for that!” said grandma.
“Poor little motherless mite!” said the stewardess. And grandma was
still telling the stewardess all about what happened when Fenella fell
asleep.
But she hadn’t been asleep long enough to dream before she woke up
again to see something waving in the air above her head. What was it?
What could it be? It was a small grey foot. Now another joined it. They
seemed to be feeling about for something; there came a sigh.
“I’m awake, grandma,” said Fenella.
“Oh, dear, am I near the ladder?” asked grandma. “I thought it was this
end.”
“No, grandma, it’s the other. I’ll put your foot on it. Are we there?”
asked Fenella.
“In the harbour,” said grandma. “We must get up, child. You’d better
have a biscuit to steady yourself before you move.”
But Fenella had hopped out of her bunk. The lamp was still burning, but
night was over, and it was cold. Peering through that round eye she
could see far off some rocks. Now they were scattered over with foam;
now a gull flipped by; and now there came a long piece of real land.
“It’s land, grandma,” said Fenella, wonderingly, as though they had
been at sea for weeks together. She hugged herself; she stood on one
leg and rubbed it with the toes of the other foot; she was trembling.
Oh, it had all been so sad lately. Was it going to change? But all her
grandma said was, “Make haste, child. I should leave your nice banana
for the stewardess as you haven’t eaten it.” And Fenella put on her
black clothes again and a button sprang off one of her gloves and
rolled to where she couldn’t reach it. They went up on deck.
But if it had been cold in the cabin, on deck it was like ice. The sun
was not up yet, but the stars were dim, and the cold pale sky was the
same colour as the cold pale sea. On the land a white mist rose and
fell. Now they could see quite plainly dark bush. Even the shapes of
the umbrella ferns showed, and those strange silvery withered trees
that are like skeletons.... Now they could see the landing-stage and
some little houses, pale too, clustered together, like shells on the
lid of a box. The other passengers tramped up and down, but more slowly
than they had the night before, and they looked gloomy.
And now the landing-stage came out to meet them. Slowly it swam towards
the Picton boat, and a man holding a coil of rope, and a cart with a
small drooping horse and another man sitting on the step, came too.
“It’s Mr. Penreddy, Fenella, come for us,” said grandma. She sounded
pleased. Her white waxen cheeks were blue with cold, her chin trembled,
and she had to keep wiping her eyes and her little pink nose.
“You’ve got my—”
“Yes, grandma.” Fenella showed it to her.
The rope came flying through the air, and “smack” it fell on to the
deck. The gangway was lowered. Again Fenella followed her grandma on to
the wharf over to the little cart, and a moment later they were bowling
away. The hooves of the little horse drummed over the wooden piles,
then sank softly into the sandy road. Not a soul was to be seen; there
was not even a feather of smoke. The mist rose and fell and the sea
still sounded asleep as slowly it turned on the beach.
“I seen Mr. Crane yestiddy,” said Mr. Penreddy. “He looked himself
then. Missus knocked him up a batch of scones last week.”
And now the little horse pulled up before one of the shell-like houses.
They got down. Fenella put her hand on the gate, and the big, trembling
dew-drops soaked through her glove-tips. Up a little path of round
white pebbles they went, with drenched sleeping flowers on either side.
Grandma’s delicate white picotees were so heavy with dew that they were
fallen, but their sweet smell was part of the cold morning. The blinds
were down in the little house; they mounted the steps on to the
veranda. A pair of old bluchers was on one side of the door, and a
large red watering-can on the other.
“Tut! tut! Your grandpa,” said grandma. She turned the handle. Not a
sound. She called, “Walter!” And immediately a deep voice that sounded
half stifled called back, “Is that you, Mary?”
“Wait, dear,” said grandma. “Go in there.” She pushed Fenella gently
into a small dusky sitting-room.
On the table a white cat, that had been folded up like a camel, rose,
stretched itself, yawned, and then sprang on to the tips of its toes.
Fenella buried one cold little hand in the white, warm fur, and smiled
timidly while she stroked and listened to grandma’s gentle voice and
the rolling tones of grandpa.
A door creaked. “Come in, dear.” The old woman beckoned, Fenella
followed. There, lying to one side on an immense bed, lay grandpa. Just
his head with a white tuft and his rosy face and long silver beard
showed over the quilt. He was like a very old wide-awake bird.
“Well, my girl!” said grandpa. “Give us a kiss!” Fenella kissed him.
“Ugh!” said grandpa. “Her little nose is as cold as a button. What’s
that she’s holding? Her grandma’s umbrella?”
Fenella smiled again, and crooked the swan neck over the bed-rail.
Above the bed there was a big text in a deep black frame:—
Lost! One Golden Hour
Set with Sixty Diamond Minutes.
No Reward Is Offered
For It Is Gone For Ever!
“Yer grandma painted that,” said grandpa. And he ruffled his white tuft
and looked at Fenella so merrily she almost thought he winked at her.
Miss Brill
Although it was so brilliantly fine—the blue sky powdered with gold and
great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins
Publiques—Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her fur. The air
was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint
chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now
and again a leaf came drifting—from nowhere, from the sky. Miss Brill
put up her hand and touched her fur. Dear little thing! It was nice to
feel it again. She had taken it out of its box that afternoon, shaken
out the moth-powder, given it a good brush, and rubbed the life back
into the dim little eyes. “What has been happening to me?” said the sad
little eyes. Oh, how sweet it was to see them snap at her again from
the red eiderdown!... But the nose, which was of some black
composition, wasn’t at all firm. It must have had a knock, somehow.
Never mind—a little dab of black sealing-wax when the time came—when it
was absolutely necessary.... Little rogue! Yes, she really felt like
that about it. Little rogue biting its tail just by her left ear. She
could have taken it off and laid it on her lap and stroked it. She felt
a tingling in her hands and arms, but that came from walking, she
supposed. And when she breathed, something light and sad—no, not sad,
exactly—something gentle seemed to move in her bosom.
There were a number of people out this afternoon, far more than last
Sunday. And the band sounded louder and gayer. That was because the
Season had begun. For although the band played all the year round on
Sundays, out of season it was never the same. It was like some one
playing with only the family to listen; it didn’t care how it played if
there weren’t any strangers present. Wasn’t the conductor wearing a new
coat, too? She was sure it was new. He scraped with his foot and
flapped his arms like a rooster about to crow, and the bandsmen sitting
in the green rotunda blew out their cheeks and glared at the music. Now
there came a little “flutey” bit—very pretty!—a little chain of bright
drops. She was sure it would be repeated. It was; she lifted her head
and smiled.
Only two people shared her “special” seat: a fine old man in a velvet
coat, his hands clasped over a huge carved walking-stick, and a big old
woman, sitting upright, with a roll of knitting on her embroidered
apron. They did not speak. This was disappointing, for Miss Brill
always looked forward to the conversation. She had become really quite
expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn’t listen, at
sitting in other people’s lives just for a minute while they talked
round her.
She glanced, sideways, at the old couple. Perhaps they would go soon.
Last Sunday, too, hadn’t been as interesting as usual. An Englishman
and his wife, he wearing a dreadful Panama hat and she button boots.
And she’d gone on the whole time about how she ought to wear
spectacles; she knew she needed them; but that it was no good getting
any; they’d be sure to break and they’d never keep on. And he’d been so
patient. He’d suggested everything—gold rims, the kind that curved
round your ears, little pads inside the bridge. No, nothing would
please her. “They’ll always be sliding down my nose!” Miss Brill had
wanted to shake her.
The old people sat on the bench, still as statues. Never mind, there
was always the crowd to watch. To and fro, in front of the flower-beds
and the band rotunda, the couples and groups paraded, stopped to talk,
to greet, to buy a handful of flowers from the old beggar who had his
tray fixed to the railings. Little children ran among them, swooping
and laughing; little boys with big white silk bows under their chins,
little girls, little French dolls, dressed up in velvet and lace. And
sometimes a tiny staggerer came suddenly rocking into the open from
under the trees, stopped, stared, as suddenly sat down “flop,” until
its small high-stepping mother, like a young hen, rushed scolding to
its rescue. Other people sat on the benches and green chairs, but they
were nearly always the same, Sunday after Sunday, and—Miss Brill had
often noticed—there was something funny about nearly all of them. They
were odd, silent, nearly all old, and from the way they stared they
looked as though they’d just come from dark little rooms or even—even
cupboards!
Behind the rotunda the slender trees with yellow leaves down drooping,
and through them just a line of sea, and beyond the blue sky with
gold-veined clouds.
Tum-tum-tum tiddle-um! tiddle-um! tum tiddley-um tum ta! blew the band.
Two young girls in red came by and two young soldiers in blue met them,
and they laughed and paired and went off arm-in-arm. Two peasant women
with funny straw hats passed, gravely, leading beautiful smoke-coloured
donkeys. A cold, pale nun hurried by. A beautiful woman came along and
dropped her bunch of violets, and a little boy ran after to hand them
to her, and she took them and threw them away as if they’d been
poisoned. Dear me! Miss Brill didn’t know whether to admire that or
not! And now an ermine toque and a gentleman in grey met just in front
of her. He was tall, stiff, dignified, and she was wearing the ermine
toque she’d bought when her hair was yellow. Now everything, her hair,
her face, even her eyes, was the same colour as the shabby ermine, and
her hand, in its cleaned glove, lifted to dab her lips, was a tiny
yellowish paw. Oh, she was so pleased to see him—delighted! She rather
thought they were going to meet that afternoon. She described where
she’d been—everywhere, here, there, along by the sea. The day was so
charming—didn’t he agree? And wouldn’t he, perhaps?... But he shook his
head, lighted a cigarette, slowly breathed a great deep puff into her
face, and even while she was still talking and laughing, flicked the
match away and walked on. The ermine toque was alone; she smiled more
brightly than ever. But even the band seemed to know what she was
feeling and played more softly, played tenderly, and the drum beat,
“The Brute! The Brute!” over and over. What would she do? What was
going to happen now? But as Miss Brill wondered, the ermine toque
turned, raised her hand as though she’d seen some one else, much nicer,
just over there, and pattered away. And the band changed again and
played more quickly, more gayly than ever, and the old couple on Miss
Brill’s seat got up and marched away, and such a funny old man with
long whiskers hobbled along in time to the music and was nearly knocked
over by four girls walking abreast.
Oh, how fascinating it was! How she enjoyed it! How she loved sitting
here, watching it all! It was like a play. It was exactly like a play.
Who could believe the sky at the back wasn’t painted? But it wasn’t
till a little brown dog trotted on solemn and then slowly trotted off,
like a little “theatre” dog, a little dog that had been drugged, that
Miss Brill discovered what it was that made it so exciting. They were
all on the stage. They weren’t only the audience, not only looking on;
they were acting. Even she had a part and came every Sunday. No doubt
somebody would have noticed if she hadn’t been there; she was part of
the performance after all. How strange she’d never thought of it like
that before! And yet it explained why she made such a point of starting
from home at just the same time each week—so as not to be late for the
performance—and it also explained why she had quite a queer, shy
feeling at telling her English pupils how she spent her Sunday
afternoons. No wonder! Miss Brill nearly laughed out loud. She was on
the stage. She thought of the old invalid gentleman to whom she read
the newspaper four afternoons a week while he slept in the garden. She
had got quite used to the frail head on the cotton pillow, the hollowed
eyes, the open mouth and the high pinched nose. If he’d been dead she
mightn’t have noticed for weeks; she wouldn’t have minded. But suddenly
he knew he was having the paper read to him by an actress! “An
actress!” The old head lifted; two points of light quivered in the old
eyes. “An actress—are ye?” And Miss Brill smoothed the newspaper as
though it were the manuscript of her part and said gently; “Yes, I have
been an actress for a long time.”
The band had been having a rest. Now they started again. And what they
played was warm, sunny, yet there was just a faint chill—a something,
what was it?—not sadness—no, not sadness—a something that made you want
to sing. The tune lifted, lifted, the light shone; and it seemed to
Miss Brill that in another moment all of them, all the whole company,
would begin singing. The young ones, the laughing ones who were moving
together, they would begin, and the men’s voices, very resolute and
brave, would join them. And then she too, she too, and the others on
the benches—they would come in with a kind of accompaniment—something
low, that scarcely rose or fell, something so beautiful—moving.... And
Miss Brill’s eyes filled with tears and she looked smiling at all the
other members of the company. Yes, we understand, we understand, she
thought—though what they understood she didn’t know.
Just at that moment a boy and girl came and sat down where the old
couple had been. They were beautifully dressed; they were in love. The
hero and heroine, of course, just arrived from his father’s yacht. And
still soundlessly singing, still with that trembling smile, Miss Brill
prepared to listen.
“No, not now,” said the girl. “Not here, I can’t.”
“But why? Because of that stupid old thing at the end there?” asked the
boy. “Why does she come here at all—who wants her? Why doesn’t she keep
her silly old mug at home?”
“It’s her fu-fur which is so funny,” giggled the girl. “It’s exactly
like a fried whiting.”
“Ah, be off with you!” said the boy in an angry whisper. Then: “Tell
me, ma petite chère—”
“No, not here,” said the girl. “Not _yet_.”
On her way home she usually bought a slice of honey-cake at the
baker’s. It was her Sunday treat. Sometimes there was an almond in her
slice, sometimes not. It made a great difference. If there was an
almond it was like carrying home a tiny present—a surprise—something
that might very well not have been there. She hurried on the almond
Sundays and struck the match for the kettle in quite a dashing way.
But to-day she passed the baker’s by, climbed the stairs, went into the
little dark room—her room like a cupboard—and sat down on the red
eiderdown. She sat there for a long time. The box that the fur came out
of was on the bed. She unclasped the necklet quickly; quickly, without
looking, laid it inside. But when she put the lid on she thought she
heard something crying.
Her First Ball
Exactly when the ball began Leila would have found it hard to say.
Perhaps her first real partner was the cab. It did not matter that she
shared the cab with the Sheridan girls and their brother. She sat back
in her own little corner of it, and the bolster on which her hand
rested felt like the sleeve of an unknown young man’s dress suit; and
away they bowled, past waltzing lamp-posts and houses and fences and
trees.
“Have you really never been to a ball before, Leila? But, my child, how
too weird—” cried the Sheridan girls.
“Our nearest neighbour was fifteen miles,” said Leila softly, gently
opening and shutting her fan.
Oh dear, how hard it was to be indifferent like the others! She tried
not to smile too much; she tried not to care. But every single thing
was so new and exciting... Meg’s tuberoses, Jose’s long loop of amber,
Laura’s little dark head, pushing above her white fur like a flower
through snow. She would remember for ever. It even gave her a pang to
see her cousin Laurie throw away the wisps of tissue paper he pulled
from the fastenings of his new gloves. She would like to have kept
those wisps as a keepsake, as a remembrance. Laurie leaned forward and
put his hand on Laura’s knee.
“Look here, darling,” he said. “The third and the ninth as usual.
Twig?”
Oh, how marvellous to have a brother! In her excitement Leila felt that
if there had been time, if it hadn’t been impossible, she couldn’t have
helped crying because she was an only child, and no brother had ever
said “Twig?” to her; no sister would ever say, as Meg said to Jose that
moment, “I’ve never known your hair go up more successfully than it has
to-night!”
But, of course, there was no time. They were at the drill hall already;
there were cabs in front of them and cabs behind. The road was bright
on either side with moving fan-like lights, and on the pavement gay
couples seemed to float through the air; little satin shoes chased each
other like birds.
“Hold on to me, Leila; you’ll get lost,” said Laura.
“Come on, girls, let’s make a dash for it,” said Laurie.
Leila put two fingers on Laura’s pink velvet cloak, and they were
somehow lifted past the big golden lantern, carried along the passage,
and pushed into the little room marked “Ladies.” Here the crowd was so
great there was hardly space to take off their things; the noise was
deafening. Two benches on either side were stacked high with wraps. Two
old women in white aprons ran up and down tossing fresh armfuls. And
everybody was pressing forward trying to get at the little
dressing-table and mirror at the far end.
A great quivering jet of gas lighted the ladies’ room. It couldn’t
wait; it was dancing already. When the door opened again and there came
a burst of tuning from the drill hall, it leaped almost to the ceiling.
Dark girls, fair girls were patting their hair, tying ribbons again,
tucking handkerchiefs down the fronts of their bodices, smoothing
marble-white gloves. And because they were all laughing it seemed to
Leila that they were all lovely.
“Aren’t there any invisible hair-pins?” cried a voice. “How most
extraordinary! I can’t see a single invisible hair-pin.”
“Powder my back, there’s a darling,” cried some one else.
“But I must have a needle and cotton. I’ve torn simply miles and miles
of the frill,” wailed a third.
Then, “Pass them along, pass them along!” The straw basket of
programmes was tossed from arm to arm. Darling little pink-and-silver
programmes, with pink pencils and fluffy tassels. Leila’s fingers shook
as she took one out of the basket. She wanted to ask some one, “Am I
meant to have one too?” but she had just time to read: “Waltz 3. _Two,
Two in a Canoe._ Polka 4. _Making the Feathers Fly_,” when Meg cried,
“Ready, Leila?” and they pressed their way through the crush in the
passage towards the big double doors of the drill hall.
Dancing had not begun yet, but the band had stopped tuning, and the
noise was so great it seemed that when it did begin to play it would
never be heard. Leila, pressing close to Meg, looking over Meg’s
shoulder, felt that even the little quivering coloured flags strung
across the ceiling were talking. She quite forgot to be shy; she forgot
how in the middle of dressing she had sat down on the bed with one shoe
off and one shoe on and begged her mother to ring up her cousins and
say she couldn’t go after all. And the rush of longing she had had to
be sitting on the veranda of their forsaken up-country home, listening
to the baby owls crying “More pork” in the moonlight, was changed to a
rush of joy so sweet that it was hard to bear alone. She clutched her
fan, and, gazing at the gleaming, golden floor, the azaleas, the
lanterns, the stage at one end with its red carpet and gilt chairs and
the band in a corner, she thought breathlessly, “How heavenly; how
simply heavenly!”
All the girls stood grouped together at one side of the doors, the men
at the other, and the chaperones in dark dresses, smiling rather
foolishly, walked with little careful steps over the polished floor
towards the stage.
“This is my little country cousin Leila. Be nice to her. Find her
partners; she’s under my wing,” said Meg, going up to one girl after
another.
Strange faces smiled at Leila—sweetly, vaguely. Strange voices
answered, “Of course, my dear.” But Leila felt the girls didn’t really
see her. They were looking towards the men. Why didn’t the men begin?
What were they waiting for? There they stood, smoothing their gloves,
patting their glossy hair and smiling among themselves. Then, quite
suddenly, as if they had only just made up their minds that that was
what they had to do, the men came gliding over the parquet. There was a
joyful flutter among the girls. A tall, fair man flew up to Meg, seized
her programme, scribbled something; Meg passed him on to Leila. “May I
have the pleasure?” He ducked and smiled. There came a dark man wearing
an eyeglass, then cousin Laurie with a friend, and Laura with a little
freckled fellow whose tie was crooked. Then quite an old man—fat, with
a big bald patch on his head—took her programme and murmured, “Let me
see, let me see!” And he was a long time comparing his programme, which
looked black with names, with hers. It seemed to give him so much
trouble that Leila was ashamed. “Oh, please don’t bother,” she said
eagerly. But instead of replying the fat man wrote something, glanced
at her again. “Do I remember this bright little face?” he said softly.
“Is it known to me of yore?” At that moment the band began playing; the
fat man disappeared. He was tossed away on a great wave of music that
came flying over the gleaming floor, breaking the groups up into
couples, scattering them, sending them spinning....
Leila had learned to dance at boarding school. Every Saturday afternoon
the boarders were hurried off to a little corrugated iron mission hall
where Miss Eccles (of London) held her “select” classes. But the
difference between that dusty-smelling hall—with calico texts on the
walls, the poor terrified little woman in a brown velvet toque with
rabbit’s ears thumping the cold piano, Miss Eccles poking the girls’
feet with her long white wand—and this was so tremendous that Leila was
sure if her partner didn’t come and she had to listen to that
marvellous music and to watch the others sliding, gliding over the
golden floor, she would die at least, or faint, or lift her arms and
fly out of one of those dark windows that showed the stars.
“Ours, I think—” Some one bowed, smiled, and offered her his arm; she
hadn’t to die after all. Some one’s hand pressed her waist, and she
floated away like a flower that is tossed into a pool.
“Quite a good floor, isn’t it?” drawled a faint voice close to her ear.
“I think it’s most beautifully slippery,” said Leila.
“Pardon!” The faint voice sounded surprised. Leila said it again. And
there was a tiny pause before the voice echoed, “Oh, quite!” and she
was swung round again.
He steered so beautifully. That was the great difference between
dancing with girls and men, Leila decided. Girls banged into each
other, and stamped on each other’s feet; the girl who was gentleman
always clutched you so.
The azaleas were separate flowers no longer; they were pink and white
flags streaming by.
“Were you at the Bells’ last week?” the voice came again. It sounded
tired. Leila wondered whether she ought to ask him if he would like to
stop.
“No, this is my first dance,” said she.
Her partner gave a little gasping laugh. “Oh, I say,” he protested.
“Yes, it is really the first dance I’ve ever been to.” Leila was most
fervent. It was such a relief to be able to tell somebody. “You see,
I’ve lived in the country all my life up till now....”
At that moment the music stopped, and they went to sit on two chairs
against the wall. Leila tucked her pink satin feet under and fanned
herself, while she blissfully watched the other couples passing and
disappearing through the swing doors.
“Enjoying yourself, Leila?” asked Jose, nodding her golden head.
Laura passed and gave her the faintest little wink; it made Leila
wonder for a moment whether she was quite grown up after all. Certainly
her partner did not say very much. He coughed, tucked his handkerchief
away, pulled down his waistcoat, took a minute thread off his sleeve.
But it didn’t matter. Almost immediately the band started and her
second partner seemed to spring from the ceiling.
“Floor’s not bad,” said the new voice. Did one always begin with the
floor? And then, “Were you at the Neaves’ on Tuesday?” And again Leila
explained. Perhaps it was a little strange that her partners were not
more interested. For it was thrilling. Her first ball! She was only at
the beginning of everything. It seemed to her that she had never known
what the night was like before. Up till now it had been dark, silent,
beautiful very often—oh yes—but mournful somehow. Solemn. And now it
would never be like that again—it had opened dazzling bright.
“Care for an ice?” said her partner. And they went through the swing
doors, down the passage, to the supper room. Her cheeks burned, she was
fearfully thirsty. How sweet the ices looked on little glass plates and
how cold the frosted spoon was, iced too! And when they came back to
the hall there was the fat man waiting for her by the door. It gave her
quite a shock again to see how old he was; he ought to have been on the
stage with the fathers and mothers. And when Leila compared him with
her other partners he looked shabby. His waistcoat was creased, there
was a button off his glove, his coat looked as if it was dusty with
French chalk.
“Come along, little lady,” said the fat man. He scarcely troubled to
clasp her, and they moved away so gently, it was more like walking than
dancing. But he said not a word about the floor. “Your first dance,
isn’t it?” he murmured.
“How _did_ you know?”
“Ah,” said the fat man, “that’s what it is to be old!” He wheezed
faintly as he steered her past an awkward couple. “You see, I’ve been
doing this kind of thing for the last thirty years.”
“Thirty years?” cried Leila. Twelve years before she was born!
“It hardly bears thinking about, does it?” said the fat man gloomily.
Leila looked at his bald head, and she felt quite sorry for him.
“I think it’s marvellous to be still going on,” she said kindly.
“Kind little lady,” said the fat man, and he pressed her a little
closer, and hummed a bar of the waltz. “Of course,” he said, “you can’t
hope to last anything like as long as that. No-o,” said the fat man,
“long before that you’ll be sitting up there on the stage, looking on,
in your nice black velvet. And these pretty arms will have turned into
little short fat ones, and you’ll beat time with such a different kind
of fan—a black bony one.” The fat man seemed to shudder. “And you’ll
smile away like the poor old dears up there, and point to your
daughter, and tell the elderly lady next to you how some dreadful man
tried to kiss her at the club ball. And your heart will ache, ache”—the
fat man squeezed her closer still, as if he really was sorry for that
poor heart—“because no one wants to kiss you now. And you’ll say how
unpleasant these polished floors are to walk on, how dangerous they
are. Eh, Mademoiselle Twinkletoes?” said the fat man softly.
Leila gave a light little laugh, but she did not feel like laughing.
Was it—could it all be true? It sounded terribly true. Was this first
ball only the beginning of her last ball, after all? At that the music
seemed to change; it sounded sad, sad; it rose upon a great sigh. Oh,
how quickly things changed! Why didn’t happiness last for ever? For
ever wasn’t a bit too long.
“I want to stop,” she said in a breathless voice. The fat man led her
to the door.
“No,” she said, “I won’t go outside. I won’t sit down. I’ll just stand
here, thank you.” She leaned against the wall, tapping with her foot,
pulling up her gloves and trying to smile. But deep inside her a little
girl threw her pinafore over her head and sobbed. Why had he spoiled it
all?
“I say, you know,” said the fat man, “you mustn’t take me seriously,
little lady.”
“As if I should!” said Leila, tossing her small dark head and sucking
her underlip....
Again the couples paraded. The swing doors opened and shut. Now new
music was given out by the bandmaster. But Leila didn’t want to dance
any more. She wanted to be home, or sitting on the veranda listening to
those baby owls. When she looked through the dark windows at the stars,
they had long beams like wings....
But presently a soft, melting, ravishing tune began, and a young man
with curly hair bowed before her. She would have to dance, out of
politeness, until she could find Meg. Very stiffly she walked into the
middle; very haughtily she put her hand on his sleeve. But in one
minute, in one turn, her feet glided, glided. The lights, the azaleas,
the dresses, the pink faces, the velvet chairs, all became one
beautiful flying wheel. And when her next partner bumped her into the
fat man and he said, “Par_don_,” she smiled at him more radiantly than
ever. She didn’t even recognize him again.
The Singing Lesson
With despair—cold, sharp despair—buried deep in her heart like a wicked
knife, Miss Meadows, in cap and gown and carrying a little baton, trod
the cold corridors that led to the music hall. Girls of all ages, rosy
from the air, and bubbling over with that gleeful excitement that comes
from running to school on a fine autumn morning, hurried, skipped,
fluttered by; from the hollow class-rooms came a quick drumming of
voices; a bell rang; a voice like a bird cried, “Muriel.” And then
there came from the staircase a tremendous knock-knock-knocking. Some
one had dropped her dumbbells.
The Science Mistress stopped Miss Meadows.
“Good mor-ning,” she cried, in her sweet, affected drawl. “Isn’t it
cold? It might be win-ter.”
Miss Meadows, hugging the knife, stared in hatred at the Science
Mistress. Everything about her was sweet, pale, like honey. You would
not have been surprised to see a bee caught in the tangles of that
yellow hair.
“It is rather sharp,” said Miss Meadows, grimly.
The other smiled her sugary smile.
“You look fro-zen,” said she. Her blue eyes opened wide; there came a
mocking light in them. (Had she noticed anything?)
“Oh, not quite as bad as that,” said Miss Meadows, and she gave the
Science Mistress, in exchange for her smile, a quick grimace and passed
on....
Forms Four, Five, and Six were assembled in the music hall. The noise
was deafening. On the platform, by the piano, stood Mary Beazley, Miss
Meadows’ favourite, who played accompaniments. She was turning the
music stool. When she saw Miss Meadows she gave a loud, warning “Sh-sh!
girls!” and Miss Meadows, her hands thrust in her sleeves, the baton
under her arm, strode down the centre aisle, mounted the steps, turned
sharply, seized the brass music stand, planted it in front of her, and
gave two sharp taps with her baton for silence.
“Silence, please! Immediately!” and, looking at nobody, her glance
swept over that sea of coloured flannel blouses, with bobbing pink
faces and hands, quivering butterfly hair-bows, and music-books
outspread. She knew perfectly well what they were thinking. “Meady is
in a wax.” Well, let them think it! Her eyelids quivered; she tossed
her head, defying them. What could the thoughts of those creatures
matter to some one who stood there bleeding to death, pierced to the
heart, to the heart, by such a letter—
... “I feel more and more strongly that our marriage would be a
mistake. Not that I do not love you. I love you as much as it is
possible for me to love any woman, but, truth to tell, I have come to
the conclusion that I am not a marrying man, and the idea of settling
down fills me with nothing but—” and the word “disgust” was scratched
out lightly and “regret” written over the top.
Basil! Miss Meadows stalked over to the piano. And Mary Beazley, who
was waiting for this moment, bent forward; her curls fell over her
cheeks while she breathed, “Good morning, Miss Meadows,” and she
motioned towards rather than handed to her mistress a beautiful yellow
chrysanthemum. This little ritual of the flower had been gone through
for ages and ages, quite a term and a half. It was as much part of the
lesson as opening the piano. But this morning, instead of taking it up,
instead of tucking it into her belt while she leant over Mary and said,
“Thank you, Mary. How very nice! Turn to page thirty-two,” what was
Mary’s horror when Miss Meadows totally ignored the chrysanthemum, made
no reply to her greeting, but said in a voice of ice, “Page fourteen,
please, and mark the accents well.”
Staggering moment! Mary blushed until the tears stood in her eyes, but
Miss Meadows was gone back to the music stand; her voice rang through
the music hall.
“Page fourteen. We will begin with page fourteen. ‘A Lament.’ Now,
girls, you ought to know it by this time. We shall take it all
together; not in parts, all together. And without expression. Sing it,
though, quite simply, beating time with the left hand.”
She raised the baton; she tapped the music stand twice. Down came Mary
on the opening chord; down came all those left hands, beating the air,
and in chimed those young, mournful voices:—
Fast! Ah, too Fast Fade the Ro-o-ses of Pleasure;
Soon Autumn yields unto Wi-i-nter Drear.
Fleetly! Ah, Fleetly Mu-u-sic’s Gay Measure
Passes away from the Listening Ear.
Good Heavens, what could be more tragic than that lament! Every note
was a sigh, a sob, a groan of awful mournfulness. Miss Meadows lifted
her arms in the wide gown and began conducting with both hands. “... I
feel more and more strongly that our marriage would be a mistake....”
she beat. And the voices cried: _Fleetly! Ah, Fleetly._ What could have
possessed him to write such a letter! What could have led up to it! It
came out of nothing. His last letter had been all about a fumed-oak
bookcase he had bought for “our” books, and a “natty little hall-stand”
he had seen, “a very neat affair with a carved owl on a bracket,
holding three hat-brushes in its claws.” How she had smiled at that! So
like a man to think one needed three hat-brushes! _From the Listening
Ear_, sang the voices.
“Once again,” said Miss Meadows. “But this time in parts. Still without
expression.” _Fast! Ah, too Fast._ With the gloom of the contraltos
added, one could scarcely help shuddering. _Fade the Roses of
Pleasure._ Last time he had come to see her, Basil had worn a rose in
his buttonhole. How handsome he had looked in that bright blue suit,
with that dark red rose! And he knew it, too. He couldn’t help knowing
it. First he stroked his hair, then his moustache; his teeth gleamed
when he smiled.
“The headmaster’s wife keeps on asking me to dinner. It’s a perfect
nuisance. I never get an evening to myself in that place.”
“But can’t you refuse?”
“Oh, well, it doesn’t do for a man in my position to be unpopular.”
_Music’s Gay Measure_, wailed the voices. The willow trees, outside the
high, narrow windows, waved in the wind. They had lost half their
leaves. The tiny ones that clung wriggled like fishes caught on a line.
“... I am not a marrying man....” The voices were silent; the piano
waited.
“Quite good,” said Miss Meadows, but still in such a strange, stony
tone that the younger girls began to feel positively frightened. “But
now that we know it, we shall take it with expression. As much
expression as you can put into it. Think of the words, girls. Use your
imaginations. _Fast! Ah, too Fast_,” cried Miss Meadows. “That ought to
break out—a loud, strong _forte_—a lament. And then in the second line,
_Winter Drear_, make that _Drear_ sound as if a cold wind were blowing
through it. _Dre-ear!_” said she so awfully that Mary Beazley, on the
music stool, wriggled her spine. “The third line should be one
crescendo. _Fleetly! Ah, Fleetly Music’s Gay Measure._ Breaking on the
first word of the last line, _Passes._ And then on the word, _Away_,
you must begin to die... to fade... until _The Listening Ear_ is
nothing more than a faint whisper.... You can slow down as much as you
like almost on the last line. Now, please.”
Again the two light taps; she lifted her arms again. _Fast! Ah, too
Fast._ “... and the idea of settling down fills me with nothing but
disgust—” Disgust was what he had written. That was as good as to say
their engagement was definitely broken off. Broken off! Their
engagement! People had been surprised enough that she had got engaged.
The Science Mistress would not believe it at first. But nobody had been
as surprised as she. She was thirty. Basil was twenty-five. It had been
a miracle, simply a miracle, to hear him say, as they walked home from
church that very dark night, “You know, somehow or other, I’ve got fond
of you.” And he had taken hold of the end of her ostrich feather boa.
_Passes away from the Listening Ear._
“Repeat! Repeat!” said Miss Meadows. “More expression, girls! Once
more!”
_Fast! Ah, too Fast._ The older girls were crimson; some of the younger
ones began to cry. Big spots of rain blew against the windows, and one
could hear the willows whispering, “... not that I do not love you....”
“But, my darling, if you love me,” thought Miss Meadows, “I don’t mind
how much it is. Love me as little as you like.” But she knew he didn’t
love her. Not to have cared enough to scratch out that word “disgust,”
so that she couldn’t read it! _Soon Autumn yields unto Winter Drear._
She would have to leave the school, too. She could never face the
Science Mistress or the girls after it got known. She would have to
disappear somewhere. _Passes away._ The voices began to die, to fade,
to whisper... to vanish....
Suddenly the door opened. A little girl in blue walked fussily up the
aisle, hanging her head, biting her lips, and twisting the silver
bangle on her red little wrist. She came up the steps and stood before
Miss Meadows.
“Well, Monica, what is it?”
“Oh, if you please, Miss Meadows,” said the little girl, gasping, “Miss
Wyatt wants to see you in the mistress’s room.”
“Very well,” said Miss Meadows. And she called to the girls, “I shall
put you on your honour to talk quietly while I am away.” But they were
too subdued to do anything else. Most of them were blowing their noses.
The corridors were silent and cold; they echoed to Miss Meadows’ steps.
The head mistress sat at her desk. For a moment she did not look up.
She was as usual disentangling her eyeglasses, which had got caught in
her lace tie. “Sit down, Miss Meadows,” she said very kindly. And then
she picked up a pink envelope from the blotting-pad. “I sent for you
just now because this telegram has come for you.”
“A telegram for me, Miss Wyatt?”
Basil! He had committed suicide, decided Miss Meadows. Her hand flew
out, but Miss Wyatt held the telegram back a moment. “I hope it’s not
bad news,” she said, so more than kindly. And Miss Meadows tore it
open.
“Pay no attention to letter, must have been mad, bought hat-stand
to-day—Basil,” she read. She couldn’t take her eyes off the telegram.
“I do hope it’s nothing very serious,” said Miss Wyatt, leaning
forward.
“Oh, no, thank you, Miss Wyatt,” blushed Miss Meadows. “It’s nothing
bad at all. It’s”—and she gave an apologetic little laugh—“it’s from my
_fiancé_ saying that... saying that—” There was a pause. “I _see_,”
said Miss Wyatt. And another pause. Then—“You’ve fifteen minutes more
of your class, Miss Meadows, haven’t you?”
“Yes, Miss Wyatt.” She got up. She half ran towards the door.
“Oh, just one minute, Miss Meadows,” said Miss Wyatt. “I must say I
don’t approve of my teachers having telegrams sent to them in school
hours, unless in case of very bad news, such as death,” explained Miss
Wyatt, “or a very serious accident, or something to that effect. Good
news, Miss Meadows, will always keep, you know.”
On the wings of hope, of love, of joy, Miss Meadows sped back to the
music hall, up the aisle, up the steps, over to the piano.
“Page thirty-two, Mary,” she said, “page thirty-two,” and, picking up
the yellow chrysanthemum, she held it to her lips to hide her smile.
Then she turned to the girls, rapped with her baton: “Page thirty-two,
girls. Page thirty-two.”
We come here To-day with Flowers o’erladen,
With Baskets of Fruit and Ribbons to boot,
To-oo Congratulate . . .
“Stop! Stop!” cried Miss Meadows. “This is awful. This is dreadful.”
And she beamed at her girls. “What’s the matter with you all? Think,
girls, think of what you’re singing. Use your imaginations. _With
Flowers o’erladen. Baskets of Fruit and Ribbons to boot._ And
_Congratulate._” Miss Meadows broke off. “Don’t look so doleful, girls.
It ought to sound warm, joyful, eager. _Congratulate._ Once more.
Quickly. All together. Now then!”
And this time Miss Meadows’ voice sounded over all the other
voices—full, deep, glowing with expression.
The Stranger
It seemed to the little crowd on the wharf that she was never going to
move again. There she lay, immense, motionless on the grey crinkled
water, a loop of smoke above her, an immense flock of gulls screaming
and diving after the galley droppings at the stern. You could just see
little couples parading—little flies walking up and down the dish on
the grey crinkled tablecloth. Other flies clustered and swarmed at the
edge. Now there was a gleam of white on the lower deck—the cook’s apron
or the stewardess perhaps. Now a tiny black spider raced up the ladder
on to the bridge.
In the front of the crowd a strong-looking, middle-aged man, dressed
very well, very snugly in a grey overcoat, grey silk scarf, thick
gloves and dark felt hat, marched up and down, twirling his folded
umbrella. He seemed to be the leader of the little crowd on the wharf
and at the same time to keep them together. He was something between
the sheep-dog and the shepherd.
But what a fool—what a fool he had been not to bring any glasses! There
wasn’t a pair of glasses between the whole lot of them.
“Curious thing, Mr. Scott, that none of us thought of glasses. We might
have been able to stir ’em up a bit. We might have managed a little
signalling. _Don’t hesitate to land. Natives harmless._ Or: _A welcome
awaits you. All is forgiven._ What? Eh?”
Mr. Hammond’s quick, eager glance, so nervous and yet so friendly and
confiding, took in everybody on the wharf, roped in even those old
chaps lounging against the gangways. They knew, every man-jack of them,
that Mrs. Hammond was on that boat, and that he was so tremendously
excited it never entered his head not to believe that this marvellous
fact meant something to them too. It warmed his heart towards them.
They were, he decided, as decent a crowd of people—— Those old chaps
over by the gangways, too—fine, solid old chaps. What chests—by Jove!
And he squared his own, plunged his thick-gloved hands into his
pockets, rocked from heel to toe.
“Yes, my wife’s been in Europe for the last ten months. On a visit to
our eldest girl, who was married last year. I brought her up here, as
far as Salisbury, myself. So I thought I’d better come and fetch her
back. Yes, yes, yes.” The shrewd grey eyes narrowed again and searched
anxiously, quickly, the motionless liner. Again his overcoat was
unbuttoned. Out came the thin, butter-yellow watch again, and for the
twentieth—fiftieth—hundredth time he made the calculation.
“Let me see now. It was two fifteen when the doctor’s launch went off.
Two fifteen. It is now exactly twenty-eight minutes past four. That is
to say, the doctor’s been gone two hours and thirteen minutes. Two
hours and thirteen minutes! Whee-ooh!” He gave a queer little
half-whistle and snapped his watch to again. “But I think we should
have been told if there was anything up—don’t you, Mr. Gaven?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Hammond! I don’t think there’s anything to—anything to
worry about,” said Mr. Gaven, knocking out his pipe against the heel of
his shoe. “At the same time—”
“Quite so! Quite so!” cried Mr. Hammond. “Dashed annoying!” He paced
quickly up and down and came back again to his stand between Mr. and
Mrs. Scott and Mr. Gaven. “It’s getting quite dark, too,” and he waved
his folded umbrella as though the dusk at least might have had the
decency to keep off for a bit. But the dusk came slowly, spreading like
a slow stain over the water. Little Jean Scott dragged at her mother’s
hand.
“I wan’ my tea, mammy!” she wailed.
“I expect you do,” said Mr. Hammond. “I expect all these ladies want
their tea.” And his kind, flushed, almost pitiful glance roped them all
in again. He wondered whether Janey was having a final cup of tea in
the saloon out there. He hoped so; he thought not. It would be just
like her not to leave the deck. In that case perhaps the deck steward
would bring her up a cup. If he’d been there he’d have got it for
her—somehow. And for a moment he was on deck, standing over her,
watching her little hand fold round the cup in the way she had, while
she drank the only cup of tea to be got on board.... But now he was
back here, and the Lord only knew when that cursed Captain would stop
hanging about in the stream. He took another turn, up and down, up and
down. He walked as far as the cab-stand to make sure his driver hadn’t
disappeared; back he swerved again to the little flock huddled in the
shelter of the banana crates. Little Jean Scott was still wanting her
tea. Poor little beggar! He wished he had a bit of chocolate on him.
“Here, Jean!” he said. “Like a lift up?” And easily, gently, he swung
the little girl on to a higher barrel. The movement of holding her,
steadying her, relieved him wonderfully, lightened his heart.
“Hold on,” he said, keeping an arm round her.
“Oh, don’t worry about _Jean_, Mr. Hammond!” said Mrs. Scott.
“That’s all right, Mrs. Scott. No trouble. It’s a pleasure. Jean’s a
little pal of mine, aren’t you, Jean?”
“Yes, Mr. Hammond,” said Jean, and she ran her finger down the dent of
his felt hat.
But suddenly she caught him by the ear and gave a loud scream. “Lo-ok,
Mr. Hammond! She’s moving! Look, she’s coming in!”
By Jove! So she was. At last! She was slowly, slowly turning round. A
bell sounded far over the water and a great spout of steam gushed into
the air. The gulls rose; they fluttered away like bits of white paper.
And whether that deep throbbing was her engines or his heart Mr.
Hammond couldn’t say. He had to nerve himself to bear it, whatever it
was. At that moment old Captain Johnson, the harbour-master, came
striding down the wharf, a leather portfolio under his arm.
“Jean’ll be all right,” said Mr. Scott. “I’ll hold her.” He was just in
time. Mr. Hammond had forgotten about Jean. He sprang away to greet old
Captain Johnson.
“Well, Captain,” the eager, nervous voice rang out again, “you’ve taken
pity on us at last.”
“It’s no good blaming me, Mr. Hammond,” wheezed old Captain Johnson,
staring at the liner. “You got Mrs. Hammond on board, ain’t yer?”
“Yes, yes!” said Hammond, and he kept by the harbour-master’s side.
“Mrs. Hammond’s there. Hul-lo! We shan’t be long now!”
With her telephone ring-ringing, the thrum of her screw filling the
air, the big liner bore down on them, cutting sharp through the dark
water so that big white shavings curled to either side. Hammond and the
harbour-master kept in front of the rest. Hammond took off his hat; he
raked the decks—they were crammed with passengers; he waved his hat and
bawled a loud, strange “Hul-lo!” across the water; and then turned
round and burst out laughing and said something—nothing—to old Captain
Johnson.
“Seen her?” asked the harbour-master.
“No, not yet. Steady—wait a bit!” And suddenly, between two great
clumsy idiots—“Get out of the way there!” he signed with his
umbrella—he saw a hand raised—a white glove shaking a handkerchief.
Another moment, and—thank God, thank God!—there she was. There was
Janey. There was Mrs. Hammond, yes, yes, yes—standing by the rail and
smiling and nodding and waving her handkerchief.
“Well that’s first class—first class! Well, well, well!” He positively
stamped. Like lightning he drew out his cigar-case and offered it to
old Captain Johnson. “Have a cigar, Captain! They’re pretty good. Have
a couple! Here”—and he pressed all the cigars in the case on the
harbour-master—“I’ve a couple of boxes up at the hotel.”
“Thenks, Mr. Hammond!” wheezed old Captain Johnson.
Hammond stuffed the cigar-case back. His hands were shaking, but he’d
got hold of himself again. He was able to face Janey. There she was,
leaning on the rail, talking to some woman and at the same time
watching him, ready for him. It struck him, as the gulf of water
closed, how small she looked on that huge ship. His heart was wrung
with such a spasm that he could have cried out. How little she looked
to have come all that long way and back by herself! Just like her,
though. Just like Janey. She had the courage of a—— And now the crew
had come forward and parted the passengers; they had lowered the rails
for the gangways.
The voices on shore and the voices on board flew to greet each other.
“All well?”
“All well.”
“How’s mother?”
“Much better.”
“Hullo, Jean!”
“Hillo, Aun’ Emily!”
“Had a good voyage?”
“Splendid!”
“Shan’t be long now!”
“Not long now.”
The engines stopped. Slowly she edged to the wharf-side.
“Make way there—make way—make way!” And the wharf hands brought the
heavy gangways along at a sweeping run. Hammond signed to Janey to stay
where she was. The old harbour-master stepped forward; he followed. As
to “ladies first,” or any rot like that, it never entered his head.
“After you, Captain!” he cried genially. And, treading on the old man’s
heels, he strode up the gangway on to the deck in a bee-line to Janey,
and Janey was clasped in his arms.
“Well, well, well! Yes, yes! Here we are at last!” he stammered. It was
all he could say. And Janey emerged, and her cool little voice—the only
voice in the world for him—said,
“Well, darling! Have you been waiting long?”
No; not long. Or, at any rate, it didn’t matter. It was over now. But
the point was, he had a cab waiting at the end of the wharf. Was she
ready to go off. Was her luggage ready? In that case they could cut off
sharp with her cabin luggage and let the rest go hang until to-morrow.
He bent over her and she looked up with her familiar half-smile. She
was just the same. Not a day changed. Just as he’d always known her.
She laid her small hand on his sleeve.
“How are the children, John?” she asked.
(Hang the children!) “Perfectly well. Never better in their lives.”
“Haven’t they sent me letters?”
“Yes, yes—of course! I’ve left them at the hotel for you to digest
later on.”
“We can’t go quite so fast,” said she. “I’ve got people to say good-bye
to—and then there’s the Captain.” As his face fell she gave his arm a
small understanding squeeze. “If the Captain comes off the bridge I
want you to thank him for having looked after your wife so
beautifully.” Well, he’d got her. If she wanted another ten minutes—As
he gave way she was surrounded. The whole first-class seemed to want to
say good-bye to Janey.
“Good-bye, _dear_ Mrs. Hammond! And next time you’re in Sydney I’ll
_expect_ you.”
“Darling Mrs. Hammond! You won’t forget to write to me, will you?”
“Well, Mrs. Hammond, what this boat would have been without you!”
It was as plain as a pikestaff that she was by far the most popular
woman on board. And she took it all—just as usual. Absolutely composed.
Just her little self—just Janey all over; standing there with her veil
thrown back. Hammond never noticed what his wife had on. It was all the
same to him whatever she wore. But to-day he did notice that she wore a
black “costume”—didn’t they call it?—with white frills, trimmings he
supposed they were, at the neck and sleeves. All this while Janey
handed him round.
“John, dear!” And then: “I want to introduce you to—”
Finally they did escape, and she led the way to her state-room. To
follow Janey down the passage that she knew so well—that was so strange
to him; to part the green curtains after her and to step into the cabin
that had been hers gave him exquisite happiness. But—confound it!—the
stewardess was there on the floor, strapping up the rugs.
“That’s the last, Mrs. Hammond,” said the stewardess, rising and
pulling down her cuffs.
He was introduced again, and then Janey and the stewardess disappeared
into the passage. He heard whisperings. She was getting the tipping
business over, he supposed. He sat down on the striped sofa and took
his hat off. There were the rugs she had taken with her; they looked
good as new. All her luggage looked fresh, perfect. The labels were
written in her beautiful little clear hand—“Mrs. John Hammond.”
“Mrs. John Hammond!” He gave a long sigh of content and leaned back,
crossing his arms. The strain was over. He felt he could have sat there
for ever sighing his relief—the relief at being rid of that horrible
tug, pull, grip on his heart. The danger was over. That was the
feeling. They were on dry land again.
But at that moment Janey’s head came round the corner.
“Darling—do you mind? I just want to go and say good-bye to the
doctor.”
Hammond started up. “I’ll come with you.”
“No, no!” she said. “Don’t bother. I’d rather not. I’ll not be a
minute.”
And before he could answer she was gone. He had half a mind to run
after her; but instead he sat down again.
Would she really not be long? What was the time now? Out came the
watch; he stared at nothing. That was rather queer of Janey, wasn’t it?
Why couldn’t she have told the stewardess to say good-bye for her? Why
did she have to go chasing after the ship’s doctor? She could have sent
a note from the hotel even if the affair had been urgent. Urgent? Did
it—could it mean that she had been ill on the voyage—she was keeping
something from him? That was it! He seized his hat. He was going off to
find that fellow and to wring the truth out of him at all costs. He
thought he’d noticed just something. She was just a touch too calm—too
steady. From the very first moment—
The curtains rang. Janey was back. He jumped to his feet.
“Janey, have you been ill on this voyage? You have!”
“Ill?” Her airy little voice mocked him. She stepped over the rugs, and
came up close, touched his breast, and looked up at him.
“Darling,” she said, “don’t frighten me. Of course I haven’t! Whatever
makes you think I have? Do I look ill?”
But Hammond didn’t see her. He only felt that she was looking at him
and that there was no need to worry about anything. She was here to
look after things. It was all right. Everything was.
The gentle pressure of her hand was so calming that he put his over
hers to hold it there. And she said:
“Stand still. I want to look at you. I haven’t seen you yet. You’ve had
your beard beautifully trimmed, and you look—younger, I think, and
decidedly thinner! Bachelor life agrees with you.”
“Agrees with me!” He groaned for love and caught her close again. And
again, as always, he had the feeling that he was holding something that
never was quite his—his. Something too delicate, too precious, that
would fly away once he let go.
“For God’s sake let’s get off to the hotel so that we can be by
ourselves!” And he rang the bell hard for some one to look sharp with
the luggage.
Walking down the wharf together she took his arm. He had her on his arm
again. And the difference it made to get into the cab after Janey—to
throw the red-and-yellow striped blanket round them both—to tell the
driver to hurry because neither of them had had any tea. No more going
without his tea or pouring out his own. She was back. He turned to her,
squeezed her hand, and said gently, teasingly, in the “special” voice
he had for her: “Glad to be home again, dearie?” She smiled; she didn’t
even bother to answer, but gently she drew his hand away as they came
to the brighter streets.
“We’ve got the best room in the hotel,” he said. “I wouldn’t be put off
with another. And I asked the chambermaid to put in a bit of a fire in
case you felt chilly. She’s a nice, attentive girl. And I thought now
we were here we wouldn’t bother to go home to-morrow, but spend the day
looking round and leave the morning after. Does that suit you? There’s
no hurry, is there? The children will have you soon enough.... I
thought a day’s sight-seeing might make a nice break in your
journey—eh, Janey?”
“Have you taken the tickets for the day after?” she asked.
“I should think I have!” He unbuttoned his overcoat and took out his
bulging pocket-book. “Here we are! I reserved a first-class carriage to
Cooktown. There it is—‘Mr. _and_ Mrs. John Hammond.’ I thought we might
as well do ourselves comfortably, and we don’t want other people
butting in, do we? But if you’d like to stop here a bit longer—?”
“Oh, no!” said Janey quickly. “Not for the world! The day after
to-morrow, then. And the children—”
But they had reached the hotel. The manager was standing in the broad,
brilliantly-lighted porch. He came down to greet them. A porter ran
from the hall for their boxes.
“Well, Mr. Arnold, here’s Mrs. Hammond at last!”
The manager led them through the hall himself and pressed the
elevator-bell. Hammond knew there were business pals of his sitting at
the little hall tables having a drink before dinner. But he wasn’t
going to risk interruption; he looked neither to the right nor the
left. They could think what they pleased. If they didn’t understand,
the more fools they—and he stepped out of the lift, unlocked the door
of their room, and shepherded Janey in. The door shut. Now, at last,
they were alone together. He turned up the light. The curtains were
drawn; the fire blazed. He flung his hat on to the huge bed and went
towards her.
But—would you believe it!—again they were interrupted. This time it was
the porter with the luggage. He made two journeys of it, leaving the
door open in between, taking his time, whistling through his teeth in
the corridor. Hammond paced up and down the room, tearing off his
gloves, tearing off his scarf. Finally he flung his overcoat on to the
bedside.
At last the fool was gone. The door clicked. Now they _were_ alone.
Said Hammond: “I feel I’ll never have you to myself again. These cursed
people! Janey”—and he bent his flushed, eager gaze upon her—“let’s have
dinner up here. If we go down to the restaurant we’ll be interrupted,
and then there’s the confounded music” (the music he’d praised so
highly, applauded so loudly last night!). “We shan’t be able to hear
each other speak. Let’s have something up here in front of the fire.
It’s too late for tea. I’ll order a little supper, shall I? How does
that idea strike you?”
“Do, darling!” said Janey. “And while you’re away—the children’s
letters—”
“Oh, later on will do!” said Hammond.
“But then we’d get it over,” said Janey. “And I’d first have time to—”
“Oh, I needn’t go down!” explained Hammond. “I’ll just ring and give
the order... you don’t want to send me away, do you?”
Janey shook her head and smiled.
“But you’re thinking of something else. You’re worrying about
something,” said Hammond. “What is it? Come and sit here—come and sit
on my knee before the fire.”
“I’ll just unpin my hat,” said Janey, and she went over to the
dressing-table. “A-ah!” She gave a little cry.
“What is it?”
“Nothing, darling. I’ve just found the children’s letters. That’s all
right! They will keep. No hurry now!” She turned to him, clasping them.
She tucked them into her frilled blouse. She cried quickly, gaily: “Oh,
how typical this dressing-table is of you!”
“Why? What’s the matter with it?” said Hammond.
“If it were floating in eternity I should say ‘John!’” laughed Janey,
staring at the big bottle of hair tonic, the wicker bottle of
eau-de-Cologne, the two hair-brushes, and a dozen new collars tied with
pink tape. “Is this all your luggage?”
“Hang my luggage!” said Hammond; but all the same he liked being
laughed at by Janey. “Let’s talk. Let’s get down to things. Tell
me”—and as Janey perched on his knees he leaned back and drew her into
the deep, ugly chair—“tell me you’re really glad to be back, Janey.”
“Yes, darling, I am glad,” she said.
But just as when he embraced her he felt she would fly away, so Hammond
never knew—never knew for dead certain that she was as glad as he was.
How could he know? Would he ever know? Would he always have this
craving—this pang like hunger, somehow, to make Janey so much part of
him that there wasn’t any of her to escape? He wanted to blot out
everybody, everything. He wished now he’d turned off the light. That
might have brought her nearer. And now those letters from the children
rustled in her blouse. He could have chucked them into the fire.
“Janey,” he whispered.
“Yes, dear?” She lay on his breast, but so lightly, so remotely. Their
breathing rose and fell together.
“Janey!”
“What is it?”
“Turn to me,” he whispered. A slow, deep flush flowed into his
forehead. “Kiss me, Janey! You kiss me!”
It seemed to him there was a tiny pause—but long enough for him to
suffer torture—before her lips touched his, firmly, lightly—kissing
them as she always kissed him, as though the kiss—how could he describe
it?—confirmed what they were saying, signed the contract. But that
wasn’t what he wanted; that wasn’t at all what he thirsted for. He felt
suddenly, horrible tired.
“If you knew,” he said, opening his eyes, “what it’s been like—waiting
to-day. I thought the boat never would come in. There we were, hanging
about. What kept you so long?”
She made no answer. She was looking away from him at the fire. The
flames hurried—hurried over the coals, flickered, fell.
“Not asleep, are you?” said Hammond, and he jumped her up and down.
“No,” she said. And then: “Don’t do that, dear. No, I was thinking. As
a matter of fact,” she said, “one of the passengers died last night—a
man. That’s what held us up. We brought him in—I mean, he wasn’t buried
at sea. So, of course, the ship’s doctor and the shore doctor—”
“What was it?” asked Hammond uneasily. He hated to hear of death. He
hated this to have happened. It was, in some queer way, as though he
and Janey had met a funeral on their way to the hotel.
“Oh, it wasn’t anything in the least infectious!” said Janey. She was
speaking scarcely above her breath. “It was _heart_.” A pause. “Poor
fellow!” she said. “Quite young.” And she watched the fire flicker and
fall. “He died in my arms,” said Janey.
The blow was so sudden that Hammond thought he would faint. He couldn’t
move; he couldn’t breathe. He felt all his strength flowing—flowing
into the big dark chair, and the big dark chair held him fast, gripped
him, forced him to bear it.
“What?” he said dully. “What’s that you say?”
“The end was quite peaceful,” said the small voice. “He just”—and
Hammond saw her lift her gentle hand—“breathed his life away at the
end.” And her hand fell.
“Who—else was there?” Hammond managed to ask.
“Nobody. I was alone with him.”
Ah, my God, what was she saying! What was she doing to him! This would
kill him! And all the while she spoke:
“I saw the change coming and I sent the steward for the doctor, but the
doctor was too late. He couldn’t have done anything, anyway.”
“But—why _you_, why _you_?” moaned Hammond.
At that Janey turned quickly, quickly searched his face.
“You don’t _mind_, John, do you?” she asked. “You don’t—It’s nothing to
do with you and me.”
Somehow or other he managed to shake some sort of smile at her. Somehow
or other he stammered: “No—go—on, go on! I want you to tell me.”
“But, John darling—”
“Tell me, Janey!”
“There’s nothing to tell,” she said, wondering. “He was one of the
first-class passengers. I saw he was very ill when he came on board....
But he seemed to be so much better until yesterday. He had a severe
attack in the afternoon—excitement—nervousness, I think, about
arriving. And after that he never recovered.”
“But why didn’t the stewardess—”
“Oh, my dear—the stewardess!” said Janey. “What would he have felt? And
besides... he might have wanted to leave a message... to—”
“Didn’t he?” muttered Hammond. “Didn’t he say anything?”
“No, darling, not a word!” She shook her head softly. “All the time I
was with him he was too weak... he was too weak even to move a
finger....”
Janey was silent. But her words, so light, so soft, so chill, seemed to
hover in the air, to rain into his breast like snow.
The fire had gone red. Now it fell in with a sharp sound and the room
was colder. Cold crept up his arms. The room was huge, immense,
glittering. It filled his whole world. There was the great blind bed,
with his coat flung across it like some headless man saying his
prayers. There was the luggage, ready to be carried away again,
anywhere, tossed into trains, carted on to boats.
... “He was too weak. He was too weak to move a finger.” And yet he
died in Janey’s arms. She—who’d never—never once in all these
years—never on one single solitary occasion—
No; he mustn’t think of it. Madness lay in thinking of it. No, he
wouldn’t face it. He couldn’t stand it. It was too much to bear!
And now Janey touched his tie with her fingers. She pinched the edges
of the tie together.
“You’re not—sorry I told you, John darling? It hasn’t made you sad? It
hasn’t spoilt our evening—our being alone together?”
But at that he had to hide his face. He put his face into her bosom and
his arms enfolded her.
Spoilt their evening! Spoilt their being alone together! They would
never be alone together again.
Bank Holiday
A stout man with a pink face wears dingy white flannel trousers, a blue
coat with a pink handkerchief showing, and a straw hat much too small
for him, perched at the back of his head. He plays the guitar. A little
chap in white canvas shoes, his face hidden under a felt hat like a
broken wing, breathes into a flute; and a tall thin fellow, with
bursting over-ripe button boots, draws ribbons—long, twisted, streaming
ribbons—of tune out of a fiddle. They stand, unsmiling, but not
serious, in the broad sunlight opposite the fruit-shop; the pink spider
of a hand beats the guitar, the little squat hand, with a
brass-and-turquoise ring, forces the reluctant flute, and the fiddler’s
arm tries to saw the fiddle in two.
A crowd collects, eating oranges and bananas, tearing off the skins,
dividing, sharing. One young girl has even a basket of strawberries,
but she does not eat them. “Aren’t they _dear_!” She stares at the tiny
pointed fruits as if she were afraid of them. The Australian soldier
laughs. “Here, go on, there’s not more than a mouthful.” But he doesn’t
want her to eat them, either. He likes to watch her little frightened
face, and her puzzled eyes lifted to his: “Aren’t they a _price_!” He
pushes out his chest and grins. Old fat women in velvet bodices—old
dusty pin-cushions—lean old hags like worn umbrellas with a quivering
bonnet on top; young women, in muslins, with hats that might have grown
on hedges, and high pointed shoes; men in khaki, sailors, shabby
clerks, young Jews in fine cloth suits with padded shoulders and wide
trousers, “hospital boys” in blue—the sun discovers them—the loud, bold
music holds them together in one big knot for a moment. The young ones
are larking, pushing each other on and off the pavement, dodging,
nudging; the old ones are talking: “So I said to ’im, if you wants the
doctor to yourself, fetch ’im, says I.”
“An’ by the time they was cooked there wasn’t so much as you could put
in the palm of me ’and!”
The only ones who are quiet are the ragged children. They stand, as
close up to the musicians as they can get, their hands behind their
backs, their eyes big. Occasionally a leg hops, an arm wags. A tiny
staggerer, overcome, turns round twice, sits down solemn, and then gets
up again.
“Ain’t it lovely?” whispers a small girl behind her hand.
And the music breaks into bright pieces, and joins together again, and
again breaks, and is dissolved, and the crowd scatters, moving slowly
up the hill.
At the corner of the road the stalls begin.
“Ticklers! Tuppence a tickler! ’Ool ’ave a tickler? Tickle ’em up,
boys.” Little soft brooms on wire handles. They are eagerly bought by
the soldiers.
“Buy a golliwog! Tuppence a golliwog!”
“Buy a jumping donkey! All alive-oh!”
“_Su_-perior chewing gum. Buy something to do, boys.”
“Buy a rose. Give ’er a rose, boy. Roses, lady?”
“Fevvers! Fevvers!” They are hard to resist. Lovely, streaming
feathers, emerald green, scarlet, bright blue, canary yellow. Even the
babies wear feathers threaded through their bonnets.
And an old woman in a three-cornered paper hat cries as if it were her
final parting advice, the only way of saving yourself or of bringing
him to his senses: “Buy a three-cornered ’at, my dear, an’ put it on!”
It is a flying day, half sun, half wind. When the sun goes in a shadow
flies over; when it comes out again it is fiery. The men and women feel
it burning their backs, their breasts and their arms; they feel their
bodies expanding, coming alive... so that they make large embracing
gestures, lift up their arms, for nothing, swoop down on a girl, blurt
into laughter.
Lemonade! A whole tank of it stands on a table covered with a cloth;
and lemons like blunted fishes blob in the yellow water. It looks
solid, like a jelly, in the thick glasses. Why can’t they drink it
without spilling it? Everybody spills it, and before the glass is
handed back the last drops are thrown in a ring.
Round the ice-cream cart, with its striped awning and bright brass
cover, the children cluster. Little tongues lick, lick round the cream
trumpets, round the squares. The cover is lifted, the wooden spoon
plunges in; one shuts one’s eyes to feel it, silently scrunching.
“Let these little birds tell you your future!” She stands beside the
cage, a shrivelled ageless Italian, clasping and unclasping her dark
claws. Her face, a treasure of delicate carving, is tied in a
green-and-gold scarf. And inside their prison the love-birds flutter
towards the papers in the seed-tray.
“You have great strength of character. You will marry a red-haired man
and have three children. Beware of a blonde woman.” Look out! Look out!
A motor-car driven by a fat chauffeur comes rushing down the hill.
Inside there a blonde woman, pouting, leaning forward—rushing through
your life—beware! beware!
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am an auctioneer by profession, and if what I
tell you is not the truth I am liable to have my licence taken away
from me and a heavy imprisonment.” He holds the licence across his
chest; the sweat pours down his face into his paper collar; his eyes
look glazed. When he takes off his hat there is a deep pucker of angry
flesh on his forehead. Nobody buys a watch.
Look out again! A huge barouche comes swinging down the hill with two
old, old babies inside. She holds up a lace parasol; he sucks the knob
of his cane, and the fat old bodies roll together as the cradle rocks,
and the steaming horse leaves a trail of manure as it ambles down the
hill.
Under a tree, Professor Leonard, in cap and gown, stands beside his
banner. He is here “for one day,” from the London, Paris and Brussels
Exhibition, to tell your fortune from your face. And he stands, smiling
encouragement, like a clumsy dentist. When the big men, romping and
swearing a moment before, hand across their sixpence, and stand before
him, they are suddenly serious, dumb, timid, almost blushing as the
Professor’s quick hand notches the printed card. They are like little
children caught playing in a forbidden garden by the owner, stepping
from behind a tree.
The top of the hill is reached. How hot it is! How fine it is! The
public-house is open, and the crowd presses in. The mother sits on the
pavement edge with her baby, and the father brings her out a glass of
dark, brownish stuff, and then savagely elbows his way in again. A reek
of beer floats from the public-house, and a loud clatter and rattle of
voices.
The wind has dropped, and the sun burns more fiercely than ever.
Outside the two swing-doors there is a thick mass of children like
flies at the mouth of a sweet-jar.
And up, up the hill come the people, with ticklers and golliwogs, and
roses and feathers. Up, up they thrust into the light and heat,
shouting, laughing, squealing, as though they were being pushed by
something, far below, and by the sun, far ahead of them—drawn up into
the full, bright, dazzling radiance to... what?
An Ideal Family
That evening for the first time in his life, as he pressed through the
swing door and descended the three broad steps to the pavement, old Mr.
Neave felt he was too old for the spring. Spring—warm, eager,
restless—was there, waiting for him in the golden light, ready in front
of everybody to run up, to blow in his white beard, to drag sweetly on
his arm. And he couldn’t meet her, no; he couldn’t square up once more
and stride off, jaunty as a young man. He was tired and, although the
late sun was still shining, curiously cold, with a numbed feeling all
over. Quite suddenly he hadn’t the energy, he hadn’t the heart to stand
this gaiety and bright movement any longer; it confused him. He wanted
to stand still, to wave it away with his stick, to say, “Be off with
you!” Suddenly it was a terrible effort to greet as usual—tipping his
wide-awake with his stick—all the people whom he knew, the friends,
acquaintances, shopkeepers, postmen, drivers. But the gay glance that
went with the gesture, the kindly twinkle that seemed to say, “I’m a
match and more for any of you”—that old Mr. Neave could not manage at
all. He stumped along, lifting his knees high as if he were walking
through air that had somehow grown heavy and solid like water. And the
homeward-looking crowd hurried by, the trams clanked, the light carts
clattered, the big swinging cabs bowled along with that reckless,
defiant indifference that one knows only in dreams....
It had been a day like other days at the office. Nothing special had
happened. Harold hadn’t come back from lunch until close on four. Where
had he been? What had he been up to? He wasn’t going to let his father
know. Old Mr. Neave had happened to be in the vestibule, saying
good-bye to a caller, when Harold sauntered in, perfectly turned out as
usual, cool, suave, smiling that peculiar little half-smile that women
found so fascinating.
Ah, Harold was too handsome, too handsome by far; that had been the
trouble all along. No man had a right to such eyes, such lashes, and
such lips; it was uncanny. As for his mother, his sisters, and the
servants, it was not too much to say they made a young god of him; they
worshipped Harold, they forgave him everything; and he had needed some
forgiving ever since the time when he was thirteen and he had stolen
his mother’s purse, taken the money, and hidden the purse in the cook’s
bedroom. Old Mr. Neave struck sharply with his stick upon the pavement
edge. But it wasn’t only his family who spoiled Harold, he reflected,
it was everybody; he had only to look and to smile, and down they went
before him. So perhaps it wasn’t to be wondered at that he expected the
office to carry on the tradition. H’m, h’m! But it couldn’t be done. No
business—not even a successful, established, big paying concern—could
be played with. A man had either to put his whole heart and soul into
it, or it went all to pieces before his eyes....
And then Charlotte and the girls were always at him to make the whole
thing over to Harold, to retire, and to spend his time enjoying
himself. Enjoying himself! Old Mr. Neave stopped dead under a group of
ancient cabbage palms outside the Government buildings! Enjoying
himself! The wind of evening shook the dark leaves to a thin airy
cackle. Sitting at home, twiddling his thumbs, conscious all the while
that his life’s work was slipping away, dissolving, disappearing
through Harold’s fine fingers, while Harold smiled....
“Why will you be so unreasonable, father? There’s absolutely no need
for you to go to the office. It only makes it very awkward for us when
people persist in saying how tired you’re looking. Here’s this huge
house and garden. Surely you could be happy in—in—appreciating it for a
change. Or you could take up some hobby.”
And Lola the baby had chimed in loftily, “All men ought to have
hobbies. It makes life impossible if they haven’t.”
Well, well! He couldn’t help a grim smile as painfully he began to
climb the hill that led into Harcourt Avenue. Where would Lola and her
sisters and Charlotte be if he’d gone in for hobbies, he’d like to
know? Hobbies couldn’t pay for the town house and the seaside bungalow,
and their horses, and their golf, and the sixty-guinea gramophone in
the music-room for them to dance to. Not that he grudged them these
things. No, they were smart, good-looking girls, and Charlotte was a
remarkable woman; it was natural for them to be in the swim. As a
matter of fact, no other house in the town was as popular as theirs; no
other family entertained so much. And how many times old Mr. Neave,
pushing the cigar box across the smoking-room table, had listened to
praises of his wife, his girls, of himself even.
“You’re an ideal family, sir, an ideal family. It’s like something one
reads about or sees on the stage.”
“That’s all right, my boy,” old Mr. Neave would reply. “Try one of
those; I think you’ll like them. And if you care to smoke in the
garden, you’ll find the girls on the lawn, I dare say.”
That was why the girls had never married, so people said. They could
have married anybody. But they had too good a time at home. They were
too happy together, the girls and Charlotte. H’m, h’m! Well, well.
Perhaps so....
By this time he had walked the length of fashionable Harcourt Avenue;
he had reached the corner house, their house. The carriage gates were
pushed back; there were fresh marks of wheels on the drive. And then he
faced the big white-painted house, with its wide-open windows, its
tulle curtains floating outwards, its blue jars of hyacinths on the
broad sills. On either side of the carriage porch their
hydrangeas—famous in the town—were coming into flower; the pinkish,
bluish masses of flower lay like light among the spreading leaves. And
somehow, it seemed to old Mr. Neave that the house and the flowers, and
even the fresh marks on the drive, were saying, “There is young life
here. There are girls—”
The hall, as always, was dusky with wraps, parasols, gloves, piled on
the oak chests. From the music-room sounded the piano, quick, loud and
impatient. Through the drawing-room door that was ajar voices floated.
“And were there ices?” came from Charlotte. Then the creak, creak of
her rocker.
“Ices!” cried Ethel. “My dear mother, you never saw such ices. Only two
kinds. And one a common little strawberry shop ice, in a sopping wet
frill.”
“The food altogether was too appalling,” came from Marion.
“Still, it’s rather early for ices,” said Charlotte easily.
“But why, if one has them at all....” began Ethel.
“Oh, quite so, darling,” crooned Charlotte.
Suddenly the music-room door opened and Lola dashed out. She started,
she nearly screamed, at the sight of old Mr. Neave.
“Gracious, father! What a fright you gave me! Have you just come home?
Why isn’t Charles here to help you off with your coat?”
Her cheeks were crimson from playing, her eyes glittered, the hair fell
over her forehead. And she breathed as though she had come running
through the dark and was frightened. Old Mr. Neave stared at his
youngest daughter; he felt he had never seen her before. So that was
Lola, was it? But she seemed to have forgotten her father; it was not
for him that she was waiting there. Now she put the tip of her crumpled
handkerchief between her teeth and tugged at it angrily. The telephone
rang. A-ah! Lola gave a cry like a sob and dashed past him. The door of
the telephone-room slammed, and at the same moment Charlotte called,
“Is that you, father?”
“You’re tired again,” said Charlotte reproachfully, and she stopped the
rocker and offered her warm plum-like cheek. Bright-haired Ethel pecked
his beard, Marion’s lips brushed his ear.
“Did you walk back, father?” asked Charlotte.
“Yes, I walked home,” said old Mr. Neave, and he sank into one of the
immense drawing-room chairs.
“But why didn’t you take a cab?” said Ethel. “There are hundreds of
cabs about at that time.”
“My dear Ethel,” cried Marion, “if father prefers to tire himself out,
I really don’t see what business of ours it is to interfere.”
“Children, children?” coaxed Charlotte.
But Marion wouldn’t be stopped. “No, mother, you spoil father, and it’s
not right. You ought to be stricter with him. He’s very naughty.” She
laughed her hard, bright laugh and patted her hair in a mirror.
Strange! When she was a little girl she had such a soft, hesitating
voice; she had even stuttered, and now, whatever she said—even if it
was only “Jam, please, father”—it rang out as though she were on the
stage.
“Did Harold leave the office before you, dear?” asked Charlotte,
beginning to rock again.
“I’m not sure,” said Old Mr. Neave. “I’m not sure. I didn’t see him
after four o’clock.”
“He said—” began Charlotte.
But at that moment Ethel, who was twitching over the leaves of some
paper or other, ran to her mother and sank down beside her chair.
“There, you see,” she cried. “That’s what I mean, mummy. Yellow, with
touches of silver. Don’t you agree?”
“Give it to me, love,” said Charlotte. She fumbled for her
tortoise-shell spectacles and put them on, gave the page a little dab
with her plump small fingers, and pursed up her lips. “Very sweet!” she
crooned vaguely; she looked at Ethel over her spectacles. “But I
shouldn’t have the train.”
“Not the train!” wailed Ethel tragically. “But the train’s the whole
point.”
“Here, mother, let me decide.” Marion snatched the paper playfully from
Charlotte. “I agree with mother,” she cried triumphantly. “The train
overweights it.”
Old Mr. Neave, forgotten, sank into the broad lap of his chair, and,
dozing, heard them as though he dreamed. There was no doubt about it,
he was tired out; he had lost his hold. Even Charlotte and the girls
were too much for him to-night. They were too... too.... But all his
drowsing brain could think of was—too _rich_ for him. And somewhere at
the back of everything he was watching a little withered ancient man
climbing up endless flights of stairs. Who was he?
“I shan’t dress to-night,” he muttered.
“What do you say, father?”
“Eh, what, what?” Old Mr. Neave woke with a start and stared across at
them. “I shan’t dress to-night,” he repeated.
“But, father, we’ve got Lucile coming, and Henry Davenport, and Mrs.
Teddie Walker.”
“It will look so _very_ out of the picture.”
“Don’t you feel well, dear?”
“You needn’t make any effort. What is Charles _for_?”
“But if you’re really not up to it,” Charlotte wavered.
“Very well! Very well!” Old Mr. Neave got up and went to join that
little old climbing fellow just as far as his dressing-room....
There young Charles was waiting for him. Carefully, as though
everything depended on it, he was tucking a towel round the hot-water
can. Young Charles had been a favourite of his ever since as a little
red-faced boy he had come into the house to look after the fires. Old
Mr. Neave lowered himself into the cane lounge by the window, stretched
out his legs, and made his little evening joke, “Dress him up,
Charles!” And Charles, breathing intensely and frowning, bent forward
to take the pin out of his tie.
H’m, h’m! Well, well! It was pleasant by the open window, very
pleasant—a fine mild evening. They were cutting the grass on the tennis
court below; he heard the soft churr of the mower. Soon the girls would
begin their tennis parties again. And at the thought he seemed to hear
Marion’s voice ring out, “Good for you, partner.... Oh, _played_,
partner.... Oh, _very_ nice indeed.” Then Charlotte calling from the
veranda, “Where is Harold?” And Ethel, “He’s certainly not here,
mother.” And Charlotte’s vague, “He said—”
Old Mr. Neave sighed, got up, and putting one hand under his beard, he
took the comb from young Charles, and carefully combed the white beard
over. Charles gave him a folded handkerchief, his watch and seals, and
spectacle case.
“That will do, my lad.” The door shut, he sank back, he was alone....
And now that little ancient fellow was climbing down endless flights
that led to a glittering, gay dining-room. What legs he had! They were
like a spider’s—thin, withered.
“You’re an ideal family, sir, an ideal family.”
But if that were true, why didn’t Charlotte or the girls stop him? Why
was he all alone, climbing up and down? Where was Harold? Ah, it was no
good expecting anything from Harold. Down, down went the little old
spider, and then, to his horror, old Mr. Neave saw him slip past the
dining-room and make for the porch, the dark drive, the carriage gates,
the office. Stop him, stop him, somebody!
Old Mr. Neave started up. It was dark in his dressing-room; the window
shone pale. How long had he been asleep? He listened, and through the
big, airy, darkened house there floated far-away voices, far-away
sounds. Perhaps, he thought vaguely, he had been asleep for a long
time. He’d been forgotten. What had all this to do with him—this house
and Charlotte, the girls and Harold—what did he know about them? They
were strangers to him. Life had passed him by. Charlotte was not his
wife. His wife!
... A dark porch, half hidden by a passion-vine, that drooped
sorrowful, mournful, as though it understood. Small, warm arms were
round his neck. A face, little and pale, lifted to his, and a voice
breathed, “Good-bye, my treasure.”
My treasure! “Good-bye, my treasure!” Which of them had spoken? Why had
they said good-bye? There had been some terrible mistake. _She_ was his
wife, that little pale girl, and all the rest of his life had been a
dream.
Then the door opened, and young Charles, standing in the light, put his
hands by his side and shouted like a young soldier, “Dinner is on the
table, sir!”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” said old Mr. Neave.
The Lady’s Maid
_Eleven o’clock. A knock at the door._
... I hope I haven’t disturbed you, madam. You weren’t asleep—were you?
But I’ve just given my lady her tea, and there was such a nice cup
over, I thought, perhaps....
... Not at all, madam. I always make a cup of tea last thing. She
drinks it in bed after her prayers to warm her up. I put the kettle on
when she kneels down and I say to it, “Now you needn’t be in too much
of a hurry to say _your_ prayers.” But it’s always boiling before my
lady is half through. You see, madam, we know such a lot of people, and
they’ve all got to be prayed for—every one. My lady keeps a list of the
names in a little red book. Oh dear! whenever some one new has been to
see us and my lady says afterwards, “Ellen, give me my little red
book,” I feel quite wild, I do. “There’s another,” I think, “keeping
her out of her bed in all weathers.” And she won’t have a cushion, you
know, madam; she kneels on the hard carpet. It fidgets me something
dreadful to see her, knowing her as I do. I’ve tried to cheat her; I’ve
spread out the eiderdown. But the first time I did it—oh, she gave me
such a look—holy it was, madam. “Did our Lord have an eiderdown,
Ellen?” she said. But—I was younger at the time—I felt inclined to say,
“No, but our Lord wasn’t your age, and he didn’t know what it was to
have your lumbago.” Wicked—wasn’t it? But she’s _too_ good, you know,
madam. When I tucked her up just now and seen—saw her lying back, her
hands outside and her head on the pillow—so pretty—I couldn’t help
thinking, “Now you look just like your dear mother when I laid her
out!”
... Yes, madam, it was all left to me. Oh, she did look sweet. I did
her hair, soft-like, round her forehead, all in dainty curls, and just
to one side of her neck I put a bunch of most beautiful purple pansies.
Those pansies made a picture of her, madam! I shall never forget them.
I thought to-night, when I looked at my lady, “Now, if only the pansies
was there no one could tell the difference.”
... Only the last year, madam. Only after she’d got a
little—well—feeble as you might say. Of course, she was never
dangerous; she was the sweetest old lady. But how it took her was—she
thought she’d lost something. She couldn’t keep still, she couldn’t
settle. All day long she’d be up and down, up and down; you’d meet her
everywhere,—on the stairs, in the porch, making for the kitchen. And
she’d look up at you, and she’d say—just like a child, “I’ve lost it,
I’ve lost it.” “Come along,” I’d say, “come along, and I’ll lay out
your patience for you.” But she’d catch me by the hand—I was a
favourite of hers—and whisper, “Find it for me, Ellen. Find it for me.”
Sad, wasn’t it?
... No, she never recovered, madam. She had a stroke at the end. Last
words she ever said was—very slow, “Look in—the—Look—in—” And then she
was gone.
... No, madam, I can’t say I noticed it. Perhaps some girls. But you
see, it’s like this, I’ve got nobody but my lady. My mother died of
consumption when I was four, and I lived with my grandfather, who kept
a hair-dresser’s shop. I used to spend all my time in the shop under a
table dressing my doll’s hair—copying the assistants, I suppose. They
were ever so kind to me. Used to make me little wigs, all colours, the
latest fashions and all. And there I’d sit all day, quiet as quiet—the
customers never knew. Only now and again I’d take my peep from under
the table-cloth.
... But one day I managed to get a pair of scissors and—would you
believe it, madam? I cut off all my hair; snipped it off all in bits,
like the little monkey I was. Grandfather was _furious_! He caught hold
of the tongs—I shall never forget it—grabbed me by the hand and shut my
fingers in them. “That’ll teach you!” he said. It was a fearful burn.
I’ve got the mark of it to-day.
... Well, you see, madam, he’d taken such pride in my hair. He used to
sit me up on the counter, before the customers came, and do it
something beautiful—big, soft curls and waved over the top. I remember
the assistants standing round, and me ever so solemn with the penny
grandfather gave me to hold while it was being done.... But he always
took the penny back afterwards. Poor grandfather! Wild, he was, at the
fright I’d made of myself. But he frightened me that time. Do you know
what I did, madam? I ran away. Yes, I did, round the corners, in and
out, I don’t know how far I didn’t run. Oh, dear, I must have looked a
sight, with my hand rolled up in my pinny and my hair sticking out.
People must have laughed when they saw me....
... No, madam, grandfather never got over it. He couldn’t bear the
sight of me after. Couldn’t eat his dinner, even, if I was there. So my
aunt took me. She was a cripple, an upholstress. Tiny! She had to stand
on the sofas when she wanted to cut out the backs. And it was helping
her I met my lady....
... Not so very, madam. I was thirteen, turned. And I don’t remember
ever feeling—well—a child, as you might say. You see there was my
uniform, and one thing and another. My lady put me into collars and
cuffs from the first. Oh yes—once I did! That was—funny! It was like
this. My lady had her two little nieces staying with her—we were at
Sheldon at the time—and there was a fair on the common.
“Now, Ellen,” she said, “I want you to take the two young ladies for a
ride on the donkeys.” Off we went; solemn little loves they were; each
had a hand. But when we came to the donkeys they were too shy to go on.
So we stood and watched instead. Beautiful those donkeys were! They
were the first I’d seen out of a cart—for pleasure as you might say.
They were a lovely silver-grey, with little red saddles and blue
bridles and bells jing-a-jingling on their ears. And quite big
girls—older than me, even—were riding them, ever so gay. Not at all
common, I don’t mean, madam, just enjoying themselves. And I don’t know
what it was, but the way the little feet went, and the eyes—so
gentle—and the soft ears—made me want to go on a donkey more than
anything in the world!
... Of course, I couldn’t. I had my young ladies. And what would I have
looked like perched up there in my uniform? But all the rest of the day
it was donkeys—donkeys on the brain with me. I felt I should have burst
if I didn’t tell some one; and who was there to tell? But when I went
to bed—I was sleeping in Mrs. James’s bedroom, our cook that was, at
the time—as soon as the lights was out, there they were, my donkeys,
jingling along, with their neat little feet and sad eyes.... Well,
madam, would you believe it, I waited for a long time and pretended to
be asleep, and then suddenly I sat up and called out as loud as I
could, “_I do want to go on a donkey. I do want a donkey-ride!_” You
see, I had to say it, and I thought they wouldn’t laugh at me if they
knew I was only dreaming. Artful—wasn’t it? Just what a silly child
would think....
... No, madam, never now. Of course, I did think of it at one time. But
it wasn’t to be. He had a little flower-shop just down the road and
across from where we was living. Funny—wasn’t it? And me such a one for
flowers. We were having a lot of company at the time, and I was in and
out of the shop more often than not, as the saying is. And Harry and I
(his name was Harry) got to quarrelling about how things ought to be
arranged—and that began it. Flowers! you wouldn’t believe it, madam,
the flowers he used to bring me. He’d stop at nothing. It was
lilies-of-the-valley more than once, and I’m not exaggerating! Well, of
course, we were going to be married and live over the shop, and it was
all going to be just so, and I was to have the window to arrange....
Oh, how I’ve done that window of a Saturday! Not really, of course,
madam, just dreaming, as you might say. I’ve done it for
Christmas—motto in holly, and all—and I’ve had my Easter lilies with a
gorgeous star all daffodils in the middle. I’ve hung—well, that’s
enough of that. The day came he was to call for me to choose the
furniture. Shall I ever forget it? It was a Tuesday. My lady wasn’t
quite herself that afternoon. Not that she’d said anything, of course;
she never does or will. But I knew by the way that she kept wrapping
herself up and asking me if it was cold—and her little nose looked...
pinched. I didn’t like leaving her; I knew I’d be worrying all the
time. At last I asked her if she’d rather I put it off. “Oh no, Ellen,”
she said, “you mustn’t mind about me. You mustn’t disappoint your young
man.” And so cheerful, you know, madam, never thinking about herself.
It made me feel worse than ever. I began to wonder... then she dropped
her handkerchief and began to stoop down to pick it up herself—a thing
she never did. “Whatever are you doing!” I cried, running to stop her.
“Well,” she said, smiling, you know, madam, “I shall have to begin to
practise.” Oh, it was all I could do not to burst out crying. I went
over to the dressing-table and made believe to rub up the silver, and I
couldn’t keep myself in, and I asked her if she’d rather I... didn’t
get married. “No, Ellen,” she said—that was her voice, madam, like I’m
giving you—“No, Ellen, not for the _wide world_!” But while she said
it, madam—I was looking in her glass; of course, she didn’t know I
could see her—she put her little hand on her heart just like her dear
mother used to, and lifted her eyes... Oh, _madam_!
When Harry came I had his letters all ready, and the ring and a ducky
little brooch he’d given me—a silver bird it was, with a chain in its
beak, and on the end of the chain a heart with a dagger. Quite the
thing! I opened the door to him. I never gave him time for a word.
“There you are,” I said. “Take them all back,” I said, “it’s all over.
I’m not going to marry you,” I said, “I can’t leave my lady.” White! he
turned as white as a woman. I had to slam the door, and there I stood,
all of a tremble, till I knew he had gone. When I opened the
door—believe me or not, madam—that man _was_ gone! I ran out into the
road just as I was, in my apron and my house-shoes, and there I stayed
in the middle of the road... staring. People must have laughed if they
saw me....
... Goodness gracious!—What’s that? It’s the clock striking! And here
I’ve been keeping you awake. Oh, madam, you ought to have stopped
me.... Can I tuck in your feet? I always tuck in my lady’s feet, every
night, just the same. And she says, “Good night, Ellen. Sleep sound and
wake early!” I don’t know what I should do if she didn’t say that, now.
... Oh dear, I sometimes think... whatever should I do if anything were
to.... But, there, thinking’s no good to anyone—is it, madam? Thinking
won’t help. Not that I do it often. And if ever I do I pull myself up
sharp, “Now, then, Ellen. At it again—you silly girl! If you can’t find
anything better to do than to start thinking!...”
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