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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1429 ***
+
+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 ducklings, 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!...”
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1429 ***