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Osmania University Library

Call No. 2-^ Accession No.

Author

Title

This book should be returned on or before the date last
marked below.

BLISS

AND OTHER STORIES

BY

KATHERINE MANSFIELD

OSMAN1A UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

LONDON : CONSTABLE
& COMPANY LIMITED

Published 1920
Reprinted 1920
Reprinted 1921
Reprinted 1921
Reprinted 1921
RepnnUd 1922
Reprinted 1922
Reprinted 1923

Printed in Great Britain at
ft/ Mstyflwr Pfttt, Plymouth William Breadoo & Son, Ltd

TO

JOHN MIDDLETON MURRY

CONTENTS

PAQI

PRELUDE ....... i

JE NE PARLE PAS FRAN?AIS . . . 71

Buss 116

THE WIND BLOWS 137

PSYCHOLOGY 145

PICTURES 157

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT . .172
MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY . . .194

SUN AND MOON 208

FEUILLE D'ALBUM 218

A DILL PICKLE 228

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS .... 239

REVELATIONS 262

THE ESCAPE 272

PRELUDE

THERE was not an inch of room for Lottie
and Kezia in the buggy. When Pat
swung them on top of the luggage they
wobbled ; the grandmother's lap was full and
Linda Burnell could not possibly have held a lump
of a child on hers for any distance. Isabel, very
superior, was perched beside the new handy-man
on the driver's seat. Hold-alls, bags and boxes
were piled upon the floor. " These are absolute
necessities that I will not let out of my sight for
one instant/' said Linda Burnell, her voice tremb-
ling with fatigue and excitement.

Lottie and Kezia stood on the patch of lawn just
inside the gate all ready for the fray in their coats
with brass anchor buttons and little round caps
with battleship ribbons. Hand in hand, they
stared with round solemn eyes first at the absolute
necessities and then at their mother.

" We shall simply have to leave them. That is
all. We shall simply have to cast them off/ 1 said
Linda Burnell. A strange little laugh flew from
her lips ; she leaned back against the buttoned
leather cushions and shut her eyes, her lips tremb-
B I

PRELUDE

ling with laughter. Happily at that moment Mrs.
Samuel Josephs, who had been watching the scene
from behind her drawing-room blind, waddled
down the garden path,

" Why nod leave the chudren with be for the
afterdoon, Brs. Burnell ? They could go on the
dray with the storeban when he comes in the
eveding. Those thigs on the path have to go,
dod'tthey?"

" Yes, everything outside the house is supposed
to go," said Linda Burnell, and she waved a white
hand at the tables and chairs standing on their
heads on the front lawn. How absurd they looked !
Either they ought to be the other way up, or Lottie
and Kezia ought to stand on their heads, too. And
she longed to say : " Stand on your heads, children,
and wait for the store-man." It seemed to her that
would be so exquisitely funny that she could not
attend to Mrs. Samuel Josephs.

The fat creaking body leaned across the gate,
and the big jelly of a face smiled. " Dod't you
worry, Brs. Burnell. Loddie and Kezia can have
tea with by chudren in the dursery, and Til see
theb on the dray afterwards."

The grandmother considered. " Yes, it really is
quite the best plan. We are very obliged to you,
Mrs. Samuel Josephs. Children, say ' thank you f
to Mrs. Samuel Josephs."

Two subdued chirrups : " Thank you, Mrs.
Samuel Josephs,"

PRELUDE

" And be good little girls, and come closer "
they advanced, " don't forget to tell Mrs. Samuel
Josephs when you want to. . . ."

" No, granma."

" Dod't worry, Brs. Burnell."

At the last moment Kezia let go Lottie's hand
and darted towards the buggy.

" I want to kiss my granma good-bye again."

But she was too late. The buggy rolled off up
the road, Isabel bursting with pride, her nose
turned up at all the world, Linda Burnell prostrated,
and the grandmother rummaging among the very
curious oddments she had had put in her black
silk reticule at the last moment, for something
to give her daughter. The buggy tiwnkled away in
the sunlight and fine golden dust up the hill and
over. Kezia bit her lip, but Lottie, carefully
finding her handkerchief first, set up a wail.

"Mother! Granma !"

Mrs. Samuel Josephs, like a huge warm black silk
tea cosy, enveloped her.

" It's all right, by dear. Be a brave child. You
come and blay in the dursery ! "

She put her arm round weeping Lottie and led
her away. Kezia followed, making a face at Mrs.
Samuel Josephs' placket, which was undone as
usual, with two long pink corset laces hanging out
of it. ... *

Lottie's weeping died down as she mounted the
stairs, but the sight of her at the nursery door with

PRELUDE

swollen eyes and a blob of a nose gave great satis-
faction to the S. J.'s, who sat on two benches
before a long table covered with American cloth
and set out with immense plates of bread and
dripping and two brown jugs that faintly steamed.

" Hullo ! You've been crying ! "

" Ooh ! Your eyes have gone right in."

" Doesn't her nose look funny.''

*" You're all red-and-patchy."

Lottie was quite a success. She felt it and
swelled, smiling timidly.

" Go and sit by Zaidee, ducky," said Mrs.
Samuel Josephs, " and Kezia, you sid ad the end
by Boses."

Moses grinned and gave her a nip as she sat
down ; but she pretended not to notice. She did
hate boys.

" Which will you have ? " asked Stanley, leaning
across the table very politely, and smiling at her.
" Which will you have to begin with strawberries
and cream or bread and dripping ? "

" Strawberries and cream, please," said she.

" Ah-h-h-h." How they all laughed and beat the
table with their teaspoons. Wasn't that a take in !
Wasn't it now ! Didn't he fox her ! Good old
Stan!

" Ma ! She thought it was real."

Even Mrs. Samuel Josephs, pouring out the milk
and water, could not help smiling. " You bustn't
tease theb on their last day," she wheezed.

PRELUDE

But Kezia bit a big piece out of her bread and
dripping, and then stood the piece up on her plate.
With the bite out it made a dear little sort of a gate.
Pooh ! She didn't care ! A tear rolled down her
cheek, but she wasn't crying. She couldn't have
cried in front of those awful Samuel Josephs. She
sat with her head bent, and as the tear dripped
slowly down, she caught it with a neat little whisk
of her tongue and ate it before any of them had seen.

After tea Kezia wandered back to their own
house. Slowly she walked up the back steps, and
through the scullery into the kitchen. Nothing
was left in it but a lump of gritty yellow soap in one
corner of the kitchen window sill and a piece of
flannel stained with a blue bag in another. The
fireplace was choked up with rubbish. She poked
among it but found nothing except a hair-tidy
with a heart painted on it that had belonged to the
servant girl. Even that she left lying, and she
trailed through the narrow passage into the drawing-
room. The Venetian blind was pulled down but
not drawn close. Long pencil rays of sunlight
shone through and the wavy shadow of a bush
outside danced on the gold lines. Now it was
still, now it began to flutter again, and now it came
almost as f$r as her feet. Zoom ! Zoom ! a blue-
bottle knocked against the ceiling ; the carpet-
tacks had little bits of red fluff sticking to them.

PRELUDE

The dining-room window had a square of
coloured glass at each corner. One was blue and
one was yellow. Kezia bent down to have one more
look at a blue lawn with blue arum lilies growing at
the gate, and then at a yellow lawn with yellow
lilies and a yellow fence. As she looked a little
Chinese Lottie came out on to the lawn and began
to dust the tables and chairs with a corner of her
pinafore. Was that really Lottie ? Kezia was
not quite sure until she had looked through the
ordinary window.

Upstairs in her father's and mother's room she
found a pill box black and shiny outside and red in,
holding a blob of cotton wool.

" I could keep a bird's egg in that," she decided.

In the servant girl's room there was a stay-
button stuck in a crack of the floor, and in another
crack ^eome beads and a long needle. She knew
there was nothing in her grandmother's room ; she
had watched her pack. She went over to the window
and leaned against it, pressing her hands against
the pane.

Kezia liked to stand so before the window. She
liked the feeling of the cold shining glass against
her hot palms, and she liked to watch the funny
white tops that came on her fingers when she pressed
them hard against the pane. As she stood there,
the day flickered out and dark came. With the
dark crept the wind snuffling and howling. The
windows of the empty house shook, a creaking

6

PRELUDE

came from the walls and floors, a piece of loose
iron on the roof banged forlornly, Kezia was
suddenly quite, quite still, with wide open eyes and
knees pressed together. She was frightened. She
wanted to call Lottie and to go on calling all the
while she ran downstairs and out of the house.
But IT was just behind her, waiting at the door, at
the head of the stairs, at the bottom of the stairs,
hiding in the passage, ready to dart out at the back
door. But Lottie was at the back door, too.

" Kezia ! " she called cheerfully. " The store-
man's here. Everything is on the dray and three
horses, Kezia. Mrs. Samuel Josephs has given us a
big shawl to wear round us, and she says to button
up your coat. She won't come out because of
asthma."

Lottie was very important.

" Now then, you kids," called the storeman. He
hooked his big thumbs under their arms and up
they swung. Lottie arranged the shawl " most
beautifully " and the storeman tucked up their
feet in a piece of old blanket.

" Lift up. Easy does it."

They might have been a couple of young ponies.
The storeman felt over the cords holding his load,
unhooked the brakechain from the wheel, and
whistling, he swung up beside them.

" Keep close to me," said Lottie, " because other-
wise you pull the shawl away from my side, Kezia."

But Kezia edged up to the storeman. He towered

PRELUDE

beside her big as a giant and he smelled of nuts and
new wooden boxes.

3

It was the first time that Lottie and Kezia had
ever been out so late. Everything looked different
the painted wooden houses far smaller than they
did by day, the gardens far bigger and wilder.
Bright stars speckled the sky and the moon hung
over the harbour dabbling the waves with gold.
They could see the lighthouse shining on Quarantine
Island, and the green lights on the old coal hulks.

" There comes the Picton boat/ 1 said the store-
man, pointing to a little steamer all hung with
bright beads.

But when they reached the top of the hill and
began to go down the other side the harbour
disappeared, and although they were still in the
town they were quite lost. Other carts rattled past.
Everybody knew the storeman.

" Night, Fred."

" Night O," he shouted.

Kezia liked very much to hear him. Whenever
a cart appeared in the distance she looked up and
waited for his voice. He was an old friend ; and
she and her grandmother had often been to his
place to buy grapes. The storeman lived alone in a
cottage that had a glasshouse against one wall
built by himself. All the glasshouse was spanned
and arched over with one beautiful vine. He took

8

PRELUDE

her brown basket from her, lined it with three
large leaves, and then he felt in his belt for a little
horn knife, reached up and snapped off a big blue
cluster and laid it on the leaves so tenderly that
Kezia held her breath to watch. He was a very
big man. He wore brown velvet trousers, and he
had a long brown beard. But he never wore a
collar, not even on Sunday. The back of his neck
was burnt bright red.

" Where are we now ? " Every few minutes one
of the children asked him the question.

" Why, this is Hawk Street, or Charlotte
Crescent."

" Of course it is," Lottie pricked up her ears
at the last name ; she always felt that Charlotte
Crescent belonged specially to her. Very few
people had streets with the same name as theirs.

" Look, Kezia, there is Charlotte Crescent.
Doesn't it look different ? " Now everything
familiar was left behind. Now the big dray rattled
into unknown country, along new roads with high
clay banks on either side f up steep, steep hills, down
into bushy valleys, through wide shallow rivers.
Further and further. Lottie's head wagged ; she
drooped, she slipped half into Kezia's lap and lay
there. But Kezia could not open her eyes wide
enough. The wind blew and she shivered ; but
her cheeks and ears burned.

" Do stars ever blow about ? " she asked.

" Not to notice," said the storeman.

PRELUDE

" WeVe got a nuncle and a naunt living near
our new house," said Kezia. " They have got two
children, Pip, the eldest is called, and the youngest's
name is Rags. He's got a ram. He has to feed it
with a nenamuel teapot and a glove top over the
spout. He's going to show us. What is the differ-
ence between a ram and a sheep ? "

" Well, a ram has horns and runs for you."

Kezia considered. " I don't want to see it
frightfully," she said. " I hate rushing animals
like dogs and parrots. I often dream that animals
rush at me even camels and while they are
rushing, their heads swell e-enormous."

The storeman said nothing. Kezia peered up at
him, screwing up her eyes. Then she put her
finger out and stroked his sleeve ; it felt hairy.
" Are we near ? " she asked.

" Not far off, now," answered the storeman.
" Getting tired ? "

" Well, I'm not an atom bit sleepy," said Kezia.
" But my eyes keep curling up in such a funny sort
of way." She gave a long sigh, and to stop her eyes
from curling she shut them. . . . When she opened
them again they were clanking through a drive that
cut through the garden like a whip lash, looping
suddenly an island of green, and behind the island,
but out of sight until you came upon it, was the
house. It was long and low built, with a pillared
verandah and balcony all the way rounil. The soft
white bulk of it lay stretched upon the green garden

10

PRELUDE

like a sleeping beast. And now one and now
another of the windows leaped into light. Some-
one was walking through the empty rooms carrying
a lamp. From a window downstairs the light of a
fire flickered. A strange beautiful excitement seemed
to stream from the house in quivering ripples.

" Where are we ? " said Lottie, sitting up. Her
reefer cap was all on one side and on her cheek
there was the print of an anchor button she had
pressed against while sleeping. Tenderly the
storeman lifted her, set her cap straight, and pulled
down her crumpled clothes. She stood blinking
on the lowest verandah step watching Kezia who
seemed to come flying through the air to her feet.

" Ooh ! " cried Kezia, flinging up her arms.
The grandmother came out of the dark hall carrying
a little lamp. She was smiling.

" You found your way in the dark ? " said she.

" Perfectly well/ 1

But Lottie staggered on the lowest verandah
step like a bird fallen out of the nest. If she stood
still for a moment she fell asleep, if she leaned
against anything her eyes closed. She could not
walk another step.

" Kezia," said the grandmother, " can I trust you
to carry the lamp ? "

" Yes, my granma."

The old woman bent down and gave the bright
breathing thing into her hands and then she caught
up drunken Lottie. " This way/*

II

PRELUDE

Through a square hall filled with bales and
hundreds of parrots (but the parrots were only on
the wall-paper) down a narrow passage where the
parrots persisted in flying past Kezia with her lamp.

" Be very quiet, " warned the grandmother,
putting down Lottie and opening the dining-room
door. " Poor little mother has got such a head-
ache."

Linda Burnell, in a long cane chair, with her
feet on a hassock, and a plaid over her knees, lay
before a crackling fire. Burnell and Beryl sat at
the table in the middle of the room eating a dish
of fried chops and drinking tea out of a brown
china teapot. Over the back of her mother's chair
leaned Isabel. She had a comb in her fingers and
in a gentle absorbed fashion she was combing the
curls from her mother's forehead. Outside the
pool of lamp and firelight the room stretched dark
and bare to the hollow windows.

" Are those the children ? " But Linda did not
really care ; she did not even open her eyes to see.

" Put down the lamp, Kezia," said Aunt Beryl,
" or we shall have the house on fire before we are
out of the packing cases. More tea, Stanley ? "

" Well, you might just give me five-eighths of a
cup," said Burnell, leaning across the table. " Have
another chop, Beryl. Tip-top meat, isn't it ?
Not too lean and not too fat." He turned to his
wife. " You're sure you won't change your mind,
Linda darling ? "

12

PRELUDE

" The very thought of it is enough." She raised
one eyebrow in the way she had. The grand-
mother brought the children bread and milk and
they sat up to table, flushed and sleepy behind the
wavy steam.

" I had meat for my supper," said Isabel, still
combing gently.

" I had a whole chop for my supper, the bone and
all and Worcester sauce. Didn't I, father ? "

" Oh, don't boast, Isabel," said Aunt Beryl.

Isabel looked astounded. " I wasn't boasting,
was I, Mummy ? I never thought of boasting. I
thought they would like to know. I only meant
to tell them."

" Very well. That's enough," said Burnell. He
pushed back his plate, took a tooth-pick out of his
pocket and began picking his strong white teeth.

" You might see that Fred has a bite of some-
thing in the kitchen before he goes, will you,
mother ? "

" Yes, Stanley." The old woman turned to go.

" Oh, hold on half a jiffy. I suppose nobody
knows where my slippers were put ? I suppose
I shall not be able to get at them for a month or
two what ? "

" Yes," came from Linda. " In the top of the
canvas hold-all marked ' urgent necessities.' "

" Well you might get them for me will you,
mother ? "

" Yes, Stanley."

13

PRELUDE

Burnell got up, stretched himself, and going
over to the fire he turned his back to it and lifted
up his oat tails.

" By Jove, this is a pretty pickle. Eh, Beryl ? "

Beryl, sipping tea, her elbows on the table,
smiled over the cup at him. She wore an unfamiliar
pink pinafore ; the sleeves of her blouse were
rolled up to her shoulders showing her lovely
freckled arms, and she had let her hair fall down
her back in a long pig- tail.

" How long do you think it will take to get
straight couple of weeks eh ? " he chaffed.

" Good heavens, no," said Beryl airily. " The
worst is over already. The servant girl and I have
simply slaved all day, and ever since mother came
she has worked like a horse, too. We have never
sat down for a moment. We have had a day."

Stanley scented a rebuke.

" Well, I suppose you did not expect me to rush
away from the office and nail carpets did you ? "

" Certainly not," laughed Beryl. She put down
her cup and ran out of the dining-room.

" What the hell does she expect us to do ? " asked
Stanley. " Sit down and fan herself with a palm
leaf fan while I have a gang of professionals to do
the job ? By Jove, if she can't do a hand's turn
occasionally without shouting about it in return
for . . ."

And he gloomed as the chops began to fight the
tea in his sensitive stomach. But Linda put up a

PRELUDE

hand and dragged him down to the side of her long
chair.

" This is a wretched time for you, old boy," she
said. Her cheeks were very white but she smiled
and curled her fingers into the big red hand she
held. Burnell became quiet. Suddenly he began
to whistle " Pure as a lily, joyous and free " a
good sign.

" Think you're going to like it ? " he asked.

" I don't want to tell you, but I think I ought to,
mother," said Isabel. " Kezia is drinking tea out
of Aunt Beryl's cup."

4

They were taken off to bed by the grandmother.
She went first with a candle ; the stairs rang to
their climbing feet. Isabel and Lottie lay in a room
to themselves, Kezia curled in her grandmother's
soft bed.

" Aren't there going to be any sheets, my
granma ? "

" No, not to-night."

" It's tickly," said Kezia, " but it's like Indians."
She dragged her grandmother down to her and
kissed her under the chin. " Come to bed soon
and be my Indian brave."

" What a silly you are," said the old woman,
tucking her in as she loved to be tucked.

" Aren't you going to leave me a candle ? "

11 No. Sh h. Go to sleep."

PRELUDE

" Well, can I have the door left open ? "
She rolled herself up into a round but she did not
go to sleep. From all over the house came the
sound of steps. The house itself creaked and
popped. Loud whispering voices came from
downstairs. Once she heard Aunt Beryl's rush of
high laughter, and once she heard a loud trumpet-
ing from Burnell blowing his nose. Outside the
window hundreds of black cats with yellow eyes
sat in the sky watching her but she was not
frightened. Lottie was saying to Isabel :
" I'm going to say my prayers in bed to-night."
" No you can't, Lottie." Isabel was very firm.
" God only excuses you saying your prayers
in bed if you've got a temperature,' 1 So Lottie

yielded : Gentle Jesus meek anmile,
Look pon a little chile.
Pity me, simple Lizzie
Suffer me to come to thee.

And then they lay down back to back, their little
behinds just touching, and fell asleep.

Standing in a pool of moonlight Beryl Fairfield
undressed herself. She was tired, but she pre-
tended to be more tired than she really was letting
her clothes fall, pushing back with a languid gesture
her warm, heavy hair.

" Oh, how tired I am very tired."

She shut her eyes a moment, but her lips smiled.
Her breath rose and fell in her breast like two

16

PRELUDE

fanning wings. The window was wide open ; it
was warm, and somewhere out there in the garden
a young man, dark and slender, with mocking eyes,
tip- toed among the bushes, and gathered the
flowers into a big bouquet, and slipped under her
window and held it up to her. She saw herself bend-
ing forward. He thrust his head among the bright
waxy flowers, sly and laughing. " No, no," said
Beryl. She turned from the window and dropped
her nightgown over her head.

" How frightfully unreasonable Stanley is some-
times/' she thought, buttoning. And then, as she
lay down, there came the old thought, the cruel
thought ah, if only she had money of her own.

A young man, immensely rich, has just arrived
from England. He meets her quite by chance. . . .
The new governor is unmarried. . . . There is a
ball at Government house. . . . Who is that
exquisite creature in eau de nil satin ? Beryl
Fairfield. . . .

iC

The thing that pleases me," said Stanley,
leaning against the side of the bed and giving
himself a good scratch on his shoulders and back
before turning in, " is that I've got the place dirt
cheap, Linda. I was talking about it to little Wally
Bell to-day and he said he simply could not under-
stand why they had accepted my figure. You see
land about here is bound to become more and
more valuable ... in about ten years* time . . .

c 17

PRELUDE

of course we shall have to go very slow and cut
down expenses as fine as possible. Not asleep
are you ? "

11 No, dear, I've heard every word," said Linda.

He sprang into bed, leaned over her and blew out
the candle.

11 Good night, Mr. Business Man," said she, and
she took hold of his head by the ears and gave him
a quick kiss. Her faint far-away voice seemed to
come from a deep well.

" Good night, darling." He slipped his arm
under her neck and drew her to him.

" Yes, clasp me," said the faint voice from the
deep well.

Pat the handy man sprawled in his little room
behind the kitchen. His sponge-bag coat and
trousers hung from the door-peg like a hanged man.
From the edge of the blanket his twisted toes
protruded, and on the floor beside him there was
an empty cane bird-cage. He looked like a comic
picture.

" Honk, honk," came from the servant girl.
She had adenoids.

Last to go to bed was the grandmother.

" What. Not asleep yet ? "

11 No, I'm waiting for you," said Kezia. The old
woman sighed and lay down beside her. Kezia
thrust her head under the grandmother's arm and
gave a little squeak. But the old woman only

18

PRELUDE

pressed her faintly, and sighed again, took out her
teeth, and put them in a glass of water beside her
on the floor.

In the garden some tiny owls, perched on the
branches of a lace-bark tree, called : " More
pork ; more pork." And far away in the bush
there sounded a harsh rapid chatter : " Ha-ha-ha
. . . Ha-ha-ha."

5

Dawn came sharp and chill with red clouds on a
faint green sky and drops of water on every leaf and
blade. A breeze blew over the garden, dropping
dew and dropping petals, shivered over the drenched
paddocks, and was lost in the sombre bush. In the
sky some tiny stars floated for a moment and then
they were gone they were dissolved like bubbles.
And plain to be heard in the early quiet was the
sound of the creek in the paddock running over the
brown stones, running in and out of the sandy
hollows, hiding under clumps of dark berry bushes,
spilling into a swamp of yellow water flowers and
cresses.

And then at the first beam of sun the birds began.
Big cheeky birds, starlings and mynahs, whistled
on the lawns, the little birds, the goldfinches and
linnets and fan-tails flicked from bough to bough.
A lovely kingfisher perched on the paddock fence
preening his rich beauty, and a tut sang his three
notes and laughed and sang them again*

19

PRELUDE

" How loud the birds are," said Linda in her
dream. She was walking with her father through
a green paddock sprinkled with daisies. Suddenly
he bent down and parted the grasses and showed
her a tiny ball of fluff just at her feet. " Oh, Papa,
the darling." She made a cup of her hands and
caught the tiny bird and stroked its head with her
finger. It was quite tame. But a funny thing
happened. As she stroked it began to swell, it
ruffled and pouched, it grew bigger and bigger
and its round eyes seemed to smile knowingly at
her. Now her arms were hardly wide enough to
hold it and she dropped it into her apron. It had
become a baby with a big naked head and a gaping
bird-mouth, opening and shutting. Her father
broke into a loud clattering laugh and she woke to
see Burnell standing by the windows rattling the
Venetian blind up to the very top.

" Hullo," he said. " Didn't wake you, did I ?
Nothing much wrong with the weather this morn-
ing."

He was enormously pleased. Weather like this
set a final seal on his bargain. He felt, somehow,
that he had bought the lovely day, too got it
chucked in dirt cheap with the house and ground.
He dashed off to his bath and Linda turned over
and raised herself on one elbow to see the room by
daylight. All the furniture had found a place
all the old paraphernalia as she expressed it.
Even the photographs were on the mantelpiece and

20

PRELUDE

the medicine bottles on the shelf above the wash-
stand. Her clothes lay across a chair her out-
door things, a purple cape and a round hat with a
plume in it. Looking at them she wished that she
was going away from this house, too. And she saw
herself driving away from them all in a little buggy,
driving away from everybody and not even waving.

Back came Stanley girt with a towel, glowing and
slapping his thighs. He pitched the wet towel on
top of her hat and cape, and standing firm in the
exact centre of a square of sunlight he began to
do his exercises. Deep breathing, bending and
squatting like a frog and shooting out his legs.
He was so delighted with his firm, obedient body
that he hit himself on the chest and gave a loud
" Ah." But this amazing vigour seemed to set
him worlds away from Linda. She lay on the white
tumbled bed and watched him as if from the clouds.

" Oh, damn ! Oh, blast ! " said Stanley, who had
butted into a crisp white shirt only to find that some
idiot had fastened the neck-band and he was caught.
He stalked Over to Linda waving his arms.

" You look like a big fat turkey," said she.

" Fat. I like that," said Stanley. " I haven't a
square inch of fat on me. Feel that."

" It's rock it's iron," mocked she.

" You'd be surprised," said Stanley, as though
this were intensely interesting, " at the number of
chaps at the club who have got a corporation.
Young chaps, you know men of my age." He

21

PRELUDE

began parting his bushy ginger hair, his blue
eyes fixed and round in the glass, his knees bent,
because the dressing table was always confound
it a bit too low for him. " Little Wally Bell, for
instance," and he straightened, describing upon
himself an enormous curve with the hairbrush.
" I must say I've a perfect horror . . ."

" My dear, don't worry. You'll never be fat.
You are far too energetic."

" Yes, yes, I suppose that's true," said he, com-
forted for the hundredth time, and taking a pearl
pen-knife out of his pocket he began to pare his
nails.

" Breakfast, Stanley." Beryl was at the door.
" Oh, Linda, mother says you are not to get up
yet." She popped her head in at the door. She
had a big piece of syringa stuck through her hair.

" Everything we left on the verandah last night is
simply sopping this morning. You should see poor
dear mother wringing out the tables and the chairs.

However, there is no harm done " this with

the faintest glance at Stanley.

" Have you told Pat to have the buggy round in
time ? It's a good six and a half miles to the office."

" I can imagine what this early start for the office
will be like," thought Linda. " It will be very
high pressure indeed."

" Pat, Pat." She heard the servant girl calling.
But Pat was evidently hard to find ; the silly voice
went baa baaing* through the garden.

22

PRELUDE

Linda did not rest again until the final slam of
the front door told her that Stanley was really gone.

Later she heard her children playing in the
garden. Lottie's stolid, compact little voice cried :
" Ke zia. Isa bel." She was always getting
lost or losing people only to find them again, to hef
great surprise, round the next tree or the next
corner. " Oh, there you are after all." They had
been turned out after breakfast and told not to come
back to the house until they were called. Isabel
wheeled a neat pramload of prim dolls and Lottie
was allowed for a great treat to walk beside her
holding the doll's parasol over the face of the wax
one.

" Where are you going to, Kezia ? " asked Isabel,
who longed to find some light and menial duty that
Kezia might perform and so be roped in under her
government.

" Oh, just away," said Kezia. . . .

Then she did not hear them any more. What a
glare there was in the room. She hated blinds
pulled up to the top at any time, but in the morning
it was intolerable. She turned over to the wall
and idly, with one finger, she traced a poppy on the
wall-paper with a leaf and a stem and a fat bursting
bud. In the quiet, and under her tracing finger,
the poppy seemed to come alive. She could feel
the sticky, silky petals, the stem, hairy like a goose-
berry skin, the rough leaf and the tight glazed
bud. Things had a habit of coming alive like that.

23

PRELUDE

Not only large substantial things like furniture,
but curtains and the patterns of stuffs and the
fringes of quilts and cushions. How often she had
seen the tassel fringe of her quilt change into a
funny procession of dancers with priests attending.
. . . For there were some tassels that did not
dance at all but walked stately, bent forward as if
praying or chanting. How often the medicine
bottles had turned into a row of little men with
brown top-hats on ; and the washstand jug had a
way of sitting in the basin like a fat bird in a round
nest.

" I dreamed about birds last night," thought
Linda. What was it ? She had forgotten. But
the strangest part of this coming alive of things was
what they did. They listened, they seemed to
swell out with some mysterious important content,
and when they were full she felt that they smiled.
But it was not for her, only, their sly secret smile ;
they were members of a secret society and they
smiled among themselves. Sometimes, when she
had fallen asleep in the daytime, she woke and could
not lift a finger, could not even turn her eyes to
left or right because THEY were there ; sometimes
when she went out of a room and left it empty, she
knew as she clicked the door to that THEY were
filling it. And there were times in the evenings
when she was upstairs, perhaps, and everybody
else was down, when she could hardly escape from
them. Then she could not hurry, she could not

24

PRELUDE

hum a tune ; if she tried to say ever so carelessly
" Bother that old thimble " THEY were not
deceived. THEY knew how frightened she was ;
THEY saw how she turned her head away as she
passed the mirror. What Linda always felt was that
THEY wanted something of her, and she knew that
if she gave herself up and was quiet, more than
quiet, silent, motionless, something would really
happen.

" It's very quiet now," she thought. She opened
her eyes wide, and she heard the silence spinning
its soft endless web. How lightly she breathed ;
she scarcely had to breathe at all.

Yes, everything had come alive down to the
minutest, tiniest particle, and she did not feel her
bed, she floated, held up in the air. Only she
seemed to be listening with her wide open watchful
eyes, waiting for someone to come who just did
not come, watching for something to happen that
just did not happen.

6

In the kitchen at the long deal table under the
two windows old Mrs. Fairfield was washing the
breakfast dishes. The kitchen window looked out
on to a big grass patch that led down to the vegetable
garden and the rhubarb beds. On one side the
grass patch was bordered by the scullery and wash-
house and over this whitewashed lean-to there grew
a knotted vine. She had noticed yesterday that a

PRELUDE

few tiny corkscrew tendrils had come right through
some cracks in the scullery ceiling and all the
windows of the lean-to had a thick frill of ruffled
green.

" I am very fond of a grape vine," declared Mrs.
Fairfield, " but I do not think that the grapes will
ripen here. It takes Australian sun." And she
remembered how Beryl when she was a baby had
been picking some white grapes from the vine on
the back verandah of their Tasmanian house and
she had been stung on the leg by a huge red ant.
S^e saw Beryl in a little plaid dress with red ribbon
tie-ups on the shoulders screaming so dreadfully
that half the street rushed in. And how the child's
leg had swelled ! " T t t t ! " Mrs. Fairfield
caught her breath remembering. " Poor child,
how terrifying it was." And she set her lips tight
and went over to the stove for some more hot
water. The water frothed up in the big soapy
bowl with pink and blue bubbles on top of the
foam. Old Mrs. Fairfield 's arms were bare to the
elbow and stained a bright pink. She wore a grey
foulard dress patterned with large purple pansies,
a white linen apron and a high cap shaped like a
jelly mould of white muslin. At her throat there
was a silver crescent moon with five little owls
seated on it, and round her neck she wore a watch
guard made of black bead's.

It was hard to believe that she had not been in
that kitchen for years ; she was so much a part of

26

PRELUDE

it. She put the crocks away with a sure, precise
touch, moving leisurely and ample from the stove
to the dresser, looking into the pantry and the larder
as though there were not an unfamiliar corner.
When she had finished, everything in the kitchen
had become part of a series of patterns. She stood
in the middle of the room wiping her hands on a
check cloth ; a smile beamed on her lips ; she
thought it looked very nice, very satisfactory.

" Mother ! Mother ! Are you there ? " called
Beryl.

" Yes, dear. Do you want me ? "

" No. I'm coming/' and Beryl rushed in, very
flushed, dragging with her two big pictures.

" Mother, whatever can I do with these awful
hideous Chinese paintings that Chung Wah gave
Stanley when he went bankrupt ? It's absurd to
say that they are valuable, because they were
hanging in Chung Wah's fruit shop for months
before. I can't make out why Stanley wants them
kept. I'm sure he thinks them just as hideous as
we do, but it's because of the frames," she said
spitefully. " I suppose he thinks the frames might
fetch something some day or other."

" Why don't you hang them in the passage ? "
suggested Mrs. Fairfield ; " they would not be
much seen there."

" I can't. There is no room. I've hung all the
photographs of his office there before and after
building, and the signed photos of his business

27

PRELUDE

friends, and that awful enlargement of Isabel lying
on the mat in her singlet." Her angry glance
swept the placid kitchen. " I know what I'll do.
Fll hang them here. I will tell Stanley they got a
little damp in the moving so I have put them in
here for the time being."

She dragged a chair forward, jumped on it, took
a hammer and a big nail out of her pinafore pocket
and banged away.

"There! That is enough! Hand me the
picture, mother."

" One moment, child." Her mother was wiping
over the carved ebony frame.

" Oh, mother, really you need not dust them. It
would take years to dust all those little holes." And
she frowned at the top of her mother's head and bit
her lip with impatience. Mother's deliberate way
of doing things was simply maddening. It was old
age, she supposed, loftily.

At last the two pictures were hung side by side.
She jumped off the chair, stowing away the little
hammer.

" They don't look so bad there, do they ? " said
she. " And at any rate nobody need gaze at them
except Pat and the servant girl have I got a spider's
web on my face, mother ? I've been poking into
that cupboard under the stairs and now something
keeps tickling my nose."

But before Mrs. Fairfield had time to look
Beryl had turned away. Someone tapped on the

28

PRELUDE

window : Linda was there, nodding and smiling.
They heard the latch of the scullery door lift and
she came in. She had no hat on ; her hair stood
up on her head in curling rings and she was wrapped
up in an old cashmere shawl.

" I'm so hungry," said Linda : " where can I get
something to eat, mother ? This is the first time
I've been in the kitchen. It says * mother ' all
over ; everything is in pairs."

" I will make you some tea," said Mrs. Fairfield,
spreading a clean napkin over a corner of the table,
11 and Beryl can have a cup with you."

" Beryl, do you want half my gingerbread ? "
Linda waved the knife at her. " Beryl, do you like
the house now that we are here ? "

" Oh yes, I like the house immensely and the
garden is beautiful, but it feels very far away from
everything to me. I can't imagine people coming
out from town to see us in that dreadful jolting
bus, and I am sure there is not anyone here to come
and call. Of course it does not matter to you
because "

" But there's the buggy," said Linda. " Pat can
drive you into town whenever you like."

That was a consolation, certainly, but there was
something at the back of Beryl's mind, some-
thing she did not even put into words for
herself.

" Oh, well, at any rate it won't kill us," she said
dryly, putting down her empty cup and standing up

29

PRELUDE

and stretching. " I am going to hang curtains."
And she ran away singing :

How many thousand birds I see
That sing aloud from every tree . .

" . . . birds I see That sing aloud from every
tree. . . ." But when she reached the dining-room
she stopped singing, her face changed ; it became
gloomy and sullen.

" One may as well rot here as anywhere else," she
muttered savagely, digging the stiff brass safety-pins
into the red serge curtains.

The two left in the kitchen were quiet for a little.
Linda leaned her cheek on her fingers and watched
her mother. She thought her mother looked
wonderfully beautiful with her back to the leafy
window. There was something comforting in the
sight of her that Linda felt she could never do
without. She needed the sweet smell of her flesh,
and the soft feel of her cheeks and her arms and
shoulders still softer. She loved the way her hair
curled, silver at her forehead, lighter at her neck,
and bright brown still in the big coil under the
muslin cap. Exquisite were her mother's hands,
and the two rings she wore seemed to melt into
her creamy skin. And she was always so fresh,
so delicious. The old woman could bear nothing
but linen next to her body and she bathed in cold
water winter and summer.

30

PRELUDE

" Isn't there anything for me to do ? " asked
Linda.

" No, darling. I wish you would go into the
garden and give an eye to your children ; but that
I know you will not do."

" Of course I will, but you know Isabel is much
more grown up than any of us."

" Yes, but Kezia is not," said Mrs. Fairfield.

" Oh, Kezia has been tossed by a bull hours
ago," said Linda, winding herself up in her shawl
again.

But no, Kezia had seen a bull through a hole in
a knot of wood in the paling that separated the
tennis lawn from the paddock. But she had not
liked the bull frightfully, so she had walked away
back through the orchard, up the grassy slope, along
the path by the lace bark tree and so into the spread
tangled garden. She did not believe that she would
ever not get lost in this garden. Twice she had
found her way back to the big iron gates they had
driven through the night before, and then had
turned to walk up the drive that led to the house,
but there were so many little paths on either side.
On one side they all led into a tangle of tall dark
trees and strange bushes with flat velvet leaves and
feathery cream flowers that buzzed with flies when
you shook them this was the frightening side,
and no garden at all. The little paths here were
wet and clayey with tree roots spanned across them
like the marks of big fowls' feet.

31

PRELUDE

But on the other side of the drive there was a
high box border and the paths had box edges and
all of them led into a deeper and deeper tangle of
flowers. The camellias were in bloom, white and
crimson and pink and white striped with flashing
leaves. You could not see a leaf on the syringa
bushes for the white clusters. The roses were in
flower gentlemen's button-hole roses, little white
ones, but far too full of insects to hold under any-
one's nose, pink monthly roses with a ring of fallen
petals round the bushes, cabbage roses on thick
stalks, moss roses, always in bud, pink smooth
beauties opening curl on curl, red ones so dark they
seemed to turn black as they fell, and a certain
exquisite cream kind with a slender red stem and
bright scarlet leaves.

There were clumps of fairy bells, and all kinds of
geraniums, and there were little trees of verbena and
bluish lavender bushes and a bed of pelagoniums
with velvet eyes and leaves like moths' wings.
There was a bed of nothing but mignonette and
another of nothing but pansies borders of double
and single daisies and all kinds of little tufty plants
she had never seen before.

The red-hot pokers were taller than she ; the
Japanese sunflowers grew in a tiny jungle. She sat
down on one of the box borders. By pressing hard
at first it made a nice seat. But how dusty it was
inside I Kezia bent down to look and sneezed and
rubbed her nose.

3*

PRELUDE

And then she found herself at the top of the
rolling grassy slope that led down to the orchard.
. . . She looked down at the slope a moment ;
then she lay down on her back, gave a squeak and
rolled over and over into the thick flowery orchard
grass. As she lay waiting for things to stop spinning,
she decided to go up to the house and ask the servant
girl for an empty match-box. She wanted to make
a surprise for the grandmother. . . . First she
would put a leaf inside with a big violet lying on it,
then she would put a very small white picotee,
perhaps, on each side of the violet, and then she
would sprinkle some lavender on the top, but not
to cover their heads.

She often made these surprises for the grand-
mother, and they were always most successful.

" Do you want a match, my granny ? "

" Why, yes, child, I believe a match is just what
I'm looking for/'

The grandmother slowly opened the box and
came upon the picture inside.

" Good gracious, child ! How you astonished
me!"

" I can make her one every day here," she
thought, scrambling up the grass on her slippery
shoes.

But on her way back to the house she came to
that island that lay in the middle of the drive,
dividing the drive into two arms that met in front
of the house. The island was made of grass banked

D 33

PRELUDE

up high. Nothing grew on the top except one
huge plant with thick, grey-green, thorny leaves, and
out of the middle there sprang up a tall stout stem.
Some of the leaves of the plant were so old that
they curled up in the air no longer ; they turned
back, they were split and broken ; some of them
lay flat and withered on the ground.

Whatever could it be ? She had never seen any-
thing like it before. She stood and stared. And
then she saw her mother coming down the path.

" Mother, what is it ? " asked Kezia.

Linda looked up at the fat swelling plant with its
cruel leaves and fleshy stem. High above them, as
though becalmed in the air, and yet holding so fast
to the earth it grew from, it might have had claws
instead of roots. The curving leaves seemed to be
hiding something ; the blind stem cut into the air
as if no wind could ever shake it.

" That is an aloe, Kezia," said her mother.

" Does it ever have any flowers ? "

" Yes, Kezia," and Linda smiled down at her,
and half shut her eyes. " Once every hundred
years."

7

On his way home from the office Stanley Burnell
stopped the buggy at the Bodega, got out and
bought a large bottle of oysters. At the Chinaman's
shop next door he bought a pineapple in the pink
of condition, and noticing a basket of fresh black

34

PRELUDE

cherries he told John to put him a pound of those
as well. The oysters and the pine he stowed away in
the box under the front seat, but the cherries he
kept in his hand.

Pat, the handy-man, leapt off the box and tucked
him up again in the brown rug.

" Lift yer feet, Mr. Burnell, while I give yer a
fold under/' said he.

" Right ! Right 1 First-rate ! " said Stanley.
" You can make straight for home now."

Pat gave the grey mare a touch and the buggy
sprang forward.

" I believe this man is a first-rate chap," thought
Stanley. He liked the look of him sitting up there
in his neat brown coat and brown bowler. He liked
the way Pat had tucked him in, and he liked his
eyes. There was nothing servile about him and
if there was one thing he hated more than another
it was servility. And he looked as if he was pleased
with his job happy and contented already.

The grey mare went very well ; Burnell was
impatient to be out of the town. He wanted to be
home. Ah, it was splendid to live in the country
to get right out of that hole of a town once the office
was closed ; and this drive in the fresh warm air,
knowing all the while that his own house was at
the other end, with its garden and paddocks, its
three tip-top cows and enough fowls and ducks to
keep them in poultry, was splendid too.

As they left the town finally and bowled away up

35

PRELUDE

the deserted road his heart beat hard for joy. He
rooted in the bag and began to eat the cherries, three
or four at a time, chucking the stones over the side
of the buggy. They were delicious, so plump and
cold, without a spot or a bruise on them.

Look at those two, now black one side and white
the other perfect ! A perfect little pair of Siamese
twins. And he stuck them in his button-hole. . . .
By Jove, he wouldn't mind giving that chap up
there a handful but no, better not. Better wait
until he had been with him a bit longer.

He began to plan what he would do with his
Saturday afternoons and his Sundays. He wouldn't
go to the club for lunch on Saturday. No, cut
away from the office as soon as possible and get
them to give him a couple of slices of cold meat and
half a lettuce when he got home. And then he'd
get a few chaps out frpm town to play tennis in the
afternoon. Not too many three at most. Beryl
was a good player, too. . . . He stretched out his
right arm and slowly bent it, feeling the muscle.
. . . A bath, a good rub-down, a cigar on the veran-
dah after dinner. . . .

On Sunday morning they would go to church
children and all. Which reminded him that he
must hire a pew, in the sun if possible and well
forward so as to be out of the draught from the
door. In fancy he heard himself intoning extremely
well : " When thou did overcome the Sharpness
of Death Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven

36

PRELUDE

to all Believers." And he saw the neat brass-
edged card on the corner of the pew Mr. Stanley
Burnell and family. . . . The rest of the day he'd
loaf about with Linda. . . . Now they were walk-
ing about the garden ; she was on his arm, and he
was explaining to her at length what he intended
doing at the office the week following. He heard
her saying : " My dear, I think that is most wise."
. . . Talking things over with Linda was a wonder-
ful help even though they were apt to drift away
from the point.

Hang it all ! They weren't getting along very
fast. Pat had put the brake on again. Ugh !
What a brute of a thing it was. He could feel it
in the pit of his stomach.

A sort of panic overtook Burnell whenever he
approached near home. Before he was well inside
the gate he would shout to anyone within sight :
" Is everything all right ? " And then he did not
believe it was until he heard Linda say : " Hullo 1
Are you home again ? " That was the worst of
living in the country it took the deuce of a long
time to get back. . . . But now they weren't far
off. They were on the top of the last hill ; it was a
gentle slope all the way now and not more than half
a mile.

Pat trailed the whip over the mare's back and he
coaxed her : " Goop now. Goop now."

It wanted a few minutes to sunset. Everything
stood motionless bathed in bright, metallic light

37

PRELUDE

and from the paddocks on either side there streamed
the milky scent of ripe grass. The iron gates were
open. They dashed through and up the drive and
round the island, stopping at the exact middle of the
verandah

" Did she satisfy yer, Sir ? " said Pat, getting
off the box and grinning at his master.

" Very well indeed, Pat/ 1 said Stanley.

Linda came out of the glass door ; her voice
rang in the shadowy quiet. " Hullo ! Are you
home again ? "

At the sound of her his heart beat so hard that he
could hardly stop himself dashing up the steps and
catching her in his arms.

" Yes, I'm home again. Is everything all right ? "

Pat began to lead the buggy round to the side
gate that opened into the courtyard.

" Here, half a moment," said Burnell. " Hand
me those two parcels." And he said to Linda,
" I've brought you back a bottle of oysters and a
pineapple," as though he had brought her back all
the harvest of the earth.

They went into the hall ; Linda carried the
oysters in one hand and the pineapple in the other.
Burnell shut the glass door, threw his hat down,
put his arms round her and strained her to him,
kissing the top of her head, her cars, her lips, her
eyes.

" Oh, dear ! Oh, dear ! " said she. " Wait a
moment. Let me put down these silly things," and

38

PRELUDE

she put the bottle of oysters and the pine on a little
carved chair. " What have you got in your button-
hole cherries ? " She took them out and hung
them over his ear.

" Don't do that, darling. They are for you."

So she took them off his ear again. " You don't
mind if I save them. They'd spoil my appetite for
dinner. Come and see your children. They are
having tea."

The lamp was lighted on the nursery table.
Mrs. Fairfield was cutting and spreading bread and
butter. The three little girls sat up to table wearing
large bibs embroidered with their names. They
wiped their mouths as their father came in ready
to be kissed. The windows were open ; a jar of
wild flowers stood on the mantelpiece, and the lamp
made a big soft bubble of light on the ceiling.

" You seem pretty snug, mother," said Burnell,
blinking at the light. Isabel and Lottie sat one on
either side of the table, Kezia at the bottom the
place at the top was empty.

" That's where my boy ought to sit," thought
Stanley. He tightened his arm round Linda's
shoulder. By God, he was a perfect fool to feel as
happy as this !

" We are, Stanley. We are very snug," said
Mrs. Fairfield, cutting Kezia's bread into fingers.

" Like it better than town eh, children ? "
asked Burnell.

" Oh, yes," said the three little girls, and Isabel

39

PRELUDE

added as an after-thought : " Thank you very much
indeed, father dear."

" Come upstairs/' said Linda. " I'll bring your
slippers."

But the stairs were too narrow for them to go up
arm in arm. It was quite dark in the room. He
heard her ring tapping on the marble mantelpiece
as she felt for the matches.

" I've got some, darling. I'll light the candles."

But instead he came up behind her and again he
put his arms round her and pressed her head into his
shoulder.

" I'm so confoundedly happy," he said.

" Are you ? " She turned and put her hands on
his breast and looked up at him.

" I don't know what has come over me," he pro-
tested.

It was quite dark outside now and heavy dew was
falling. When Linda shut the window the cold dew
touched her finger tips. Far away a dog barked.
" I believe there is going to be a moon," she said.

At the words, and with the cold wet dew on her
fingers, she felt as though the moon had risen that
she was being strangely discovered in a flood of cold
light. She shivered ; she came away from the window
and sat down upon the box ottoman beside Stanley.

In the dining-room, by the flicker of a wood fire,
Beryl sat on a hassock playing the guitar. She had
bathed and changed all her clothes. Now she wore

40

PRELUDE

a white muslin dress with black spots on it and in her
hair she had pinned a black silk rose.

Nature has gone to her rest, love,

See, we are alone.
Give me your hand to press, love,

Lightly within my own.

She played and sang half to herself, for she was
watching herself playing and singing. The fire-
light gleamed on her shoes, on the ruddy belly of
the guitar, and on her white fingers. . . .

" If I were outside the window and looked in and
saw myself I really would be rather struck,"
thought she. Still more softly she played the
accompaniment not singing now but listening.

..." The first time that I ever saw you, little
girl oh, you had no idea that you were not alone
you were sitting with your little feet upon a hassock,
playing the guitar. God, I can never forget. . . ."
Beryl flung up her head and began to sing again :

Even the moon is aweary . . .

But there came a loud bang at the door. The
servant girl's crimson face popped through.

" Please, Miss Beryl, I've got to come and lay."

" Certainly, Alice/' said Beryl, in a voice of ice.
She put the guitar in a corner. Alice lunged in
with a heavy black iron tray.

" Well, I have had a job with that oving," said
she. " I can't get nothing to brown."

" Really ! " said Beryl.

41

PRELUDE

But no, she could not stand that fool of a girl.
She ran into the dark drawing-room and began
walking up and down. . . . Oh, she was restless,
restless. There was a mirror over the mantel.
She leaned her arms along and looked at her pale
shadow in it. How beautiful she looked, but there
was nobody to see, nobody.

" Why must you suffer so ? " said the face in the
mirror. " You were not made for suffering. . . .
Smile I "

Beryl smiled, and really her smile was so adorable
that she smiled again but this time because she
could not help it.

8

" Good morning, Mrs. Jones,"

" Oh, good morning, Mrs. Smith. Fm so glad to
see you. Have you brought your children ? "

" Yes, I've brought both my twins. I have had
another baby since I saw you last, but she came so
suddenly that I haven't had time to make her any
clothes, yet. So I left her. . . . How is your
husband ? "

" Oh, he is very well, thank you. At least he
had a nawful cold but Queen Victoria she's my
godmother, you know sent him a case of pine-
apples and that cured it im mediately. Is that
your new servant ? "

" Yes, her name's Gwen. I've only had her two
days. Oh, Gwen, this is my friend. Mrs. Smith."

4*

PRELUDE

" Good morning, Mrs. Smith. Dinner won't
be ready for about ten minutes."

" I don't think you ought to introduce me to the
servant. I think I ought to just begin talking to
her."

" Well, she's more of a lady-help than a servant
and you do introduce lady-helps, I know, because
Mrs. Samuel Josephs had one."

" Oh, well, it doesn't matter," said the servant,
carelessly, beating up a chocolate custard with half
a broken clothes peg. The dinner was baking
beautifully on a concrete step. She began to lay
the cloth on a pink garden seat. In front of each
person she put two geranium leaf plates, a pine
needle fork and a twig knife. There were three
daisy heads on a laurel leaf for poached eggs, some
slices of fuchsia petal cold beef, some lovely little
rissoles made of earth and water and dandelion
seeds, and the chocolate custard which she had
decided to serve in the pawa shell she had cooked
it in.

" You needn't trouble about my children," said
Mrs. Smith graciously. " If you'll just take this
bottle and fill it at the tap I mean at the dairy."

" Oh, all right," said Gwen, and she whispered to
Mrs. Jones : " Shall I go and ask Alice for a little
bit of real milk ? "

But someone called from the front of the house
and the luncheon party melted away, leaving the
charming table, leaving the rissoles and the poached

43

PRELUDE

eggs to the ants and to an old snail who pushed his
quivering horns over the edge of the garden seat
and began to nibble a geranium plate.

" Come round to the front, children. Pip and
Rags have come."

The Trout boys were the cousins Kezia had
mentioned to the storeman. They lived about a
mile away in a house called Monkey Tree Cottage.
Pip was tall for his age, with lank black hair and a
white face, but Rags was very small and so thin
that when he was undressed his shoulder blades
stuck out like two little wings. They had a mongrel
dog with pale blue eyes and a long tail turned up
at the end who followed them everywhere ; he was
called Snooker. They spent half their time comb-
ing and brushing Snooker and dosing him with
various awful mixtures concocted by Pip, and kept
secretly by him in a broken jug covered with an old
kettle lid. Even faithful little Rags was not allowed
to know the full secret of these mixtures. . . .
Take some carbolic tooth powder and a pinch of
sulphur powdered up fine, and perhaps a bit of
starch to stiffen up Snooker's coat. . . . But that
was not all ; Rags privately thought that the rest
was gun-powder. . . . And he never was allowed to
help with the mixing because of the danger. . . .
" Why if a spot of this flew in your eye, you would
be blinded for life," Pip would say, stirring the
mixture with an iron spoon. " And there's always
the chance just the chance, mind you of it

44

PRELUDE

exploding if you whack it hard enough. . . . Two
spoons of this in a kerosene tin will be enough to
kill thousands of fleas." But Snooker spent all
his spare time biting and snuffling, and he stank
abominably.

" It's because he is such a grand fighting dog/ 1
Pip would say. " All fighting dogs smell."

The Trout boys had often spent the day with the
Burnells in town, but now that they lived in this
fine house and boncer garden they were inclined
to be very friendly. Besides, both of them liked
playing with girls Pip, because he could fox
them so, and because Lottie was so easily frightened,
and Rags for a shameful reason. He adored dolls.
How he would look at a doll as it lay asleep,
speaking in a whisper and smiling timidly, and
what a treat it was to him to be allowed to hold
one. . . .

" Curve your arms round her. Don't keep them
stiff like that. You'll drop her," Isabel would say
sternly.

Now they were standing on the verandah and
holding back Snooker who wanted to go into the
house but wasn't allowed to because Aunt Linda
hated decent dogs.

" We came over in the bus with Mum," they
said, " and we're going to spend the afternoon with
you. We brought over a batch of our gingerbread
for Aunt Linda. Our Minnie made it. It's all over
nuts."

45

PRELUDE

" I skinned the almonds," said Pip. " I just stuck
my hand into a saucepan of boiling water and
grabbed them out and gave them a kind of pinch
and the nuts flew out of the skins, some of them
as high as the ceiling. Didn't they, Rags ? "

Rags nodded, " When they make cakes at our
place," said Pip, " we always stay in the kitchen,
Rags and me, and I get the bowl and he gets the
spoon and the egg beater. Sponge cake's best.
It's all frothy stuff, then."

He ran down the verandah steps to the lawn,
planted his hands on the grass, bent forward, and
just did not stand on his head.

" That lawn's all bumpy," he said. " You have
to have a flat place for standing on your head. I
can walk round the monkey tree on my head at our
place. Can't I, Rags ? "

" Nearly," said Rags faintly.

" Stand on your head on the verandah. That's
quite flat," said Kezia.

" No, smarty," said Pip. " You have to do it on
something soft, Because if you give a jerk and fall
over, something in your neck goes click, and it
breaks off. Dad told me."

" Oh, do let's play something," said Kezia.

" Very well," said Isabel quickly, " we'll play
hospitals. I will be the nurse and Pip can be the
doctor and you and Lottie and Rags can be the sick
people."

Lottie didn't want to play that, because last time

PRELUDE

Pip had squeezed something down her throat and it
hurt awfully.

" Pooh," scoffed Pip. " It was only the juice out
of a bit of mandarin peel."

" Well, let's play ladies," said Isabel. " Pip can
be the father and you can be all our dear little
children."

" I hate playing ladies," said Kezia. " You
always make us go to church hand in hand and come
home and go to bed."

Suddenly Pip took a filthy handkerchief out of his
pocket. " Snooker ! Here, sir," he called. But
Snooker, as usual, tried to sneak away, his tail
between his legs. Pip leapt on top of him, and
pressed him between his knees.

" Keep his head firm, Rags," he said, and he
tied the handkerchief round Snooker's head with a
funny knot sticking up at the top.

" Whatever is that for ? " asked Lottie.

" It's to train his ears to grow more close to his
head see ? " said Pip. " All fighting dogs have
ears that lie back. But Snooker's ears are a bit too
soft."

" I know," said Kezia. " They are always
turning inside out. I hate that."

Snooker lay down, made one feeble effort with
his paw to get the handkerchief off, but finding he
could not, trailed after the children, shivering with
misery.

47

PRELUDE

9

Pat came swinging along ; in his hand he held a
little tomahawk that winked in the sun.

" Come with me," he said to the children, " and
I'll show you how the kings of Ireland chop the
head off a duck."

They drew back they didn't believe him, and
besides, the Trout boys had never seen Pat before.

" Come on now," he coaxed, smiling and holding
out his hand to Kezia.

"Is it a real duck's head ? One from the
paddock ? "

" It is," said Pat. She put her hand in his hard
dry one, and he stuck the tomahawk in his belt and
held out the other to Rags. He loved little children.

" I'd better keep hold of Snooker's head if there's
going to be any blood about," said Pip, " because
the sight of blood makes him awfully wild." He ran
ahead dragging Snooker by the handkerchief.

" Do you think we ought to go ? " whispered
Isabel. " We haven't asked or anything. Have
we?"

At the bottom of the orchard a gate was set in the
paling fence. On the other side a steep bank led
down to a bridge that spanned the creek, and once
up the bank on the other side you were on the
fringe of the paddocks. A little old stable in the
first paddock had been turned into a fowl house.
The fowls had strayed far away across the paddock

PRELUDE

down to a dumping ground in a hollow, but the
ducks kept close to that part of the creek that flowed
under the bridge.

Tall bushes overhung the stream with red leaves
and yellow flowers and clusters of blackberries. At
some places the stream was wide and shallow, but at
others it tumbled into deep little pools with foam
at the edges and quivering bubbles. It was in these
pools that the big white ducks had made themselves
at home, swimming and guzzling along the weedy
banks.

Up and down they swam, preening their dazzling
breasts, and other ducks with the same dazzling
breasts and yellow bills swam upside down with
them.

" There is the little Irish navy," said Pat, " and
look at the old admiral there with the green neck
and the grand little flagstaff on his tail."

He pulled a handful of grain from his pocket and
began to walk towards the fowl -house, lazy, his
straw hat with the broken crown pulled over his
eyes.

11 Lid. Lid lid lid lid " he called.

" Qua. Qua qua qua qua " answered

the ducks, making for land, and flapping and
scrambling up the bank they streamed after him in a
long waddling line. He coaxed them, pretending
to throw the grain, shaking it in his hands and calling
to them until they swept round him in a white
ring.

E 49

PRELUDE

From far away the fowls heard the clamour and
they too came running across the paddock, their
heads thrust forward, their wings spread, turning
in their feet in the silly way fowls run and scolding
as they came.

Then Pat scattered the grain and the greedy
ducks began to gobble. Quickly he stooped, seized
two, one under each arm, and strode across to the
children. Their darting heads and round eyes
frightened the children all except Pip.

" Come on, sillies," he cried, " they can't bite.
They haven't any teeth. They've only got those
two little holes in their beaks for breathing through."

" Will you hold one while I finish with the
other ? " asked Pat. Pip let go of Snooker.
" Won't I ? Won't I ? Give us one. I don't mind
how much he kicks."

He nearly sobbed with delight when Pat gave
the white lump into his arms.

There was an old stump beside the door of the
fowl-house. Pat grabbed the duck by the legs, laid
it flat across the stump, and almost at the same
moment down came the little tomahawk and the
duck's head flew off the stump. Up the blood
spurted over the white feathers and over his hand.

When the children saw the blood they were
frightened no longer. They crowded round him
and began to scream. Even Isabel leaped about
crying : " The blood ! The blood ! " Pip forgot
all about his cluck. He simply threw it away from

PRELUDE

him and shouted, " I saw it. I saw it," and
jumped round the wood block.

Rags, with cheeks as white as paper, ran up to the
little head, put out a finger as if he wanted to touch
it, shrank back again and then again put out a
finger. He was shivering all over.

Even Lottie, frightened little Lottie, began to
laugh and pointed at the duck and shrieked :
" Look, Kezia, look."

" Watch it ! " shouted Pat. He put down the
body and it began to waddle with only a long
spurt of blood where the head had been ; it began
to pad away without a sound towards the steep
bank that led to the stream. . . . That was the
crowning wonder.

" Do you see that ? Do you see that ? " yelled
Pip. He ran among the little girls tugging at their
pinafores.

" It's like a little engine. It's like a funny little
railway engine," squealed Isabel.

But Kezia suddenly rushed at Pat and flung her
arms round his legs and butted her head as hard as
she could against his knees.

" Put head back ! Put head back ! " she screamed.

When he stooped to move her she would not let
go or take her head away. She held on as hard as
she could and sobbed : " Head back ! Head
back ! " until it sounded like a loud strange hiccup.

" It's stopped. It's tumbled over. It's dead,"
said Pip.

5*

PRELUDE

Pat dragged Kezia up into his arms. Her sun-
bonnet had fallen back, but she would not let him
look at her face. No, she pressed her face into a
bone in his shoulder and clasped her arms round
his neck.

The children stopped screaming as suddenly
as they had begun. They stood round the dead
duck. Rags was not frightened of the head any
more. He knelt down and stroked it, now.

" I don't think the head is quite dead yet," he
said. " Do you think it would keep alive if I gave
it something to drink ? "

But Pip got very cross : " Bah ! You baby. 1 '
He whistled to Snooker and went off.

When Isabel went up to Lottie, Lottie snatched
away.

" What are you always touching me for, Isabel ? "

" There now," said Pat to Kezia. " There's the
grand little girl."

She put up her hands and touched his ears. She
felt something. Slowly she raised her quivering
face and looked. Pat wore little round gold ear-
rings. She never knew that men wore ear-rings.
She was very much surprised.

" Do they come on and off ? " she asked huskily.

10

Up in the house, in the warm tidy kitchen, Alice,
the servant girl, was getting the afternoon tea. She
was " dressed."* She had on a black stuff dress that

PRELUDE

smelt under the arms, a white apron like a large
sheet of paper, and a lace bow pinned on to her
hair with two jetty pins. Also her comfortable
carpet slippers were changed for a pair of black
leather ones that pinched her corn on her little
toe something dreadful. , . .

It was warm in the kitchen. A blow-fly buzzed,
a fan of whity steam came out of the kettle, and the
lid kept up a rattling jig as the water bubbled. The
clock ticked in the warm air, slow and deliberate,
like the click of an old woman's knitting needle, and
sometimes for no reason at all, for there wasn't
any breeze the blind swung out and back, tapping
the window.

Alice was making water-cress sandwiches. She
had a lump of butter on the table, a barracouta loaf,
and the cresses tumbled in a white cloth.

But propped against the butter dish there was a
dirty, greasy little book, half unstitched, with curled
edges, and while she mashed the butter she read :

" To dream of black-beetles drawing a hearse is
bad. Signifies death of one you hold near or dear,
either father, husband, brother, son, or intended. If
beetles crawl backwards as you watch them it means
death from fire or from great height such as flight
of stairs, scaffolding, etc.

" Spiders. To dream of spiders creeping over
you is good. Signifies large sum of money in near
future. Should party be in family way an easy con-
finement may be expected. But care should be

53

PRELUDE

taken in sixth month to avoid eating of probable
present of shell fish. . . ."

How many thousand birds I see.

Oh, life. There was Miss Beryl. Alice dropped
the knife and slipped the Dream Book under the
butter dish. But she hadn't time to hide it quite,
for Beryl ran into the kitchen and up to the table,
and the first thing her eye lighted on were those
greasy edges. Alice saw Miss Beryl's meaning
little smile and the way she raised her eyebrows
and screwed up her eyes as though she were not
quite sure what that could be. She decided to
answer if Miss Beryl should ask her : " Nothing as
belongs to you, Miss/' But she knew Miss Beryl
would not ask her.

Alice was a mild creature in reality, but she had
the most marvellous retorts ready for questions
that she knew would never be put to her. The
composing of them and the turning of them over
and over in her mind comforted her just as much
as if they'd been expressed. Really, they kept her
alive in places where she'd been that chivvied she'd
been afraid to go to bed at night with a box of
matches on the chair in case she bit the tops off
in her sleep, as you might say.

" Oh, Alice," said Miss Beryl. " There's one
extra to tea, so heat a plate of yesterday's scones,
please. And put on the Victoria sandwich as well
as the coffee cake. And don't forget to put little

54

PRELUDE

doyleys under the plates will you ? You did
yesterday, you know, and the tea looked so ugly and
common. And, Alice, don't put that dreadful old
pink and green cosy on the afternoon teapot again.
That is only for the mornings. Really, I think it
ought to be kept for the kitchen it's so shabby,
and quite smelly. Put on the Japanese one. You
quite understand, don't you ? "
Miss Beryl had finished.

That sing aloud from every tree . . .

she sang as she left the kitchen, very pleased with
her firm handling of Alice.

Oh, Alice was wild. She wasn't one to mind
being told, but there was something in the way
Miss Beryl had of speaking to her that she couldn't
stand. Oh, that she couldn't. It made her curl
up inside, as you might say, and she fair trembled.
But what Alice really hated Miss Beryl for was that
she made her feel low. She talked to Alice in a
special voice as though she wasn't quite all there ;
and she never lost her temper with her never.
Even when Alice dropped anything or forgot any-
thing important Miss Beryl seemed to have ex-
pected it to happen.

" If you please, Mrs. Burnell," said an imaginary
Alice, as she buttered the scones, " I'd rather not
take my orders from Miss Beryl. I may be only
a common servant girl as doesn't know how to play
the guitar, but . . ."

PRELUDE

This last thrust pleased her so much that she
quite recovered her temper.

" The only thing to do," she heard, as she opened
the dining-room door, " is to cut the sleeves out
entirely and just have a broad band of black velvet
over the shoulders instead. . . ,"

ii

The white duck did not look as if it had ever had
a head when Alice placed it in front of Stanley
Burnell that night. It lay, in beautifully basted
resignation, on a blue dish its legs tied together
with a piece of string and a wreath of little balls of
stuffing round it.

It was hard to say which of the two, Alice or the
duck, looked the better basted ; they were both
such a rich colour and they both had the same air
of gloss and strain. But Alice was fiery red and
the duck a Spanish mahogany.

Burnell ran his eye along the edge of the carving
knife. He prided himself very much upon his
carving, upon making a first-class job of it. He
hated seeing a woman carve ; they were always
too slow and they never seemed to care what the
meat looked like afterwards. Now he did ; he
took a real pride in cutting delicate shaves of cold
beef, little wads of mutton, just the right thickness,
and in dividing a chicken or a duck with nice
precision. ....

56

PRELUDE

" Is this the first of the home products ? " he
asked, knowing perfectly well that it was.

" Yes, the butcher did not come. We have found
out that he only calls twice a week."

But there was no need to apologise. It was a
superb bird. It wasn't meat at all, but a kind of
very superior jelly. " My father would say,' 1 said
Burnell, " this must have been one of those birds
whose mother played to it in infancy upon the
German flute. And the sweet strains of the dulcet
instrument acted with such effect upon the infant
mind. . . . Have some more, Beryl ? You and I
are the only ones in this house with a real feeling
for food. I'm perfectly willing to state, in a court
of law, if necessary, that I love good food."

Tea was served in the drawing-room, and Beryl,
who for some reason had been very charming to
Stanley ever since he came home, suggested a game
of crib. They sat at a little table near one of the
open windows. Mrs. Fairfield disappeared, and
Linda lay in a rocking-chair, her arms above her
head, rocking to and fro.

" You don't want the light do you, Linda ? "
said Beryl. She moved the tall lamp so that she sat
under its soft light.

How remote they looked, those two, from where
Linda sat and rocked. The green table, the polished
cards, Stanley's big hands and Beryl's tiny ones, all
seemed to be part of one mysterious movement.
Stanley himself, big and solid, in his dark suit, took

57

PRELUDE

his ease, and Beryl tossed her bright head and
pouted. Round her throat she wore an unfamiliar
velvet ribbon. It changed her, somehow altered
the shape of her face but it was charming, Linda
decided. The room smelled of lilies ; there were
two big jars of arums in the fire-place.

" Fifteen two fifteen four and a pair is six and
a run of three is nine/' said Stanley, so deliberately,
he might have been counting sheep.

" Fvc nothing but two pairs," said Beryl, exagger-
ating her woe because she knew how he loved
winning.

The cribbage pegs were like two little people
going up the road together, turning round the
sharp corner, and coming down the road again.
They were pursuing each other. They did not so
much want to get ahead as to keep near enough to
talk to keep near, perhaps that was all.

But no, there was always one who was impatient
and hopped away as the other came up, and would
not listen. Perhaps the white peg was frightened of
the red one, or perhaps he was cruel and would
not give the red one a chance to speak. , , .

In the front of her dress Beryl wore a bunch of
pansies, and once when the little pegs were side by
side, she bent over and the pansies dropped out and
covered them.

" What a shame," said she, picking up the pansies.
" Just as they had a chance to fly into each other's

arms."

PRELUDE

" Farewell, my girl," laughed Stanley, and away
the red peg hopped.

The drawing-room was long and narrow with
glass doors that gave on to the verandah. It had a
cream paper with a pattern of gilt roses, and the
furniture, which had belonged to old Mrs. Fairfield,
was dark and plain. A little piano stood against
the wall with yellow pleated silk let into the carved
front. Above it hung an oil painting by Beryl of a
large cluster of surprised looking clematis. Each
flower was the size of a small saucer, with a centre
like an astonished eye fringed in black. But the
room was not finished yet. Stanley had set his
heart on a Chesterfield and two decent chairs.
Linda liked it best as it was. . . .

Two big moths flew in through the window and
round and round the circle of lamplight.

" Fly away before it is too late. Fly out again."

Round and round they flew ; they seemed to
bring the silence and the moonlight in with them
on their silent wings. . . .

" I've two kings," said Stanley. " Any good ? "

" Quite good," said Beryl.

Linda stopped rocking and got up. Stanley
looked across. " Anything the matter, darling ? "

11 No, nothing. I'm going to find mother."

She went out of the room and standing at the
foot of the stairs she called, but her mother's voice
answered her from the verandah.

The moon that Lottie and Kezia had seen from

59

PRELUDE

the storeman's wagon was full, and the house, the
garden, the old woman and Linda all were bathed
in dazzling light.

" I have been looking at the aloe," said Mrs.
Fairfield. " I believe it is going to flower this year.
Look at the top there. Are those buds, or is it only
an effect of light ?"

As they stood on the steps, the high grassy bank
on which the aloe rested rose up like a wave, and
the aloe seemed to ride upon it like a ship with the
oars lifted. Bright moonlight hung upon the
lifted oars like water, and on the green wave glittered
the dew.

" Do you feel it, too," said Linda, and she spoke
to her mother with the special voice that women use
at night to each other as though they spoke in their
sleep or from some hollow cave " Don't you feel
that it is coming towards us ? "

She dreamed that she was caught up out of the
cold water into the ship with the lifted oars and the
budding mast. Now the oars fell striking quickly,
quickly. They rowed far away over the top of the
garden trees, the paddocks and the dark bush
beyond. Ah, she heard herself cry : " Faster !
Faster 1 " to those who were rowing.

How much more real this dream was than that
they should go back to the house where the sleeping
children lay and where Stanley and Beryl played
cribbage.

" I believe thos are buds," said she. " Let us go

60

PRELUDE

down into the garden, mother. I like that aloe. I
like it more than anything here. And I am sure I
shall remember it long after I've forgotten all the
other things."

She put her hand on her mother's arm and they
walked down the steps, round the island and on to
the main drive that led to the front gates.

Looking at it from below she could see the long
sharp thorns that edged the aloe leaves, and at the
sight of them her heart grew hard. . . . She
particularly liked the long sharp thorns. . . .
Nobody would dare to come near the ship or to
follow after.

" Not even my Newfoundland dog," thought she,
" that I'm so fond of in the daytime."

For she really was fond of him ; she loved and
admired and respected him tremendously. Oh,
better than anyone else in the world. She knew
him through and through. He was the soul of
truth and decency, and for all his practical experi-
ence he was awfully simple, easily pleased and
easily hurt. . . .

If only he wouldn't jump at her so, and bark so
loudly, and watch her with such eager, loving eyes.
He was too strong for her ; she had always hated
things that rush at her, from a child. There were
times when he was frightening really frightening.
When she just had not screamed at the top of her
voice : " You are killing me." And at those times she
had longed to say the most coarse, hateful things. . . .

61

PRELUDE

" You know I'm very delicate. You know as
well as I do that my heart is affected, and the
doctor has told you I may die any moment. I have
had three great lumps of children already. . . ."

Yes, yes, it was true. Linda snatched her hand
from mother's arm. For all her love and respect
and admiration she hated him. And how tender
he always was after times like those, how submissive,
how thoughtful. He would do anything for her ;
he longed to serve her. . . . Linda heard herself
saying in a weak voice :

" Stanley, would you light a candle ? "

And she heard his joyful voice answer : "Of
course I will, my darling." And he leapt out of bed
as though he were going to leap at the moon for her.

It had never been so plain to her as it was at this
moment. There were all her feelings for him,
sharp and defined, one as true as the other. And
there was this other, this hatred, just as real as the
rest. She could have done her feelings up in little
packets and given them to Stanley. She longed
to hand him that last one, for a surprise. She could
see his eyes as he opened that . . .

She hugged her folded arms and began to laugh
silently. How absurd life was it was laughable,
simply laughable. And why this mania of hers to
keep alive at all ? For it really was a mania, she
thought, mocking and laughing.

" What am I guarding myself for so preciously ?
I shall go on having*children and Stanley will go on

62

PRELUDE

making money and the children and the gardens
will grow bigger and bigger, with whole fleets of
aloes in them for me to choose from."

She had been walking with her head bent, looking
at nothing. Now she looked up and about her.
They were standing by the red and white camellia
trees. Beautiful were the rich dark leaves spangled
with light and the round flowers that perch among
them like red and white birds. Linda pulled a
piece of verbena and crumpled it, and held her hands
to her mother,

" Delicious/' said the old woman. " Are you
cold, child ? Are you trembling ? Yes, your hands
are cold. We had better go back to the house/'

" What have you been thinking about ? " said
Linda. " Tell me/'

" I haven't really been thinking of anything. I
wondered as we passed the orchard what the fruit
trees were like and whether we should be able to
make much jam this autumn. There are splendid
healthy currant bushes in the vegetable garden.
I noticed them to-day. I should like to see those
pantry shelves thoroughly well stocked with our own
jam. . . ."

12

" MY DARLING NAN,

Don't think me a piggy wig because I
haven't written before. I haven't had a moment,

63

PRELUDE

dear, and even now I feel so exhausted that I can
hardly hold a pen.

Well, the dreadful deed is done. We have
actually left the giddy whirl of town, and I can't
see how we shall ever go back again, for my brother-
in-law has bought this house ' lock, stock and
barrel/ to use his own words.

In a way, of course, it is an awful relief, for he has
been threatening to take a place in the country
ever since Fve lived with them and I must say
the house and garden are awfully nice a million
times better than that awful cubby-hole in town.

But buried, my dear. Buried isn't the word.

We have got neighbours, but they are only
farmers big louts of boys who seem to be milking
all day, and two dreadful females with rabbit
teeth who brought us some scones when we were
moving and said they would be pleased to help.
But my sister who lives a mile away doesn't know a
soul here, so I am sure we never shall. It's pretty
certain nobody will ever come out from town to
see us, because though there is a bus it's an awful
old rattling thing with black leather sides that any
decent person would rather die than ride in for six
miles.

Such is life. It's a sad ending for poor little B.
I'll get to be a most awful frump in a year or two
and come and see you in a mackintosh and a sailor
hat tied on with a white china silk motor veil. So
pretty.

PRELUDE

Stanley says that now we are settled for after
the most awful week of my life we really are settled
he is going to bring out a couple of men from the
club on Saturday afternoons for tennis. In fact,
two are promised as a great treat to-day. But, my
dear, if you could see Stanley's men from the club
. . . rather fattish, the type who look frightfully
indecent without waistcoats always with toes that
turn in rather so conspicuous when you are
walking about a court in white shoes. And they
are pulling up their trousers every minute don't
you know and whacking at imaginary things with
their rackets.

I used to play with them at the club last summer,
and I am sure you will know the type when I tell
you that after I'd been there about three times they
all called me Miss Beryl. It's a weary world. Of
course mother simply loves the place, but then I
suppose when I am mother's age I shall be content
to sit in the sun and shell peas into a basin. But
I'm not not not.

What Linda thinks about the whole affair, per
usual, I haven't the slightest idea. Mysterious as
ever. . . .

My dear, you know that white satin dress of
mine. I have taken the sleeves out entirely, put
bands of black velvet across the shoulders and two
big red poppies off my dear sister's chapeau. It is a
great success, though when I shall wear it I do not
know."

F 6 S

PRELUDE

Beryl sat writing this letter at a little table in her
room. In a way, of course, it was all perfectly true,
but in another way it was all the greatest rubbish
and she didn't believe a word of it. No, that
wasn't true. She felt all those things, but she
didn't really feel them like that.

It was her other self who had written that letter.
It not only bored, it rather disgusted her real self.

" Flippant and silly/' said her real self. Yet she
knew that she'd send it and she'd always write that
kind of twaddle to Nan Pym. In fact, it was a very
mild example of the kind of letter she generally
wrote.

Beryl leaned her elbows on the table and read it
through again. The voice of the letter seemed to
come up to her from the page. It was faint already,
like a voice heard over the telephone, high, gushing,
with something bitter in the sound. Oh, she
detested it to-day.

" You've always got so much animation," said
Nan Pym. " That's why men are so keen on you."
And she had added, rather mournfully, for men
were not at all keen on Nan, who was a solid kind
of girl, with fat hips and a high colour " I can't
understand how you can keep it up. But it is your
nature, I suppose."

What rot. What nonsense. It wasn't her nature
at all. Good heavens, if she had ever been her real
self with Nan Pvm, Nannie would have jumped out
of the window with surprise. . . . My dear, you

66

PRELUDE

know that white satin of mine. . . . Beryl slammed
the letter-case to.

She jumped up and half unconsciously, half
consciously she drifted over to the looking-glass.

There stood a slim girl in white a white serge
skirt, a white silk blouse, and a leather belt drawn in
very tightly at her tiny waist.

Her face was heart-shaped, wide at the brows and
with a pointed chin but not too pointed. Her
eyes, her eyes were perhaps her best feature ; they
were such a strange uncommon colour greeny blue
with little gold points in them.

She had fine black eyebrows and long lashes so
long, that when they lay on her cheeks you positively
caught the light in them, someone or other had told
her.

Her mouth was rather large. Too large ? No,
not really. Her underlip protruded a little ; she
had a way of sucking it in that somebody else had
told her was awfully fascinating.

Her nose was her least satisfactory feature. Not
that it was really ugly. But it was not half as fine
as Linda's. Linda really had a perfect little nose.
Hers spread rather not badly. And in all prob-
ability she exaggerated the spreadiness of it just
because it was her nose, and she was so awfully
critical of herself. She pinched it with a thumb
and first finger and made a little face. . . .

Lovely, lovely hair. And such a mass of it. It
had the colour of fresh fallen leaves, brown and red

6?

PRELUDE

with a glint of yellow. When she did it in a long
plait she felt it on her backbone like a long snake.
She loved to feel the weight of it dragging her head
back, and she loved to feel it loose, covering her
bare arms. " Yes, my dear, there is no doubt
about it, you really are a lovely little thing."

At the words her bosom lifted ; she took a long
breath of delight, half closing her eyes.

But even as she looked the smile faded from her
lips and eyes. Oh God, there she was, back again,
playing the same old game. False false as ever.
False as when she'd written to Nan Pym. False even
when she was alone with herself, now.

What had that creature in the glass to do with
her, and why was she staring ? She dropped down
to one side of her bed and buried her face in her
arms.

11 Oh," she cried, " I am so miserable so fright-
fully miserable. I know that Pm silly and spiteful
and vain ; I'm always acting a part. I'm never my
real self for a moment." And plainly, plainly, she
saw her false self running up and down the stairs,
laughing a special trilling laugh if they had visitors,
standing under the lamp if a man came to dinner,
so that he should see the light on her hair, pouting
and pretending to be a little girl when she was
asked to play the guitar. Why ? She even kept
it up for Stanley's benefit. Only last night when
he was reading the paper her false self had stood
beside him and leaned against his shoulder on pur*

68

PRELUDE

pose. Hadn't she put her hand over his, pointing
out something so that he should see how white her
hand was beside his brown one.

How despicable ! Despicable ! Her heart was
cold with rage. " It's marvellous how you keep
it up," said she to the false self. But then it was
only because she was so miserable so miserable.
If she had been happy and leading her own life,
her false life would cease to be. She saw the real
Beryl a shadow ... a shadow. Faint and un-
substantial she shone. What was there of her
except the radiance ? And for what tiny moments
she was really she. Beryl could almost remember
every one of them. At those times she had felt :
" Life is rich and mysterious and good, and I am
rich and mysterious and good, too." Shall I ever
be that Beryl for ever ? Shall I ? How can I ?
And was there ever a time when I did not have a
false self ? . . . But just as she had got that far
she heard the sound of little steps running along
the passage ; the door handle rattled. Kezia
came in.

" Aunt Beryl, mother says will you please come
down ? Father is home with a man and lunch is
ready."

Botheration ! How she had crumpled her skirt,
kneeling in that idiotic way.

" Very well, Kezia." She went over to the
dressing table and powdered her nose.

Kezia crossed too, and unscrewed a little pot of

PRELUDE

cream and sniffed it. Under her arm she carried a
very dirty calico cat.

When Aunt Beryl ran out of the room she sat the
cat up on the dressing table and stuck the top of the
cream jar over its ear.

" Now look at yourself/' said she sternly.

The calico cat was so overcome by the sight that
it toppled over backwards and bumped and bumped
on to the floor. And the top of the cream jar flew
through the air and rolled like a penny in a round
on the linoleum and did not break.

But for Kezia it had broken the moment it flew
through the air, and she picked it up, hot all over,
and put it back on the dressing table.

Then she tip-toed away, far too quickly and
airily. . . .

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

I DO not know why I have such a fancy for this
little cafe. It's dirty and sad, sad. It's not as
if it had anything to distinguish it from a
hundred others it hasn't ; or as if the same
strange types came here every day, whom one
could watch from one's corner and recognise
and more or less (with a strong accent on the less)
get the hang of.

But pray don't imagine that those brackets
are a confession of my humility before the mystery
of the human soul. Not at all ; I don't believe
in the human soul. I never have. I believe that
people are like portmanteaux packed with certain
things, started going, thrown about, tossed away,
dumped down, lost and found, half emptied
suddenly, or squeezed fatter than ever, until finally
the Ultimate Porter swings them on to the Ultimate
Train and away they rattle. . . .

Not but what these portmanteaux can be very
fascinating. Oh, but very ! I see myself standing
in front of them, don't you know, like a Customs
official.

" Have you anything to declare ? Any wines,
spirits, cigars, perfumes, silks ? "

7 1

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

And the moment of hesitation as to whether I
am going to be fooled just before I chalk that
squiggle, and then the other moment of hesitation
just after, as to whether I have been, are perhaps
the two most thrilling instants in life. Yes, they
are, to me.

But before I started that long and rather far-
fetched and not frightfully original digression,
what I meant to say quite simply was that there
are no portmanteaux to be examined here because
the clientele of this cafe, ladies and gentlemen,
does not sit down. No, it stands at the counter,
and it consists of a handful of workmen who
come up from the river, all powdered over with
white flour, lime or something, and a few soldiers,
bringing with them thin, dark girls with silver
rings in their ears and market baskets on their
arms.

Madame is thin and dark, too, with white
cheeks and white hands. In certain lights she
looks quite transparent, shining out of her black
shawl with an extraordinary effect. When she
is not serving she sits on a stool with her face
turned, always, to the window. Her dark-ringed
eyes search among and follow after the people
passing, but not as if she was looking for somebody.
Perhaps, fifteen years agp> .she was ; but now the
pose has become a habit. You can tell from her
air of fatigue and hopelessness that she must have
given them up fo the last ten years, at least. . . .

72

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

And then there is the waiter. Not pathetic
decidedly not comic. Never making one of those
perfectly insignificant remarks which amaze you so
coming from a waiter, (as though the poor wretch
were a sort of cross between a coffee-pot and a wine
bottle and not expected to hold so much as a drop
of anything else). He is grey, flat-footed and
withered, with long, brittle nails that set your nerves
on edge while he scrapes up your two sous. When
he is not smearing over the table or flicking at a dead
fly or two, he stands with one hand on the back of
a chair, in his far too long apron, and over his other
arm the three-cornered dip of dirty napkin, waiting
to be photographed in connection with some
wretched murder. " Interior of Cafe where Body
was Found." You've seen him hundreds of
times.

Do you believe that every place has its hour of
the day when it really does come alive ? That's
not exactly what I mean. It's more like this.
There does seem to be a moment when you realize
that, quite by accident, you happen to have come
on to the stage at exactly the moment you were
expected. Everything is arranged for you waiting
for you. Ah, master of the situation ! You fill
with important breath. And at the same time you
smile, secretly, slyly, because Life seems to be
opposed to granting you these entrances, seems
indeed to be engaged in snatching them from you
and making them impossible, keeping you in the

73

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

wings until it is too late, in fact. . . . Just for once
you've beaten the old hag.

I enjoyed one of these moments the first time I
ever came in here. That's why I keep coming back,
I suppose. Revisiting the scene of my triumph, or
the scene of the crime where I had the old bitch
by the throat for once and did what I pleased with
her.

Query : Why am I so bitter against Life ? And
why do I see her as a rag-picker on the American
cinema, shuffling along wrapped in a filthy shawl
with her old claws crooked over a stick ?

Answer : The direct result of the American
cinema acting upon a weak mind.

Anyhow, the " short winter afternoon was
drawing to a close," as they say, and I was drifting
along, either going home or not going home, when
I found myself in here, walking over to this seat
in the corner.

I hung up my English overcoat and grey felt hat
on that same peg behind me, and after I had allowed
the waiter time for at least twenty photographers
to snap their fill of him, I ordered a coffee.

He poured me out a glass of the familiar, purplish
stuff with a green wandering light playing over it,
and shuffled off, and I sat pressing my hands
against the glass because it was bitterly cold
outside.

Suddenly I realized that quite apart from myself,
I was smiling. ^Slowly I raised my head and saw

74

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

myself in the mirror opposite. Yes, there I sat,
leaning on the table, smiling my deep, sly smile, the
glass of coffee with its vague plume of steam before
me and beside it the ring of white saucer with two
pieces of sugar.

I opened my eyes very wide. There I had been
for all eternity, as it were, and now at last I was
coming to life. . . .

It was very quiet in the cafe. Outside, one could
just see through the dusk that it had begun to snow.
One could just see the shapes of horses and carts
and people, soft and white, moving through the
feathery air. The waiter disappeared and re-
appeared with an armful of straw. He strewed it
over the floor from the door to the counter and
round about the stove with humble, almost adoring
gestures. One would not have been surprised if the
door had opened and the Virgin Mary had come in,
riding upon an ass, her meek hands folded over hei
big belly, . . .

That's rather nice, don't you think, that bit
about the Virgin ? It comes from the pen so gently ;
it has such a " dying fall." I thought so at the time
and decided to make a note of it. One never knows
when a little tag like that may come in useful to
round off a paragraph. So, taking care to move as
little as possible because the " spell " was still
unbroken (you know that ?), I reached over to the
next table for a writing pad.

No paper or envelopes, of course. Only a morsel

75

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

of pink blotting-paper, incredibly soft and limp
and almost moist, like the tongue of a little dead
kitten, which I've never felt.

I sat but always underneath, in this state of
expectation, rolling the little dead kitten's tongue
round my finger and rolling the soft phrase round
my mind while my eyes took in the girls' names and
dirty jokes and drawings of bottles and cups that
would not sit in the saucers, scattered over the
writing pad.

They are always the same, you know. The girls
always have the same names, the cups never sit
in the saucers ; all the hearts are stuck and tied
up with ribbons.

But then, quite suddenly, at the bottom of the
page, written in green ink, I fell on to that stupid,
stale little phrase : Je ne pa le pas frangais.

There ! it had come the moment the geste !
And although I was so ready, it caught me, it
tumbled me over ; I was simply overwhelmed.
And the physical feeling was so curious, so particu-
lar. It was as if all of me, except my head and arms,
all of me that was under the table, had simply
dissolved, melted, turned into water. Just my head
remained and two sticks of arms pressing on to the
table. But, ah ! the agony of that moment ! How
can I describe it ? I didn't think of anything. I
didn't even cry out to myself. Just for one moment
I was not. I was Agony, Agony, Agony.

Then it passed, and the very second after I was

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

thinking : " Good God ! Am I capable of feeling
as strongly as that ? But I was absolutely uncon-
scious ! I hadn't a phrase to meet it with I I was
overcome ! I was swept off my feet ! I didn't even
try, in the dimmest way, to put it down ! "

And up I puffed and puffed, blowing off finally
with : " After all I must be first-rate. No second-
rate mind could have experienced such an intensity
of feeling so ... purely."

The waiter has touched a spill at the red stove
and lighted a bubble of gas under a spreading shade.
It is no use looking out of the window, Madame ; it
is quite dark now. Your white hands hover over your
dark shawl. They are like two birds that have come
home to roost. They are restless, restless. , . .
You tuck them, finally, under your warm little
armpits.

Now the waiter has taken a long pole and clashed
the curtains together. " All gone/' as children
say.

And besides, I've no patience with people who
can't let go of things, who will follow after and cry
out. When a thing's gone, it's gone. It's over and
done with. Let it go then ! Ignore it, and comfort
yourself, if you do want comforting, with the
thought that you never do recover the same thing
that you lose. It's always a new thing. The moment
it leaves you it's changed. Why, that's even true of
a hat you chase after ; and I don't mean superficially

77

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

I mean profoundly speaking ... 1 have made it a
rule of my life never to regret and never to look
back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and
no one who intends to be a writer can afford to
indulge in it. You can't get it into shape ; you
can't build on it ; it's only good for wallowing in.
Looking back, of course, is equally fatal to Art.
It's keeping yourself poor. Art can't and won't
stand poverty.

jfe ne park pas f ran fats. Je ne park pas
frangais. All the while I wrote that last page my
other self has been chasing up and down out in the
dark there. It left me just when I began to analyse
my grand moment, dashed off distracted, like a
lost dog who thinks at last, at last, he hears the
familiar step again.

" Mouse ! Mouse ! Where are you ? Are you
near ? Is that you leaning from the high window
and stretching out your arms for the wings of the
shutters ? Are you this soft bundle moving towards
me through the feathery snow ? Are you this little
girl pressing through the swing-doors of the
restaurant ? Is that your dark shadow bending
forward in the cab ? Where are you ? Where are
you ? Which way must I turn ? Which way
shall I run ? And every moment I stand here
hesitating you are farther away again. Mouse !
Mouse ! "

Now the poor dog has come back into the caf,
his tail between "his legs, quite exhausted.

JE JNE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

" It was a ... false . , . alarm. She's nowhere
... to ... be seen."
" Lie down then ! Lie down ! Lie down ! "

My name is Raoul Duquette. I am twenty-six
years old and a Parisian, a true Parisian. About my
family it really doesn't matter. I have no family ;
I don't want any. I never think about my childhood.
I've forgotten it.

In fact, there's only one memory that stands
out at all. That is rather interesting because it
seems to me now so very significant as regards
myself from the literary point of view. It is
this.

When I was about ten our laundress was an
African woman, very big, very dark, with a check
handkerchief over her frizzy hair. When she came
to our house she always took particular notice of me,
and after the clothes had been taken out of the
basket she would lift me up into it and give me a
rock while I held tight to the handles and screamed
for joy and fright. I was tiny for my age, and pale,
with a lovely little half-open mouth I feel sure of
that.

One day when I was standing at the door, watch-
ing her go, she turned round and beckoned to me,
nodding and smiling in a strange secret way. I
never thought of not following. She took me into
a little outhouse at the end of the passage, caught
me up in her arms and began kissing me. Ah, those

79

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

kisses ! Especially those kisses inside my ears that
nearly deafened me.

When she set me down she took from her pocket
a little round fried cake covered with sugar, and I
reeled along the passage back to our door.

As this performance was repeated once a week
it is no wonder that I remember it so vividly.
Besides, from that very first afternoon, my child-
hood was, to put it prettily, " kissed away." I
became very languid, very caressing, and greedy
beyond measure. And so quickened, so sharpened,
I seemed to understand everybody and be able
to do what I liked with everybody.

I suppose I was in a state of more or less physical
excitement, and that was what appealed to them.
For all Parisians are more than half oh, well,
enough of that. And enough of my childhood,
too. Bury it under a laundry basket instead of a
shower of roses and passons oultre.

I date myself from the moment that I became the
tenant of a small bachelor flat on the fifth floor of a
tall, not too shabby house, in a street that might
or might not be discreet. Very useful, that. . . .
There I emerged, came out into the light and put
out my two horns with a study and a bedroom and a
kitchen on my back. And real furniture planted
in the rooms. In the bedroom a wardrobe with a
long glass, a big bed covered with a yellow puffed-up
quilt, a bed tattle with a marbled top and a toilet

80

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

set sprinkled with tiny apples. In my study-
English writing table with drawers, writing chair
with leather cushions, books, arm-chair, side table
with paper-knife and lamp on it and some nude
studies on the walls. I didn't use the kitchen except
to throw old papers into.

Ah, I can see myself that first evening, after the
furniture men had gone and I'd managed to get rid
of my atrocious old concierge walking about on
tip-toe, arranging and standing in front of the glass
with my hands in my pockets and saying to that
radiant vision : "I am a young man who has his
own flat. I write for two newspapers. I am going
in for serious literature. I am starting a career.
The book that I shall bring out will simply stagger
the critics. I am going to write about things that
have never been touched before. I am going to
make a name for myself as a writer about the
submerged world. But not as others have done
before me. Oh, no I Very naively, with a sort of
tender humour and from the inside, as though
it were all quite simple, quite natural. I see my
way quite perfectly. Nobody has ever done it as
I shall do it because none of the others have lived
my experiences. Fm rich I'm rich."

All the same I had no more money than I have
now. It's extraordinary how one can live without
money. ... I have quantities of good clothes,
silk undenvear, two evening suits, four pairs of
patent leather boots with light uppers, all sorts
o 81

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

of little things, like gloves and powder boxes and
a manicure set, perfumes, very good soap, and
nothing is paid for. If I find myself in need of
right-down cash well, there's always an African
laundress and an outhouse, and I am very frank and
bon enfant about plenty of sugar on the little fried
cake afterwards. . . .

And here I should like to put something on record.
Not from any strutting conceit, but rather with a
mild sense of wonder. I've never yet made the
first advances to any woman. It isn't as though
I've known only one class of woman not by any
means. But from little prostitutes and kept women
and elderly widows and shop girls and wives of
respectable men, and even advanced modern
literary ladies at the most select dinners and
soirees (I've been there), I've met invariably with
not only the same readiness, but with the same
positive invitation. It surprised me at first. I
used to look across the table and think " Is that very
distinguished young lady, discussing le Kipling
with the gentleman with the brown beard, really
pressing my foot ? " And I was never really
certain until I had pressed hers.

Curious, isn't it ? I don't look at all like a maiden's
dream. . . .

I am little and light with an olive skin, black eyes
with long lashes, black silky hair cut short, tiny
square teeth that show when I smile. My hands are
supple and small. A woman in a bread shop once

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JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

said to me : " You have the hands for making fine
little pastries." I confess, without my clothes I am
rather charming. Plump, almost like a girl, with
smooth shoulders, and I wear a thin gold bracelet
above my left elbow.

But, wait ! Isn't it strange I should have written
all that about my body and so on ? It's the result
of my bad life, my submerged life. I am like a little
woman in a cafe who has to introduce herself with
a handful of photographs. " Me in my chemise,
coming out of an eggshell. . . . Me upside down
in a swing, with a frilly behind like a cauliflower. . , ."
You know the things.

If you think what Pve written is merely super-
ficial and impudent and cheap you're wrong. I'll
admit it does sound so, but then it is not all. If it
were, how could I have experienced what I did
when I read that stale little phrase written in green
ink, in the writing-pad ? That proves there's more
in me and that I really am important, doesn't it ?
Anything a fraction less than that moment of
anguish I might have put on. But no I That was
real.

" Waiter, a whisky."

I hate whisky. Every time I take it into my
mouth my stomach rises against it, and the stuff
they keep here is sure to be particularly vile. I
only ordered it because I am going to write about
an Englishman. We French are incredibly old-

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JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

fashioned and out of date still in some ways. I
wonder I didn't ask him at the same time for a
pair of tweed knickerbockers, a pipe, some long
teeth and a set of ginger whiskers.

" Thanks, man vieux. You haven't got perhaps
a set of ginger whiskers ? "

" No, monsieur," he answers sadly. " We don't
sell American drinks."

And having smeared a corner of the table he
goes back to have another couple of dozen taken by
artificial light.

Ugh ! The smell of it ! And the sickly sensation
when one's throat contracts.

" It's bad stuff to get drunk on," says Dick
Harmon, turning his little glass in his fingers and
smiling his slow, dreaming smile. So he gets
drunk on it slowly and dreamily and at a certain
moment begins to sing very low, very low, about
a man who walks up and down trying to find a
place where he can get some dinner.

Ah ! how I loved that song, and how I loved the
way he sang it, slowly, slowly, in a dark, soft voice :

There was a man

Walked up and down

To get a dinner in the town . . .

It seemed to hold, in its gravity and muffled
measure, all those tall grey buildings, those fogs,
those endless streets, those sharp shadows of police-
men that mean England.

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

And then the subject ! The lean, starved
creature walking up and down with every house
barred against him because he had no " home."
How extraordinarily English that is. ... I remem-
ber that it ended where he did at last " find a place "
and ordered a little cake of fish, but when he asked
for bread the waiter cried contemptuously, in a
loud voice : " We don't serve bread with one fish
ball."

What more do you want ? How profound those
songs are ! There is the whole psychology of a
people ; and how un-French how un-French !

" Once more, Deeck, once more ! " I would
plead, clasping my hands and making a pretty
mouth at him. He was perfectly content to sing
it for ever.

There again. Even with Dick. It was he who
made the first advances.

I met him at an evening party given by the editor
of a new review. It was a very select, very fashion-
able affair. One or two of the older men were there
and the ladies were extremely comme ilfaut. They
sat on cubist sofas in full evening dress and allowed
us to hand them thimbles of cherry brandy and to
talk to them about their poetry. For, as far as I can
remember, they were all poetesses.

It was impossible not to notice Dick. He was
the only Englishman present, and instead of cir-
culating gracefully round the room as we all did,

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he stayed in one place leaning against the wall, his
hands in his pockets, that dreamy half smile on his
lips, and replying in excellent French in his low,
soft voice to anybody who spoke to him.

" Who is he ? "

" An Englishman. From London. A writer.
And he is making a special study of modern French
literature."

That was enough for me. My little book, False
Coins, had just been published. I was a young,
serious writer who was making a special study of
modern English literature.

But I really had not time to fling my line before
he said, giving himself a soft shake, coming right out
of the water after the bait, as it were : " Won't
you come and see me at my hotel ? Come about
five o'clock and we can have a talk before going
out to dinner."

" Enchanted 1 "

I was so deeply, deeply flattered that I had to
leave him then and there to preen and preen myself
before the cubist sofas. What a catch ! An
Englishman, reserved, serious, making a special
study of French literature, . . .

That same night a copy of False Coins with a
carefully cordial inscription was posted off, and a
day or two later we did dine together and spent the
evening talking.

Talking but not only of literature. I discovered
to my relief that it wasn't necessary to keep to the

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tendency of the modern novel, the need of a new
form, or the reason why our young men appeared
to be just missing it. Now and again, as if by
accident, I threw in a card that seemed to have
nothing to do with the game, just to see how he'd
take it. But each time he gathered it into his hands
with his dreamy look and smile unchanged. Perhaps
he murmured : " That's very curious." But
not as if it were curious at all.

That calm acceptance went to my head at last.
It fascinated me. It led me on and on till I
threw every card that I possessed at him and
sat back and watched him arrange them in his
hand.

" Very curious and interesting. . . ."

By that time we were both fairly drunk, and he
began to sing his song very soft, very low, about
the man who walked up and down seeking his
dinner.

But I was quite breathless at the thought of what I
had done. I had shown somebody both sides of my
life. Told him everything as sincerely and truth-
fully as I could. Taken immense pains to explain
things about my submerged life that really were
disgusting and never could possibly see the light of
literary day. On the whole I had made myself out
far worse than I was more boastful, more cynical,
more calculating.

And there sat the man I had confided in, singing
to himself and smiling. ... It moved me so that

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

real tears came into my eyes. I saw them glittering
on my long silky lashes so charming.

After that I took Dick about with me everywhere,
and he came to my flat, and sat in the arm-chair, very
indolent, playing with the paper-knife. I cannot
think why his indolence and dreaminess always
gave me the impression he had been to sea. And
all his leisurely slow ways seemed to be allowing
for the movement of the ship. This impression was
so strong that often when we were together and he
got up and left a little woman just when she did not
expect him to get up and leave her, but quite the
contrary, I would explain : " He can't help it,
Baby. He has to go back to his ship." And I
believed it far more than she did.

All the while we were together Dick never went
with a woman. I sometimes wondered whether
he wasn't completely innocent. Why didn't I ask
him ? Because I never did ask him anything about
himself. But late one night he took out his pocket-
book and a photograph dropped out of it. I picked
it up and glanced at it before I gave it to him. It
was of a woman. Not quite young. Dark, hand-
some, wild-looking, but so full in every line of a
kind of haggard pride that even if Dick had not
stretched out so quickly I wouldn't have looked
longer.

" Out of my sight, you little perfumed fox-
terrier of a "Frenchman," said she.

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

(In my very worst moments my nose reminds
me of a fox-terrier's.)

" That is my Mother," said Dick, putting up the
pocket-book.

But if he had not been Dick I should have been
tempted to cross myself, just for fun.

This is how we parted. As we stood outside his
hotel one night waiting for the concierge to release
the catch of the outer door, he said, looking up
at the sky : " I hope it will be fine to-morrow. I am
leaving for England in the morning."

" You're not serious."

" Perfectly. I have to get back. I've some work
to do that I can't manage here."

" But but have you made all your preparations?"

" Preparations ? " He almost grinned. " I've
none to make."

" But enfin> Dick, England is not the other
side of the boulevard."

" It isn't much farther off," said he. " Only
a few hours, you know." The door cracked
open.

" Ah, I wish I'd known at the beginning of the
evening ! "

I felt hurt. I felt as a woman must feel when a
man takes out his watch and remembers an
appointment that cannot possibly concern her,
except that its claim is the stronger. " Why didn't
you tell me ? "

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

He put out his hand and stood, lightly swaying
upon the step as though the whole hotel were his
ship, and the anchor weighed.

" I forgot. Truly I did. But you'll write, won't
you ? Good night, old chap. I'll be over again
one of these days."

And then I stood on the shore alone, more like
a little fox-terrier than ever. . . .

" But after all it was you who whistled to me, you
who asked me to come ! What a spectacle I've cut
wagging my tail and leaping round you, only to be left
like this while the boat sails off in its slow, dreamy
way. . . . Curse these English ! No, this is too
insolent altogether. Who do you imagine I am ?
A little paid guide to the night pleasures of Paris ?
. . . No, monsieur. I am a young writer, very
serious, and extremely interested in modern English
literature. And I have been insulted insulted."

Two days after came a long, charming letter from
him, written in French that was a shade too French,
but saying how he missed me and counted on our
friendship, on keeping in touch.

I read it standing in front of the (unpaid for)
wardrobe mirror. It was early morning. I wore
a blue kimono embroidered with white birds and
my hair was still wet ; it lay on my forehead, wet
and gleaming.

" Portrait of Madame Butterfly," said I, " on
hearing of the arrival of ce cher Pinkerton."

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According to the books I should have felt
immensely relieved and delighted. " . . . Going
over to the window he drew apart the curtains and
looked out at the Paris trees, just breaking into
buds and green. . . . Dick ! Dick ! My English
friend ! "

I didn't. I merely felt a little sick. Having been
up for my first ride in an aeroplane I didn't want
to go up again, just now.

That passed, and months after, in the winter,
Dick wrote that he was coming back to Paris to stay
indefinitely. Would I take rooms for him ? He
was bringing a woman friend with him.

Of course I would. Away the little fox-terrier
flew. It happened most usefully, too ; for I owed
much money at the hotel where I took my
meals, and two English people requiring rooms
for an indefinite time was an excellent sum on
account.

Perhaps I did rather wonder, as I stood in the
larger of the two rooms with Madame, saying
" Admirable," what the woman friend would be
like, but only vaguely. Either she would be very
severe, flat back and front, or she would be
tall, fair, dressed in mignonette green, name
Daisy, and smelling of rather sweetish lavender
water.

You see, by this time, according to my rule of not
looking back, I had almost forgotten Dick. I even

9*

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

got the tune of his song about the unfortunate man
a little bit wrong when I tried to hum it. ...

I very nearly did not turn up at the station after
all. I had arranged to, and had, in fact, dressed
with particular care for the occasion. For I
intended to take a new line with Dick this time.
No more confidences and tears on eyelashes. No,
thank you !

" Since you left Paris," said I, knotting my black
silver-spotted tie in the (also unpaid for) mirror over
the mantelpiece, " I have been very successful,
you know. I have two more books in preparation,
and then I have written a serial story, Wrong
Doors, which is just on the point of publication and
will bring me in a lot of money. And then my
little book of poems," I cried, seizing the
clothes-brush and brushing the velvet collar of
my new indigo-blue overcoat, " my little book
Left Umbrellas really did create," and I
laughed and waved the brush, " an immense
sensation ! "

It was impossible not to believe this of the person
who surveyed himself finally, from top to toe,
drawing on his soft grey gloves. He was looking the
part ; he was the part.

That gave me an idea. I took out my notebook,
and still in full view, jotted down a note or two. . . .
How can one look the part and not be the part ?
Or be the part and not look it ? Isn't looking

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JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

being ? Or being looking ? At any rate who is to
say that it is not ? . . .

This seemed to me extraordinarily profound at
the time, and quite new. But I confess that some-
thing did whisper as, smiling, I put up the note-
book : " You literary ? you look as though you've
taken down a bet on a racecourse 1 " But I didn't
listen. I went out, shutting the door of the flat with
a soft, quick pull so as not to warn the concierge
of my departure, and ran down the stairs quick as a
rabbit for the same reason.

But ah I the old spider. She was too quick for
me. She let me run down the last little ladder of
the web and then she pounced. " One moment.
One little moment, Monsieur/' she whispered,
odiously confidential. " Come in. Come in."
And she beckoned with a dripping soup ladle.
I went to the door, but that was not good enough.
Right inside and the door shut before she would
speak.

There are two ways of managing your concierge if
you haven't any money. One is to take the high
hand, make her your enemy, bluster, refuse to
discuss anything ; the other is to keep in with her,
butter her up to the two knots of the black rag tying
up her jaws, pretend to confide in her, and rely on
her to arrange with the gas man and to put off
the landlord.

I had tried the second. But both are equally

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detestable and unsuccessful. At any rate whichever
you're trying is the worse, the impossible one.

It was the landlord this time. . . . Imitation of
the landlord by the concierge threatening to toss
me out. . . . Imitation of the concierge by the
concierge taming the wild bull. . . . Imitation of
the landlord rampant again, breathing in the con-
cierge's face. I was the concierge. No, it was too
nauseous. And all the while the black pot on the
gas ring bubbling away, stewing out the hearts and
livers of every tenant in the place.

" Ah ! " I cried, staring at the clock on the
mantelpiece, and then, realizing that it didn't go,
striking my forehead as though the idea had nothing
to do with it. " Madame, I have a very important
appointment with the director of my newspaper
at nine-thirty. Perhaps to-morrow I shall be able
to give you . . ."

Out, out. And down the metro and squeezed
into a full carriage. The more the better. Every-
body was one bolster the more between me and the
concierge. I was radiant.

" Ah ! pardon, Monsieur ! " said the tall charm-
ing creature in black with a big full bosom and a
great bunch of violets dropping from it. As the
train swayed it thrust the bouquet right into my
eyes. " Ah ! pardon, Monsieur ! "

But I looked up at her, smiling mischievously.

" There is nothing I love more, Madame, than
flowers on a balcony."

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At the very moment of speaking I caught sight
of the huge man in a fur coat against whom my
charmer was leaning. He poked his head over her
shoulder and he went white to the nose ; in fact his
nose stood out a sort of cheese green.
" What was that you said to my wife ? "
Gare Saint Lazare saved me. But you'll own
that even as the author of False Coins, Wrong
Doors, Left Umbrellas, and two in preparation,
it was not too easy to go on my triumphant way.

At length, after countless trains had steamed
into my mind, and countless Dick Harmons had
come rolling towards me, the real train came. The
little knot of us waiting at the barrier moved up
close, craned forward, and broke into cries as
though we were some kind of many-headed monster,
and Paris behind us nothing but a great trap we
had set to catch these sleepy innocents.

Into the trap they walked and were snatched
and taken off to be devoured. Where was my
prey ?

" Good God ! " My smile and my lifted hand
fell together. For one terrible moment I thought
this was the woman of the photograph, Dick's
mother, walking towards me in Dick's coat and
hat. In the effort and you saw what an effort it
was to smile, his lips curled in just the same
way and he made for me, haggard and wild and
proud.

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What had happened ? What could have changed
him like this ? Should I mention it ?

I waited for him and was even conscious of
venturing a fox-terrier wag or two to see if he could
possibly respond, in the way I said : " Good
evening, Dick ! How are you, old chap ? All
right ? "

"All right. All right." He almost gasped.
" You've got the rooms ? "

Twenty times, good God ! I saw it all. Light
broke on the dark waters and my sailor hadn't
been drowned. I almost turned a somersault with
amusement.

It was nervousness, of course. It was embarrass-
ment. It was the famous English seriousness.
What fun I was going to have ! I could have
hugged him.

" Yes, I've got the rooms," I nearly shouted.
" But where is Madame ? "

" She's been looking after the luggage," he
panted. " Here she comes, now."

Not this baby walking beside the old porter as
though he were her nurse and had just lifted her out
of her ugly perambulator while he trundled the
boxes on it.

" And she's not Madame," said Dick, drawling
suddenly.

At that moment she caught sight of him and
hailed him with* her minute muff. She broke away
from her nurse and ran up and said something, very

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

quick, in English ; but he replied in French :
" Oh, very well. I'll manage."

But before he turned to the porter he indicated
me with a vague wave and muttered something.
We were introduced. She held out her hand in that
strange boyish way Englishwomen do, and stand-
ing very straight in front of me with her chin raised
and making she too the effort of her life to
control her preposterous excitement, she said,
wringing my hand (I'm sure she didn't know it was
mine), Je ne park pas Franfais.

" But I'm sure you do," I answered, so tender,
so reassuring, I might have been a dentist about
to draw her first little milk tooth.

" Of course she does." Dick swerved back to us.
" Here, can't we get a cab or taxi or something ?
We don't want to stay in this cursed station all
night. Do we ? "

This was so rude that it took me a moment to
recover ; and he must have noticed, for he flung
his arm round my shoulder in the old way, saying :
" Ah, forgive me, old chap. But we've had such
a loathsome, hideous journey. We've taken years to
come. Haven't we ? " To her. But she did not
answer. She bent her head and began stroking her
grey muff ; she walked beside us stroking her
grey muff all the way.

" Have I been wrong ? " thought I. "Is this
simply a case of frenzied impatience on their part ?
Are they merely ' in need of a bed/ as we say ?
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JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

Have they been suffering agonies on the journey ?
Sitting, perhaps, very close and warm under the
same travelling rug? " and so on and so on while
the driver strapped on the boxes. That done

" Look here, Dick. I go home by m^tro. Here
is the address of your hotel. Everything is arranged.
Come and see me as soon as you can."

Upon my life I thought he was going to faint.
He went white to the lips.

" But you're coming back with us/' he cried.
" I thought it was all settled. Of course you're
coming back. You're not going to leave us." No,
I gave it up. It was too difficult, too English for
me.

" Certainly, certainly. Delighted. I only
thought, perhaps . . ."

" You must come ! " said Dick to the little fox-
terrier. And again he made that big awkward turn
towards her.

" Get in, Mouse."

And Mouse got in the black hole and sat stroking
Mouse II and not saying a word.

Away we jolted and rattled like three little dice
that life had decided to have a fling with.

I had insisted on taking the flap seat facing
them because I would not have missed for any-
thing those occasional flashing glimpses I had
as we broke through the white circles of lamp-
light.

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They revealed Dick, sitting far back in his corner,
his coat collar turned up, his hands thrust in his
pockets, and his broad dark hat shading him as if
it were a part of him a sort of wing he hid under.
They showed her, sitting up very straight, her
lovely little face more like a drawing than a real
face every line was so full of meaning and so sharp
cut against the swimming dark.

For Mouse was beautiful. She was exquisite,
but so fragile and fine that each time I looked at
her it was as if for the first time. She came upon
you with the same kind of shock that you feel when
you have been drinking tea out of a thin innocent
cup and suddenly, at the bottom, you see a tiny
creature, half butterfly, half woman, bowing to you
with her hands in her sleeves.

As far as I could make out she had dark
hair and blue or black eyes. Her long lashes
and the two little feathers traced above were most
important.

She wore a long dark cloak such as one sees in
old-fashioned pictures of Englishwomen abroad.
Where her arms came out of it there was grey fur
fur round her neck, too, and her close-fitting cap
was furry.

" Carrying out the mouse idea," I decided.

Ah, but how intriguing it was how intriguing !
Their excitement came nearer and nearer to me,
while I ran out to meet it, bathed in it, flung myself

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far out of my depth, until at last I was as hard put
to it to keep control as they.

But what I wanted to do was to behave in the
most extraordinary fashion like a clown. To
start singing, with large extravagant gestures, to
point out of the window and cry : " We are now
passing, ladies and gentlemen, one of the sights for
which noire Paris is justly famous/ 1 to jump out
of the taxi while it was going, climb over the roof
and dive in by another door ; to hang out of the
window and look for the hotel through the wrong
end of a broken telescope, which was also a peculiarly
ear-splitting trumpet.

I watched myself do all this, you understand, and
even managed to applaud in a private way by
putting my gloved hands gently together, while
I said to Mouse : " And is this your first visit to
Paris ? "

" Yes, I've not been here before."
" Ah, then you have a great deal to see."
And I was just going to touch lightly upon the
objects of interest and the museums when we
wrenched to a stop.

Do you know it's very absurd but as I pushed
open the door for them and followed up the stairs
to the bureau on the landing I felt somehow that
this hotel was mine.

There was a vase of flowers on the window sill of
the bureau tod I even went so far as to re-arrange

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a bud or two and to stand off and note the effect
while the manageress welcomed them. And when
she turned to me and handed me the keys (the
gar f on was hauing up the boxes) and said :
" Monsieur Duquette will show you your rooms "
I had a longing to tap Dick on the arm with a
key and say, very confidentially : " Look here, old
chap. As a friend of mine Til be only too willing
to make a slight reduction . . ."

Up and up we climbed. Round and round.
Past an occasional pair of boots (why is it one never
sees an attractive pair of boots outside a door ?).
Higher and higher.

" Pm afraid they're rather high up/' I mur-
mured idiotically. " But I chose them because . . ."

They so obviously did not care why I chose them
that I went no further. They accepted everything.
They did not expect anything to be different. This
was just part of what they were going through
that was how I analysed it.

11 Arrived at last." I ran from one side of the
passage to the other, turning on the lights, explain-
ing.

" This one I thought for you, Dick. The other
is larger and it has a little dressing-room in the
alcove."

My " proprietary " eye noted the clean towels
and covers, and the bed linen embroidered in red
cotton. I thought them rather charming rooms,
sloping, full of angles, just the sort of rooms one

IOT

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

would expect to find if one had not been to Paris
before.

Dick dashed his hat down on the bed.

" Oughtn't I to help that chap with the boxes ? "
he asked nobody.

" Yes, you ought," replied Mouse, " they're
dreadfully heavy/'

And she turned to me with the first glimmer of a
smile : " Books, you know." Oh, he darted such
a strange look at her before he rushed out. And he
not only helped, he must have torn the box off the
garfon's back, for he staggered back, carrying one,
dumped it down and then fetched in the other.

" That's yours, Dick," said she.

" Well, you don't mind it standing here for the
present, do you ? " he asked, breathless, breathing
hard (the box must have been tremendously heavy).
He pulled out a handful of money. " I suppose I
ought to pay this chap."

Thegarfon, standing by, seemed to think so too.

" And will you require anything further,
Monsieur ? "

11 No ! No ! " said Dick impatiently.

But at that Mouse stepped forward. She said,
too deliberately, not looking at Dick, with her
quaint clipped English accent : " Yes, I'd like some
tea. Tea for three."

And suddenly she raised her muff as though her
hands were clasped inside it, and she was telling the
pale, sweaty *garfon by that action that she was at

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the end of her resources, that she cried out to him
to save her with " Tea. Immediately ! "

This seemed to me so amazingly in the picture,
so exactly the gesture and cry that one would
expect (though I couldn't have imagined it) to be
wrung out of an Englishwoman faced with a great
crisis, that I was almost tempted to hold up my
hand and protest.

" No ! No ! Enough. Enough. Let us leave
off there. At the word tea. For really, really,
youVe filled your greediest subscriber so full
that he will burst if he has to swallow another
word/ 1

It even pulled Dick up. Like someone who has
been unconscious for a long long time he turned
slowly to Mouse and slowly looked at her with his
tired, haggard eyes, and murmured with the echo
of his dreamy voice : " Yes. That's a good idea."
And then : " You must be tired, Mouse. Sit
down."

She sat down in a chair with lace tabs on the
arms ; he leaned against the bed, and I established
myself on a straight-backed chair, crossed my legs
and brushed some imaginary dust off the knees of
my trousers. (The Parisian at his ease.)

There came a tiny pause. Then he said : " Won't
you take off your coat, Mouse ? "

" No, thanks. Not just now."

Were they going to ask me ? Or should I hold
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JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

up my hand and call out in a baby voice : " It's
my turn to be asked/*

No, I shouldn't. They didn't ask me.

The pause became a silence. A real silence.

"... Come, my Parisian fox-terrier ! Amuse
these sad English ! It's no wonder they are such
a nation for dogs."

But, after all why should I ? It was not my
"job," as they would say. Nevertheless, I made
a vivacious little bound at Mouse.

" What a pity it is that you did not arrive by
daylight. There is such a charming view from
these two windows. You know, the hotel is on a
corner and each window looks down an immensely
long, straight street."

" Yes," said she.

" Not that that sounds very charming," I laughed.
" But there is so much animation so many absurd
little boys on bicycles and people hanging out of
windows and oh, well, you'll see for yourself
in the morning. . . . Very amusing. Very ani-
mated."

" Oh, yes," said she.

If the pale, sweaty gar f on had not come in at
that moment, carrying the tea-tray high on one hand
as if the cups were cannon-balls and he a heavy
weight lifter on the cinema. . . .

He managed to lower it on to a round
table.

" Bring the table over here," said Mouse. The
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waiter seemed to be the only person she cared to
speak to. She took her hands out of her muff,
drew off her gloves and flung back the old-fashioned
cape.

" Do you take milk and sugar ? "

" No milk, thank you, and no sugar."

I went over for mine like a little gentleman. She
poured out another cup.

" That's for Dick."

And the faithful fox-terrier carried it across to
him and laid it at his feet, as it were.

" Oh, thanks," said Dick.

And then I went back to my chair and she sank
back in hers.

But Dick was off again. He stared wildly at the
cup of tea for a moment, glanced round him, put it
down on the bed-table, caught up his hat and stam-
mered at full gallop : " Oh, by the way, do you
mind posting a letter for me ? I want to get it off
by to-night's post. I must. It's very urgent. . . ."
Feeling her eyes on him, he flung : " It's to my
mother." To me : "I won't be long. I've got
everything I want. But it must go off to-night
You don't mind ? It ... it won't take any
time."

" Of course I'll post it. Delighted."

" Won't you drink your tea first ? " suggested
Mouse softly.

... Tea ? Tea ? Yes, of course. Tea, . . .
A cup of tea on the bed-table. ... In his racing

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dream he flashed the brightest, most charming
smile at his little hostess.

" No, thanks. Not just now."

And still hoping it would not be any trouble to
me he went out of the room and closed the door,
and we heard him cross the passage.

I scalded myself with mine in my hurry to take
the cup back to the table and to say as I stood
there : " You must forgive me if I am impertinent
... if I am too frank. But Dick hasn't tried to
disguise it has he ? There is something the
matter. Can I help ? "

(Soft music. Mouse gets up, walks the stage for
a moment or so before she returns to her chair and
pours him out, oh, such a brimming, such a burning
cup that the tears come into the friend's eyes while
he sips while he drains it to the bitter dregs. . . .)

I had time to do all this before she replied. First
she looked in the teapot, filled it with hot water,
and stirred it with a spoon.

" Yes, there is something the matter. No, I'm
afraid you can't help, thank you." Again I got
that glimmer of a smile. " I'm awfully sorry. It
must be horrid for you."

Horrid, indeed ! Ah, why couldn't I tell her
that it was months and months since I had been so
entertained ?

" But you are suffering," I ventured softly, as
though that Was what I could not bear to see.

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JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

She didn't deny it. She nodded and bit her
under-lip and I thought I saw her chin tremble.

" And there is really nothing I can do ? " More
softly still.

She shook her head, pushed back the table and
jumped up.

" Oh, it will be all right soon," she breathed,
walking over to the dressing-table and standing with
her back towards me. " It will be all right. It
can't go on like this."

" But of course it can't." I agreed, wondering
whether it would look heartless if I lit a cigarette ;
I had a sudden longing to smoke.

In some way she saw my hand move to my breast
pocket, half draw out my cigarette case and put
it back again, for the next thing she said was :
" Matches ... in ... candlestick. I noticed
them."

And I heard from her voice that she was crying.

" Ah ! thank you. Yes. Yes. I've found
them." I lighted my cigarette and walked up and
down, smoking.

It was so quiet it might have been two o'clock in
the morning. It was so quiet you heard the boards
creak and pop as one does in a house in the country.
I smoked the whole cigarette and stabbed the end
into my saucer before Mouse turned round and
came back to the table.

" Isn't Dick being rather a long time ? "
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" You are very tired. I expect you want to go
to bed/' I said kindly. (And pray don't mind me
if you do, said my mind.)

" But isn't he being a very long time ? " she
insisted.

I shrugged. " He is, rather."

Then I saw she looked at me strangely. She was
listening.

" He's been gone ages," she said, and she went
with little light steps to the door, opened it, and
crossed the passage into his room.

I waited. I listened too, now. I couldn't have
borne to miss a word. She had left the door open.
I stole across the room and looked after her. Dick's
door was open, too. But there wasn't a word to
miss.

You know I had the mad idea that they were
kissing in that quiet room a long comfortable kiss.
One of those kisses that not only puts one's grief to
bed, but nurses it and warms it and tucks it up and
keeps it fast enfolded until it is sleeping sound.
Ah ! how good that is.

It was over at last. I heard some one move and
tip-toed away.

It was Mouse. She came back. She felt her
way into the room carrying the letter for me. But
it wasn't in an envelope ; it was just a sheet of
paper and she held it by the corner as though it was
still wet.

Her head was bent so low so tucked in her furry
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JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

collar that I hadn't a notion until she let the paper
fall and almost fell herself on to the floor by the
side of the bed, leaned her cheek against it, flung
out her hands as though the last of her poor
little weapons was gone and now she let her-
self be carried away, washed out into the deep
water.

Flash ! went my mind. Dick has shot himself,
and then a succession of flashes while I rushed in,
saw the body, head unharmed, small blue hole over
temple, roused hotel, arranged funeral, attended
funeral, closed cab, new morning coat. . . .

I stooped down and picked up the paper and
would you believe it so ingrained is my Parisian
sense of comme il faut I murmured " pardon "
before I read it.

" MOUSE, MY LITTLE MOUSE,

It's no good. It's impossible. I can't see
it through. Oh, I do love you. I do love you,
Mouse, but I can't hurt her. People have been
hurting her all her life. I simply dare not give
her this final blow. You see, though she's stronger
than both of us, she's so frail and proud. It would
kill her kill her, Mouse. And, oh God, I can't
kill my mother I Not even for you. Not even for
us. You do see that don't you.

It all seemed so possible when we talked and
planned, but the very moment the train started
it was all over. I felt her drag me back to her

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calling. I can hear her now as I write. And she's
alone and she doesn't know. A man would have
to be a devil to tell her and I'm not a devil, Mouse.
She mustn't know. Oh, Mouse, somewhere,
somewhere in you don't you agree ? It's all so
unspeakably awful that I don't know if I want to go
or not. Do I ? Or is Mother just dragging me ?
I don't know. My head is too tired. Mouse,
Mouse what will you do ? But I can't think of
that, either. I dare not. I'd break down. And
I must not break down. All I've got to do is
just to tell you this and go. I couldn't have gone
off without telling you. You'd have been
frightened. And you must not be frightened.
You won't will you ? I can't bear but no more
of that. And don't write. I should not have the
courage to answer your letters and the sight of your

spidery handwriting

Forgive me. Don't love me any more. Yes.
Love me. Love me. Dick."

What do you think of that ? Wasn't that a rare
find ? My relief at his not having shot himself
was mixed with a wonderful sense of elation. I
was even more than even with my " that's very
curious and interesting " Englishman. . . .

She wept so strangely. With her eyes shut, with
her face quite calm except for the quivering eye-
lids. The tears pearled down her cheeks and she
let them fall.

no

JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

But feeling my glance upon her she opened her
eyes and saw me holding the letter.

" You've read it ? "

Her voice was quite calm, but it was not her voice
any more. It was like the voice you might imagine
coming out of a tiny, cold sea shell swept high and
dry at last by the salt tide. . . .

I nodded, quite overcome, you understand, and
laid the letter down.

" It's incredible ! incredible 1 " I whispered.

At that she got up from the floor, walked over to
the wash-stand, dipped her handkerchief into the
jug and sponged her eyes, saying : " Oh, no. It's
not incredible at all." And still pressing the wet
ball to her eyes she came back to me, to her chair
with the lace tabs, and sank into it.

" I knew all along, of course," said the cold,
salty little voice. " From the very moment that we
started. I felt it all through me, but I still went on
hoping " and here she took the handkerchief down
and gave me a final glimmer f< as one so stupidly
does, you know."

" As one does."

Silence.

" But what will you do ? You'll go back ? You'll
see him ? "

That made her sit right up and stare across
at me.

" What an extraordinary idea ! " she said, more
coldly than ever. " Of course I shall not dream

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JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

of seeing him. As for going back that is quite
out of the question. I can't go back."

" But . . ."

" It's impossible. For one thing all my friends
think I am married."

I put out my hand " Ah, my poor little
friend."

But she shrank away. (False move.)

Of course there was one question that had been
at the back of my mind all this time. I hated it.

" Have you any money ? "

" Yes, I have twenty pounds here," and she
put her hand on her breast. I bowed. It was a
great deal more than I had expected.

" And what are your plans ? "

Yes, I know. My question was the most clumsy,
the most idiotic one I could have put. She had
been so tame, so confiding, letting me, at any rate
spiritually speaking, hold her tiny quivering body
in one hand and stroke her furry head and now,
I'd thrown her away. Oh, I could have kicked
myself.

She stood up. " I have no plans. But it's
very late. You must go now, please."

How could I get her back ? I wanted her back.
I swear I was not acting then.

" Do feel that I am your friend," I cried. " You
will let me come to-morrow, early ? You will
let me look after you a little take care of you a
little ? Yoft'll use me just as you think fit ? "

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I succeeded. She came out of her hole . . .
timid . . . but she came out.

" Yes, you're very kind. Yes. Do come to-
morrow. I shall be glad. It makes things rather
difficult because " and again I clasped her boyish
hand ' ' je ne park pas franfais"

Not until I was half-way down the boulevard
did it come over me the full force of it.

Why, they were suffering . . . those two . , .
really suffering. I have seen two people suffer as
I don't suppose I ever shall again. . .

Of course you know what to expect. You antici-
pate, fully, what I am going to write. It wouldn't
be me, otherwise.

I never went near the place again.

Yes, I still owe that considerable amount for
lunches and dinners, but that's beside the mark.
It's vulgar to mention it in the same breath with the
fact that I never saw Mouse again.

Naturally, I intended to. Started out got to
the door wrote and tore up letters did all those
things. But I simply could not make the final
effort.

Even now I don't fully understand why. Of
course I knew that I couldn't have kept it up.
That had a great deal to do with it. But you
would have thought, putting it at its lowest,
curiosity couldn't have kept my fox-terrier nose
away . . .

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JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS

Jc ne parle pas f ran fats. That was her swan
song for me.

But how she makes me break my rule. Oh,
youVe seen for yourself, but I could give you
countless examples.

. . . Evenings, when I sit in some gloomy cafe,
and an automatic piano starts playing a " mouse "
tune (there are dozens of tunes that evoke just her)
I begin to dream things like . . .

A little house on the edge of the sea, somewhere
far, far away. A girl outside in a frock rather like
Red Indian women wear, hailing a light, bare-
foot boy who runs up from the beach.

" What have you got ? "

" A fish." I smile and give it to her.

. . . The same girl, the same boy, different
costumes sitting at an open window, eating fruit
and leaning out and laughing.

" All the wild strawberries are for you, Mouse.
I won't touch one."

. . . A wet night. They are going home together
under an umbrella. They stop on the door to press
their wet cheeks together.

And so on and so on until some dirty old gallant
comes up to my table and sits opposite and begins
to grimace and yap. Until I hear myself saying :
" But I've got the little girl for you, mon vieux.
So little . . % so tiny." I kiss the tips of my fingers

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and lay them upon my heart. " I give you my word
of honour as a gentleman, a writer, serious, young,
and extremely interested in modern English
literature/'

I must go. I must go. I reach down my coat and
hat. Madame knows me. " You haven't dined
yet ? " she smiles.

" No, not yet, Madame."

BLISS

ALTHOUGH Bertha Young was thirty she
still had moments like this when she
wanted to run instead of walk, to take
dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a
hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch
it again, or to stand still and laugh at nothing at
nothing, simply.

What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the
corner of your own street, you are overcome,
suddenly, by a feeling of bliss absolute bliss I
as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece
of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your
bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into
every particle, into every finger and toe ? ...

Oh, is there no way you can pxpress it without
being " drunk and disorderly " ? How idiotic
civilization is ! Why be given a body if you have
to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle ?

" No, that about the fiddle is not quite what I
mean," she thought, running up the steps and
feeling in her bag for the key she'd forgotten it,
as usual and rattling the letter-box. " It's not

what I mean, because Thank you, Mary "

she went into the hall. " Is nurse back ? "

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BLISS

" Yes, M'm."

" And has the fruit come ? "

" Yes, M'm. Everything's come."

" Bring the fruit up to the dining-room, will
you ? I'll arrange it before I go upstairs/'

It was dusky in the dining-room and quite
chilly. But all the same Bertha threw off her coat ;
she could not bear the tight clasp of it another
moment, and the cold air fell on her arms.

But in her bosom there was still that bright
glowing place that shower of little sparks coming
from it. It was almost unbearable. She hardly
dared to breathe for fear of fanning it higher, and
yet she breathed deeply, deeply. She hardly dared
to look into the cold mirror but she did look, and
it gave her back a woman, radiant, with smiling,
trembling lips, with big, dark eyes and an air of
listening, waiting for something . . . divine to
happen . . . that she knew must happen . . .
infallibly.

Mary brought in the fruit on a tray and with it
a glass bowl, and a blue dish, very lovely, with a
strange sheen on it as though it had been dipped
in milk.

" Shall I turn on the light, M'm ? "

" No, thank you. I can see quite well."

There were tangerines and apples stained with
strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as
silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom
and a big cluster of purple ones. These last she had

117

BLISS

bought to tone in with the new dining-room carpet.
Yes, that did sound rather far-fetched and absurd,
but it was really why she had bought them. She
had thought in the shop : "I must have some
purple ones to bring the carpet up to the table."
And it had seemed quite sense at the time.

When she had finished with them and had made
two pyramids of these bright round shapes, she
stood away from the table to get the effect and it
really was most curious. For the dark table seemed
to melt into the dusky light and the glass dish and
the blue bowl to float in the air. This, of course
in her present mood, was so incredibly beautiful.
. . . She began to laugh.

" No, no. I'm getting hysterical." And she
seized her bag and coat and ran upstairs to the
nursery.

Nurse sat at a low table giving Little B her supper
after her bath. The baby had on a white flannel
gown and a blue woollen jacket, and "her dark,
fine hair was brushed up into a funny little peak.
She looked up when she saw her mother and began
to jump.

" Now, my lovey, eat it up like a good girl," said
Nurse, setting her lips in a way that Bertha knew,
and that meant she had come into the nursery at
another wrong moment.

" Has she been good, Nanny ? "

" She's been a little sweet all the afternoon/'
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BLISS

whispered Nanny. " We went to the park and I
sat down on a chair and took her out of the pram
and a big dog came along and put its head on my
knee and she clutched its ear, tugged it. Oh, you
should have seen her."

Bertha wanted to ask if it wasn't rather dangerous
to let her clutch at a strange dog's ear. But she did
not dare to. She stood watching them, her hands
by her side, like the poor little girl in front of the
rich little girl with the doll.

The baby looked up at her again, stared, and
then smiled so charmingly that Bertha couldn't
help crying :

" Oh, Nanny, do let me finish giving her her
supper while you put the bath things away."

" Well, M'm, she oughtn't to be changed hands
while she's eating," said Nanny, still whispering.
" It unsettles her ; it's very likely to upset her."

How absurd it was. Why have a baby if it has
to be kept not in a case like a rare, rare fiddle
but in another woman's arms ?

" Oh, I must ! " said she.

Very offended, Nanny handed her over.

" Now, don't excite her after her supper. You
know you do, M'm. And I have such a time with
her after ! "

Thank heaven 1 Nanny went out of the room
with the bath towels.

" Now I've got you to myself, my little precious,"
said Bertha, as the baby leaned against her.

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BLISS

She ate delightfully, holding up her lips for the
spoon and then waving her hands. Sojnetimes she
wouldn't let the spoon go ; and sometimes, just
as Bertha had filled it, she waved it away to the
four winds.

When the soup was finished Bertha turned round
to the fire.

" You're nice you're very nice ! " said she,
kissing her warm baby. " I'm fond of you. I
like you."

And, indeed, she loved Little B so much her
neck as she bent forward, her exquisite toes as they
shone transparent in the firelight that all her
feeling of bliss came back again, and again she
didn't know how to express it what to do with it.

" You're wanted on the telephone," said Nanny,
coming back in triumph and seizing her Little B.

Down she flew. It was Harry.

" Oh, is that you, Ber ? Look here. I'll be late.
I'll take a taxi and come along as quickly as I can,
but get dinner put back ten minutes will you ?
All right ? "

" Yes, perfectly. Oh, Harry \ "

" Yes ? "

What had she to say ? She'd nothing to say.
She only wanted to get in touch with him for a
moment. She couldn't absurdly cry : " Hasn't
it been a divine day 1 "

" What is' it ? " rapped out the little voice.
1 20

BLISS

" Nothing. Entendu" said Bertha, and hung
up the receiver, thinking how more than idiotic
civilization was.

They had people coming to dinner. The
Norman Knights a very sound couple he was
about to start a theatre, and she was awfully keen
on interior decoration, a young man, Eddie Warren,
who had just published a little book of poems and
whom everybody was asking to dine, and a " find "
of Bertha's called Pearl Fulton. What Miss
Fulton did, Bertha didn't know. They had met
at the club and Bertha had fallen in love with her,
as she always did fall in love with beautiful women
who had something strange about them.

The provoking thing was that, though they had
been about together and met a number of times
and really talked, Bertha couldn't yet make her out.
Up to a certain point Miss Fulton was rarely,
wonderfully frank, but the certain point was there,
and beyond that she would not go.

Was there anything beyond it ? Harry said
"No." Voted her dullish, and "cold like all
blond women, with a touch, perhaps, of anaemia
of the brain." But Bertha wouldn't agree with
him ; not yet, at any rate.

" No, the way she has of sitting with her head a
little on one side, and smiling, has something
behind it, Harry, and I must find out what that
something is."

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BLISS

" Most likely it's a good stomach/' answered
Harry.

He made a point of catching Bertha's heels with
replies of that kind . . . " liver frozen, my dear
girl," or " pure flatulence/' or " kidney disease,"
. . . and so on. For some strange reason Bertha
liked this, and almost admired it in him very
much.

She went into the drawing-room and lighted the
fire ; then, picking up the cushions, one by one,
that Mary had disposed so carefully, she threw
them back on to the chairs and the couches. That
made all the difference ; the room came alive at
once. As she was about to throw the last one she
surprised herself by suddenly hugging it to her,
passionately, passionately. But it did not put out
the fire in her bosom. Oh, on the contrary !

The windows of the drawing-room opened on to
a balcony overlooking the garden. At the far end,
against the wall, there was a tall, slender pear tree
in fullest, richest bloom ; it stood perfect, as
though becalmed against the jade-green sky.
Bertha couldn't help feeling, even from this distance,
that it had not a single bud or a faded petal. Down
below, in the garden beds, the red and yellow
tulips, heavy with flowers, seemed to lean upon the
dusk. A grey cat, dragging its belly, crept across
the lawn, and a black one, its shadow, trailed after.
The sight of them, so intent and so quick, gave
Bertha a cifrious shiver.

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BLISS

" What creepy things cats are ! " she stam-
mered, and she turned away from the window and
began walking up and down. . . .

How strong the jonquils smelled in the warm
room. Too strong ? Oh, no. And yet, as though
overcome, she flung down on a couch and pressed
her hands to her eyes.

"I'm too happy too happy ! " she murmured.

And she seemed to see on her eyelids the lovely
pear tree with its wide open blossoms as a symbol
of her own life.

Really really she had everything. She was
young. Harry and she were as much in love as
ever, and they got on together splendidly and were
really good pals. She had an adorable baby. They
didn't have to worry about money. They had this
absolutely satisfactory house and garden. And
friends modern, thrilling friends, writers and
painters and poets or people keen on social questions
just the kind of friends they wanted. And then
there were books, and there was music, and she had
found a wonderful little dressmaker, and they were
going abroad in the summer, and their new cook
made the most superb omelettes. . . .

"I'm absurd. Absurd ! " She sat up ; but she
felt quite dizzy, quite drunk. It must have been
the spring.

Yes, it was the spring. Now she was so tired she
could not drag herself upstairs to dress.

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BLISS

A white dress, a string of jade beads, green shoes
and stockings. It wasn't intentional. She had
thought of this scheme hours before she stood at
the drawing-room window.

Her petals rustled softly into the hall, and she
kissed Mrs. Norman Knight, who was taking off
the most amusing orange coat with a procession
of black monkeys round the hem and up the
fronts.

" . . . Why ! Why ! Why is the middle-class
so stodgy so utterly without a sense of humour !
My dear, it's only by a fluke that I am here at all
Norman being the protective fluke. For my darling
monkeys so upset the train that it rose to a man and
simply ate me with its eyes. Didn't laugh wasn't
amused that I should have loved. No, just
stared and bored me through and through."

" But the cream of it was," said Norman, pressing
a large tortoiseshell-rimmed monocle into his eye,
" you don't mind me telling this, Face, do you ? "
(In their home and among their friends they called
each other Face and Mug.) " The cream of it
was when she, being full fed, turned to the woman
beside her and said : ' Haven't you ever seen a
monkey before ? ' "

" Oh, yes I " Mrs. Norman Knight joined
in the laughter. " Wasn't that too absolutely
creamy ? "

And a funnier thing still was that now her coat was
off she did * look like a very intelligent monkey ~

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BLISS

who had even made that yellow silk dress out of
scraped banana skins. And her amber ear-rings ;
they were like little dangling nuts.

" This is a sad, sad fall ! " said Mug, pausing
in front of Little B's perambulator. " When the

perambulator comes into the hall " and he

waved the rest of the quotation away.

The bell rang. It was lean, pale Eddie Warren
(as usual) in a state of acute distress.

" It is the right house, isn't it ? " he pleaded.

" Oh, I think so I hope so," said Bertha
brightly.

" I have had such a dreadful experience with a
taxi-man ; he was most sinister. I couldn't get
him to stop. The more I knocked and called the
faster he went. And in the moonlight this bizarre
figure with the flattened head crouching over the
lit-tle wheel. . . ."

He shuddered, taking off an immense white silk
scarf. Bertha noticed that his socks were white,
too most charming.

" But how dreadful ! " she cried.

" Yes, it really was," said Eddie, following her
into the drawing-room. " I saw myself driving
through Eternity in a timeless taxi."

He knew the Norman Knights. In fact, he was
going to write a play for N. K. when the theatre
scheme came off.

" Well, Warren, how's the play ? " said Norman
Knight, dropping his monocle and giving his eye

125

BLISS

a moment in which to rise to the surface before
it was screwed down again.

And Mrs. Norman Knight : " Oh, Mr. Warren,
what happy socks ? "

" I am so glad you like them," said he, staring
at his feet. " They seem to have got so much
whiter since the moon rose." And he turned
his lean sorrowful young face to Bertha. " There
is a moon, you know."

She wanted to cry : " I am sure there is often
often ! "

He really was a most attractive person. But so
was Face, crouched before the fire in her banana
skins, and so was Mug, smoking a cigarette and
saying as he flicked the ash : " Why doth the
bridegroom tarry ? "

" There he is, now."

Bang went the front door open and shut. Harry
shouted : " Hullo, you people. Down in five
minutes." And they heard him swarm up the
stairs. Bertha couldn't help smiling ; she knew
how he loved doing things at high pressure. What,
after all, did an extra five minutes matter ? But he
would pretend to himself that they mattered beyond
measure. And then he would make a great point
of coming into the drawing-room, extravagantly
cool and collected.

Harry had such a zest for life. Oh, how she
appreciated it in him. And his passion for fight-
ing for seeking in everything that came up against
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BLISS

him another test of his power and of his courage
that, too, she understood. Even when it made him
just occasionally, to other people, who didn't know
him well, a little ridiculous perhaps. . . . For there
were moments when he rushed into battle where
no battle was. . . . She talked and laughed and
positively forgot until he had come in (just as she
had imagined) that Pearl Fulton had not turned up.

" I wonder if Miss Fulton has forgotten ? "

" I expect so," said Harry. " Is she on the
'phone ? "

" Ah ! There's a taxi, now." And Bertha
smiled with that little air of proprietorship that
she always assumed while her women finds were new
and mysterious. " She lives in taxis."

" She'll run to fat if she does," said Harry coolly,
ringing the bell for dinner. " Frightful danger
for blond women."

" Harry don't," warned Bertha, laughing up
at him.

Came another tiny moment, while they waited,
laughing and talking, just a trifle too much at their
ease, a trifle too unaware. And then Miss Fulton,
all in silver, with a silver fillet binding her pale
blond hair, came in smiling, her head a little on
one side.

" Am I late ? "

" No, not at all," said Bertha. " Come along."
And she took her arm and they moved into the
dining-room.

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BLISS

What was there in the touch of that cool arm that
could fan fan start blazing blazing the fire
of bliss that Bertha did not know what to do
with?

Miss Fulton did not look at her ; but then she
seldom did look at people directly. Her heavy
eyelids lay upon her eyes and the strange half
smile came and went upon her lips as though she
lived by listening rather than seeing. But Bertha
knew, suddenly, as if the longest, most intimate
look had passed between them as if they had said
to each other : " You, too ? "that Pearl Fulton,
stirring the beautiful red soup in the grey plate,
was feeling just what she was feeling.

And the others ? Face and Mug, Eddie and
Harry, their spoons rising and falling dabbing
their lips with their napkins, crumbling bread,
fiddling with the forks and glasses and talking,

" I met her at the Alpha show the weirdest
little person. She'd not only cut off her hair, but
she seemed to have taken a dreadfully good snip
off her legs and arms and her neck and her poor
little nose as well."

41 Isn't she very KA with Michael Oat ? "

" The man who wrote Love in False Teeth ? "

" He wants to write a play for me. One act.
One man. Decides to commit suicide. Gives all
the reasons why he should and why he shouldn't.
And just as he has made up his mind either to do
it or not to*do it curtain. Not half a bad idea."

128

BLISS

" What's he going to call it Stomach
Trouble ' ? "

" I think I've come across the same idea
in a lit-tle French review, quite unknown in Eng-
land."

No, they didn't share it. They were dears
dears and she loved having them there, at her
table, and giving them delicious food and wine.
In fact, she longed to tell them how delightful
they were, and what a decorative group they made,
how they seemed to set one another off and how they
reminded her of a play by Tchekof !

Harry was enjoying his dinner. It was part of his
well, not his nature, exactly, and certainly not his
pose his something or other to talk about food
and to glory in his " shameless passion for the
white flesh of the lobster " and " the green of
pistachio ices green and cold like the eyelids of
Egyptian dancers."

When he looked up at her and said : " Bertha,
this is a very admirable soufflfe ! " she almost could
have wept with child-like pleasure.

Oh, why did she feel so tender towards the whole
world to-night ? Everything was good was right.
All that happened seemed to $11 again her brimming
cup of bliss.

And still, in the back of her mind, there was the

pear tree. It would be silver now, in the light of

poor dear Eddie's moon, silver as Miss Fulton,

who sat there turning a tangerine in her slender

K 129

BLISS

fingers that were so pale a light seemed to come
from them.

What she simply couldn't make out what was
miraculous was how she should have guessed
Miss Fulton's mood so exactly and so instantly.
For she never doubted for a moment that she was
right, and yet what had she to go on ? Less than
nothing.

" I believe this does happen very, very rarely
between women. Never between men," thought
Bertha. " But while I am making the coffee in the
drawing-room perhaps she will ' give a sign/ "

What she meant by that she did not know, and
what would happen after that she could not imagine.

While she thought like this she saw herself
talking and laughing. She had to talk because of
her desire to laugh.

" I must laugh or die."

But when she noticed Face's funny little habit of
tucking something down the front of her bodice
as if she kept a tiny, secret hoard of nuts there, too
Bertha had to dig her nails into her hands so as
not to laugh too much.

It was over at last. And : " Come and see my
new coffee machine," said Bertha.

" We only have a new coffee machine once a
fortnight," said Harry. Face took her arm this
time ; Miss Fulton bent her head and followed
after.

130

BLISS

The fire had died down in the drawing-room to a
red, flickering " nest of baby phoenixes," said Face.

" Don't turn up the light for a moment. It is so
lovely." And down she crouched by the fire again.
She was always cold . . . " without her little
red flannel jacket, of course," thought Bertha.

At that moment Miss Fulton " gave the sign."

" Have you a garden ? " said the cool, sleepy
Voice.

This was so exquisite on her part that all Bertha
could do was to obey. She crossed the room,
pulled the curtains apart, and opened those long
windows.

" There ! " she breathed.

And the two women stood side by side looking
at the slender, flowering tree. Although it was so
still it seemed, like the flame of a candle, to stretch
up, to point, to quiver in the bright air, to grow
taller and taller as they gazed almost to touch
the rim of the round, silver moon.

How long did they stand there ? Both, as it were,
caught in that circle of unearthly light, under-
standing each other perfectly, creatures of another
world, and wondering what they were to do in this
one with all this blissful treasure that burned in
their bosoms and dropped, in silver flowers, from
their hair and hands ?

For ever for a moment ? And did Miss
Fulton murmur : " Yes. Just that." Or did
Bertha dream it ?

BLISS

Then the light was snapped on and Face made
the coffee and Harry said : " My dear Mrs.
Knight, don't ask me about my baby. I never see
her. I shan't feel the slightest interest in her until
she has a lover/' and Mug took his eye out of the
conservatory for a moment and then put it under
glass again and Eddie Warren drank his coffee and
set down the cup with a face of anguish as though
he had drunk and seen the spider.

" What I want to do is to give the young men a
show. I believe London is simply teeming with
first-chop, unwritten plays. What I want to say
to 'em is : ' Here's the theatre. Fire ahead.' "

" You know, my dear, I am going to decorate a
room for the Jacob Nathans. Oh, I am so tempted
to do a fried-fish scheme, with the backs of the
chairs shaped like frying pans and lovely chip
potatoes embroidered all over the curtains."

" The trouble with our young writing men is
that they are still too romantic. You can't put out
to sea without being seasick and wanting a basin.
Well, why won't they have the courage of those
basins ? "

" A dreadful poem about a girl who was violated
by a beggar without a nose in a lit-tle wood. . . ."

Miss Fulton sank into the lowest, deepest chair
and Harry handed round the cigarettes.

From the way he stood in front of her shaking
the silver box and saying abruptly : " Egyptian ?
Turkish ? ^Virginian ? They're all mixed up,"

132

BLISS

Bertha realized that she not only bored him ;
he really disliked her. And she decided from the
way Miss Fulton said : " No, thank you, I won't
smoke," that she felt it, too, and was hurt.

" Oh, Harry, don't dislike her. You are quite
wrong about her. She's wonderful, wonderful.
And, besides, how can you feel so differently about
someone who means so much to me. I shall try
to tell you when we are in bed to-night what has
been happening. What she and I have shared."

At those last words something strange and almost
terrifying darted into Bertha's mind. And this
something blind and smiling whispered to her :
" Soon these people will go. The house will be
quiet quiet. The lights will be out. And you
and he will be alone together in the dark room the
warm bed. . . ."

She jumped up from her chair and ran over to the
piano.

" What a pity someone does not play 1 " she
cried. " What a pity somebody does not play."

For the first time in her life Bertha Young desired
her husband.

Oh, she'd loved him she'd been in love with
him, of course, in every other way, but just not in
that way. And, equally, of course, she'd under-
stood that he was different. They'd discussed it so
often. It had worried her dreadfully at first to find
that she was so cold, but after a time it had not

'33

BLISS

seemed to matter. They were so frank with each
other such good pals. That was the best of being
modern.

But now ardently ! ardently ! The word
ached in her ardent body ! Was this what that
feeling of bliss had been leading up to ? But then
then

" My dear," said Mrs. Norman Knight, " you
know our shame. We are the victims of time and
train. We live in Hampstead. It's been so nice,"

" I'll come with you into the hall," said Bertha.
" I loved having you. But you must not miss the
last train. That's so awful, isn't it ? "

" Have a whisky, Knight, before you go ? "
called Harry.

11 No, thanks, old chap."

Bertha squeezed his hand for that as she shook it.

" Good night, good-bye," she cried from the top
step, feeling that this self of hers was taking leave of
them for ever.

When she got back into the drawing-room the
others were on the move.

" . . . Then you can come part of the way in my
taxi."

" I shall be so thankful not to have to face another
drive alone after my dreadful experience."

" You can get a taxi at the rank just at the end
of the street. You won't have to walk more than
a few yards,"

" That's a comfort. I'll go and put on my coat."

BLISS

Miss Fulton moved towards the hall and Bertha
was following when Harry almost pushed past.

" Let me help you."

Bertha knew that he was repenting his rudeness
she let him go. What a boy he was in some
ways so impulsive so simple.

And Eddie and she were left by the fire.

" I wonder if you have seen Bilks' new poem
called Table d'Hote," said Eddie softly. " It's so
wonderful. In the last Anthology. Have you got
a copy ? I'd so like to show it to you. It begins with
an incredibly beautiful line : ' Why Must it Always
be Tomato Soup ? ' "

" Yes," said Bertha. And she moved noiselessly
to a table opposite the drawing-room door and
Eddie glided noiselessly after her. She picked
up the little book and gave it to him ; they had not
made a sound.

While he looked it up she turned her head towards
the hall. And she saw . . . Harry with Miss
Fulton's coat in his arms and Miss Fulton with her
back turned to him and her head bent. He tossed
the coat away, put his hands on her shoulders and
turned her violently to him. His lips said : " I adore
you," and Miss Fulton laid her moonbeam fingers
on his cheeks and smiled her sleepy smile. Harry's
nostrils quivered ; his lips curled back in a hideous
grin while he whispered : " To-morrow," and with
her eyelids Miss Fulton said : " Yes."

" Here it is," said Eddie. " ' Why Must it Always

BLISS

be Tomato Soup ? ' It's so deeply true, don't
you feel ? Tomato soup is so dreadfully eternal."

" If you prefer," said Harry's voice, very loud,
from the hall, " I can phone you a cab to come to
the door."

" Oh, no. It's not necessary," said Miss Fulton,
and she came up to Bertha and gave her the slender
fingers to hold.

" Good-bye. Thank you so much."

" Good-bye," said Bertha.

Miss Fulton held her hand a moment longer.

" Your lovely pear tree ! " she murmured.

And then she was gone, with Eddie following,
like the black cat following the grey cat.

" I'll shut up shop," said Harry, extravagantly
cool and collected.

" Your lovely pear tree pear tree pear tree ! "

Bertha simply ran over to the long windows.

" Oh, what is going to happen now ? " she cried.

But the pear tree was as lovely as ever and as full
of flower and as still.

THE WIND BLOWS

SUDDENLY dreadfully she wakes up.
What has happened ? Something dread-
ful has happened. No nothing has
happened. It is only the wind shaking the house,
rattling the windows, banging a piece of iron on
the roof and making her bed tremble. Leaves
flutter past the window, up and away ; down in
the avenue a whole newspaper wags in the air like
a lost kite and falls, spiked on a pine tree. It is
cold. Summer is over it is autumn everything
is ugly. The carts rattle by, swinging from side
to side ; two Chinamen lollop along under their
wooden yokes with the straining vegetable baskets
their pigtails and blue blouses fly out in the wind.
A white dog on three legs yelps past the gate. It is
all over ! What is ? Oh, everything ! And she
begins to plait her hair with shaking fingers, not
daring to look in the glass. Mother is talking to
grandmother in the hall.

" A perfect idiot ! Imagine leaving anything out
on the line in weather like this. . . . Now my best
little TenerifFe-work teacloth is simply in ribbons.
What is that extraordinary smell ? It's the porridge
burning. Oh, heavens this wind ! "

137

THE WIND BLOWS

She has a music lesson at ten o'clock. At the
thought the minor movement of the Beethoven
begins to play in her head, the trills long and
terrible like little rolling drums. . . . Marie Swain-
son runs into the garden next door to pick the
" chrysanths " before they are ruined. Her skirt
flies up above her waist ; she tries to beat it down,
to tuck it between her legs while she stoops, but
it is no use up it flies. All the trees and bushes
beat about her. She picks as quickly as she can,
but she is quite distracted. She doesn't mind what
she does she pulls the plants up by the roots and
bends and twists them, stamping her foot and
swearing.

" For heaven's sake keep the front door shut !
Go round to the back," shouts someone. And then
she hears Bogey :

" Mother, you're wanted on the telephone.
Telephone, Mother. It's the butcher."

How hideous life is revolting, simply revolting.
. . . And now her hat-elastic's snapped. Of
course it would. She'll wear her old tarn and
slip out the back way. But Mother has seen.

" Matilda. Matilda. Come back im-me-diately !
What on earth have you got on your head ? It
looks like a tea cosy. And why have you got that
mane of hair on your forehead."

" I can't come back, Mother. I'll be late for my
lesson."

" Come back immediately 1 "

138

THE WIND BLOWS

She won't. She won't. She hates Mother. "Go
to hell," she shouts, running down the road.

In waves, in clouds, in big round whirls the dust
comes stinging, and with it little bits of straw and
chaff and manure. There is a loud roaring sound
from the trees in the gardens, and standing at
the bottom of the road outside Mr. Bullen's gate
she can hear the sea sob : " Ah ! . . . Ah 1 ...
Ah-h 1 " But Mr. Bullen's drawing-room is as
quiet as a cave. The windows are closed, the
blinds half pulled, and she is not late. The-girl-
before-her has just started playing MacDowell's
" To an Iceberg." Mr. Bullen looks over at her
and half smiles.

" Sit down," he says. " Sit over there in the
sofa corner, little lady."

How funny he is. He doesn't exactly laugh at
you . . . but there is just something. . . . Oh,
how peaceful it is here. She likes this room. It
smells of art serge and stale smoke and chrysanthe-
mums . . . there is a big vase of them on the
mantelpiece behind the pale photograph of Rubin-
stein . . . d mon ami Robert Bullen. . . . Over
the black glittering piano hangs " Solitude "
a dark tragic woman draped in white, sitting on a
rock, her knees crossed, her chin on her hands.

" No, no ! " says Mr. Bullen, and he leans over
the other girl, put his arms over her shoulders and
plays the passage for her. The stupid she's
blushing ! How ridiculous !

139

THE WIND BLOWS

Now the-girl-before-her has gone ; the front
door slams. Mr. Bullen comes back and walks
up and down, very softly, waiting for her. What
an extraordinary thing. Her fingers tremble so
that she can't undo the knot in the music satchel.
It's the wind. . . . And her heart beats so hard
she feels it must lift her blouse up and down. Mr.
Bullen does not say a word. The shabby red
piano seat is long enough for two people to sit side
by side. Mr. Bullen sits down by her.

" Shall I begin with scales/' she asks, squeezing
her hands together. " I had some arpeggios, too."

But he does not answer. She doesn't believe
he even hears . . . and then suddenly his fresh
hand with the ring on it reaches over and opens
Beethoven.

" Let's have a little of the old master," he says.

But why does he speak so kindly so awfully
kindly and as though they had known each other
for years and years and knew everything about
each other.

He turns the page slowly. She watches his hand
it is a very nice hand and always looks as though
it had just been washed.

" Here we are," says Mr. Bullen.

Oh, that kind voice Oh, that minor movement.
Here come the little drums. . . .

" Shall I take the repeat ? "

" Yes, dear phild."

His voice is far, far too kind. The crotchets and
140

THE WIND BLOWS

quavers are dancing up and down the stave
like little black boys on a fence. Why is he
so ... She will not cry she has nothing to cry
about. . . .

" What is it, dear child ? "

Mr. Bullen takes her hands. His shoulder is
there just by her head. She leans on it ever so
little, her cheek against the springy tweed.

" Life is so dreadful, " she murmurs, but she
does not feel it's dreadful at all. He says something
about " waiting " and " marking time " and
" that rare thing, a woman," but she does not hear.
It is so comfortable ... for ever . . .

Suddenly the door opens and in pops Marie
Swainson, hours before her time.

" Take the allegretto a little faster," says Mr.
Bullen, and gets up and begins to walk up and down
again.

" Sit in the sofa corner, little lady," he says to
Marie.

The wind, the wind. It's frightening to be here
in her room by herself. The bed, the mirror, the
white jug and basin gleam like the sky outside.
It's the bed that is frightening. There it lies,
sound asleep. . . . Does Mother imagine for one
moment that she is going to darn all those stockings
knotted up on the quilt like a coil of snakes ? She's
not. No, Mother, I do not see why I should. . . .
The wind the wind ! There's a funny smell of

141

THE WIND BLOWS

soot blowing down the chimney. Hasn't anyone
written poems to the wind ?..."! bring fresh
flowers to the leaves and showers/' . . . What
nonsense.

" Is that you, Bogey ? "

" Come for a walk round the esplanade, Matilda.
I can't stand this any longer."

" Right-o. I'll put on my ulster. Isn't it an
awful day ! " Bogey's ulster is just like hers.
Hooking the collar she looks at herself in the glass.
Her face is white, they have the same excited eyes
and hot lips. Ah, they know those two in the glass.
Good-bye, dears ; we shall be back soon.

" This is better, isn't it ? "

" Hook on," says Bogey.

They cannot walk fast enough. Their heads
bent, their legs just touching, they stride like one
eager person through the town, down the asphalt
zigzag where the fennel grows wild and on to the
esplanade. It is dusky just getting dusky. The
wind is so strong that they have to fight their way
through it, rocking like two old drunkards. All
the poor little pahutukawas on the esplanade are
bent to the ground.

" Come on ! Come on ! Let's get near."

Over by the breakwater the sea is very high.
They pull off their hats and her hair blows across
her mouth, tasting of salt. The sea is so high that
the waves do not break at alj ; they thump against
the rough stone wall and suck up the weedy,

143

THE WIND BLOWS

dripping steps. A fine spray skims from the water
right across the esplanade. They are covered with
drops ; the inside of her mouth tastes wet and
cold.

Bogey's voice is breaking. When he speaks he
rushes up and down the scale. It's funny it
makes you laugh and yet it just suits the day.
The wind carries their voices away fly the sen-
tences like little narrow ribbons.

" Quicker ! Quicker ! "

It is getting very dark. In the harbour the coal
hulks show two lights one high on a mast, and
one from the stern.

" Look, Bogey. Look over there."

A big black steamer with a long loop of smoke
streaming, with the portholes lighted, with lights
everywhere, is putting out to sea. The wind
does not stop her ; she cuts through the waves,
making for the open gate between the pointed
rocks that leads to ... It's the light that makes
her look so awfully beautiful and mysterious. . . .
They are on board leaning over the rail arm in arm.

" . . . Who are they ? "

" . . . Brother and sister."

" Look, Bogey, there's the town. Doesn't it
look small ? There's the post office clock chiming
for the last time. There's the esplanade where
we walked that windy day. Do you remember ?
I cried at my music lesson that day how many
years ago ! Good-bye, little island, good-bye. . . ."

H3

THE WIND BLOWS

Now the dark stretches a wing over the tumbling
water. They can't see those two any more. Good-
bye, good-bye. Don't forget. . . . But the ship
is gone, now.

The wind the wind.

44

PSYCHOLOGY

WHEN she opened the door and saw him
standing there she was more pleased
than ever before, and he, too, as he
followed her into the studio, seemed very very
happy to have come.

" Not busy ? "

"No. Just going to have tea."

" And you are not expecting anybody ? "

"Nobody at all."

"Ah! That's good." .

He laid aside his coat and hat gently, lingeringly,
as though he had time and to spare for everything,
or as though he were taking leave of them for ever,
and came over to the fire and held out his hands
to the quick, leaping flame.

Just for a moment both of them stood silent
in that leaping light. Still, as it were, they tasted
on their smiling lips the sweet shock of their greeting.
Their secret selves whispered :

" Why should we speak ? Isn't this enough ? "

" More than enough. I never realized until this
moment . . ."

14 How good it is just to be with you. . . ."

" Like this. . . ."

L H5

PSYCHOLOGY

" It's more than enough."

But suddenly he turned and looked at her and she
moved quickly away.

" Have a cigarette ? I'll put the kettle on. Are
you longing for tea ? "

" No. Not longing."

" Well, I am."

" Oh, you." He thumped the Armenian cushion
and flung on to the sommier. " You're a perfect
little Chinee."

" Yes, I am," she laughed. " I long for tea as
strong men long for wine."

She lighted the lamp under its broad orange
shade, pulled the curtains and drew up the tea
table. Two birds sang in the kettle ; the fire
fluttered. He sat up clasping his knees. It was
delightful this business of having tea and she
always had delicious things to eat little sharp
sandwiches, short sweet almond fingers, and a dark,
rich cake tasting of rum but it was an interruption.
He wanted it over, the table pushed away, their two
chairs drawn up to the light, and the moment came
when he took out his pipe, filled it, and said,
pressing the tobacco tight into the bowl : " I have
been thinking over what you said last time and it
seems to me . . ."

Yes, that was what he waited for and so did she.
Yes, while she shook the teapot hot and dry over
the spirit flame she saw, those other two, him, leaning
back, taking his ease among the cushions, and her,

146

PSYCHOLOGY

curled up m escargot in the blue shell arm-chair.
The picture was so clear and so minute it might
have been painted on the blue teapot lid. And yet
she couldn't hurry. She could almost have cried :
" Give me time." She must have time in which
to grow calm. She wanted time in which to free
herself from all these familiar things with which
she lived so vividly. For all these gay things round
her were part of her her offspring and they knew
it and made the largest, most vehement claims.
But now they must go. They must be swept away,
shooed away like children, sent up the shadowy
stairs, packed into bed and commanded to go to
sleep at once without a murmur 1

For the special thrilling quality of their friend-
ship was in their complete surrender. Like two
open cities in the midst of some vast plain their
two minds lay open to each other. And it wasn't
as if he rode into hers like a conqueror, armed to
the eyebrows and seeing nothing but a gay silken
flutter nor did she enter his like a queen walking
soft on petals. No, they were eager, serious
travellers, absorbed in understanding what was
to be seen and discovering what was hidden
making the most of this extraordinary absolute
chance which made it possible for him to be utterly
truthful to her and for her to be utterly sincere
with him.

And the best of it was they were both of them
old enough to enjoy their adventure to the full

H7

PSYCHOLOGY

without any(stupid emotional complication^ (Passion
(would have ruined everything); they quite saw
that. Besides, all that sort of thing was over and
done with for both of them he was thirty-one,
she was thirty they had had their experiences,
and very rich and varied they had been, but now
was the time for harvest harvest. Weren't his
novels to be very big novels indeed ? And her plays.
Who else had her exquisite sense of real English
Comedy ? . . .

Carefully she cut the cake into thick little wads
and he reached across for a piece.

" Do realize how good it is," she implored.
" Eat it imaginatively. Roll your eyes if you can
and taste it on the breath. It's not a sandwich
from the hatter's bag it's the kind of cake that
might have been mentioned in the Book of Genesis.
. . . And God said : ' Let there be cake. And
there was cake. And God saw that it was good.' "

" You needn't entreat me," said he. " Really
you needn't. It's a queer thing but I always do
notice what I eat here and never anywhere else.
I suppose it comes of living alone so long and
always reading while I feed ... my habit of
looking upon food as just food . . . something
that's there, at certain times ... to be devoured
... to be . . . not there." He laughed. " That
shocks you. Doesn't it ? "

" To the bone," said he.

" But look here " He pushed away his cup

148

PSYCHOLOGY

and began to speak very fast. " I simply haven't
got any external life at all. I don't know the names
of things a bit trees and so on and I never
notice places or furniture or what people look like.
One room is just like another to me a place to
sit and read or talk in except," and here he paused,
smiled in a strange naive way, and said, " except
this studio." He looked round him and then at
her ; he laughed in his astonishment and pleasure.
He was like a man who wakes up in a train to find
that he has arrived, already, at the journey's end.

" Here's another queer thing. If I shut my eyes
I can see this place down to every detail every
detail. . . . Now I come to think of it I've never
realized this consciously before. Often when I am
away from here I revisit it in spirit wander about
among your red chairs, stare at the bowl of fruit
on the black table and just touch, very lightly,
that marvel of a sleeping boy's head."

He looked at it as he spoke. It stood on the
corner of the mantelpiece ; the head to one side
down-drooping, the lips parted, as though in his
sleep the little boy listened to some sweet sound. . . .

" I love that little boy," he murmured. And
then they both were silent.

A new silence came between them. Nothing in
the least like the satisfactory pause that had
followed their greetings the " Well, here we are
together again, and there's no reason why we
shouldn't go on from just where we left off last

149

PSYCHOLOGY

time." That silence could be contained in the circle
of warm, delightful fire and lamplight. How many
times hadn't they flung something into it just for the
fun of watching the ripples break on the easy
shores. But into this unfamiliar pool the head of
the little boy sleeping his timeless sleep dropped
and the ripples flowed away, away boundlessly
far into deep glittering darkness.

And then both of them broke it. She said :
" I must make up the fire/' and he said : " I have
been trying a new . , ." Both of them escaped.
She made up the fire and put the table back, the
blue chair was wheeled forward, she curled up and
he lay back among the cushions. Quickly !
Quickly ! They must stop it from happening
again,

" Well, I read the book you left last time."

" Oh, what do you think of it ? "

They were off and all was as usual. But was it ?
Weren't they just a little too quick, too prompt
with their replies, too ready to take each other up ?
Was this really anything more than a wonderfully
good imitation of other occasions ? His heart
beat ; her cheek burned and the stupid thing
was she could not discover where exactly they were
or what exactly was happening. She hadn't time
to glance back. And just as she had got so far it
happened again. They faltered, wavered, broke
down, were silent. Ag&in they were conscious of
the boundless, questioning dark. Again, there they

PSYCHOLOGY

were two hunters, bending over their fire, but
hearing suddenly from the jungle beyond a shake
of wind and a loud, questioning cry. . . .

She lifted her head. " It's raining/' she mur-
mured. And her voice was like his when he had
said : " I love that little boy."

Well. Why didn't they just give way to it
yield and see what will happen then ? But no.
Vague and troubled though they were, they knew
enough to realize their precious friendship was in
danger. She was the one who would be destroyed
not they and they'd be no party to that.

He got up, knocked out his pipe, ran his hand
through his hair and said : "I have been wonder-
ing very much lately whether the novel of the
future will be a psychological novel or not. How
sure are you that psychology qua psychology has
got anything to do with literature at all ? "

" Do you mean you feel there's quite a chance
that the mysterious non-existent creatures the
young writers of to-day are trying simply to
jump the psycho-analyst's claim ? "

" Yes, I do. And I think it's because this
generation is just wise enough to know that it is
sick and to realize that its only chance of recovery
is by going into its symptoms making an exhaustive
study of them tracking them down trying to
get at the root of the trouble."

" But oh," she wailed. " What a dreadfully
dismal outlook."

'5*

PSYCHOLOGY

" Not at all," said he. " Look here . . ." On
the talk went. And now it seemed they really had
succeeded. She turned in her chair to look at him
while she answered. Her smile said : " We have
won." And he smiled back, confident : " Abso-
lutely."

But the smile undid them. It lasted too long ;
it became a grin. They saw themselves as two
little grinning puppets jigging away in nothingness.

" What have we been talking about ? " thought
he. He was so utterly bored he almost groaned.

" What a spectacle we have made of ourselves,"
thought she. And she saw him laboriously oh,
laboriously laying out the grounds and herself
running after, putting here a tree and there a flowery
shrub and here a handful of glittering fish in a pool.
They were silent this time from sheer dismay.

The clock struck six merry little pings and the
fire made a soft flutter. What fools they were
heavy, stodgy, elderly with positively upholstered
minds.

And now the silence put a spell upon them like
solemn music. It was anguish anguish for her
to bear it and he would die he'd die if it were
broken. . . . And yet he longed to break it. Not
by speech. At any rate not by their ordinary
maddening chatter. There was another way for
them to speak to each other, and in the new way he
wanted to murmur : " Do you feel this too ? Do
you understand it at all ? " . . .

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PSYCHOLOGY

Instead, to his horror, he heard himself say:
" I must be off ; I'm meeting Brand at six."

What devil made him say that instead of the
other ? She jumped simply jumped out of her
chair, and he heard her crying : " You must rush,
then. He's so punctual. Why didn't you say
so before ? "

" You've hurt me ; you've hurt me ! We've
failed ! " said her secret self while she handed him
his hat and stick, smiling gaily. She wouldn't
give him a moment for another word, but ran along
the passage and opened the big outer door.

Could they leave each other like this ? How
could they ? He stood on the step and she just
inside holding the door. It was not raining
now.

" You've hurt me hurt me," said her heart.
" Why don't you go ? No, don't go. Stay. No
go ! " And she looked out upon the night.

She saw the beautiful fall of the steps, the dark
garden ringed with glittering ivy, on the other side
of the road the huge bare willows and above them
the sky big and bright with stars. But of course he
would see nothing of all this. He was superior to
it all. He with his wonderful " spiritual "
vision !

She was right. He did see nothing at all.
Misery ! He'd missed it. It was too late to do
anything now. Was it too late ? Yes, it was. A
cold snatch of hateful wind blew into the garden.

J 53

PSYCHOLOGY

Curse life ! He heard her cry " au revoir " and the
door slammed.

Running back into the studio she behaved so
strangely. She ran up and down lifting her arms
and crying : " Oh ! Oh ! How stupid ! How
imbecile ! How stupid ! " And then she flung
herself down on the sommier thinking of nothing
just lying there in her rage. All was over. What
was over ? Oh something was. And she'd
never see him again never. After a long long
time (or perhaps ten minutes) had passed in that
black gulf her bell rang a sharp quick jingle. It
was he, of course. And equally, of course, she
oughtn't to have paid the slightest attention to it
but just let it go on ringing and ringing. She flew
to answer.

On the doorstep there stood an elderly virgin, a
pathetic creature who simply idolized her
(heaven knows why) and had this habit of turning
up and ringing the bell and then saying, when she
opened the door : " My dear, send me away ! "
She never did. As a rule she asked her in and let
her admire everything and accepted the bunch of
slightly soiled looking flowers more than
graciously. But to-day . .

" Oh, I am so sorry," she cried. " But I've got
someone with me. We are working on some wood-
cuts. I'm hopelessly busy all evening."

" It doesn't matter., It doesn't matter at all,
darling." said the good friend. " I was just passing

PSYCHOLOGY

and I thought I'd leave you some violets. " She
fumbled down among the ribs of a large old umbrella.
" I put them down here. Such a good place to
keep flowers out of the wind. Here they are,"
she said, shaking out a little dead bunch.

For a moment she did not take the violets. But
while she stood just inside, holding the door, a
strange thing happened. . . . Again she saw the
beautiful fall of the steps, the dark garden ringed
with glittering ivy, the willows, the big bright sky.
Again she felt the silence that was like a question.
But this time she did not hesitate. She moved
forward. Very softly and gently, as though fearful
of making a ripple in that boundless pool of quiet
she put her arms round her friend.

" My dear," murmured her happy friend, quite
overcome by this gratitude. " They are really noth-
ing. Just the simplest little thrippenny bunch."

But as she spoke she was enfolded more
tenderly, more beautifully embraced, held by such
a sweet pressure and for so long that the poor
dear's mind positively reeled and she just had the
strength to quaver : " Then you really don't mind
me too much ? "

" Good night, my friend," whispered the other.
" Come again soon."

" Oh, I will. I will."

This time she walked back to the studio slowly,
and standing in the middle of the room with half-
shut eyes she felt so light, so rested, as if she had

155

PSYCHOLOGY

woken up out of a childish sleep. Even the act
of breathing was a joy. . . .

The sommier was very untidy. All the cushions
" like furious mountains " as she said ; she put
them in order before going over to the writing-
table.

" I have been thinking over our talk about the
psychological novel," she dashed off, " it really
is intensely interesting/' . . . And so on and so on.

At the end she wrote : " Good night, my friend.
Come again soon."

156

PICTURES

EIGHT o'clock in the morning. Miss Ada
Moss lay in a black iron bedstead, staring
up at the ceiling. Her room, a Blooms-
bury top-floor back, smelled of soot and face powder
and the paper of fried potatoes she brought in for
supper the night before.

" Oh, dear," thought Miss Moss, " I am cold. I
wonder why it is that I always wake up so cold in
the mornings now. My knees and feet and my
back especially my back ; it's like a sheet of ice.
And I always was such a one for being warm in the
old days. It's not as if I was skinny I'm just the
same full figure that I used to be. No, it's because
I don't have a good hot dinner in the evenings."

A pageant of Good Hot Dinners passed across
the ceiling, each of them accompanied by a bottle
of Nourishing Stout. . . .

" Even if I were to get up now," she thought,
" and have a sensible substantial breakfast . . ."
A pageant of Sensible Substantial Breakfasts
followed the dinners across the ceiling, shepherded
by an enormous, white, uncut ham. Miss Moss
shuddered and disappeared under the bedclothes.
Suddenly, in bounced the landlady.

157

PICTURES

" There's a letter for you, Miss Moss."

" Oh," said Miss Moss, far too friendly, " thank
you very much, Mrs. Pine. It's very good of you,
I'm sure, to take the trouble."

" No trouble at all," said the landlady. " I
thought perhaps it was the letter you'd been
expecting."

" Why," said Miss Moss brightly, " yes, perhaps
it is." She put her head on one side and smiled
vaguely at the letter. " I shouldn't be sur-
prised."

The landlady's eyes popped. " Well, I should,
Miss Moss," said she, " and that's how it is. And
I'll trouble you to open it, if you please. Many
is the lady in my place as would have done it for
you and have been within her rights. For things
can't go on like this, Miss Moss, no indeed they
can't. What with week in week out and first you've
got it and then you haven't, and then. it's another
letter lost in the post or another manager down at
Brighton but will be back on Tuesday for certain
I'm fair sick and tired and I won't stand it no more.
Why should I, Miss Moss, I ask you, at a time like
this, with prices flying up in the air and my poor
dear lad in France ? My sister Eliza was only
saying to me yesterday ' Minnie/ she says, ' you're
too soft-hearted. You could have let that room
time and time again,' says she, * and if people won't
look after themselves in times like these, nobody
else will,* she says. ' She may have had a College

PICTURES

eddication and sung in West End concerts/ says she,
' but if your Lizzie says what's true/ she says, ' and
she's washing her own wovens and drying them on
the towel rail, it's easy to see where the finger's
pointing. And it's high time you had done with it/
says she."

Miss Moss gave no sign of having heard this.
She sat up in bed, tore open her letter and
read :

" Dear Madam,

Yours to hand. Am not producing at
present, but have filed photo for future ref.
Yours truly,

BACKWASH FILM Co.''

This letter seemed to afford her peculiar satis-
faction ; she read it through twice before replying
to the landlady.

" Well, Mrs. Pine, I think you'll be sorry for
what you said. This is from a manager, asking me
to be there with evening dress at ten o'clock next
Saturday morning,' 1

But the landlady was too quick for her. She
pounced, secured the letter.

" Oh, is it ! Is it indeed ! " she cried.

" Give me back that letter. Give it back to me
at once, you bad, wicked woman," cried Miss Moss,
who could not get out of bed because her night-
dress was slit down the back. " Give me back my

159

PICTURES

private letter." The landlady began slowly backing
out of the room, holding the letter to her buttoned
bodice.

" So it's come to this, has it ? " said she. " Well,
Miss Moss, if I don't get my rent at eight o'clock
to-night, we'll see who's a bad, wicked woman
that's all." Here she nodded, mysteriously.
" And I'll keep this letter." Here her voice rose.
" It will be a pretty little bit of evidence I " And
here it fell, sepulchral, " My lady"

The door banged and Miss Moss was alone. She
flung off the bed clothes, and sitting by the side
of the bed, furious and shivering, she stared at her
fat white legs with their great knots of greeny-
blue veins.

" Cockroach ! That's what she is. She's a
cockroach ! " said Miss Moss. " I could have her
up for snatching my letter I'm sure I could."
Still keeping on her nightdress she began to drag on
her clothes.

11 Oh, if I could only pay that woman, I'd give
her a piece of my mind that she wouldn't forget.
I'd tell her off proper." She went over to the
chest of drawers for a safety-pin, and seeing herself
in the glass she gave a vague smile and shook her
head. " Well, old girl," she murmured, " you're
up against it this time, and no mistake." But the
person in the glass made an ugly face at her.

" You silly thing," scolded Miss Moss. " Now
what's the good of crying : you'll only make your

160

PICTURES

nose red. No, you get dressed and go out and try
your luck that's what you've got to do."

She unhooked her vanity bag from the bedpost,
rooted in it, shook it, turned it inside out.

" I'll have a nice cup of tea at an A B C to settle
me before I go anywhere," she decided. " I've
got one and thrippence yes, just one and
three."

Ten minutes later, a stout lady in blue serge,
with a bunch of artificial " parmas " at her bosom,
a black hat covered with purple pansies, white
gloves, boots with white uppers, and a vanity bag
containing one and three, sang in a low contralto
voice :

Sweet-heart, remember when days are forlorn
It al-ways is dar-kest before the dawn,

But the person in the glass made a face at her, and
Miss Moss went out. There were grey crabs all
the way down the street slopping water over grey
stone steps. With his strange, hawking cry and the
jangle of the cans the milk boy went his rounds.
Outside Brittweiler's Swiss House he made a
splash, and an old brown cat without a tail appeared
from nowhere, and began greedily and silently
drinking up the spill. It gave Miss Moss a queer
feeling to watch a sinking as you might say.

But when she came to the ABC she found the door
propped open ; a man went in and out carrying
trays of rolls, and there was nobody inside except a
M 161

PICTURES

waitress doing her hair and the cashier unlocking the
cash-boxes. She stood in the middle of the floor
but neither of them saw her.

" My boy came home last night," sang the
waitress.

" Oh, I say how topping for you 1 " gurgled the
cashier.

" Yes, wasn't it," sang the waitress. " He
brought me a sweet little brooch. Look, it's got
' Dieppe ' written on it."

The cashier ran across to look and put her arm
round the waitress' neck.

" Oh, I say how topping for you."

" Yes, isn't it," said the waitress. " O-oh, he is
brahn. ' Hullo/ I said, ' hullo, old mahogany.' "

" Oh, I say," gurgled the cashier, running back
into her cage and nearly bumping into Miss Moss
on the way. " You are a treat ! " Then the man
with the rolls came in again, swerving past
her.

" Can I have a cup of tea, Miss ? " she
asked.

But the waitress went on doing her hair. " Oh,"
she sang, " we're not open yet." She turned round
and waved her comb at the cashier.

" Are we, dear ? "

" Oh, no," said the cashier. Miss Moss went
out.

" I'll go to Charing^Cross. Yes, that's what I'll
do," she decided. " But I won't have a cup of tea.

162

PICTURES

No, I'll have a coffee. There's more of a tonic
in coffee. . . . Cheeky, those girls are ! Her boy
came home last night ; he brought her a brooch
with ' Dieppe ' written on it." She began to cross
the road. . . .

" Look out, Fattie ; don't go to sleep ! " yelled
a taxi driver. She pretended not to hear.

" No, I won't go to Charing Cross," she decided.
" I'll go straight to Kig and Kadgit. They're open
at nine. If I get there early Mr. Kadgit may have
something by the morning's post. . . . I'm very
glad you turned up so early, Miss Moss. I've just
heard from a manager who wants a lady to play . . . .
I think you'll just suit him. I'll give you a card
to go and see him. It's three pounds a week and all
found. If I were you I'd hop round as fast as I
could. Lucky you turned up so early . . ."

But there was nobody at Kig and Kadgit's except
the charwoman wiping over the " lino " in the
passage.

" Nobody here yet, Miss," said the char.

" Oh, isn't Mr. Kadgit here ? " said Miss Moss,
trying to dodge the pail and brush. " Well, I'll
just wait a moment, if I may."

" You can't wait in the waiting-room, Miss. I
'aven't done it yet. Mr. Kadgit's never 'ere before
'leven-thirty Saturdays. Sometimes 'e don't come
at all," And the char began crawling towards her.

" Dear me how silly of me," said Miss Moss.
" I forgot it was Saturday."

PICTURES

11 Mind your feet, please, Miss," said the char.
And Miss Moss was outside again.

That was one thing about Beit and Bithems ; it
was lively. You walked into the waiting-room, into
a great buzz of conversation, and there was every-
body ; you knew almost everybody. The early ones
sat on chairs and the later ones sat on the early
ones' laps, while the gentlemen leaned negligently
against the walls or preened themselves in front
of the admiring ladies.

" Hello," said Miss Moss, very gay. " Here we
are again ! "

And young Mr. Clayton, playing the banjo on
his walking-stick, sang : " Waiting for the Robert
E. Lee."

" Mr. Bithem here yet ? " asked Miss Moss,
taking out an old dead powder puff and powdering
her nose mauve.

" Oh, yes, dear," cried the chorus. " He's been
here for ages. We've all been waiting here for
more than an hour."

" Dear me ! " said Miss Moss. " Anything doing,
do you think ? "

" Oh, a few jobs going for South Africa," said
young Mr. Clayton. " Hundred and fifty a week
for two years, you know."

" Oh ! " cried the chorus. " You are weird, Mr.
Clayton. Isn't he a cure ? Isn't he a scream, dear ?
Oh, Mr. Clayton, yo^do make me laugh. Isn't
he a comic ? "

164

PICTURES

A dark, mournful girl touched Miss Moss on the
arm.

" I just missed a lovely job yesterday/' she said.
14 Six weeks in the provinces and then the West
End. The manager said I would have got it for
certain if only I'd been robust enough. He said
if my figure had been fuller, the part was made for
me." She stared at Miss Moss, and the dirty dark
red rose under the brim of her hat looked, somehow,
as though it shared the blow with her, and was
crushed, too.

" Oh, dear, that was hard lines," said Miss Moss
trying to appear indifferent. " What was it if I
may ask ? "

But the dark, mournful girl saw through her and
a gleam of spite came into her heavy eyes.

" Oh, no good to you, my dear," said she.
11 He wanted someone young, you know a dark
Spanish type my style, but more figure, that
was all."

The inner door opened and Mr. Bithem appeared
in his shirt sleeves. He kept one hand on the door
ready to whisk back again, and held up the
other.

" Look here, ladies " and then he paused,

grinned his famous grin before he said " and
bhoys" The waiting-room laughed so loudly
at this that he had to hold both hands up. " It's
no good waiting this morning. Come back Monday ;
I'm expecting several calls on Monday."

PICTURES

Miss Moss made a desperate rush forward.
" Mr. Bithem, I wonder if you've heard from . . ."

" Now let me see," said Mr. Bithem slowly,
staring ; he had only seen Miss Moss four times
a week for the past how many weeks ? " Now,
who are you ? "

" Miss Ada Moss."

" Oh, yes, yes ; of course, my dear. Not yet,
my dear. Now I had a call for twenty-eight ladies
to-day, but they had to be young and able to hop
it a bit see ? And I had another call for sixteen
but they had to know something about sand-dancing.
Look here, my dear, I'm up to the eyebrows this
morning. Come back on Monday week ; it's no
good coming before that." He gave her a whole
grin to herself and patted her fat back. " Hearts of
oak, dear lady," said Mr. Bithem, " hearts of
oak ! "

At the North-East Film Company the crowd
was all the way up the stairs. Miss Moss found
herself next to a fair little baby thing about thirty
in a white lace hat with cherries round it.

" What a crowd ! " said she. " Anything special
on?"

" Didn't you know, dear ? " said the baby,
opening her immense pale eyes. " There was a
call at nine-thirty for attractive girls. We've all
been waiting for hours. Have you played for this
company before ? " Miss Moss put her head on
one side. " No, I don't think I have."

1 66

PICTURES

" They're a lovely company to play for/' said the
baby. " A friend of mine has a friend who gets
thirty pounds a day. . . . Have you arcted much
for thej?/-lums ? "

" Well, I'm not an actress by profession/ 1 con-
fessed Miss Moss. " I'm a contralto singer. But
things have been so bad lately that I've been doing
a little."

" It's like that, isn't it, dear ? " said the baby.

" I had a splendid education at the College of
Music," said Miss Moss, " and I got my silver
medal for singing. I've often sung at West End
concerts. But I thought, for a change, I'd try my
luck . . ."

" Yes, it's like that, isn't it, dear ? " said the
baby.

At that moment a beautiful typist appeared at
the top of the stairs.

" Are you all waiting for the North-East
call ? "

" Yes ! " cried the chorus.

" Well, it's off. I've just had a phone through."

" But look here ! What about our expenses ? "
shouted a voice.

The typist looked down at them, and she couldn't
help laughing.

" Oh, you weren't to have been paid. The North-
East never pay their crowds."

There was only a little round window at the
Bitter Orange Company. No waiting-room

PICTURES

nobody at all except a girl, who came to the
window when Miss Moss knocked, and said :
11 Well ? "

" Can I see the producer, please ? " said Miss
Moss pleasantly. The girl leaned on the window-
bar, half shut her eyes and seemed to go to sleep
for a moment. Miss Moss smiled at her. The
girl not only frowned ; she seemed to smell some-
thing vaguely unpleasant ; she sniffed. Suddenly
she moved away, came back with a paper and
thrust it at Miss Moss.

" Fill up the form ! " said she. And banged the
window down.

" Can you aviate high-dive drive a car buck-
jump shoot ? " read Miss Moss. She walked
along the street asking herself those questions.
There was a high, cold wind blowing ; it tugged
at her, slapped her face, jeered ; it knew she could
not answer them. In the Square Gardens she found
a little wire basket to drop the form into. And
then she sat down on one of the benches to powder
her nose. But the person in the pocket mirror made
a hideous face at her, and that was too much for Miss
Moss ; she had a good cry. It cheered her wonder-
fully.

" Well, that's over," she sighed, " It's one
comfort to be off my feet. And my nose will soon
get cool in the air. . . . It's very nice in here.
Look at the sparrows. Cheep. Cheep. How close
they come. I expect somebody feeds them. No,

168

PICTURES

I've nothing for you, you cheeky little things. . . ."
She looked away from them. What was the big
building opposite the Cafe de Madrid ? My
goodness, what a smack that little child came down 1
Poor little mite ! Never mind up again. . . .
By eight o'clock to-night . . . Cafe de Madrid.
" I could just go in and sit there and have a coffee,
that's all/ 1 thought Miss Moss. " It's such a place
for artists too. I might just have a stroke of luck.
... A dark handsome gentleman in a fur coat
comes in with a friend, and sits at my table, perhaps.
* No, old chap, I've searched London for a contralto
and I can't find a soul. You see, the music is
difficult ; have a look at it/ " And Miss Moss
heard herself saying : " Excuse me, I happen to be
a contralto, and I have sung that part many times.
. . . Extraordinary ! ' Come back to my studio
and I'll try your voice now.' . . . Ten pounds a
week. . . . Why should I feel nervous ? It's not
nervousness. Why shouldn't I go to the Cafe de
Madrid ? I'm a respectable woman I'm a con-
tralto singer. And I'm only trembling because I've
had nothing to eat to-day. . . . ' A nice little piece
of evidence, my lady.' . . . Very well, Mrs. Pine.
Cafe de Madrid. They have concerts there in the
evenings. . . . c Why don't they begin ? ' The
contralto has not arrived. . . . ' Excuse me, I
happen to be a contralto ; I have sung that music
many times."

It was almost dark in the cafe. Men, palms, red
169

PICTURES

plush seats, white marble tables, waiters in aprons,
Miss Moss walked through them all. Hardly had
she sat down when a very stout gentleman wearing
a very small hat that floated on the top of his head
like a little yacht flopped into the chair opposite
hers.

" Good evening ! " said he.

Miss Moss said, in her cheerful way : " Good
evening ! "

" Fine evening," said the stout gentleman.

" Yes, very fine. Quite a treat, isn't it ? " said
she.

He crooked a sausage finger at the waiter
" Bring me a large whisky " and turned to Miss
Moss. " What's yours ? "

" Well, I think I'll take a brandy if it's all the

same."

Five minutes later the stout gentleman leaned
across the table and blew a puff of cigar smoke full
in her face.

" That's a tempting bit o* ribbon ! " said he.

Miss Moss blushed until a pulse at the top of her
head that she never had felt before pounded
away.

" I always was one for pink," said she.

The stout gentleman considered her, drumming
with her fingers on the table.

" I like 'em firm and well covered," said he.

Miss Moss, to her surprise, gave a loud snigger.

Five minutes later the stout gentleman heaved
170

PICTURES

himself up. " Well, am I goin' your way, or are
you comin' mine ? " he asked.

" I'll come with you, if it's all the same," said
Miss Moss. And she sailed after the little yacht out
of the cafe.

171

THE MAN WITHOUT A
TEMPERAMENT

HE stood at the hall door turning the ring,
turning the heavy signet ring upon his
little finger while his glance travelled
coolly, deliberately, over the round tables and
basket chairs scattered about the glassed-in verandah.
He pursed his lips he might have been going to
whistle but he did not whistle only turned the
ring turned the ring on his pink, freshly washed
hands.

Over in the corner sat The Two Topknots,
drinking a decoction they always drank at this hour
something whitish, greyish, in glasses, with
little husks floating on the top and rooting in a
tin full of paper shavings for pieces of speckled
biscuit, which they broke, dropped into the glasses
and fished for with spoons. Their two coils of
knitting, like two shakes, slumbered beside the
tray.

The American Woman sat where she always sat
against the glass wall, in the shadow of a great
creeping thing with wide open purple eyes that
pressed that flattened itself against the glass,

172

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

hungrily watching her. And she knoojt was there
she knoo it was looking at her Just that way.
She played up to it ; she gave herself little airs.
Sometimes she even pointed at it, crying : " Isn't
that the most terrible thing you've ever seen !
Isn't that ghoulish ! " It was on the other side of
the verandah, after all ... and besides it couldn't
touch her, could it, Klaymongso ? She was an
American Woman, wasn't she Klaymongso, and
she'd just go right away to her Consul. Klay-
mongso, curled in her lap, with her torn antique
brocade bag, a grubby handkerchief, and a pile of
letters from home on top of him, sneezed for
reply.

The other tables were empty. A glance passed
between the American and the Topknots. She
gave a foreign little shrug ; they waved an under-
standing biscuit. But he saw nothing. Now he
was still, now from his eyes you saw he listened.
" Hoo-e-zip-zoo-oo ! " sounded the lift. The
iron cage clanged open. Light dragging steps
sounded across the hall, coming towards him.
A hand, like a leaf, fell on his shoulder. A soft
voice said : " Let's go and sit over there where
we can see the drive. The trees are so lovely."
And he moved forward with the hand still on his
shoulder, and the light, dragging steps beside his.
He pulled out a chair and she sank into it, slowly,
leaning her head against the back, her arms falling
along the side*.

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THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

" Won't you bring the other up closer ? It's
such miles away,'* But he did not move.

" Where's your shawl ? " he asked.

" Oh ! " She gave a little groan of dismay.
" How silly I am, I've left it upstairs on the bed.
Never mind. Please don't go for it. I shan't
want it, I know I shan't."

" You'd better have it." And he turned and
swiftly crossed the verandah into the dim hall with
its scarlet plush and gilt furniture conjuror's
furniture its Notice of Services at the English
Church, its green baize board with the unclaimed
letters climbing the black lattice, huge " Presenta-
tion " clock that struck the hours at the half-hours,
bundles of sticks and umbrellas and sunshades in
the clasp of a brown wooden bear, past the two
crippled palms, two ancient beggars at the foot
of the staircase, up the marble stairs three at a time,
past the life-size group on the landing of two stout
peasant children with their marble pinnies full of
marble grapes, and along the corridor, with its
piled-up wreckage of old tin boxes, leather trunks,
canvas hold-alls, to their room.

The servant girl was in their room, singing
loudly while she emptied soapy water into a pail.
The windows were open wide, the shutters put
back, and the light glared in. She had thrown the
carpets and the big white pillows over the balcony
rails ; the nets were 4ooped up from the beds ;
on the writing table there stood a pan of fluff and

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

match-ends. When she saw him her small impudent
eyes snapped and her singing changed to humming.
But he gave no sign. His eyes searched the glaring
room. Where the devil was the shawl !

" Vous desireZj Monsieur ? " mocked the servant
girl.

No answer. He had seen it. He strode across
the room, grabbed the grey cobweb and went out,
banging the door. The servant girl's voice at
its loudest and shrillest followed him along the
corridor.

" Oh, there you are. What happened ? What
kept you ? The tea's here, you see. I've just
sent Antonio off for the hot water. Isn't it extra-
ordinary ? I must have told him about it sixty times
at least, and still he doesn't bring it. Thank you.
That's very nice. One does just feel the air when
one bends forward."

" Thanks." He took his tea and sat down in the
other chair. " No, nothing to eat."

" Oh do ! Just one, you had so little at lunch
and it's hours before dinner."

Her shawl dropped off as she bent forward to
hand him the biscuits. He took one and put it
in his saucer.

" Oh, those trees along the drive," she cried,
" I could look at them for ever. They are like
the most exquisite huge ferns. And you see that
one with the grey-silver bark and the clusters of
cream coloured flowers, I pulled down a head of

*75

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

them yesterday to smell and the scent " she
shut her eyes at the memory and her voice thinned
away, faint, airy " was like freshly ground nut-
megs." A little pause. She turned to him and
smiled. " You do know what nutmegs smell like
do you, Robert ? "

And he smiled back at her. " Now how am I
going to prove to you that I do ? "

Back came Antonio with not only the hot water
with letters on a salver and three rolls of
paper.

" Oh, the post ! Oh, how lovely ! Oh, Robert,
they mustn't be all for you ! Have they just come,
Antonio ? " Her thin hands flew up and hovered
over the letters that Antonio offered her, bending
forward.

" Just this moment, Signora," grinned Antonio.
" I took-a them from the postman myself. I
made-a the postman give them for me."

" Noble Antonio ! " laughed she. " There
those are mine, Robert ; the rest are yours."

Antonio wheeled sharply, stiffened, the grin
went out of his face. His striped linen jacket and
his flat gleaming fringe made him look like a wooden
doll.

Mr. Salesby put the letters into his pocket ;
the papers lay on the table. He turned the ring,
turned the signet ring on his little finger and stared
in front of him, blinking, vacant.

But she with her teacup in one hand, the
176

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

sheets of thin paper in the other, her head tilted
back, her lips open, a brush of bright colour on her
cheek-bones, sipped, sipped, drank , . . drank. . . .
" From Lottie," came her soft murmur. " Poor
dear . . . such trouble . . . left foot. She thought
. . . neuritis , . . Doctor Blyth . . . flat foot
. . . massage. So many robins this year . . .
maid most satisfactory . , . Indian Colonel . . .
every grain of rice separate . . . very heavy fall
of snow." And her wide lighted eyes looked up
from the letter. " Snow, Robert ! Think of it ! "
And she touched the little dark violets pinned on
her thin bosom and went back to the letter.

. . . Snow. Snow in London. Millie with the
early morning cup of tea. " There's been a terrible
fall of snow in the night, Sir." " Oh, has there,
Millie ? " The curtains ring apart, letting in the
pale, reluctant light. He raises himself in the
bed ; he catches a glimpse of the solid houses
opposite framed in white, of their window boxes
full of great sprays of white coral. ... In the
bathroom overlooking the back garden. Snow
heavy snow over everything. The lawn is covered
with a wavy pattern of cat's paws ; there is a thick,
thick icing on the garden table ; the withered pods
of the laburnum tree are white tassels ; only here
and there in the ivy is a dark leaf showing. . . ,
Warming his back at the dining-room fire, the
paper drying over a chair. Millie with the bacon.
N 177

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

" Oh, if you please, Sir, there's two little boys
come as will do the steps and front for a shilling,
shall I let them ? " . . . And then flying lightly,
lightly down the stairs Jinnie. " Oh, Robert, isn't
it wonderful ! Oh, what a pity it has to melt.
Where's the pussy- wee ? " "Til get him from
Millie " . . . " Millie, you might just hand me up
the kitten if you've got him down there." " Very
good, Sir." He feels the little beating heart under
his hand. " Come on, old chap, your Missus wants
you." " Oh, Robert, do show him the snow his
first snow. Shall I open the window and give him
a little piece on his paw to hold ? . . ."

11 Well, that's very satisfactory on the whole
very. Poor Lottie ! Darling Anne ! How I only
wish I could send them something of this," she
cried, waving her letters at the brilliant, dazzling
garden. " More tea, Robert ? Robert dear, more
tea ? "

" No, thanks, no. It was very good," he drawled.

" Well mine wasn't. Mine was just like chopped
hay. Oh, here comes the Honeymoon Couple."

Half striding, half running, carrying a basket
between them and rods and lines, they came up the
drive, up the shallow steps.

" My ! have you been out fishing ? " cried the
American Woman.

They were out of "breath, they panted : " Yes,
yes, we have been out in a little boat all day. We

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

have caught seven. Four are good to eat. But three
we shall give away. To the children."

Mrs. Salesby turned her chair to look ; the
Topknots laid the snakes down. They were a very
dark young couple black hair, olive skin, brilliant
eyes and teeth. He was dressed " English fashion "
in a flannel jacket, white trousers and shoes. Round
his neck he wore a silk scarf ; his head, with his
hair brushed back, was bare. And he kept mopping
his forehead, rubbing his hands with a brilliant
handkerchief. Her white skirt had a patch of wet ;
her neck and throat were stained a deep pink.
When she lifted her arms big half-hoops of per-
spiration showed under her arm-pits ; her hair
clung in wet curls to her cheeks. She looked as
though her young husband had been dipping her
in the sea, and fishing her out again to dry in the
sun and then in with her again all day.

" Would Klaymongso like a fish ? " they cried.
Their laughing voices charged with excitement
beat against the glassed-in verandah like birds, and
a strange saltish smell came from the basket.

" You will sleep well to-night," said a Topknot,
picking her ear with a knitting needle while the
other Topknot smiled and nodded.

The Honeymoon Couple looked at each other.
A great wave seemed to go over them. They
gasped, gulped, staggered a little and then came up
laughing laughing.

" We cannot go upstairs, we are too tired. We
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THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

must have tea just as we are. Here coffee. No
tea. No coffee. Tea coffee, Antonio ! " Mrs.
Salesby turned.

"Robert! Robert!" Where was he? He
wasn't there. Oh, there he was at the other end of
the verandah, with his back turned, smoking a
cigarette. " Robert, shall we go for our little
turn ? "

" Right." He stumped the cigarette into an ash-
tray and sauntered over, his eyes on the ground.
" Will you be warm enough ? "

" Oh, quite."

" Sure ? "

" Well," she put her hand on his arm, " perhaps "
and gave his arm the faintest pressure " it's
not upstairs, it's only in the hall perhaps you'd
get me my cape. Hanging up."

He came back with it and she bent her small
head while he dropped it on her shoulders. Then,
very stiff, he offered her his arm. She bowed
sweetly to the people on the verandah while he
just covered a yawn, and they went down the steps
together.

" Vous avez voo fa ! " said the American
Woman.

" He is not a man," said the Two Topknots,
" he is an ox. I say to my sister in the morning and
at night when we are in bed, I tell her No man is
he, but an ox ! "

Wheeling, tumbling, swooping, the laughter of
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THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

the Honeymoon Couple dashed against the glass
of the verandah.

The sun was still high. Every leaf, every flower
in the garden lay open, motionless, as if exhausted,
and a sweet, rich, rank smell filled the quivering
air. Out of the thick, fleshy leaves of a cactus there
rose an aloe stem loaded with pale flowers that
looked as though they had been cut out of butter ;
light flashed upon the lifted spears of the palms ;
over a bed of scarlet waxen flowers some big black
insects " zoom-zoomed " ; a great, gaudy creeper,
orange splashed with jet, sprawled against a wall.

11 I don't need my cape after all," said she.
" It's really too warm." So he took it off and
carried it over his arm. " Let us go down this path
here. I feel so well to-day marvellously better.
Good heavens look at those children ! And to
think it's November 1 "

In a corner of the garden there were two brimming
tubs of water. Three little girls, having thought-
fully taken off their drawers and hung them on a
bush, their skirts clasped to their waists, were
standing in the tubs and tramping up and down.
They screamed, their hair fell over their faces,
they splashed one another. But suddenly, the
smallest, who had a tub to herself, glanced up and
saw who was looking. For a moment she seemed
overcome with terror, then clumsily she struggled
and strained out of her tub, and still holding her
clothes above her waist. " The Englishman 1

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THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

The Englishman ! " she shrieked and fled away to
hide. Shrieking and screaming, the other two
followed her. In a moment they were gone ; in a
moment there was nothing but the two brimming
tubs and their little drawers on the bush.

" How very extraordinary ! " said she.
" What made them so frightened ? Surely they
were much too young to . . ." She looked up at
him. She thought he looked pale but wonderfully
handsome with that great tropical tree behind him
with its long, spiked thorns.

For a moment he did not answer. Then he met
her glance, and smiling his slow smile, " Tres
rum ! " said he.

Tres rum ! Oh, she felt quite faint. Oh, why
should she love him so much just because he said
a thing like that. Tres rum ! That was Robert all
over. Nobody else but Robert could ever say such
a thing. To be so wonderful, so brilliant, so learned,
and then to say in that queer, boyish voice. . . .
She could have wept.

" You know you're very absurd, sometimes,"
said she.

" I am," he answered. And they walked on.

But she was tired. She had had enough. She
did not want to walk any more.

" Leave me here and go for a little constitutional,
won't you ? I'll be in one of these long chairs.
What a good thing yoif ve got my cape ; you won't
have to go upstairs for a rug. Thank you, Robert,

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THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

I shall look at that delicious heliotrope. . . . You
won't be gone long ? "

" No no. You don't mind being left ? "

" Silly ! I want you to go. I can't expect you to
drag after your invalid wife every minute. . , .
How long will you be ? "

He took out his watch. " It's just after half-
past four, I'll be back at a quarter past five."

" Back at a quarter past five," she repeated, and
she lay still in the long chair and folded her hands.

He turned away. Suddenly he was back again.
" Look here, would you like my watch ? " And
he dangled it before her.

" Oh ! " She caught her breath. " Very, very
much." And she clasped the watch, the warm
watch, the darling watch in her fingers. " Now go
quickly."

The gates of the Pension Villa Excelsior were
open wide, jammed open against some bold
geraniums. Stooping a little, staring straight
ahead, walking swiftly, he passed through them
and began climbing the hill that wound behind the
town like a great rope looping the villas together.
The dust lay thick. A carriage came bowling
along driving towards the Excelsior. In it sat the
General and the Countess ; they had been for his
daily airing. Mr. Salesby stepped to one side but
the dust beat up, thick, white, stifling like wool.
The Countess just had time to nudge the General.

" There he goes," she said spitefully.

'83

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

But the General gave a loud caw and refused to
look.

" It is the Englishman," said the driver, turning
round and smiling. And the Countess threw up
her hands and nodded so amiably that he spat with
satisfaction and gave the stumbling horse a cut.

On on past the finest villas in the town,
magnificent palaces, palaces worth coming any
distance to see, past the public gardens with the
carved grottoes and statues and stone animals
drinking at the fountain, into a poorer quarter.
Here the road ran narrow and foul between high
lean houses, the ground floors of which were
scooped and hollowed into stables and carpenters'
shops. At a fountain ahead of him two old hags
were beating linen. As he passed them they
squatted back on their haunches, stared, and then
their " A-hak-kak-kak ! " with the slap, slap, of
the stone on the linen sounded after him.

He reached the top of the hill ; he turned a
corner and the town was hidden. Down he looked
into a deep valley with a dried up river bed at the
bottom. This side and that was covered with small
dilapidated houses that had broken stone verandahs
where the fruit lay drying, tomato lanes in the
garden, and from the gates to the doors a trellis
of vines. The late sunlight, deep, golden, lay in the
cup of the valley ; there was a smell of charcoal in
the air. In the gardens the men were cutting
grapes. He watched a man standing in the greenish

184

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

shade, raising up, holding a black cluster in one
hand, taking the knife from his belt, cutting, laying
the bunch in a flat boat-shaped basket. The man
worked leisurely, silently, taking hundreds of years
over the job. On the hedges on the other side of
the road there were grapes small as berries, growing
wild, growing among the stones. He leaned against
a wall, filled his pipe, put a match to it. . . .

Leaned across a gate, turned up the collar of his
mackintosh. It was going to rain. It didn't
matter, he was prepared for it. You didn't expect
anything else in November. He looked over the
bare field. From the corner by the gate there came
the smell of swedes, a great stack of them, wet,
rank coloured. Two men passed walking towards
the straggling village. " Good day ! " " Good
day ! " By Jove ! he had to hurry if he was going
to catch that train home. Over the gate, across a
field, over the stile, into the lane, swinging along
in the drifting rain and dusk. . . . Just home in
time for a bath and a change before supper. . . .
In the drawing-room ; Jinnie is sitting pretty
nearly in the fire. " Oh, Robert, I didn't hear you
come in. Did you have a good time ? How nice
you smell ! A present ? " " Some bits of black-
berry I picked for you. Pretty colour." " Oh,
lovely, Robert ! Dennis and Beaty are coming to
supper." Supper cold beef, potatoes in their
jackets, claret, household bread. They are gay

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

everybody's laughing. " Oh, we all know Robert/'
says Dennis, breathing on his eyeglasses and
polishing them. " By the way, Dennis, I picked
up a very jolly little edition of . . ."

A clock struck. He wheeled sharply. What
time was it. Five ? A quarter past ? Back, back
the way he came. As he passed through the gates
he saw her on the look-out. She got up, waved
and slowly she came to meet him, dragging the
heavy cape. In her hand she carried a spray of
heliotrope.

" You're late," she cried gaily. " You're three
minutes late. Here's your watch, it's been very
good while you were away. Did you have a nice
time ? Was it lovely ? Tell me. Where did you
go?"

" I say put this OH," he said, taking the cape
from her.

" Yes, I will. Yes, it's getting chilly. Shall we
go up to our room ? "

When they reached the lift she was coughing.
He frowned.

" It's nothing. I haven't been out too late.
Don't be cross." She sat down on one of the red
plush chairs while he rang and rang, and then,
getting no answer, kept his finger on the bell.

" Oh, Robert, do you think you ought to ? "

" Ought to what?""

The door of the salon opened. " What is that ?
186

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

Who is making that noise ? " sounded from within.
Klaymongso began to yelp. " Caw ! Caw ! Caw ! "
came from the General. A Topknot darted out
with one hand to her ear, opened the staff door,
" Mr. Queet ! Mr. Queet ! " she bawled. That
brought the manager up at a run.

" Is that you ringing the bell, Mr. Salesby ?
Do you want the lift ? Very good, Sir. I'll take
you up myself. Antonio wouldn't have been a
minute, he was just taking off his apron "
And having ushered them in, the oily manager
went to the door of the salon. " Very sorry you
should have been troubled, ladies and gentle-
men/* Salesby stood in the cage, sucking in his
cheeks, staring at the ceiling and turning the ring,
turning the signet ring on his little finger. . . .

Arrived in their room he went swiftly over to
the washstand, shook the bottle, poured her out a
dose and brought it across.

" Sit down. Drink it. And don't talk." And
he stood over her while she obeyed. Then he took
the glass, rinsed it and put it back in its case.
" Would you like a cushion ? "

" No, I'm quite all right. Come over here.
Sit down by me just a minute, will you, Robert ?
Ah, that's very nice." She turned and thrust the
piece of heliotrope in the lapel of his coat. " That,"
she said, " is most becoming," And then she
leaned her head against his shoulder, and he put his
arm round her.

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

" Robert " her voice like a sigh like a

breath.
" Yes "

They sat there for a long while. The sky flamed,
paled ; the two white beds were like two ships.
... At last he heard the servant girl running along
the corridor with the hot water cans, and gently
he released her and turned on the light.

" Oh, what time is it ? Oh, what a heavenly
evening. Oh, Robert, I was thinking while you
were away this afternoon . . ."

They were the last couple to enter the dining-
room. The Countess was there with her lorgnette
and her fan, the General was there with his special
chair and the air cushion and the small rug over his
knees. The American Woman was there showing
Klaymongso a copy of the Saturday Evening Post.
. , . " We're having a feast of reason and a flow of
soul." The Two Topknots were there feeling
over the peaches and the pears in their dish of
fruit, and putting aside all they considered unripe
or overripe to show to the manager, and the
Honeymoon Couple leaned across the table,
whispering, trying not to burst out laughing.

Mr. Queet, in everyday clothes and white canvas
shoes, served the soup, and Antonio, in full evening
dress, handed it round.

" No," said the American Woman, " take it
away, Antonio. We can't eat soup. We can't eat
anything mushy, can we, Klaymongso ? "

188

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

" Take them back and fill them to the rim ! "
said 'the Topknots, and they turned and watched
while Antonio delivered the message.

" What is it ? Rice ? Is it cooked ? " The Countess
peered through her lorgnette. " Mr. Queet, the
General can have some of this soup if it is
cooked."

" Very good, Countess."

The Honeymoon Couple had their fish instead.

" Give me that one. That's the one I caught.
No it's not. Yes, it is. No it's not. Well, it's
looking at me with its eye so it must be. Tee 1
Hee ! Hee ! " Their feet were locked together
under the table.

" Robert, you're not eating again. Is anything the
matter ? "

11 No. Off food, that's all."

" Oh, what a bother. There are eggs and spinach
coming. You don't like spinach, do you. I must
tell them in future . . ."

An egg and mashed potatoes for the General.

" Mr. Queet ! Mr. Queet ! "

" Yes, Countess."

" The General's egg's too hard again."

"Caw! Caw! Caw!"

" Very sorry, Countess. Shall I have you another
cooked, General ? "

. . . They are the first to leave the dining-room.
She rises, gathering her shawl and he stands aside,
waiting for her to pass, turning the ring, turning

189

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

the signet ring on his little finger. In the hall Mr.
Queet hovers. " I thought you might not want to
wait for the lift. Antonio's just serving the finger
bowls. And I'm sorry the bell won't ring, it's
out of order. I can't think what's happened."

" Oh, I do hope . . ." from her.

" Get in," says he.

Mr. Queet steps after them and slams the door. . . .

. . . " Robert, do you mind if I go to bed very
soon ? Won't you go down to the salon or out
into the garden ? Or perhaps you might smoke
a cigar on the balcony. It's lovely out there.
And I like cigar smoke. I always did. But if you'd
rather . . ."

" No, I'll sit here."

He takes a chair and sits on the balcony. He
hears her moving about in the room, lightly,
lightly, moving and rustling. Then she comes over
to him. " Good night, Robert."

" Good night." He takes her hand and kisses
the palm. " Don't catch cold."

The sky is the colour of jade. There are a great
many stars ; an enormous white moon hangs over
the garden. Far away lightning flutters flutters
like a wing flutters like a broken bird that tries to
fly and sinks again and again struggles.

The lights from the salon shine across the
garden path and there is the sound of a piano. And
once the American Woman, opening the French
window to let Klaymongso into the garden, cries

190

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

" Have you seen this moon ? " But nobody
answers.

He gets very cold sitting there, staring at the
balcony rail. Finally he comes inside. The moon
the room is painted white with moonlight. The
light trembles in the mirrors ; the two beds seem
to float. She is asleep. He sees her through the
nets, half sitting, banked up with pillows, her
white hands crossed on the sheet. Her white
cheeks, her fair hair pressed against the pillow,
are silvered over. He undresses quickly, stealthily
and gets into bed. Lying there, his hands clasped
behind his head. . . .

... In his study. Late summer. The Virginia
creeper just on the turn. . . .

" Well, my dear chap, that's the whole story.
That's the long and the short of it. If she can't
cut away for the next two years and give a decent
climate a chance she don't stand a dog's h'm
show. Better be frank about these things." " Oh,
certainly. . . . " "And hang it all, old man,
what's to prevent you going with her? It isn't
as though you've got a regular job like us wage
earners. You can do what you do wherever you

are " " Two years." " Yes, I should give it

two years. You'll have no trouble about letting this
house you know. As a matter of fact . . ."

... He is with her. " Robert, the awful thing
is I suppose it's my illness I simply feel I could

191

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

not go alone. You see you're everything. You're
bread and wine, Robert, bread and wine. Oh,
my darling what am I saying ? Of course I could,
of course I won't take you away. . . ."

He hears her stirring. Does she want something ?

" Boogies ? "

Good Lord ! She is talking in her sleep. They
haven't used that name for years.

" Boogies. Are you awake ? "

" Yes, do you want anything ? "

" Oh, I'm going to be a bother. I'm so sorry.
Do you mind ? There's a wretched mosquito
inside my net I can hear him singing. Would
you catch him ? I don't want to move because of my
heart."

" No, don't move. Stay where you are." He
switches on the light, lifts the net. " Where is the
little beggar ? Have you spotted him ? "

" Yes, there, over by the corner. Oh, I do feel
such a fiend to have dragged you out of bed. Do
you mind dreadfully ? "

" No, of course not." For a moment he hovers
in his blue and white pyjamas. Then, " got him,"
he said.

" Oh, good. Was he a juicy one ? "

" Beastly." He went over to the washstand and
dipped his fingers in water. " Are you all right
now ? Shall I switch* off the light ? "

" Yes, please. No. Boogies ! Come back here
192

THE MAN WITHOUT A TEMPERAMENT

a moment. Sit down by me. Give me your hand."
She turns his signet ring. " Why weren't you
asleep ? Boogies, listen. Come closer. I some-
times wonder do you mind awfully being out here
with me ? "

He bends down. He kisses her. He tucks her
in, he smoothes the pillow.

" Rot ! " he whispers.

MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

IF there was one thing that he hated more than
another it was the way she had of waking him
in the morning. She did it on purpose, of
course. It was her way of establishing her grievance
for the day, and he was not going to let her know
how successful it was. But really, really, to wake a
sensitive person like that was positively dangerous !
It took him hours to get over it simply hours. She
came into the room buttoned up in an overall,
with a handkerchief over her head thereby proving
that she had been up herself and slaving since dawn
and called in a low, warning voice : " Reginald 1 "

"Eh! What! What's that? What's the
matter ? "

" It's time to get up ; it's half-past eight." And
out she went, shutting the door quietly after her,
to gloat over her triumph, he supposed.

He rolled over in the big bed, his heart still
beating in quick, dull throbs, and with every throb
he felt his energy escaping him, his his inspiration
for the day stifling under those thudding blows. It
seemed that she took a malicious delight in making
life more difficult for him than Heaven knows

194

MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

it was, by denying him his rights as an artist, by
trying to drag him down to her level. What was
the matter with her ? What the hell did she want ?
Hadn't he three times as many pupils now as
when they were first married, earned three times
as much, paid for every stick and stone that they
possessed, and now had begun to shell out for
Adrian's kindergarten ? . . . And had he ever
reproached her for not having a penny to her
name ? Never a word never a sign 1 The truth
was that once you married a^ woman she became
insatiable, and the truth was that nothing was more
fataTTor an artist than marriage, at any rate until
he was well over forty. . . . Why had he married
her ? He asked himself this question on an average
about three times a day, but he never could answer
it satisfactorily. She had caught him at a weak
moment, when the first plunge into reality had
bewildered and overwhelmed him for a time.
Looking back, he saw a pathetic, youthful creature,
half child, half wild untamed bird, totalfy incom-
petenFTo cope with bills and creditors lmd all the
sordid^3etalls oT Existence r WslP^fie had done
her best to clip his wings, if that was any satisfaction
for her, and she could congratulate herself on the
success of this early morning trick. One ought to
wake exquisitely, reluctantly, he thought, slipping
down in the warm bed. He began to imagine a
series of enchanting scenes which ended with his
latest, most charming pupil putting her bare,

'95

MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

scented arms round his neck, and covering him
with her long, perfumed hair. " Awake, my
love ! " . . .

As was his daily habit, while the bath water ran,
Reginald Peacock tried his voice.

When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,
Looping up her laces, tying up her hair,

he sang, softly at first, listening to the quality,
nursing his voice until he came to the third line :

Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded . . .

and upon the word " wedded " he burst into such a
shout of triumph that the tooth-glass on the bath-
room shelf trembled and even the bath tap seemed
to gush stormy applause. . . .

Well, there was nothing wrong with his voice, he
thought, leaping into the bath and soaping his soft,
pink body all over with a loofah shaped like a fish.
He could fill Covent Garden with it ! " Wedded,"
he shouted again, seizing the towel with a magnificent
operatic gesture, and went on singing while he
rubbed as though he had been Lohengrin tipped
out by an unwary Swan and drying himself in the
greatest haste before that tiresome Elsa came along
along. . . .

Back in his bedroom, he pulled the blind up with
a jerk, and standing upon the pale square of sun-
light that lay upon the carpet like a sheet of cream
blotting-paper, he began to do his exercises deep

196

MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

breathing, bending forward and back, squatting
like a frog and shooting out his legsfor if there was
one thing he had a horror of it was of getting fat,
and men in his profession had a dreadful tendency
that way. However, there was no sign of it at
present. He was, he decided, just right, just in
good proportion. In fact, he could not help a
thrill of satisfaction when he saw himself in the glass,
dressed in a morning coat, dark grey trousers,
grey socks and a black tie with a silver thread in it.
Not that he was vain he couldn't stand vain men
no ; the sight of himself gave him a thrill of
purely artistic satisfaction. " Voild tout ! " said
he, passing his hand over his sleek hair.

That little, easy French phrase blown so lightly
from his lips, like a whiff of smoke, reminded him
that someone had asked him again, the evening
before, if he was English. People seemed to find
it impossible to believe that he hadn't some
Southern blood. True, there was an emotional
quality in his singing that had nothing of the John
Bull in it. ... The door-handle rattled and turned
round and round. Adrian's head popped through.

" Please, father, mother says breakfast is quite
ready, please."

" Very well," said Reginald. Then, just as
Adrian disappeared : " Adrian ! "

" Yes, father."

" You haven't said ' good morning.' "

A few months ago Reginald had spent a week-
197

MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

end in a very aristocratic family, where the father
received his little sons in the morning and shook
hands with them. Reginald thought the practice
charming, and introduced it immediately, but
Adrian felt dreadfully silly at having to shake hands
with his own father every morning. And why did
his father always sort of sing to him instead of
talk ? . . ,

In excellent temper, Reginald walked into the
dining-room and sat down before a pile of letters, a
copy of the Times, and a little covered dish. He
glanced at the letters and then at his breakfast.
There were two thin slices of bacon and one egg.

" Don't you want any bacon ? " he asked.

" No, I prefer a cold baked apple. I don't feel
the need of bacon every morning."

Now, did she mean that there was no need for
him to have bacon every morning, either, and that
she grudged having to cook it for him ?

" If you don't want to cook the breakfast," said
he, " why don't you keep a servant ? You know we
can afford one, and you know how I loathe to see
my wife doing the work. Simply because all the
women we have had in the past have been failures
and utterly upset my regime, and made it almost
impossible for me to have any pupils here, youVc
given up trying to find a decent woman. It's not
impossible to train a servant is it ? I mean, it
doesn't require genius ? "

" But I prefer to do the work myself ; it makes
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MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

life so much more peaceful. . . Run along,
Adrian darling, and get ready for school."

" Oh no, that's not it I " Reginald pretended to
smile. " You do the work yourself, because, for
some extraordinary reason, you love to humiliate
me. Objectively, you may not know that, but,
subjectively, it's the case." This last remark so
delighted him that he cut open an envelope as
gracefully as if he had been on the stage. . . ,

" DEAR MR. PEACOCK,

I feel I cannot go to sleep until I have
thanked you again for the wonderful joy your
singing gave me this evening. Quite unforgettable.
You make me wonder, as I have not wondered since
I was a girl, if this is all. I mean, if this ordinary
world is all. If there is not, perhaps, for those of us
who understand, divine beauty and richness await-
ing us if we only have the courage to see it. And
to make it ours. . . . The house is so quiet. I
wish you were here now that I might thank you in
person. You are doing a great thing. You are
teaching the world to escape from life !

Yours, most sincerely,

/ENONE FELL.
P.S. I am in every afternoon this week. . . ."

The letter was scrawled in violet ink on thick,
handmade paper. Vanity, that bright bird, lifted

199

MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

its wings again, lifted them until he felt his breast
would break.

" Oh well, uun't let us quarrel," said he, and
actually flung out a hand to his wife.

But she was not great enough to respond.

" I must hurry and take Adrian to school," said
she. " Your room is quite ready for you."

Very well very well let there be open war
between them ! But he was hanged if he'd be the
first to make it up again I

He walked up and down his room, and was not
calm again until he heard the outer door close upon
Adrian and his wife. Of course, if this went on,
he would have to make some other arrangement.
That was obvious. Tied and bound like this, how
could he help the world to escape from life ? He
opened the piano and looked up his pupils for the
morning. Miss Betty Brittle, the Countess Wil-
kowska and Miss Marian Morrow. They were
charming, all three.

Punctually at half-past ten the door-bell rang.
He went to the door. Miss Betty Brittle was there,
dressed in white, with her music in a blue silk
case.

" I'm afraid I'm early," she said, blushing and
shy, and she opened her big blue eyes very wide.
14 Am I ? "

" Not at all, dear lady. I am only too charmed,"
taid Reginald. " Won't you come in ? "

" It's such a heavenly morning," said Miss

200

MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

Brittle. " I walked across the Park. The flowers
were too marvellous."

" Well, think about them while you sing your
exercises/' said Reginald, sitting down at the
piano. " It will give your voice colour and
warmth/'

Oh, what an enchanting idea ! What a genius Mr
Peacock was. She parted her pretty lips, and began
to sing like a pansy.

" Very good, very good, indeed," said Reginald,
playing chords that would waft a hardened criminal
to heaven. " Make the notes round. Don't be
afraid. Linger over them, breathe them like a
perfume."

How pretty she looked, standing there in her
white frock, her little blonde head tilted, showing
her milky throat.

11 Do you ever practise before a glass ? " asked
Reginald. " You ought to, you know ; it makes
the lips more flexible. Come over here."

They went over to the mirror and stood side by
side.

" Now sing moo-e-koo-e-oo-e-a ! "

But she broke down, and blushed more brightly
than ever.

" Oh," she cried, " I can't. It makes me feel so
silly. It makes me want to laugh. I do look so
absurd ! "

44 No, you don't. Don't be afraid," said Reginald,
but laughed, too, very kindly. " Now, try again I "

2PI

MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

The lesson simply flew, and Betty Brittle quite
got over her shyness.

" When can I come again ? " she asked, tying
the music up again in the blue silk case. " I want
to take as many lessons as I can just now. Oh,
Mr. Peacock, I do enjoy them so much. May I
come the day after to-morrow ? "

" Dear lady, I shall be only too charmed/ 1 said
Reginald, bowing her out.

Glorious girl ! And when they had stood in front
of the mirror, her white sleeve had just touched his
black one. He could feel yes, he could actually
feel a warm glowing spot, and he stroked it. She
loved her lessons. His wife came in.

" Reginald, can you let me have some money ?
I must pay the dairy. And will you be in for dinner
to-night ? "

" Yes, you know I'm singing at Lord Timbuck's
at half-past nine. Can you make me some clear
soup, with an egg in it ? "

" Yes. And the money, Reginald. It's eight and
sixpence/'

" Surely that's very heavy isn't it ? "

" No, it's just what it ought to be. And Adrian
must have milk."

There she was off again Now she was stand-
ing up for Adrian against him.

" I have not the slightest desire to deny my child
a proper amount of milk/ 1 said he. " Here is ten
shillings/'

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MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

The door-bell rang. He went to the door.

" Oh," said the Countess Wilkowska, " the
stairs. I have not a breath." And she put her hand
over her heart as she followed him into the music-
room. She was all in black, with a little black hat
with a floating veil violets in her bosom.

" Do not make me sing exercises, to-day," she
cried, throwing out her hands in her delightful
foreign way. " No, to-day, I want only to sing
songs. . . . And may I take off my violets ? They
fade so soon."

" They fade so soon they fade so soon," played
Reginald on the piano,

" May I put them here ? " asked the Countess,
dropping them in a little vase that stood in front
of one of Reginald's photographs.

" Dear lady, I should be only too charmed 1 "

She began to sing, and all was well until she
came to the phrase : " You love me. Yes, I know
you love me ! " Down dropped his hands from the
keyboard, he wheeled round, facing her.

" No, no ; that's not good enough. You can do
better than that," cried Reginald ardently. " You
must sing as if you were in love. Listen ; let me
try and show you." And he sang.

" Oh, yes, yes. I see what you mean," stammered
the little Countess. " May I try it again ? "

" Certainly. Do not be afraid. Let yourself go.
Confess yourself. Make proud surrender 1 " he
called above the music. And she sang.

203

MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

" Yes ; better that time. But I still feel you are
capable of more. Try it with me. There must be a
kind of exultant defiance as well don't you feel ? "
And they sang together. Ah ! now she was sure
she understood. " May I try once again ? "

" You love me. Ye?, I know you love me."

The lesson was over before that phrase was quite
perfect. The little foreign hands trembled as they
put the music together.

" And you are forgetting your violets," said
Reginald softly.

" Yes, I think I will forget them," said the
Countess, biting her underlip. What fascinating
ways these foreign women have !

" And you will come to my house on Sunday and
make music ? " she asked.

" Dear lady, I shall be only too charmed ! " said
Reginald.

Weep ye no more, sad fountains
Why need ye flow so fast ?

sang Miss Marian Morrow, but her eyes filled with
tears and her chin trembled.

" Don't sing just now," said Reginald. " Let me
play it for you." He played so softly.

" Is there anything the matter ? " asked Reginald.
" You're not quite happy this morning."

No, she wasn't ; she was awfully miserable.

" You don't care to tell me what it is ? "

It really was nothing particular. She had those
204

MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

moods sometimes when life seemed almost unbear-
able.
" Ah, I know," he said ; " if I could only help ! "

II But you do ; you do ! Oh, if it were not for my
lessons I don't feel I could go on."

" Sit down in the arm-chair and smell the violets
and let me sing to you. It will do you just as much
good as a lesson."

Why weren't all men like Mr. Peacock ?

II 1 wrote a poem after the concert last night
just about what I felt. Of course, it wasn't personal.
May I send it to you ? "

" Dear lady, I should be only too charmed 1 "

By the end of the afternoon he was quite tired
and lay down on a sofa to rest his voice before dress-
ing. The door of his room was open. He could hear
Adrian and his wife talking in the dining-room.

" Do you know what that teapot reminds me of,
Mummy ? It reminds me of a little sitting-down
kitten."

" Does it, Mr. Absurdity ? "

Reginald dozed. The telephone bell woke him.

" ^Enone Fell is speaking. Mr. Peacock, I have
just heard that you are singing at Lord Timbuck's
to-night. Will you dine with me, and we can go on
together afterwards ? " And the words of his reply
dropped like flowers down the telephone.

" Dear lady, I should be only too charmed."

What a triumphant evening ! The little dinner
ttte-d-ttte with /Enone Fell, the drive to Lord

205

MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

Timbuck's in her white motor-car, when she
thanked him again for the unforgettable joy.
Triumph upon triumph ! And Lord Timbuck's
champagne simply flowed.

" Have some more champagne, Peacock," said
Lord Timbuck. Peacock, you notice not Mr.
Peacock but Peacock, as if he were one of them.
And wasn't he ? He was an artist. He could sway
them all. And wasn't he teaching them all to escape
from life ? How he sang ! And as he sang, as in a
dream he saw their feathers and their flowers and
their fans, offered to him, laid before him, like a
huge bouquet.

" Have another glass of wine, Peacock."

" I could have any one I liked by lifting a finger/ 1
thought Peacock, positively staggering home.

But as he let himself into the dark flat his mar-
vellous sense of elation began to ebb away. He
turned up the light in the bedroom. His wife lay
asleep, squeezed over to her side of the bed. He
remembered suddenly how she had said when he had
told her he was going out to dinner : " You might
have let me know before ! " And how he had
answered : " Can't you possibly speak to me
without offending against even good manners ? "
It was incredible, he thought, that she cared so
little for him incredible that she wasn't interested
in the slightest in his triumphs and his artistic
career. When so many women in her place would
have given their eyes. . . . Yes, he knew it. ...

206

MR. REGINALD PEACOCK'S DAY

Why not acknowledge it ? ... And there she lay,
an enemy, even in her sleep. . . . Must it ever
be thus ? he thought, the champagne still working.
Ah, if we only were friends, how much I could tell
her now ! About this evening ; even about Tim-
buck's manner to me, and all that they said to me
and so on and so on. If only I felt that she was
here to come back to that I could confide in her
and so on and so on.

In his emotion he pulled off his evening boot and
simply hurled it in the corner. The noise woke his
wife with a terrible start. She sat up, pushing back
her hair. And he suddenly decided to have one
more try to treat her as a friend, to tell her every-
thing, to win her. Down he sat on the side of the
bed, and seized one of her hands. But of all those
splendid things he had to say, not one could he
utter. For some fiendish reason, the only words
he could get out were : " Dear lady, I should be so
charmed so charmed 1 "

207

SUN AND MOON

IN the afternoon the chairs came, a whole big
cart full of little gold ones with their legs in
the air. And then the flowers came. When
you stared down from the balcony at the people
carrying them the flower pots looked like funny
awfully nice hats nodding up the path.

Moon thought they were hats. She said :
" Look. There's a man wearing a palm on his
head." But she never knew the difference between
real things and not real ones.

There was nobody to look after Sun and Moon.
Nurse was helping Annie alter Mother's dress
which was much-too-long-and-tight-under-the-
arms and Mother was running all over the house
and telephoning Father to be sure not to forget
things. She only had time to say : " Out of my
way, children ! "

They kept out of her way at any rate Sun did.
He did so hate being sent stumping back to the
nursery. It didn't matter about Moon. If she
got tangled in people's legs they only threw her up
and shook her till she Squeaked. But Sun was too
heavy for that. He was so heavy that the fat man

208

SUN AND MOON

who came to dinner on Sundays used to say :
" Now, young man, let's try to lift you." And then
he'd put his thumbs under Sun's arms and groan
and try and give it up at last saying : " He's a
perfect little ton of bricks ! "

Nearly all the furniture was taken out of the
dining-room. The big piano was put in a corner
and then there came a row of flower pots and then
there came the goldy chairs. That was for the
concert. When Sun looked in a while faced man
sat at the piano not playing, but banging at it
and then looking inside. He had a bag of tools on
the piano and he had stuck his hat on a statue
against the wall. Sometimes he just started to play
and then he jumped up again and looked inside.
Sun hoped he wasn't the concert.

But of course the place to be in was the kitchen.
There was a man helping in a cap like a blancmange,
and their real cook, Minnie, was all red in the face
and laughing. Not cross at all. She gave them
each an almond finger and lifted them up on to the
flour bin so that they could watch the wonderful
things she and the man were making for supper.
Cook brought in the things and he put them on
dishes and trimmed them. Whole fishes, with their
heads and eyes and tails still on, he sprinkled with
red and green and yellow bits ; he made squiggles
all over the jellies, he stuck a collar on a
ham and put a very thin sort of a fork in it ;
he dotted almonds and tiny round biscuits on
p 209

SUN AND MOON

the creams. And more and more things kept
coming.

" Ah, but you haven't seen the ice pudding,"
said Cook. " Come along." Why was she being
so nice, thought Sun as she gave them each a hand.
And they looked into the refrigerator.

Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! It was a little house. It was a
little pink house with white snow on the roof and
green windows and a brown door and stuck in the
door there was a nut for a handle.

When Sun saw the nut he felt quite tired and had
to lean against Cook.

" Let me touch it. Just let me put my finger on
the roof," said Moon, dancing. She always wanted
to touch all the food. Sun didn't.

" Now, my girl, look sharp with the table," said
Cook as the housemaid came in.

" It's a picture, Min," said Nellie. " Come
along and have a look." So they all went into the
dining-room . Sun and Moon were almost frightened .
They wouldn't go up to the table at first ; they
just stood at the door and made eyes at it.

It wasn't real night yet but the blinds were down
in the dining-room and the lights turned on and
all the lights were red roses. Red ribbons and
bunches of roses tied up the table at the corners.
In the middle was a lake with rose petals floating
on it.

" That's where the ice pudding is to be," said
Cook

aio

SUN AND MOON

Two silver lions with wings had fruit on their
backs, and the salt cellars were tiny birds drinking
out of basins.

And all the winking glasses and shining plates
and sparkling knives and forks and all the food.
And the little red table napkins made into roses. . . .

" Are people going to eat the food ? " asked Sun.

" I should just think they were," laughed Cook,
laughing with Nellie. Moon laughed, too ; she
always did the same as other people. But Sun
didn't want to laugh. Round and round he walked
with his hands behind his back. Perhaps he never
would have stopped if Nurse hadn't called suddenly :
" Now then, children. It's high time you were
washed and dressed." And they were marched off
to the nursery.

While they were being unbuttoned Mother
looked in with a white thing over her shoulders ;
she was rubbing stuff on her face.

11 I'll ring for them when I want them, Nurse,
and then they can just come down and be seen and
go back again," said she.

Sun was undressed, first nearly to his skin, and
dressed again in a white shirt with red and white
daisies speckled on it, breeches with strings at the
sides and braces that came over, white socks and
red shoes.

" Now you're in your Russian costume," said
Nurse, flattening down his fringe.

" Am I? "said Sun.

211

SUN AND MOON

" Yes. Sit quiet in that chair and watch your
little sister,"

Moon took ages. When she had her socks put
on she pretended to fall back on the bed and waved
her legs at Nurse as she always did, and every
time Nurse tried to make her curls with a finger
and a wet brush she turned round and asked Nurse
to show her the photo of her brooch or something
like that. But at last she was finished too. Her
dress stuck out, with fur on it, all white ; there was
even fluffy stuff on the legs of her drawers. Her
shoes were white with big blobs on them.

" There you are, my lamb," said Nurse. " And
you look like a sweet little cherub of a picture of a
powder-puff ? " Nurse rushed to the door.
" Ma'am, one moment,"

Mother came in again with half her hair down.

" Oh," she cried. " What a picture ! "

" Isn't she," said Nurse.

And Moon held out her skirts by the tips and
dragged one of her feet. Sun didn't mind people
not noticing him much. . . .

After that they played clean tidy games up at the
table while Nurse stood at the door, and when the
carriages began to come and the sound of laughter
and voices and soft rustlings came from down below
she whispered : " Now then, children, stay where
you are." Moon kept jerking the table cloth so that
it all hung down her side and Sun hadn't any
and then she pretended she didn't do it on purpose.

212

SUN AND MOON

At last the bell rang. Nurse pounced at them
with the hair brush, flattened his fringe, made her
bow stand on end and joined their hands together.

" Down you go ! " she whispered.

And down they went. Sun did feel silly holding
Moon's hand like that but Moon seemed to like
it. She swung her arm and the bell on her coral
bracelet jingled.

At the drawing-room door stood Mother fanning
herself with a black fan. The drawing-room was
full of sweet smelling, silky, rustling ladies and men
in black with funny tails on their coats like beetles.
Father was among them, talking very loud, and
rattling something in his pocket.

"What a picture 1" cried the ladies. "Oh,
the ducks ! Oh, the lambs ! Oh, the sweets !
Oh, the pets ! "

All the people who couldn't get at Moon kissed
Sun, and a skinny old lady with teeth that clicked
said : " Such a serious little poppet," and rapped
him on the head with something hard.

Sun looked to see if the same concert was there,
but he was gone. Instead, a fat man with a pink
head leaned over the piano talking to a girl who
held a violin at her ear.

There was only one man that Sun really liked.
He was a little grey man, with long grey whiskers,
who walked about by himself. He came up to Sun
and rolled his eyes in a very nice way and said :
" Hullo, my lad." Then he went away. But soon

213

SUN AND MOON

he came back again and said : " Fond of dogs ? "
Sun said : " Yes." But then he went away again,
and though Sun looked for him everywhere he
couldn't find him. He thought perhaps he'd gone
outside to fetch in a puppy.

" Good night, my precious babies," said Mother,
folding them up in her bare arms. " Fly up to your
little nest."

Then Moon went and made a silly of herself
again. She put up her arms in front of everybody
and said : " My Daddy must carry me."

But they seemed to like it, and Daddy swooped
down and picked her up as he always did.

Nurse was in such a hurry to get them to bed that
she even interrupted Sun over his prayers and said :
" Get on with them, child, do." And the moment
after they were in bed and in the dark except for
the nightlight in its little saucer.

" Are you asleep ? " asked Moon,

11 No," said Sun. " Are you ? "

" No," said Moon.

A long while after Sun woke up again. There was
a loud, loud noise of clapping from downstairs,
like when it rains. He heard Moon turn over.

" Moon, are you awake ? "

" Yes, are you."

" Yes. Well, let's go and look over the stairs."

They had just got settled on the top step when the
drawing-room door opened and they heard the
party cross over the hall into the dining-room.

214

SUN AND MOON

Then that door was shut ; there was a noise of
11 pops " and laughing. Then that stopped and
Sun saw them all walking round and round the
lovely table with their hands behind their backs
like he had done. . . . Round and round they
walked, looking and staring. The man with the grey
whiskers liked the little house best. When he saw
the nut for a handle he rolled his eyes like he did
before and said to Sun : " Seen the nut ? "

" Don't nod your head like that, Moon."

" Pm not nodding. It's you."

11 It is not. I never nod my head."

" O-oh, you do. You're nodding it now."

" I'm not. I'm only showing you how not to do
it."

When they woke up again they could only hear
Father's voice very loud, and Mother, laughing
away. Father came out of the dining-room
bounded up the stairs, and nearly fell over
them.

" Hullo ! " he said. " By Jove, Kitty, come and
look at this."

Mother came out. " Oh, you naughty children,"
said she from the hall.

" Let's have 'em down and give 'em a bone," said
Father. Sun had never seen him so jolly.

" No, certainly not," said Mother.

" Oh, my Daddy, do ! Do have us down," said
Moon.

" I'm hanged if I won't," cried Father. I won't
215

SUN AND MOON

be bullied. Kitty way there." And he caught
them up, one under each arm.

Sun thought Mother would have been dreadfully
cross. But she wasn't. She kept on laughing at
Father.

" Oh, you dreadful boy ! " said she. But she
didn't mean Sun.

" Come on, kiddies. Come and have some
pickings/* said this jolly Father. But Moon stopped
a minute.

" Mother your dress is right off one side/*

" Is it ? " said Mother. And Father said " Yes "
and pretended to bite her white shoulder, but she
pushed him away.

And so they went back to the beautiful dining-
room.

But oh ! oh ! what had happened. The
ribbons and the roses were all pulled untied. The
little red table napkins lay on the floor, all the
shining plates were dirty and all the winking glasses.
The lovely food that the man had trimmed was all
thrown about, and there were bones and bits and
fruit peels and shells everywhere. There was
even a bottle lying down with stuff coming out
of it on to the cloth and nobody stood it up again.

And the little pink house with the snow roof and
the green windows was broken broken half
melted away in the centre of the table.

" Come on, Sun/ 1 said Father, pretending not to
notice.

216

SUN AND MOON

Moon lifted up her pyjama legs and shuffled up
to the table and stood on a chair, squeaking away.

" Have a bit of this ice," said Father, smashing
in some more of the roof.

Mother took a little plate and held it for him ;
she put her other arm round his neck.

" Daddy. Daddy," shrieked Moon. " The
little handle's left. The little nut. Kin I eat it ? "
And she reached across and picked it out of the door
and scrunched it up, biting hard and blinking.

" Here, my lad," said Father.

But Sun did not move from the door. Suddenly
he put up his head and gave a loud wail.

" I think it's horrid horrid horrid ! " he
sobbed.

11 There, you see ! " sai3 Mother. " You see ! "

" Off with you," said Father, no longer jolly,
" This moment. Off you go ! "

And wailing loudly, Sun stumped off to the
nursery.

217

FEUILLE D'ALBUM

HE really was an impossible person. Too
shy altogether. With absolutely nothing
to say for himself. And such a weight.
Once he was in your studio he never knew when
to go, but would sit on and on until you nearly
screamed, and burned to throw something enormous
after him when he did finally blush his way out
something like the tortoise stove. The strange
thing was that at first sight he looked most inter-
esting. Everybody agreed about that. You would
drift into the caf6 one evening and there you would
see, sitting in a corner, with a glass of coffee in
front of him, a thin, dark boy, wearing a blue
jersey with a little grey flannel jacket buttoned
over it. And somehow that blue jersey and the
grey jacket with the sleeves that were too short
gave him the air of a boy that has made up his mind
to run away to sea. Who has run away, in fact, and
will get up in a moment and sling a knotted handker-
chief containing his nightshirt and his mother's
picture on the end of a stick, and walk out into the
night and be drowned. . . . Stumble over the
wharf edge on his way to the ship, even. . . . He
had black close-cropped hair, grey eyes with long

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FEUILLE D'ALBUM

lashes, white cheeks and a mouth pouting as though
he were determined not to cry. . . . How could
one resist him ? Oh, one's heart was wrung at
sight. And, as if that were not enough, there was
his trick of blushing. . . . Whenever the waiter
came near him he turned crimson he might have
been just out of prison and the waiter in the
know, . . .

" Who is he, my dear ? Do you know ? "

" Yes. His name is Ian French. Painter.
Awfully clever, they say. Someone started by
giving him a mother's tender care. She asked him
how often he heard from home, whether he had
enough blankets on his bed, how much milk he
drank a day. But when she went round to his
studio to give an eye to his socks, she rang and
rang, and though she could have sworn she heard
someone breathing inside, the door was not
answered. . . . Hopeless ! "

Someone else decided that he ought to fall in love.
She summoned him to her side, called him " boy/'
leaned over him so that he might smell the enchant-
ing perfume of her hair, took his arm, told him how
marvellous life could be if one only had the courage,
and went round to his studio one evening and rang
and rang. . . . Hopeless.

" What the poor boy really wants is thoroughly
rousing/' said a third. So off they went to cates
and cabarets, little dances, places where you drank
something that tasted like tinned apricot juice, but

219

FEUILLE D'ALBUM

cost twenty-seven shillings a bottle and was called
champagne, other places, too thrilling for words,
where you sat in the most awful gloom, and where
some one had always been shot the night before.
But he did not turn a hair. Only once he got very
drunk, but instead of blossoming forth, there he
sat, stony, with two spots of red on his cheeks,
like, my dear, yes, the dead image of that rag-
time thing they were playing, like a " Broken Doll."
But when she took him back to his studio he had
quite recovered, and said " good night " to her
in the street below, as though they had walked
home from church together. . . . Hopeless.

After heaven knows how many more attempts
for the spirit of kindness dies very hard in women
they gave him up. Of course, they were still
perfectly charming, and asked him to their shows,
and spoke to him in the ca&, but that was all. When
one is an artist one has no time simply for people
w r ho won't respond. Has one ?

" And besides I really think there must be some-
thing rather fishy somewhere . . . don't you ?
It can't all be as innocent as it looks ! Why come
to Paris if you want to be a daisy in the field ?
No, I'm not suspicious. But "

He lived at the top of a tall mournful building
overlooking the river. One of those buildings that
look so romantic on rainy nights and moonlight
nights, when the shutters are shut, and the heavy
door, and the sign advertising " a little apartment

220

FEUILLE D'ALBUM

to let immediately " gleams forlorn beyond words.
One of those buildings that smell so unromantic all
the year round, and where the concierge lives in a
glass cage on the ground floor, wrapped up in a
filthy shawl, stirring something in a saucepan and
ladling out tit-bits to the swollen old dog lolling
on a bead cushion. . . . Perched up in the air the
studio had a wonderful view. The two big windows
faced the water ; he could see the boats and the
barges swinging up and down, and the fringe of an
island planted with trees, like a round bouquet.
The side window looked across to another house,
shabbier still and smaller, and down below there
was a flower market. You could see the tops of
huge umbrellas, with frills of bright flowers escaping
from them, booths covered with striped awning
where they sold plants in boxes and clumps of wet
gleaming palms in terra-cotta jars. Among the
flowers the old women scuttled from side to side,
like crabs. Really there was no need for him to go
out. If he sat at the window until his white beard
fell over the sill he still would have found some-
thing to draw. . . .

How surprised those tender women would have
been if they had managed to force the door. For
he kept his studio as neat as a pin. Everything
was arranged to form a pattern, a little " still life "
as it were the saucepans with their lids on the wall
behind the gas stove, the bowl of eggs, milk jug
and teapot on the shelf, the books and the lamp

221

FEUILLE D'ALBUM

with the crinkly paper shade on the table. An
Indian curtain that had a fringe of red leopards
marching round it covered his bed by day, and on
the wall beside the bed on a level with your eyes
when you were lying down there was a small
neatly printed notice : GET UP AT ONCE.

Every day was much the same. While the light
was good he slaved at his painting, then cooked his
meals and tidied up the place. And in the evenings
he went off to the caf6, or sat at home reading or
making out the most complicated list of expenses
headed : " What I ought to be able to do it on,"
and ending with a sworn statement . . . " I swear
not to exceed this amount for next month. Signed,
Ian French."

Nothing very fishy about this ; but those far-
seeing women were quite right. It wasn't all.

One evening he was sitting at the side window
eating some prunes and throwing the stones on
to the tops of the huge umbrellas in the deserted
flower market. It had been raining the first real
spring rain of the year had fallen a bright spangle
hung on everything, and the air smelled of buds
and moist earth. Many voices sounding languid
and content rang out in the dusky air, and the
people who had come to close their windows and
fasten the shutters leaned out instead. Down
below in the market the trees were peppered with
new green. What kind of trees were they? he
wondered. And now came the lamplighter. He

222

FEUILLE D'ALBUM

stared at the house across the way, the small,
shabby house, and suddenly, as if in answer to his
gaze, two wings of windows opened and a girl
came out on to the tiny balcony carrying a pot of
daffodils. She was a strangely thin girl in a dark
pinafore, with a pink handkerchief tied over her
hair. Her sleeves were rolled up almost to her
shoulders and her slender arms shone against the
dark stuff.

" Yes, it is quite warm enough. It will do them
good,' 1 she said, putting down the pot and turning
to some one in the room inside. As she turned she
put her hands up to the handkerchief and tucked
away some wisps of hair. She looked down at the
deserted market and up at the sky, but where he
sat there might have been a hollow in the air. She
simply did not see the house opposite. And then she
disappeared.

His heart fell out of the side window of his studio,
and down to the balcony of the house opposite
buried itself in the pot of daffodils under the half-
opened buds and spears of green. . . . That room
with the balcony was the sitting-room, and the
one next door to it was the kitchen. He heard the
clatter of the dishes as she washed up after supper,
and then she came to the window, knocked a little
mop against the ledge, and hung it on a nail to
dry. She never sang or unbraided her hair, or
held out her arms to the moon as young girls are
supposed to do. And she always wore the same

223

FEUILLE D'ALBUM

dark pinafore and the pink handkerchief over her
hair. . . . Whom did she live with ? Nobody
else came to those two windows, and yet she was
always talking to some one in the room. Her
mother, he decided, was an invalid. They took in
sewing. The father was dead. . . . He had been
a journalist very pale, with long moustaches, and
a piece of black hair falling over his forehead.

By working all day they just made enough money
to live on, but they never went out and they had no
friends. Now when he sat down at his table he
had to make an entirely new set of sworn statements.
. , . Not to go to the side window before a certain
hour : signed, Ian French. Not to think about
her until he had put away his painting things for
the day : signed, Ian French.

It was quite simple. She was the only person he
really wanted to know, because she was, he decided,
the only other person alive who was just his age.
He couldn't stand giggling girls, and he had no use
for grown-up women. . . . She was his age, she
was well, just like him. He sat in his dusky
studio, tired, with one arm hanging over the back of
his chair, staring in at her window and seeing
himself in there with her. She had a violent
temper ; they quarrelled terribly at times, he and
she. She had a way of stamping her foot and
twisting her hands in her pinafore . . . furious.
And she very rarely laughed. Only when she told
him about an absurd little kitten she once had who

224

FEUILLE D'ALBUM

used to roar and pretend to be a lion when it was
given meat to eat. Things like that made her
laugh. . . . But as a rule they sat together very
quietly ; he, just as he was sitting now, and she
with her hands folded in her lap and her feet tucked
under, talking in low tones, or silent and tired after
the day's work. Of course, she never asked him
about his pictures, and of course he made the most
wonderful drawings of her which she hated, because
he made her so thin and so dark. . . . But how
could he get to know her ? This might go on for
years. . . .

Then he discovered that once a week, in the
evenings , she went out shopping. On two successive
Thursdays she came to the window wearing an
old-fashioned cape over the pinafore, and carrying
a basket. From where he sat he could not see the
door of her house, but on the next Thursday
evening at the same time he snatched up his cap and
ran down the stairs. There was a lovely pink light
over everything. He saw it glowing in the river,
and the people walking towards him had pink
faces and pink hands.

He leaned against the side of his house waiting for
her and he had no idea of what he was going to do
or say. " Here she comes," said a voice in his head.
She walked very quickly, with small, light steps ;
with one hand she carried the basket, with the other
she kept the cape together. . . . What could he
do ? He could only follow. . . . First she went into
Q 225

FEUILLE D'ALBUM

the grocer's and spent a long time in there, and then
she went into the butcher's where she had to wait
her turn. Then she was an age at the draper's
matching something, and then she went to the
fruit shop and bought a lemon. As he watched her
he knew more surely than ever he must get to know
her, now. Her composure, her seriousness and her
loneliness, the very way she walked as though she
was eager to be done with this world of grown-ups
all was so natural to him and so inevitable.

" Yes, she is always like that," he thought
proudly. " We have nothing to do with these
people."

But now she was on her way home and he was
as far off as ever. . . . She suddenly turned into
the dairy and he saw her through the window
buying an egg. She picked it out of the basket
with such care a brown one, a beautifully shaped
one, the one he would have chosen. And when she
came out of the dairy he went in after her. In a
moment he was out again, and following her past
his house across the flower market, dodging among
the huge uisbrellas and treading on the fallen
flowers and the round marks where the pots had
stood. . . . Through her door he crept, and up the
stairs after, taking care to tread in time with her so
that she should not notice. Finally, she stopped
on the landing, and took the key out of her purse.
As she put it into the door he ran up and faced
her.

226

FEUILLE D'ALBUM

Blushing more crimson than ever, but looking
at her severely he said, almost angrily : " Excuse
me, Mademoiselle, you dropped this/'

And he handed her an egg.

227

A DILL PICKLE

A>JD then, after six years, she saw him
again. He was seated at one of those little
bamboo tables decorated with a Japanese
vase of paper daffodils. There was a tall plate of
fruit in front of him, and very carefully, in a way
she recognized immediately as his " special " way,
he was peeling an orange.

He must have felt that shock of recognition in her
for he looked up and met her eyes. Incredible !
He didn't know her ! She smiled ; he frowned.
She came towards him. He closed his eyes an
instant, but opening them his face lit up as though
he had struck a match in a dark room. He laid down
the orange and pushed back his chair, and she
took her little warm hand out of her muff and gave
it to him.

" Vera ! " he exclaimed. " How strange. Really,
for a moment I didn't know you. Won't you sit
down ? You've had lunch ? Won't you have some
coffee ? "

She hesitated, but of course she meant to.

11 Yes, I'd like some coffee." And she sat down
opposite him.

" You've changed* You've changed very much,' 1
he said, staring at her with that eager, lighted look.

228

A DILL PICKLE

" You look so well. I've never seen you look so
well before/*

" Really ? " She raised her veil and unbuttoned
her high fur collar. " I don't feel very well. I
can't bear this weather, you know."

" Ah, no. You hate the cold. . . ."

" Loathe it." She shuddered. " And the worst
of it is that the older one grows . . ."

He interrupted her. " Excuse me," and tapped
on the table for the waitress. " Please bring some
coffee and cream." To her : " You are sure you
won't eat anything ? Some fruit, perhaps. The
fruit here is very good."

" No, thanks. Nothing."

" Then that's settled." And smiling just a hint
too broadly he took up the orange again. " You
were saying the older one grows "

" The colder," she laughed. But she was think-
ing how well she remembered that trick of his
the trick of interrupting her and of how it used
to exasperate her six years ago. She used to feel
then as though he, quite suddenly, in the middle
of what she was saying, put his hand over her lips,
turned from her, attended to something different,
and then took his hand away, and with just the same
slightly too broad smile, gave her his attention
again. . . . Now we are ready. That is settled.

" The colder ! " He echoed her words, laughing
too. " Ah, ah. You still say the same things. And
there is another thing about you that is not changed

229

A DILL PICKLE

at all your beautiful voice your beautiful way
of speaking." Now he was very grave ; he leaned
towards her, and she smelted the warm, stinging
scent of the orange peel. " You have only to say
one word and I would know your voice among all
other voices. I don't know what it is I've often
wondered that makes your voice such a haunt-
ing memory. ... Do you remember that first
afternoon we spent together at Kew Gardens ?
You were so surprised because I did not know the
names of any flowers. I am still just as ignorant
for all your telling me. But whenever it is very
fine and warm, and I see some bright colours it's
awfully strange I hear your voice saying : ' Ger-
anium, marigold and verbena.' And I feel those three
words are all I recall of some forgotten, heavenly
language. . . . You remember that afternoon ? "

" Oh, yes, very well." She drew a long, soft
breath, as though the paper daffodils between them
were almost too sweet to bear. Yet, what had
remained in her mind of that particular afternoon
was an absurd scene over the tea table. A great
many people taking tea in a Chinese pagoda, and he
behaving like a maniac about the wasps waving
them away, flapping at them with his straw hat,
serious and infuriated out of all proportion to the
occasion. How delighted the sniggering tea drinkers
had been. And how she had suffered.

But now, as he sp&ke, that memory faded. His
was the truer. Yes, it had been a wonderful

230

A DILL PICKLE

afternoon, full of geranium and marigold and ver-
bena, and warm sunshine. Her thoughts lingered
over the last two words as though she sang them.

In the warmth, as it were, another memory un-
folded. She saw herself sitting on a lawn. He
lay beside her, and suddenly, after a long silence,
he rolled over and put his head in her lap.

" I wish," he said, in a low, troubled voice,
" I wish that I had taken poison and were about
to die here now ! "

At that moment a little girl in a white dress,
holding a long, dripping water lily, dodged from
behind a bush, stared at them, and dodged back
again. But he did not see. She leaned over him.

" Ah, why do you say that ? I could not say
that/ 1

But he gave a kind of soft moan, and taking her
hand he held it to his cheek.

" Because I know I am going to love you too
much far too much. And I shall suffer so terribly,
Vera, because you never, never will love me."

He was certainly far better looking now than he
had been then. He had lost all that dreamy vague-
ness and indecision. Now he had the air of a man
who has found his place in life, and fills it with a
confidence and an assurance which was, to say
the least, impressive. He must have made money,
too. His clothes were admirable, and at that
moment he pulled a Russian cigarette case out of
his pocket.

231

A DILL PICKLE

" Won't you smoke ? "

" Yes, I will." She hovered over them. " They
look very good."

" I think they are. I get them made for me by a
little man in St. James's Street. I don't smoke very
much. I'm not like you but when I do, they
must be delicious, very fresh cigarettes. Smoking
isn't a habit with me ; it's a luxury like perfume.
Are you still so fond of perfumes ? Ah, when I
was in Russia . . ."

She broke in : " You've really been to Russia ? "

11 Oh, yes. I was there for over a year. Have
you forgotten how we used to talk of going there ? "

" No, I've not forgotten."

He gave a strange half laugh and leaned back in
his chair. " Isn't it curious. I have really carried
out all those journeys that we planned. Yes, I
have been to all those places that we talked of,
and stayed in them long enough to as you used to
say, ' air oneself ' in them. In fact, I have spent
the last three years of my life travelling all the time.
Spain, Corsica, Siberia, Russia, Egypt. The only
country left is China, and I mean to go there, too,
when the war is over."

As he spoke, so lightly, tapping the end of his
cigarette against the ash-tray, she felt the strange
beast that had slumbered so long within her bosom
stir, stretch itself, yawn, prick up its ears, and
suddenly bound to its feet, and fix its longing,
hungry stare upon thofce far away places. But all

232

A DILL PICKLE

she said was, smiling gently : " How I envy
you."

He accepted that. " It has been/' he said,
" very wonderful especially Russia. Russia was
all that we had imagined, and far, far more. I even
spent some days on a river boat on the Volga.
Do you remember that boatman's song that you
used to play ? "

" Yes." It began to play in her mind as she
spoke.

" Do you ever play it now ? "

" No, I've no piano."

He was amazed at that. " But what has become
of your beautiful piano ? "

She made a little grimace. " Sold. Ages ago."

" But you were so fond of music," he wondered.

" I've no time for it now," said she.

He let it go at that. " That river life," he went
on, "is something quite special. After a day or
two you cannot realize that you have ever known
another. And it is not necessary to know the
language the life of the boat creates a bond between
you and the people that's more than sufficient.
You eat with them, pass the day with them, and
in the evening there is that endless singing."

She shivered, hearing the boatman's song break
out again loud and tragic, and seeing the boat float-
ing on the darkening river with melancholy trees
on either side. ... " Yes, I should like that,"
said she, stroking her muff.

A DILL PICKLE

" You'd like almost everything about Russian
life," he said warmly. " It's so informal, so
impulsive, so free without question. And then
the peasants are so splendid. They are such human
beings yes, that is it. Even the man who drives
your carriage has has some real part in what is
happening. I remember the evening a party of
us, two friends of mine and the wife of one of them,
went for a picnic by the Black Sea. We took
supper and champagne and ate and drank on the
grass. And while we were eating the coachman
came up. ' Have a dill pickle,' he said. He wanted
to share with us. That seemed to me so right,
so you know what I mean ? "

And she seemed at that moment to be sitting on
the grass beside the mysteriously Black Sea, black
as velvet, and rippling against the banks in silent,
velvet waves. She saw the carriage drawn up to one
side of the road, and the little group on the grass,
their faces and hands white in the moonlight.
She saw the pale dress of the woman outspread and
her folded parasol, lying on the grass like a huge
pearl crochet hook. Apart from them, with his
supper in a cloth on his knees, sat the coachman.
" Have a dill pickle," said he, and although she
was not certain what a dill pickle was, she saw the
greenish glass jar with a red chili like a parrot's beak
glimmering through. She sucked in her cheeks ;
the dill pickle was terribly sour. . . .

" Yes, I know perfectly what you mean," she said.

234

A DILL PICKLE

In the pause that followed they looked at each
other. In the past when they had looked at each
other like that they had felt such a boundless under-
standing between them that their souls had, as it
were, put their arms round each other and dropped
into the same sea, content to be drowned, like
mournful lovers. But now, the surprising thing
was that it was he who held back. He who said :

" What a marvellous listener you are. When you
look at me with those wild eyes I feel that I could
tell you things that I would never breathe to another
human being."

Was there just a hint of mockery in his voice or
was it her fancy ? She could not be sure.

" Before I met you," he said, " I had never
spoken of myself to anybody. How well I remember
one night, the night that I brought you the little
Christmas tree, telling you all about my childhood.
And of how I was so miserable that I ran away
and lived under a cart in our yard for two days
without being discovered. And you listened, and
your eyes shone, and I felt that you had even made
the little Christmas tree listen too, as in a fairy
story."

But of that evening she had remembered a little
pot of caviare. It had cost seven and sixpence.
He could not get over it. Think of it a tiny jar like
that costing seven and sixpence. While she ate it
he watched her, delighted and shocked.

" No, really, that is eating money. You could not

A DILL PICKLE

get seven shillings into a little pot that size. Only
think of the profit they must make. . . ." And
he had begun some immensely complicated calcu-
lations. . . . But now good-bye to the caviare. The
Christmas tree was on the table, and the little boy
lay under the cart with his head pillowed on the
yard dog.

" The dog was called Bosun," she cried delight-
edly.

But he did not follow. " Which dog ? Had you
a dog ? I don't remember a dog at all/'

" No, no. I mean the yard dog when you were a
little boy." He laughed and snapped the cigarette
case to.

" Was he ? Do you know I had forgotten that.
It seems such ages ago. I cannot believe that it is
only six years. After I had recognized you to-day
I had to take such a leap I had to take a leap
over my whole life to get back to that time. I was
such a kid then." He drummed on the table.
"I've often thought how I must have bored you.
And now I understand so perfectly why you wrote
to me as you did although at the time that letter
nearly finished my life. I found it again the other
day, and I couldn't help laughing as I read it. It
was so clever such a true picture of me." He
glanced up. " You're not going ? "

She had buttoned her collar again and drawn
down her veil.

" Yes, I am afraid I must," she said, and
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A DILL PICKLE

managed a smile. Now she knew that he had been
mocking.

" Ah, no, please," he pleaded. " Don't go just
for a moment," and he caught up one of her gloves
from the table and clutched at it as if that would
hold her. " I see so few people to talk to nowadays,
that I have turned into a sort of barbarian," he
said. " Have I said something to hurt you ? "

" Not a bit," she lied. But as she watched him
draw her glove through his fingers, gently, gently,
her anger really did die down, and besides, at the
moment he looked more like himself of six years
ago. . . .

" What I really wanted then," he said softly,
" was to be a sort of carpet to make myself into
a sort of carpet for you to walk on so that you need
not be hurt by the sharp stones and the mud that you
hated so. It was nothing more positive than that
nothing more selfish. Only I did desire, eventually,
to turn into a magic carpet and carry you away to all
those lands you longed to see."

As he spoke she lifted her head as though she
drank something ; the strange beast in her bosom
began to purr. . . .

" I felt that you were more lonely than anybody
else in the world," he went on, " and yet, perhaps,
that you were the only person in the world who was
really, truly alive. Born out of your time," he
murmured, stroking the glove, " fated."

Ah, God ! What had she done I How had she

*37

A DILL PICKLI

dared to throw away her happiness like this. This
was the only man who had ever understood her.
Was it too late ? Could it be too late ? She was
that glove that he held in his fingers. . . .

" And then the fact that you had no friends and
never had made friends with people. How I
understood that, for neither had I. Is it just the
same now ? "

" Yes," she breathed. " Just the same. I am
as alone as ever,"

" So am I," he laughed gently, "just the same."

Suddenly with a quick gesture he handed her
back the glove and scraped his chair on the floor.
" But what seemed to me so mysterious then is
perfectly plain to me now. And to you, too, of
course. ... It simply was that we were such
egoists, so self-engrossed, so wrapped up in our-
selves that we hadn't a corner in our hearts for any-
body else. Do you know," he cried, naive and
hearty, and dreadfully like another side of that old
self again, " I began studying a Mind System when
I was in Russia, and I found that we were not
peculiar at all. It's quite a well known form of . . ."

She had gone. He sat there, thunder-struck,
astounded beyond words. . . . And then he asked
the waitress for his bill.

" But the cream has not been touched," he said.
" Please do not charge me for it."

238

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

OH, dear, how she wished that it wasn't night-
time. She'd have much rather travelled
by day, much much rather. But the lady
at the Governess Bureau had said : " You had
better take an evening boat and then if you get
into a compartment for ' Ladies Only ' in the train
you will be far safer than sleeping in a foreign
hotel. Don't go out of the carriage ; don't walk
about the corridors and be sure to lock the lavatory
door if you go there. The train arrives at Munich
at eight o'clock, and Frau Arnholdt says that the
Hotel Grunewald is only one minute away. A
porter can take you there. She will arrive at six
the same evening, so you will have a nice quiet
day to rest after the journey and rub up your
German. And when you want anything to eat
I would advise you to pop into the nearest baker's
and get a bun and some coffee. You haven't been
abroad before, have you ? " " No." " Well, I
always tell my girls that it's better to mistrust people
at first rather than trust them, and it's safer to
suspect people of evil intentions rather than good

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

ones. ... It sounds rather hard but we've got
to be women of the world, haven't we ? "

It had been nice in the Ladies' Cabin. The
stewardess was so kind and changed her money
for her and tucked up her feet. She lay on one of
the hard pink-sprigged couches and watched the
other passengers, friendly and natural, pinning
their hats to the bolsters, taking off their boots and
skirts, opening dressing-cases and arranging
mysterious rustling little packages, tying their
heads up in veils before lying down. Thud, thud,
thud, went the steady screw of the steamer. The
stewardess pulled a green shade over the light and
sat down by the stove, her skirt turned back over
her knees, a long piece of knitting on her lap. On
a shelf above her head there was a water-bottle with
a tight bunch of flowers stuck in it. " I like travel-
ling very much," thought the little governess. She
smiled and yielded to the warm rocking.

But when the boat stopped and she went up on
deck, her dress-basket in one hand, her rug and
umbrella in the other, a cold, strange wind flew
under her hat. She looked up at the masts and spars
of the ship black against a green glittering sky and
down to the dark landing stage where strange
muffled figures lounged, waiting ; she moved
forward with the sleepy flock, all knowing where
to go to and what to do except her, and she felt
afraid. Just a little-*-just enough to wish oh,
to wish that it was daytime and that one of those

240

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

women who had smiled at her in the glass, when
they both did their hair in the Ladies* Cabin, was
somewhere near now. " Tickets, please. Show
your tickets. Have your tickets ready." She went
down the gangway balancing herself carefully on
her heels. Then a man in a black leather cap came
forward and touched her on the arm. " Where for,
Miss ? " He spoke English he must be a guard
or a stationmaster with a cap like that. She had
scarcely answered when he pounced on her dress-
basket. " This way/' he shouted, in a rude,
determined voice, and elbowing his way he strode
past the people. " But I don't want a porter."
What a horrible man ! " I don't want a porter,
I want to carry it myself." She had to run to keep up
with him, and her anger, far stronger than she,
ran before her and snatched the bag out of the
wretch's hand. He paid no attention at all, but
swung on down the long dark platform, and across
a railway line. " He is a robber." She was sure
he was a robber as she stepped between the silvery
rails and felt the cinders crunch under her shoes
On the other side oh, thank goodness ! there
was a train with Munich written on it. The man
stopped by the huge lighted carriages. " Second
class ? " asked the insolent voice. " Yes, a Ladies'
compartment." She was quite out of breath.
She opened her little purse to find something small
enough to give this horrible man while he tossed
her dress-basket into the rack of an empty carriage
R 241

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

that had a ticket, Dames Seules, gummed on the
window. She got into the train and handed him
twenty centimes. " What's this ? " shouted the
man, glaring at the money and then at her, holding
it up to his nose, sniffing at it as though he had
never in his life seen, much less held, such a sum.
" It's a franc. You know that, don't you ? It's
a franc. That's my fare ! " A franc ! Did he
imagine that she was going to give him a franc for
playing a trick like that just because she was a girl
and travelling alone at night ? Never, never ! She
squeezed her purse in her hand and simply did not
see him she looked at a view of St. Malo on the
wall opposite and simply did not hear him. " Ah,
no. Ah, no. Four sous. You make a mistake.
Here, take it. It's a franc I want." He leapt on
to the step of the train and threw the money on to
her lap. Trembling with terror she screwed herself
tight, tight, and put out an icy hand and took the
money stowed it away in her hand. " That's
all you're going to get," she said. For a minute or
two she felt his sharp eyes pricking her all over,
while he nodded slowly, pulling down his mouth :
"Ve-ry well. Trrrh bien" He shrugged his
shoulders and disappeared into the dark. Oh, the
relief ! How simply terrible that had been ! As
she stood up to feel if the dress-basket was firm
she caught sight of herself in the mirror, quite
white, with big round eyes. She untied her
" motor veil " and unbuttoned her green cape.

242

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

" But it's all over now/ 1 she said to the mirror face,
feeling in some way that it was more frightened
than she.

People began to assemble on the platform. They
stood together in little groups talking ; a strange
light from the station lamps painted their faces
almost green. A little boy in red clattered up with
a huge tea wagon and leaned against it, whistling
and flicking his boots with a serviette. A woman
in a black alpaca apron pushed a barrow with
pillows for hire. Dreamy and vacant she looked
like a woman wheeling a perambulator up and
down, up and down with a sleeping baby inside
it. Wreaths of white smoke floated up from some-
where and hung below the roof like misty vines.
" How strange it all is/' thought the little governess,
" and the middle of the night, too/' She looked
out from her safe corner, frightened no longer but
proud that she had not given that franc. " I can
look after myself of course I can. The great

thing is not to " Suddenly from the corridor

there came a stamping of feet and men's voices,
high and broken with snatches of loud laughter.
They were coming her way. The little governess
shrank into her corner as four young men in bowler
hats passed, staring through the door and window.
One of them, bursting with the joke, pointed to the
notice Dames Seules and the four bent down
the better to see the one little girl in the corner.
Oh dear, they were in the carriage next door.

-43

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

She heard them tramping about and then a sudden
hush followed by a tall thin fellow with a tiny
black moustache who flung her door open. " If
mademoiselle cares to come in with us/' he said,
in French. She saw the others crowding behind
him, peeping under his arm and over his shoulder,
and she sat very straight and still. ' ' If mademoiselle
will do us the honour/' mocked the tall man. One
of them could be quiet no longer ; his laughter
went off in a loud crack. " Mademoiselle is
serious/' persisted the young man, bowing and
grimacing. He took off his hat with a flourish, and
she was alone again.

" En voiture. En voi-ture ! " Some one ran
up and down beside the train. " I wish it wasn't
night-time. I wish there was another woman in
the carriage. Fm frightened of the men next door/ 1
The little governess looked out to see her porter
coming back again the same man making for her
carriage with his arms full of luggage. But but
what was he doing ? He put his thumb nail under
the label Dames Settles and tore it right off and then
stood aside squinting at her while an old man
wrapped in a plaid cape climbed up the high step.
" But this is a ladies' compartment." " Oh, no,
Mademoiselle, you make a mistake. No, no, I
assure you, Merci, Monsieur." " En voi-turre ! "
A shrill whistle. The porter stepped off triumphant
and the train started*. For a moment or two big
tears brimmed her eyes and through them she saw

244

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

the old man unwinding a scarf from his neck and
untying the flaps of his Jaeger cap. He looked
very old. Ninety at least. He had a white
moustache and big gold-rimmed spectacles with
little blue eyes behind them and pink wrinkled
cheeks. A nice face and charming the way he
bent forward and said in halting French : " Do I
disturb you, Mademoiselle ?. Would you rather I
took all these things out of the rack and found another
carriage ? " What ! that old man have to move all
those heavy things just because she . . . " No,
it's quite all right. You don't disturb me at all."
" Ah, a thousand thanks." He sat down opposite
her and unbuttoned the cape of his enormous coat
and flung it off his shoulders.

The train seemed glad to have left the station.
With a long leap it sprang into the dark. She rubbed
a place in the window with her glove but she could
see nothing just a tree outspread like a black fan
or a scatter of lights, or the line of a hill, solemn
and huge. In the carriage next door the young
men started singing " Un, deux, trots." They
sang the same song over and over at the tops of
their voices.

" I never could have dared to go to sleep if I had
been alone," she decided. "I couldn't have put my
feet up or even taken off my hat." The singing
gave her a queer little tremble in her stomach and,
hugging herself to stop it, with her arms crossed
under her cape, she felt really glad to have the old

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

man in the carriage with her. Careful to see that
he was not looking she peeped at him through her
long lashes. He sat extremely upright, the chest
thrown out, the chin well in, knees pressed together,
reading a German paper. That was why he spoke
French so funnily. He was a German. Something
in the army, she supposed a Colonel or a General
once, of course, not now ; he was too old for that
now. How spick and span he looked for an old
man. He wore a pearl pin stuck in his black tie
and a ring with a dark red stone on his little finger ;
the tip of a white silk handkerchief showed in the
pocket of his double-breasted jacket. Somehow,
altogether, he was really nice to look at. Most old
men were so horrid. She couldn't bear them
doddery or they had a disgusting cough or some-
thing. But not having a beard that made all the
difference and then his cheeks were so pink and
his moustache so very white. Down went the
German paper and the old man leaned forward with
the same delightful courtesy : " Do you speak
German, Mademoiselle ? " " Ja, ein wenig, mehr
als Franzosisch" said the little governess, blushing
a deep pink colour that spread slowly over her
cheeks and made her blue eyes look almost black.
" Ach, so ! " The old man bowed graciously.
" Then perhaps you would care to look at some
illustrated papers." He slipped a rubber band from
a little roll of them and handed them across.
" Thank you very much." She was very fond of

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

looking at pictures, but first she would take off her
hat and gloves. So she stood up, unpinned the
brown straw and put it neatly in the rack beside
the dress-basket, stripped off her brown kid gloves,
paired them in a tight roll and put them in the crown
of the hat for safety, and then sat down again,
more comfortably this time, her feet crossed, the
papers on her lap. How kindly the old man in the
corner watched her bare little hand turning over the
big white pages, watched her lips moving as she
pronounced the long words to herself, rested upon
her hair that fairly blazed under the light. Alas !
how tragic for a little governess to possess hair
that made one think of tangerines and marigolds, of
apricots and tortoiseshell cats and champagne !
Perhaps that was what the old man was thinking
as he gazed and gazed, and that not even the dark
ugly clothes could disguise her soft beauty. Perhaps
the flush that licked his cheeks and lips was a flush
of rage that anyone so young and tender should
have to travel alone and unprotected through the
night. Who knows he was not murmuring in his
sentimental German fashion : " Ja y es ist eine
Tragcedie! Would to God I were the child's
grandpapa ! "

" Thank you very much. They were very
interesting." She smiled prettily handing back the
papers. " But you speak German extremely well/'
said the old man. " You have been in Germany
before, of course ? " " Oh no, this is the first

247

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

time " a little pause, then " this is the first time
that I have ever been abroad at all." " Really !
I am surprised. You gave me the impression, if
I may say so, that you were accustomed to travel-
ling." " Oh, well I have been about a good deal
in England, and to Scotland, once." "So. I
myself have been in England once, but I could not
learn English." He raised one hand and shook
his head, laughing. " No, it was too difficult for
me. . . . ' Ow-do-you-do. Please vich is ze vay
to Leicestaire Squaare.' " She laughed too.
" Foreigners always say . . ." They had quite a
little talk about it. " But you will like Munich,"
said the old man. " Munich is a wonderful city.
Museums, pictures, galleries, fine buildings and
shops, concerts, theatres, restaurants all are in
Munich. I have travelled all over Europe many,
many times in my life, but it is always to Munich
that I return. You will enjoy yourself there."
" I am not going to stay in Munich," said the
little governess, and she added shyly, " I am going
to a post as governess to a doctor's family in Augs-
burg." " Ah, that was it." Augsburg he knew.
Augsburg well was not beautiful. A solid
manufacturing town. But if Germany was new to
her he hoped she would find something interesting
there too. " I am sure I shall." " But what a pity
not to see Munich before you go. You ought to
take a little holiday on your way " he smiled
" and store up some pleasant memories." " I am

248

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

afraid I could not do that" aaid the little governess,
shaking her head, suddenly important and serious.
" And also, if one is alone ..." He quite under-
stood. He bowed, serious too. They were silent
after that. The train shattered on, baring its dark,
flaming breast to the hills and to the valleys. It
was warm in the carriage. She seemed to lean
against the dark rushing and to be carried away
and away. Little sounds made themselves heard ;
steps in the corridor, doors opening and shutting
a murmur of voices whistling. . . . Then the
window was pricked with long needles of rain. . . .
But it did not matter ... it was outside . . . and
she had her umbrella . . . she pouted, sighed,
opened and shut her hands once and fell fast
asleep.

" Pardon ! Pardon ! " The sliding back of the
carriage door woke her with a start. What had
happened ? Some one had come in and gone out
again. The old man sat in his corner, more upright
than ever, his hands in the pockets of his coat,
frowning heavily. " Ha ! ha ! ha 1 " came from
the carriage next door. Still half asleep, she put
her hands to her hair to make sure it wasn't a dream.
" Disgraceful ! " muttered the old man more to
himself than to her. " Common, vulgar fellows !
I am afraid they disturbed you, gracious Fraulein,
blundering in here like that." No, not really. She

249

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

was just going to wake up, and she took out her
silver watch to look at the time. Half-past four. A
cold blue light filled the window panes. Now when
she rubbed a place she could see bright patches of
fields, a clump of white houses like mushrooms, a
road " like a picture " with poplar trees on either
side, a thread of river. How pretty it was ! How
pretty and how different ! Even those pink clouds
in the sky looked foreign. It was cold, but she
pretended that it was far colder and rubbed her
hands together and shivered, pulling at the collar
of her coat because she was so happy.

The train began to slow down. The engine gave
a long shrill whistle. They were coming to a town.
Taller houses, pink and yellow, glided by, fast asleep
behind their green eyelids, and guarded by the
poplar trees that quivered in the blue air as if on
tiptoe, listening. In one house a woman opened
the shutters, flung a red and white mattress across
the window frame and stood staring at the train.
A pale woman with black hair and a white woollen
shawl over her shoulders. More women appeared
at the doors and at the windows of the sleeping
houses. There came a flock of sheep. The
shepherd wore a blue blouse and pointed wooden
shoes. Look ! look what flowers and by the
railway station too ! Standard roses like brides-
maids* bouquets, white geraniums, waxy pink
ones that you would hever see out of a greenhouse
at home. Slower and slower. A man with a

250

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

watering-can was spraying the platform. " A-a-a-
ah ! " Somebody came running and waving his
arms. A huge fat woman waddled through the
glass doors of the station with a tray of strawberries.
Oh, she was thirsty ! She was very thirsty ! " A-
a-a-ah ! " The same somebody ran back again.
The train stopped.

The old man pulled his coat round him and got
up, smiling at her. He murmured something she
didn't quite catch, but she smiled back at him as he
left the carriage. While he was away the little
governess looked at herself again in the glass, shook
and patted herself with the precise practical care
of a girl who is old enough to travel by herself and
has nobody else to assure her that she is " quite
all right behind." Thirsty and thirsty ! The air
tasted of water. She let down the window and the
fat woman with the strawberries passed as if on
purpose ; holding up the tray to her. " Nein,
danke" said the little governess, looking at the big
berries on their gleaming leaves. " Wie viel? "
she asked as the fat woman moved away. " Two
marks fifty, Fraulein." " Good gracious ! " She
came in from the window and sat down in the
corner, very sobered for a minute. Half a crown !
" H-o-o-o-o-o-e-e-e 1 " shrieked the train, gather-
ing itself together to be off again. She hoped the
old man wouldn't be left behind. Oh, it was
daylight everything was lovely if only she hadn't
been so thirsty. Where was the old man oh, here

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

he was she dimpled at him as though he were
an old accepted friend as he closed the door and,
turning, took from under his cape a basket of the
strawberries. " If Fraulein would honour me
by accepting these . . ." " What for me ? "
But she drew back and raided her hands as though
he were about to put a wild little kitten on her lap.

" Certainly, for you," said the old man. " For
myself it is twenty years since I was brave enough
to eat strawberries/' " Oh, thank you very much.
Danke bestens" she stammered, " sie sind so sehr
schon ! " " Eat them and see," said the old man
looking pleased and friendly. " You won't have
even one ? " " No, no, no." Timidly and charm-
ingly her hand hovered. They were so big and
juicy she had to take two bites to them the juice
ran all down her fingers and it was while she
munched the berries that she first thought of the
old man as a grandfather. What a perfect grand-
father he would make ! Just like one out of a book !

The sun came out, the pink clouds in the sky, the
strawberry clouds were eaten by the blue. " Are
they good ? " asked the old man. " As good as they
look ? "

When she had eaten them she felt she had known
him for years. She told him about Frau Arnholdt
and how she had got the place. Did he know the
Hotel Grunewald ? Frau Arnholdt would not arrive
until the evening. He listened, listened until he
knew as much about the affair as she did, until he

252

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

said not looking at her but smoothing the palms
of his brown su&de gloves together : "I wonder
if you would let me show you a little of Munich
to-day. Nothing much but just perhaps a picture
gallery and the Englischer Garten. It seems such
a pity that you should have to spend the day at the
hotel, and also a little uncomfortable ... in a
strange place. Nicht wahr? You would be back
there by the early afternoon or whenever you wish,
of course, and you would give an old man a great
deal of pleasure."

It was not until long after she had said " Yes "
because the moment she had said it and he had
thanked her he began telling her about his travels
in Turkey and attar of roses that she wondered
whether she had done wrong. After all, she really
did not know him. But he was so old and he had
been so very kind not to mention the strawberries.
. . . And she couldn't have explained the refeson
why she said " No," and it was her last day in a way,
her last day to really enjoy herself in. " Was I
wrong ? Was I ? " A drop of sunlight fell into her
hands and lay there, warm and quivering. " If
I might accompany you as far as the hotel," he
suggested, " and call for you again at about ten
o'clock." He took out his pocket-book and handed
her a card. " Herr Regierungsrat. . , ." He had
a title ! Well, it was bound to be all right ! So after
that the little governess gave herself up to the
excitement of being really abroad, to looking out

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

and reading the foreign advertisement signs, to being
told about the places they came to having her
attention and enjoyment looked after by the charm-
ing old grandfather until they reached Munich
and the Hauptbahnhof. " Porter ! Porter ! "
He found her a porter, disposed of his own luggage
in a few words, guided her through the bewildering
crowd out of the station down the clean white
steps into the white road to the hotel. He explained
who she was to the manager as though all this had
been bound to happen, and then for one moment
her little hand lost itself in the big brown su&de ones.
" I will call for you at ten o'clock." He was gone.
" This way, Fraulein," said a waiter, who had
been dodging behind the manager's back, all eyes
and ears for the strange couple. She followed him
up two flights of stairs into a dark bedroom. He
dashed down her dress-basket and pulled up a
clattering, dusty blind. Ugh ! what an ugly, cold
room what enormous furniture ! Fancy spending
the day in here ! " Is this the room Frau Arnholdt
ordered ? " asked the little governess. The waiter
had a curious way of staring as if there was some-
thing funny about her. He pursed up his lips about
to whistle, and then changed his mind. " Gewiss"
he said. Well, why didn't he go ? Why did he
stare so ? " Gehen Sie" said the little governess,
with frigid English simplicity. His little eyes, like
currants, nearly popped out of his doughy cheeks.
" Gehen Sie sofort" she repeated icily. At the

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

door he turned. " And the gentleman," said he,
" shall I show the gentleman upstairs when he
comes ? "

Over the white streets big white clouds fringed
with silver and sunshine everywhere. Fat, fat
coachmen driving fat cabs ; funny women with
little round hats cleaning the tramway lines ; people
laughing and pushing against one another ; trees
on both sides of the streets and everywhere you
looked almost, immense fountains ; a noise of
laughing from the footpaths or the middle of the
streets or the open windows. And beside her,
more beautifully brushed than ever, with a rolled
umbrella in one hand and yellow gloves instead of
brown ones, her grandfather who had asked her to
spend the day. She wanted to run, she wanted to
hang on his arm, she wanted to cry every minute,
" Oh, I am so frightfully happy 1 " He guided her
across the roads, stood still while she " looked/ 1
and his kind eyes beamed on her and he said " just
whatever you wish/ 1 She ate two white sausages
and two little rolls of fresh bread at eleven o'clock in
the morning and she drank some beer, which he
told her wasn't intoxicating, wasn't at all like
English beer, out of a glass like a flower vase. And
then they took a cab and really she must have seen
thousands and thousands of wonderful classical
pictures in about a quarter of an hour I " I shall

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

have to think them over when I am alone." . . .
But when they came out of the picture gallery it
was raining. The grandfather unfurled his umbrella
and held it over the little governess. They started
to walk to the restaurant for lunch. She, very close
beside him so that he should have some of the
umbrella, too. " It goes easier," he remarked in a
detached way, " if you take my arm, Fraulein.
And besides it is the custom in Germany." So she
took his arm and walked beside him while he
pointed out the famous statues, so interested that
he quite forgot to put down the umbrella even when
the rain was long over.

After lunch they went to a cafe to hear a gipsy
band, but she did not like that at all. Ugh ! such
horrible men where there with heads like eggs and
cuts on their faces, so she turned her chair and
cupped her burning cheeks in her hands and watched
her old friend instead. . . . Then they went to
the Englischer Garten.

" I wonder what the time is," asked the little
governess. " My watch has stopped. I forgot
to wind it in the train last night. We've seen such
a lot of things that I feel it must be quite late."
" Late ! " He stopped in front of her laughing and
shaking his head in a way she had begun to know.
" Then you have not really enjoyed yourself.
Late ! Why, we have not had any ice cream yet 1 "
" Oh, but I have enjoyed myself," she cried,
distressed, " more than I can possibly say. It

256

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

has been wonderful ! Only Frau Arnholdt is to be
at the hotel at six and I ought to be there by five."
11 So you shall. After the ice cream I shall put you
into a cab and you can go there comfortably."
She was happy again. The chocolate ice cream
melted melted in little sips a long way down.
The shadows of the trees danced on the table
cloths, and she sat with her back safely turned
bto the ornamental clock that pointed to twenty-
five minutes to seven. " Really and truly," said
the little governess earnestly, " this has been the
happiest day of my life. I've never even imagined
such a day." In spite of the ice cream her grateful
baby heart glowed with love for the fairy grand-
father.

So they walked out of the garden down a long
alley. The day was nearly over. " You see those
big buildings opposite," said the old man. " The
third storey that is where I live. I and the old
housekeeper who looks after me." She was very
interested. " Now just before I find a cab for you,
will you come and see my little ' home ' and let
me give you a bottle of the attar of roses I told you
about in the train ? For remembrance ? " She
would love to. " Pve never seen a bachelor's
flat in my life," laughed the little governess.

The passage was quite dark. "Ah, I suppose

my old woman has gone out to buy me a chicken.

One moment." He opened a door and stood aside

for her to pass, a little shy but curious, into a

s 257

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

strange room. She did not know quite what to say.
It wasn't pretty. In a way it was very ugly but
neat, and, she supposed, comfortable for such an
old man. " Well, what do you think of it ? " He
knelt down and took from a cupboard a round tray
with two pink glasses and a tall pink bottle. " Two
little bedrooms beyond," he said gaily, " and a
kitchen. It's enough, eh ? " " Oh, quite enough."
" And if ever you should be in Munich and care
to spend a day or two why there is always a little
nest a wing of a chicken, and a salad, and an old
man delighted to be your host once more and many
many times, dear little Fraulein ! " He took the
stopper out of the bottle and poured some wine
into the two pink glasses. His hand shook and
the wine spilled over the tray. It was very quiet in
the room. She said : " I think I ought to gonow."
" But you will have a tiny glass of wine with me
just one before you go ? " said the old man. " No,
really no. I never drink wine. I I have promised
never to touch wine or anything like that." And
though he pleaded and though she felt dreadfully
rude, especially when he seemed to take it to heart
so, she was quite determined. " No, really, please."
" Well, will you just sit down on the sofa for five
minutes and let me drink your health ? " The little
governess sat down on the edge of the red velvet
couch and he sat do\vn beside her and drank her
health at a gulp. " Have you really been happy
to-day ? " asked the old man, turning round, so

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

close beside her that she felt his knee twitching
against hers. Before she could answer he held her
hands. " And are you going to give me one little
kiss before you go ? " he asked, drawing her closer
still.

It was a dream ! It wasn't true ! It wasn't
the same old man at all. Ah, how horrible ! The
little governess stared at him in terror. " No, no,
no ! " she stammered, struggling out of his hands.
" One little kiss. A kiss. What is it ? Just a kiss,
dear little Fraulein. A kiss." He pushed his face
forward, his lips smiling broadly ; and how his
little blue eyes gleamed behind the spectacles!
" Never never. How can you ! " She sprang up,
but he was too quick and he held her against the
wall, pressed against her his hard old body and
his twitching knee and, though she shook her head
from side to side, distracted, kissed her on the
mouth. On the mouth ! Where not a soul who
wasn't a near relation had ever kissed her
before. , . .

She ran, ran down the street until she found a
broad road with tram lines and a policeman standing
in the middle like a clockwork doll. " I want to get
a tram to the Hauptbahnhof," sobbed the little
governess. " Fraulein ? " She wrung her hands
at him. " The Hauptbahnhof. There there's
one now," and while he watched very much sur-
prised, the little girl with her hat on one side, crying
without a handkerchief, sprang on to the tram

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

not seeing the conductor's eyebrows, nor hearing
the hochzvohlgebildete Dame talking her over with a
scandalized friend. She rocked herself and cried out
loud and said " Ah, ah ! " pressing her hands to her
mouth. " She has been to the dentist," shrilled a
fat old woman, too stupid to be uncharitable.
" Na> sqgen Sie 'mal, what toothache ! The child
hasn't one left in her mouth." While the tram
swung and jangled through a world full of old men
with twitching knees.

When the little governess reached the hall of the
Hotel Grunewald the same waiter who had come
into her room in the morning was standing by a
table, polishing a tray of glasses. The sight of the
little governess seemed to fill him out with some
inexplicable important content. He was ready
for her question ; his answer came pat and suave.
" Yes, Fraulein, the lady has been here. I told her
that you had arrived and gone out again immediately
with a gentleman. She asked me when you were
coming back again but of course I could not say.
And then she went to the manager." He took up a
glass from the table, held it up to the light, looked
at it with one eye closed, and started polishing it
with a corner of his apron. "...?" " Pardon,
Fraulein ? Ach, no,*Fraulein. The manager could
tell her nothing nothing." He shook his head
and smiled at the brilliant glass. " Where is the

260

THE LITTLE GOVERNESS

lady now ? " asked the little governess, shuddering
so violently that she had to hold her handkerchief
up to her mouth. " How should I know ? " cried
the waiter, and as he swooped past her to pounce
upon a new arrival his heart beat so hard against
his ribs that he nearly chuckled aloud. " That's
it ! that's it ! " he thought. " That will show her."
And as he swung the new arrival's box on to his
shoulders hoop ! as though he were a giant and
the box a feather, he minced over again the little
governess's words, " Gehen Sie. Gehen Sie sofort.
Shall 1 1 Shall I ! " he shouted to himself.

*6i

REVELATIONS

FROM eight o'clock in the morning until
about half-past eleven Monica Tyrell
suffered from her nerves, and suffered so
terribly that these hours were agonizing, simply.
It was not as though she could control them. " Per-
haps if I were ten years younger . . ." she would
say. For now that she was thirty-three she had a
queer little way of referring to her age on all occa-
sions, of looking at her friends with grave, childish
eyes and saying : " Yes, I remember how twenty
years ago . . ." or of drawing Ralph's attention to
the girls real girls with lovely youthful arms and
throats and swift hesitating movements who sat
near them in restaurants. " Perhaps if I were ten
years younger . . ."

11 Why don't you get Marie to sit outside your
door and absolutely forbid anybody to come near
your room until you ring your bell ? "

" Oh, if it were as simple as that ! " She threw
her little gloves down and pressed her eyelids with
her fingers in the way* he knew so well. " But in
the first place I'd be so conscious of Marie sitting
there, Marie shaking her finger at Rudd and Mr?*

262

REVELATIONS

Moon, Marie as a kind of cross between a wardress
and a nurse for mental cases ! And then, there's
the post. One can't get over the fact that the post
comes, and once it has come, who who could
wait until eleven for the letters ? "

His eyes grew bright ; he quickly, lightly clasped
her. " My letters, darling ? "

" Perhaps," she drawled, softly, and she drew
her hand over his reddish hair, smiling too, but
thinking : " Heavens ! What a stupid thing to
say ! "

But this morning she had been awakened by one
great slam of the front door. Bang. The flat
shook. What was it ? She jerked up in bed,
clutching the eiderdown ; her heart beat. What
could it be ? Then she heard voices in the passage.
Marie knocked, and, as the door opened, with a
sharp tearing rip out flew the blind and the curtains,
stiffening, flapping, jerking. The tassel of the blind
knocked knocked against the window. " Eh-h,
voild ! " cried Marie, setting down the tray and
running. " C'est le vent, Madame. C'est un vent
insupportable"

Up rolled the blind ; the window went up with
a jerk ; a whitey-greyish light filled the room.
Monica caught a glimpse of a huge pale sky and a
cloud like a torn shirt dragging across before she
hid her eyes with her sleeve.

" Marie ! the curtains 1 Quick, the curtains ! "
Monica fell back into the bed and then " Ring-ting-

263

REVELATIONS

a-ping-ping, ring-ting-a-ping-ping." It was the
telephone. The limit of her suffering was reached ;
she grew quite calm. " Go and see, Marie/'

" It is Monsieur. To know if Madame will lunch
at Princes' at one-thirty to-day." Yes, it was
Monsieur himself. Yes, he had asked that the
message be given to Madame immediately. Instead
of replying, Monica put her cup down and asked
Marie in a small wondering voice what time it was.
It was half-past nine. She lay still and half closed
her eyes. " Tell Monsieur I cannot come," she
said gently. But as the door shut, anger anger
suddenly gripped her close, close, violent, half
strangling her. How dared he ? How dared Ralph
do such a thing when he knew how agonizing her
nerves were in the morning ! Hadn't she explained
and described and even though lightly, of course ;
she couldn't say such a thing directly given him
to understand that this was the one unforgivable
thing.

And then to choose this frightful windy morning.
Did he think it was just a fad of hers, a little feminine
folly to be laughed at and tossed aside ? Why, only
last night she had said : " Ah, but you must take
me seriously, too." And he had replied : " My
darling, you'll not believe me, but I know you
infinitely better than you know yourself. Every
delicate thought arid feeling I bow to, I treasure.
Yes, laugh 1 I love the way your lip lifts " and
he had leaned across the table " I don't care who

264

REVELATIONS

sees that I adore all of you. I'd be with you on
mountain-top and have all the searchlights of the
world play upon us."

" Heavens ! " Monica almost clutched her head.
Was it possible he had really said that ? How in-
credible men were 1 And she had loved him how
could she have loved a man who talked like that.
What had she been doing ever since that dinner
party months ago, when he had seen her home and
asked if he might come and " see again that slow
Arabian smile " ? Oh, what nonsense what utter
nonsense and yet she remembered at the time a
strange deep thrill unlike anything she had ever
felt before.

" Coal ! Coal ! Coal ! Old iron ! Old iron I
Old iron ! " sounded from below. It was all over.
Understand her ? He had understood nothing.
That ringing her up on a windy morning was im-
mensely significant. Would he understand that ?
She could almost have laughed. " You rang me
up when the person who understood me simply
couldn't have." It was the end. And when Mari
said : " Monsieur replied he would be in the
vestibule in case Madame changed her mind,"
Monica said : " No, not verbena, Marie. Carna-
tions. Two handfuls."

A wild white morning, a tearing, rocking wind.
Monica sat down before the mirror. She was pale.
The maid combed back her dark hair combed it
all back and her face was like a mask, with pointed

265

REVELATIONS

eyelids and dark red lips. As she stared at herself
in the blueish shadowy glass she suddenly felt oh,
the strangest, most tremendous excitement filling
her slowly, slowly, until she wanted to fling out her
arms, to laugh, to scatter everything, to shock Marie,
to cry : " I'm free. I'm free. I'm free as the wind."
And now all this vibrating, trembling, exciting, fly-
ing world was hers. It was her kingdom. No, no,
she belonged to nobody but Life.

" That will do, Marie/' she stammered. " My
hat, my coat, my bag. And now get me a taxi."
Where was she going ? Oh, anywhere. She could
not stand this silent flat, noiseless Marie, this
ghostly, quiet, feminine interior. She must be
out ; she must be driving quickly anywhere,
anywhere.

" The taxi is there, Madame." As she pressed
open the big outer doors of the flats the wild wind
caught her and floated her across the pavement.
Where to ? She got in, and smiling radiantly at
the cross, cold-looking driver, she told him to take
fyer to her hairdresser's. What would she have
done without her hairdresser ? Whenever Monica
had nowhere else to go to or nothing on earth to do
she drove there. She might just have her hair
waved, and by that time she'd have thought out a
plan. The cross, cold driver drove at a tremendous
pace, and she let herself be hurled from side to side.
She wished he would go faster and faster. Oh,
to be free of Princes' at one-thirty, of being the

266

REVELATIONS

tiny kitten in the swansdown basket, of being the
Arabian, and the grave, delighted child and the little
wild creature. . . . " Never again/' she cried aloud,
clenching her small fist. But the cab had stopped,
and the driver was standing holding the door open
for her.

The hairdresser's shop was warm and glittering.
It smelled of soap and burnt paper and wallflower
brilliantine. There was Madame behind the counter,
round, fat, white, her head like a powder-puff rolling
on a black satin pin-cushion. Monica always had
the feeling that they loved her in this shop and
understood her the real her far better than many
of her friends did. She was her real self here, and
she and Madame had often talked quite strangely
together. Then there was George who did her
hair, young, dark, slender George. She was really
fond of him.

But to-day how curious ! Madame hardly
greeted her. Her face was whiter than ever, but
rims of bright red showed round her blue bead
eyes, and even the rings on her pudgy fingers did
not flash. They were cold, dead, like chips of glass.
When she called through the wall-telephone to
George there was a note in her voice that had never
been there before. But Monica would not believe
this. No, she refused to. It was just her imagina-
tion. She sniffed greedily the warm, scented air,
and passed behind the velvet curtain into the small
cubicle.

267

REVELATIONS

Her hat and jacket were off and hanging from the
peg, and still George did not come. This was the
first time he had ever not been there to hold the
chair for her, to take her hat and hang up her bag,
dangling it in his fingers as though it were something
he'd never seen before something fairy. And how
quiet the shop was ! There was not a sound even
from Madame. Only the wind blew, shaking the
old house ; the wind hooted, and the portraits of
Ladies of the Pompadour Period looked down and
smiled, cunning and sly. Monica wished she
hadn't come. Oh, what a mistake to have come !
Fatal. Fatal. Where was George ? If he didn't
appear the next moment she would go away. She
took off the white kimono. She didn't want to look
at herself any more. When she opened a big pot
of cream on the glass shelf her fingers trembled.
There was a tugging feeling at her heart as though
her happiness her marvellous happiness were
trying to get free.

" I'll go. I'll not stay." She took down her hat.
But just at that moment steps sounded, and, looking
in the mirror, she saw George bowing in the door-
way. How queerly he smiled ! It was the mirror
of course. She turned round quickly. His lips
curled back in a sort of grin, and wasn't he un-
shaved ? he looked almost green in the face.

" Very sorry to have kept you waiting/' he
mumbled, sliding, gliding forward.

Oh, no, she wasn't going to stay. " I'm afraid,"
268

REVELATIONS

she began. But he had lighted the gas and laid the
tongs across, and was holding out the kimono.

" It's a wind," he said. Monica submitted. She
smelled his fresh young fingers pinning the jacket
under her chin. " Yes, there is a wind," said she,
sinking back into the chair. And silence fell.
George took out the pins in his expert way. Her
hair tumbled back, but he didn't hold it as he
usually did, as though to feel how fine and soft and
heavy it was. He didn't say it " was in a lovely
condition." He let it fall, and, taking a brush out
of a drawer, he coughed faintly, cleared his throat
and said dully : " Yes, it's a pretty strong one, I
should say it was."

She had no reply to make. The brush fell on her
hair. Oh, oh, how mournful, how mournful ! It
fell quick and light, it fell like leaves ; and then it
fell heavy, tugging like the tugging at her heart.
" That's enough," she cried, shaking herself free.

" Did I do it too much ? " asked George. He
crouched over the tongs. " I'm sorry." There
came the smell of burnt paper the smell she loved
and he swung the hot tongs round in his hand*
staring before him. " I shouldn't be surprised if
it rained." He took up a piece of her hair, when
she couldn't bear it any longer she stopped him.
She looked at him ; she saw herself looking at him
in the white kimono like a nun. " Is there some-
thing the matter here ? Has something happened ?"
But George gave a half shrug and a grimace. " Oh,

269

REVELATIONS

no, Madame. Just a little occurrence. " And he
took up the piece of hair again. But, oh, she wasn't
deceived. That was it. Something awful had
happened. The silence really, the silence seemed
to come drifting down like flakes of snow. She
shivered. It was cold in the little cubicle, all cold
and glittering. The nickel taps and jets and sprays
looked somehow almost malignant. The wind
rattled the window-frame ; a piece of iron banged,
and the young man went on changing the tongs,
crouching over her. Oh, how terrifying Life was,
thought Monica. How dreadful. It is the loneli-
ness which is so appalling. We whirl along like
leaves, and nobody knows nobody cares where we
fall, in what black river we float away. The tugging
feeling seemed to rise into her throat. It ached,
ached ; she longed to cry. " That will do," she
whispered. " Give me the pins." As he stood
beside her, so submissive, so silent, she nearly
dropped her arms and sobbed. She couldn't bear
any more. Like a wooden man the gay young
George still slid, glided, handed her her hat and
veil, took the note, and brought back the change,
She stuffed it into her bag. Where was she going
now ?

George took a brush. " There is a little powder
on your coat," he murmured. He brushed it away.
And then suddenly he raised himself and, looking
at Monica, gave a strange wave with the brush and
said : " The truth is, Madame, since you are an

270

REVELATIONS

old customer my little daughter died this morning.
A first child " and then his white face crumpled
like paper, and he turned his back on her and began
brushing the cotton kimono. "Oh, oh," Monica
began to cry. She ran out of the shop into the taxi.
The driver > looking furious, swung off the seat and
slammed the door again. " Where to ? "

" Princes'," she sobbed. And all the way there
she saw nothing but a tiny wax doll with a feather
of gold hair, lying meek, its tiny hands and feet
crossed. And then just before she came to Princes'
she saw a flower shop full of white flowers. Oh,
what a perfect thought. Lilies-of-the-valley, and
white pansies, double white violets and white velvet
ribbon. . ; . From an unknown friend. . . . From
one who understands. . . . For a Little Girl. . . .
She tapped against the window, but the driver did
not hear ; and, anyway, they were at Princes'
already.

171

THE ESCAPE

IT was his fault, wholly and solely his fault,
that they had missed the train. What if the
idiotic hotel people had refused to produce
the bill ? Wasn't that simply because he hadn't
impressed upon the waiter at lunch that they must
have it by two o'clock ? Any other man would have
sat there and refused to move until they handed it
over. But no ! His exquisite belief in human
nature had allowed him to get up and expect one
of those idiots to bring it to their room. . . . And
then, when the voiture did arrive, while they were
still (Oh, Heavens !) waiting for change, why hadn't
he seen to the arrangement of the boxes so that they
could, at least, have started the moment the money
( Jiad come ? Had he expected her to go outside, to
stand under the awning in the heat and point with
her parasol ? Very amusing picture of English
domestic life. Even when the driver had been told
how fast he had to drive he had paid no attention
whatsoever just smiled. " Oh," she groaned, " if
she'd been a driver she couldn't have stopped
smiling herself at the absurd, ridiculous way he
was urged to hurry." And she sat back and imitated

272

THE ESCAPE

his voice : " Ailez> vite, vite " and begged the
driver's pardon for troubling him. . . .

And then the station unforgettable with the
sight of the jaunty little train shuffling away and
those hideous children waving from the windows.
11 Oh, why am I made to bear these things ? Why
am I exposed to them ? . . ." The glare, the flies,
while they waited, and he and the stationmaster
put their heads together over the time-table, trying
to find this other train, which, of course, they
wouldn't catch. The people who'd gathered round,
and the woman who'd held up that baby with that
awful, awful head. ..." Oh, to care as I care
to feel as I feel, and never to be saved anything
never to know for one moment what it was to ...
to . . ."

Her voice had changed. It was shaking now
crying now. She fumbled with her bag, and pro-
duced from its little maw a scented handkerchief.
She put up her veil and, as though she were doing
it for somebody else, pitifully, as though she were
saying to somebody else : "I know, my darling,"
she pressed the handkerchief to her eyes.

The little bag, with its shiny, silvery jaws open,
lay on her lap. He could see her powder-puff, her
rouge stick, a bundle of letters, a phial of tiny black
pills like seeds, a broken cigarette, a mirror, white
ivory tablets with lists on them that had been
heavily scored through. He thought : " In Egypt
she would be buried with those things."

T

THE ESCAPE

They had left the last of the houses, those smal
straggling houses with bits of broken pot flun^
among the flower-beds and half-naked hens scratch-
ing round the doorsteps. Now they were mounting
a long steep road that wound round the hill and
over into the next bay. The horses stumbled
pulling hard. Every five minutes, every two minutes
the driver trailed the whip across them. His stou
back was solid as wood ; there were boils on hi
reddish neck, and he wore a new, a shining ne\
straw hat. . . .

There was a little wind, just enough wind tc
blow to satin the new leaves on the fruit trees, to
stroke the fine grass, to turn to silver the smoky
olives just enough wind to start in front of the
carriage a whirling, twirling snatch of dust that
settled on their clothes like the finest ash. When
she took out her powder-puff the powder came flying
over them both.

" Oh, the dust," she breathed, " the disgusting,
revolting dust." And she put down her veil and lay
back as if overcome.

" Why don't you put up your parasol ? " he sug-
gested. It was on the front seat, and he leaned for-
ward to hand it to her. At that she suddenly sat
upright and blazed again.

" Please leave my parasol alone ! I don't want
my parasol ! And anyone who was not utterly in-
sensitive would know that Pm far, far too exhausted
to hold up a parasol. And with a wind like this

274

THE ESCAPE

Jugging at it. ... Put it down at once," she
^flashed, and then snatched the parasol from him,
tossed it into the crumpled hood behind, and sub-
sided, panting.

Another bend of the road, and down the hill there
came a troop of little children, shrieking and gig-
gling, little girls with sun-bleached hair, little boys
in faded soldiers' caps. In their hands they carried
lowers any kind of flowers grabbed by the head,
ttid these they offered, running beside the carriage.
Lilac, faded lilac, greeny-white snowballs, one arum
lily, a handful of hyacinths. They thrust the flowers
and their impish faces into the carriage ; one even
threw into her lap a bunch of marigolds. Poor little
mice ! He had his hand in his trouser pocket
before her. " For Heaven's sake don't give them
anything. Oh, how typical of you 1 Horrid little
monkeys ! Now they'll follow us all the way.
Don't encourage them ; you would encourage
beggars " ; and she hurled the bunch out of the
carriage with, " Well, do it when I'm not there,
please."

He saw the queer shock on the children's faceb.
They stopped running, lagged behind, and then
they began to shout something, and went on shout-
ing until the carriage had rounded yet another bend.

" Oh, how many more are there before the top
of the hill is reached ? The horses haven't trotted
once. Surely it isn't necessary for them to walk the
whole way."

THE ESCAPE

" We shall be there in a minute now," he said,
and took out his cigarette-case. At that she turned
round towards him. She clasped her hands and
held them against her breast ; her dark eyes looked
immense, imploring, behind her veil ; her nostrils
quivered, she bit her lip, and her head shook with
a little nervous spasm. But when she spoke, her
voice was quite weak and very, very calm.

" I want to ask you something. I want to beg
something of you," she said. " I've asked you
hundreds and hundreds of times before, but you've
forgotten. It's such a little thing, but if you knew
what it meant to me. . . ." She pressed her hands
together. " But you can't know. No human
creature could know and be so cruel." And then,
slowly, deliberately, gazing at him with those huge,
sombre eyes : " I beg and implore you for the last
time that when we are driving together you won't
smoke. If you could imagine," she said, " the an-
guish I suffer when that smoke comes floating across
my face. . . ."

" tfery well," he said. " I won't. I forgot."
And he put the case back.

" Oh, no," said she, and almost began to laugh,
and put the back of her hand across her eyes. " You
couldn't have forgotten. Not that."

The wind came, blowing stronger. They were
at the top of the hill. " Hoy-yip-yip-yip," cried
the driver. They swung down the road that fell
into a small valley, skirted the sea coast at the

276

THE ESCAPE

bottom of it, and then coiled over a gentle ridge on
the other side. Now there were houses again,
olue-shuttered against the heat, with bright burning
gardens, with geranium carpets flung over tfce
pinkish walls. The coast-line was dark ; on the
edge of the sea a white silky fringe just stirred.
The carriage swung down the hill, bumped, shook.
" Yi-ip," shouted the driver. She clutched the
sides of the seat, she closed her eyes, and he knew
she felt this was happening on purpose ; this
swinging and bumping, this was all done and he
was responsible for it, somehow to spite her be-
cause she had asked if they couldn't go a little faster.
But just as they reached the bottom of the valley
there was one tremendous lurch. The carriage
nearly overturned, and he saw her eyes blaze at
him, and she positively hissed, " I suppose you are
enjoying this ? "

They went on. They reached the bottom of the
valley. Suddenly she stood up. " Cocker ! Cocker!
Arretez-vous ! " She turned round and looked into
the crumpled hood behind. " I knew it," she ex-
claimed. " I knew it. I heard it fall, and so did
you, at that last bump."

"What? Where?"

11 My parasol. It's gone. The parasol that
belonged to my mother. The parasol that I prize
more than more than . . ." She was simply
beside herself. The driver turned round, his gay,
broad face smiling.

277

THE ESCAPE

" I, too, heard something/* said he, simply ana
gaily. " But I thought as Monsieur and Madame
said nothing ..."

< " There. You hear that. Then you must have
heard it too. So that accounts for the extraordinary
smile on your face. ..."

" Look here," he said, " it can't be gone. If tl
fell out it will be there still. Stay where you are.
I'll fetch it."

But she saw through that. Oh, how she saw
through it ! " No, thank you." And she bent her
spiteful, smiling eyes upon him, regardless of the
driver. " I'll go myself. I'll walk back and find
it, and trust you not to follow. For " knowing the
driver did not understand, she spoke softly, gently
" if I don't escape from you for a minute I shall
go mad."

She stepped out of the carriage. " My bag."
He handed it to her.

" Madame prefers . . ."

But the driver had already swung down from
his seat, and was seated on the parapet reading a
small newspaper. The horses stood with hanging
heads. It was still. The man in the carriage
stretched himself out, folded his arms. He
felt the sun beat on his knees. His head
was sunk on his breast. " Hish, hish," sounded
from the sea. The wind sighed in the valley
and was quiet. He ,felt himself, lying there, a
hollow man, a parched, withered man, as it

278

THE ESCAPE

*

of ashes. And the sea sounded, " Hish,
hish."

It was then that he saw the tree, that he was
conscious of its presence just inside a garden gat.
It was an immense tree with a round, thick silver
ot.em and a great arc of copper leaves that gave back
the light and yet were sombre. There was some-
thing beyond the tree a whiteness, a softness, an
opaque mass, half-hidden with delicate pillars.
As he looked at the tree he felt his breathing die
away and he became part of the silence. It seemed
to gft>w, it seemed to expand in the quivering heat
until the great carved leaves hid the sky, and yet it
was motionless. Then from within its depths or
from beyond there came the sound of a woman's
voice. A woman was singing. The warm un-
troubled voice floated upon the air, and it was all
part of the silence as he was pait of it. Suddenly,
as the voice rose, soft, dreaming, gentle, he knew
that it would come floating to him from the hidden
leaves and his peace was shattered. What was
happening to him ? Something stirred in his breast
Something dark, something unbearable and dread-
ful pushed in his bosom, and like a great weed it
floated, rocked ... it was warm, stifling. He tried
to struggle to tear at it, and at the same moment-
all was over. Deep, deep, he sank into the silence,
staring at the tree and waiting for the voice that came
iloating, falling, until he felt himself enfolded.

*79

THE ESCAPE

In the shaking corridor of the train. It> was
night. The train rushed and roared through the
dark. He held on with both hands to the brass rail.
TKie door of their carriage was open.

" Do not disturb yourself, Monsieur. He will
come in and sit down when he wants to. He likes
he likes it is his habit. . . . Oui, Madame, je
suis un peu souffrante. . . , Ales nerfs. Oh, but my
husband is never so happy as when he is travelling.
He likes roughing it. ... My husband. . . . My
husband. . . ."

The voices murmured, murmured. They were
never still. But so great was his heavenly happiness
as he stood there he wished he might live for ever.