Bliss, and Other Stories

1 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 trembling 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,” 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 trembling 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’t they?”

“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 I’ll 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’

to Mrs. Samuel Josephs.”

Two subdued chirrups: “Thank you, Mrs. Samuel Josephs.”

“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 twinkled 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 swollen eyes and a blob of a nose gave

great satisfaction 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.

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.

2 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 far as her feet. Zoom! Zoom! a blue-bottle knocked against

the ceiling; the carpet-tacks had little bits of red fluff sticking to

them.

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 some 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 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 storeman’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 otherwise you pull the shawl

away from my side, Kezia.”

But Kezia edged up to the storeman. He towered 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,” said the storeman, 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 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,

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.

“We’ve 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 difference 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

round. The soft white bulk of it lay stretched upon the green garden

like a sleeping beast. And now one and now another of the windows

leaped into light. Someone 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.”

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.”

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

headache.”

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?”

“The very thought of it is enough.” She raised one eyebrow in the way

she had. The grandmother 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 something 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.”

Burnell got up, stretched himself, and going over to the fire he turned

his back to it and lifted up his coat 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 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?”

“No. Sh—h. Go to sleep.”

“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

trumpeting 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.” 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 pretended 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 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 bending 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 sometimes,” 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. . . .

“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 understand why they had accepted my figure. You see land

about here is bound to become more and more valuable . . . in about ten

years’ time . . . of course we shall have to go very slow and cut down

expenses as fine as possible. Not asleep—are you?”

“No, dear, I’ve heard every word,” said Linda.

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

“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?”

“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 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 _tui_ sang his three notes and laughed and sang them

again.

“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 morning.”

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 the medicine bottles on the shelf above the wash-stand.

Her clothes lay across a chair—her outdoor 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 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, comforted 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.

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 her 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 gooseberry skin, the rough leaf and the tight

glazed bud. Things had a habit of coming alive like that. 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 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 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. She 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 beads.

It was hard to believe that she had not been in that kitchen for years;

she was so much a part of 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

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. I’ll 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 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, “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, something 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 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.

“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.

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 anyone’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! Kezia

bent down to look and sneezed and rubbed her nose.

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 grandmother, 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 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 anything 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 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! 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 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 from 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 verandah 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

_Sharp_ness of Death Thou didst open the _King_dom of Heaven 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 walking 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

wonderful 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! 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 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,” 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 ears, her lips, her eyes.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” said she. “Wait a moment. Let me put down these

silly things,” and 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 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 protested.

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 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 firelight 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.

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!”

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. I’m 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

pineapples 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.”

“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 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 combing

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 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,” 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.”

“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 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.

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 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.

“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.

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 duck. He simply threw

it away from 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.

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.” 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 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 confinement may be expected. But care should be 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 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

anything important Miss Beryl seemed to have expected 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

. . .”

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. . . .”

11 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. . . .

“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,”

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 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.

“I’ve nothing but two pairs,” said Beryl, exaggerating 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.”

“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?”

“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 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!” 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 those are buds,” said she. “Let us go 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 experience 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. . . .

“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 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, 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 I’ve 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.

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.”

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 Pym, Nannie would have jumped

out of the window with surprise. . . . My dear, you 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

probability 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 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.

“Oh,” she cried, “I am so miserable—so frightfully miserable. I know

that I’m 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 purpose. 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 unsubstantial 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 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. . . .