Bliss

By Katherine Mansfield

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!—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 express 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?”

“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 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,” 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! 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.

She ate delightfully, holding up her lips for spoon and then waving her hands. Sometimes 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!”

“What is it?” rapped out the little voice.

“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 anæmia 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.”

“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 curious shiver.

“What creepy things cats are!” she stammered, 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.

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!” 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—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 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 fighting—for seeking in everything that came up against 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.

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.”

“Isn’t she very liée 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.”

“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 England.”

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 soufflée!” 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 fill 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 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.

The fire had died down in the drawing-room to a red, flickering “nest of baby phœnixes,” 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, understanding 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?

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,” 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!” 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 understood 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 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.

“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.”

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’Hôte,” 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 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.

Pictures

Eight o’clock in the morning. Miss Ada Moss lay in a black iron bedstead, staring up at the ceiling. Her room, a Bloomsbury 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.

“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 surprised.”

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 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 satisfaction; 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.”

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 nightdress was slit down the back. “Give me back my 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!” 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.

“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 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 A B C she found the door propped open; a man went in and out carrying trays of rolls, and there was nobody inside except a waitress doing her hair and the cashier unlocking 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!” 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. 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.”

“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 everybody; 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, you do make me laugh. Isn’t he a comic?”

A dark, mournful girl touched Miss Moss on the arm.

“I just missed a lovely job yesterday,” she said. “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. “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.”

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.”

“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 the fil-lums?”

“Well, I’m not an actress by profession,” confessed 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—nobody at all except a girl, who came to the window when Miss Moss knocked, and said: “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 something 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 wonderfully.

“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, I’ve nothing for you, you cheeky little things. . . .” She looked away from them. What was the big building opposite—the Café de Madrid? My goodness, what a smack that little child came down! Poor little mite! Never mind—up again. . . . By eight o’clock to-night . . . Café de Madrid. “I could just go in and sit there and have a coffee, that’s all,” 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 Café de Madrid? I’m a respectable woman—I’m a contralto 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. Café de Madrid. They have concerts there in the evenings. . . . ‘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 café. Men, palms, red 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 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 café.

 

 

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 had 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 his voice: “Allez, 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. “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 produced 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.”

They had left the last of the houses, those small straggling houses with bits of broken pot flung among the flower-beds and half-naked hens scratching 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 stout back was solid as wood; there were boils on his reddish neck, and he wore a new, a shining new straw hat. . . .

There was a little wind, just enough wind to 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 suggested. It was on the front seat, and he leaned forward 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 insensitive would know that I’m far, far too exhausted to hold up a parasol. And with a wind like this tugging at it. . . . Put it down at once,” she flashed, and then snatched the parasol from him, tossed it into the crumpled hood behind, and subsided, panting.

Another bend of the road, and down the hill there came a troop of little children, shrieking and giggling, little girls with sun-bleached hair, little boys in faded soldiers’ caps. In their hands they carried flowers—any kind of flowers—grabbed by the head, and 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! 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 faces. They stopped running, lagged behind, and then they began to shout something, and went on shouting 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.”

“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 anguish I suffer when that smoke comes floating across my face. . . .”

“Very 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 bottom of it, and then coiled over a gentle ridge on the other side. Now there were houses again, blue-shuttered against the heat, with bright burning gardens, with geranium carpets flung over the 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 because 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. “Cocher! Cocher! Arrêtez-vous!” She turned round and looked into the crumpled hood behind. “I knew it,” she exclaimed. “I knew it. I heard it fall, and so did you, at that last bump.”

“What? Where?”

“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.

“I, too, heard something,” said he, simply and 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 it 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 were, 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 gate. It was an immense tree with a round, thick silver stem and a great arc of copper leaves that gave back the light and yet were sombre. There was something 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 grow, 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 untroubled voice floated upon the air, and it was all part of the silence as he was part 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 dreadful 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 floating, falling, until he felt himself enfolded.

. . .

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. The 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. . . . Mes 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.