THE DOVES’ NEST
AND OTHER STORIES
_BOOKS OF STORIES BY
KATHERINE MANSFIELD_
BLISS
THE GARDEN PARTY
THE DOVES’ NEST
_NEW YORK: ALFRED · A · KNOPF_
THE
DOVES’ NEST
AND OTHER STORIES
BY KATHERINE
MANSFIELD
“_Reverence, that angel of the world_.”
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
ALFRED . A . KNOPF
MCMXXIII
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
_Published, August, 1923_
_Second Printing, August, 1923_
_Third Printing, October, 1923_
_Fourth Printing, November, 1923_
_Set up, electrotyped, and printed by the Vail-Ballou Press,
Inc., Binghamton, N. Y. Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington &
Co., New York. Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y._
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO WALTER DE LA MARE
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 9
THE DOLL’S HOUSE 25
HONEYMOON 39
A CUP OF TEA 50
TAKING THE VEIL 65
THE FLY 74
THE CANARY 85
_Unfinished Stories_:
A MARRIED MAN’S STORY 92
THE DOVES’ NEST 117
SIX YEARS AFTER 147
DAPHNE 156
FATHER AND THE GIRLS 166
ALL SERENE! 177
A BAD IDEA 186
A MAN AND HIS DOG 191
SUCH A SWEET OLD LADY 197
HONESTY 202
SUSANNAH 209
SECOND VIOLIN 214
MR. AND MRS. WILLIAMS 220
WEAK HEART 227
WIDOWED 234
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Katherine Mansfield died at Fontainebleau on January 9th 1923, at the age
of thirty-four.
This volume contains all the complete stories, and several fragments of
stories, which she wrote at the same time as, or after, those published
in “The Garden Party and Other Stories.” Her earlier work, belonging to
the period between her first book, “In a German Pension,” and her second,
“Bliss and Other Stories,” will be published in one or two separate
volumes in a collected edition of her work. Thus the continuity of her
writing will be preserved, and an opportunity given to those who care
for such things to follow the development of a talent now generally
recognised as among the rarest of her generation.
The title of this volume, “The Doves’ Nest and Other Stories,” is the
title which Katherine Mansfield intended to give it. Whether the stories
which compose it are those which she would finally have included in it,
I cannot say. Her standard of self-criticism was continually changing,
and changing always in the direction of a greater rigour. In writings
which I thought perfect she, with her keener insight, discerned unworthy
elements. Now that I am forced to depend upon my own sole judgment, it
has seemed to me that there is not a scrap of her writing—not even the
tiniest fragment—during this final period which does not bear the visible
impress of her exquisite individuality and her creative power.
On October 27, 1921, soon after she had finished and sent to her
publisher the stories which compose “The Garden Party,” she wrote the
following plan of her new book in her journal. (The letters L. and N.
Z. mean that the stories were to have London or New Zealand for their
setting.)
STORIES FOR MY NEW BOOK
N. Z. _Honesty_: The Doctor, Arnold Cullen and his wife Lydia,
and Archie the friend.
L. _Second Violin_: Alexander and his friend in the train.
Spring ... wet lilac ... spouting rain.
N. Z. _Six Years After_: A wife and husband on board a steamer.
They see some one who reminds them. The cold buttons.
L. _Lives Like Logs of Driftwood_: This wants to be a long,
very well written story. The men are important, especially the
lesser man. It wants a great deal of working ... newspaper
office.
N. Z. _A Weak Heart_: Roddie on his bike in the evening, with
his hands in his pockets, _doing marvels_ by that dark tree at
the corner of May Street.
L. _Widowed_: Geraldine and Jimmie, a house overlooking Sloane
Street and Square. Wearing those buds at her breast. “Married
or not married” ... From autumn to spring.
N. Z. _Our Maude_: Husban͜d ͜and͟ wi͜fe p͟la͜y du͟ets:͜ _A͟nd_
͜a _o͟ne_ a͟ _two_ ͟a _three_ a _one_ a _two three one_! His
white waistcoats. Wifeling and Mahub! What a girl you are!
N. Z. _At Karori_: The little lamp. I seen it. And then they
were silent.
N. Z. _Aunt Anne_: Her life with the Tannhaüser overture.
Of these stories only the one called _At Karori_ and subsequently
entitled _The Doll’s House_ was finished, three days later, on October
30. Of some of the remaining stories there are considerable fragments,
of three of them I have so far discovered no trace at all. All the
fragments I have found which indubitably belong to any of these stories I
have included in this volume. I have also included other fragments which
seemed to possess a separate existence, but I have reserved most of the
shorter pieces for publication with her Journal.
Between October 1921, when the original plan of this volume was sketched,
and the end of January 1922, she finished other stories which she had
not foreseen. These were _A Cup of Tea_, _Honeymoon_, _Taking the Veil_,
and the long, unfinished, yet somehow complete piece, _A Married Man’s
Story_. In January she also began _The Doves’ Nest_, a story which was
particularly important to her, and with the writing of which—at least at
the beginning—she was satisfied. She wrote in her Journal on New Year’s
Day, 1922:
Wrote _The Doves’ Nest_ this afternoon. I was in no mood to
write; it seemed impossible. Yet, when I had finished three
pages, they ‘were all right!’ This is a proof (never to be too
often proved) that when one has thought out a story nothing
remains but the _labour_.
She worked on and off at _The Doves’ Nest_ during the following summer
also. Unfortunately I can find no trace of her own manuscript. There is a
fair, clean copy, typewritten by herself, of the portion printed in this
book, but nothing more.
In February 1922 began three months of an exacting medical treatment in
Paris, during which work became more and more a physical impossibility.
Nevertheless, at the beginning of this time, on February 20th, she wrote
_The Fly_. On her return to Switzerland in June she tried to resume work
on _The Doves’ Nest_ and she wrote the scenario of a play; but again
physical weakness made work in the mountains impossible. To ease the
strain on her heart she descended into the valley in June. At Sierre she
wrote more of _The Doves’ Nest_, much more, alas, than remains; she also
began the unfinished piece called _Father and the Girls_ and finished
the short story called _The Canary_. These were the last of the stories
written by her which can be exactly dated. There is reason, however, to
believe that the passage of the story called _Six Years After_ which ends
with the words: “Can one do nothing for the dead? And for a long time
the answer had been—Nothing!” was actually the last piece written by
her. It seems to belong to the autumn of 1922, when she had, for a time,
practically abandoned writing.
It was not, however, because of her physical weakness that she stopped
writing in the late summer of 1922. The power of her spirit to triumph
over the frailty of her body had been proved over and over again. She
stopped writing deliberately, not under compulsion. She felt that her
whole attitude to life needed to be renewed, and she determined that she
would write no more until it had been renewed.
Perhaps an idea of the way her mind—or rather her whole being—was moving,
may be gleaned from some extracts from her journal. At first, her
dissatisfaction with her work took shape in a feeling that she was not
exerting the whole of her powers or expressing the whole of her knowledge
in her writings. As early as July 1921, when she was still engaged on the
last of the stories for “The Garden Party,” she wrote:
July 1921. I finished _Mr. and Mrs. Dove_ yesterday. I am not
altogether pleased with it. It’s a little bit made up. It’s not
inevitable. I meant to imply that those two may not be happy
together—that that is the kind of reason for which a young girl
marries. But have I done so? I don’t think so. Besides it’s not
_strong_ enough. I want to be nearer—far nearer than that. I
want to use all my force, even when I am taking a fine line.
And I have a sneaking notion that I have, at the end, used the
doves _unwarrantably_. Tu sais ce que je veux dire. I used them
to round off something—didn’t I? Is that quite my game? No,
it’s not. It’s not quite the kind of truth I’m after. Now for
_Susannah_. All must be _deeply felt_.
And a few days later she wrote:
July 23. Finished _An Ideal Family_ yesterday. It seems to me
better than the _Doves_, but still it’s not good enough. I
worked at it hard enough, God knows, and yet I didn’t get the
deepest truth out of the idea, even once. What is this feeling?
I feel again that this kind of knowledge is too easy for me;
it’s even a kind of trickery. I know so much more. It looks
and smells like a story, but I wouldn’t buy it. I don’t want
to possess it—to live with it. _No._ Once I have written two
more, I shall tackle something different—a long story—_At the
Bay_, with more _difficult_ relationships. That’s the whole
problem.
Yet a little later her vision of the cause of her own dissatisfaction
deepened, and she began to define it in terms—of the insufficient clarity
of her own spirit, and of the incompleteness of her inward life—which
were to become more and more familiar.
Well, I must confess I have had an idle day—God knows why. All
was to be written, but I just didn’t write it. I thought I
would, but I felt tired after tea, and rested instead. Is it
good or bad in me to behave so? I have a sense of guilt, but
at the same time I know that to rest is the very best thing I
can do. And for some reason there is a kind of booming in my
head—which is horrid. But marks of earthly degradation still
pursue me. I am not crystal clear. Above all else, I do still
lack application. It’s not right. There is so much to do, and
I do so little. Look at the stories that wait and wait, just
at the threshold. Why don’t I let them in? And their place
would be taken by others who are lurking beyond, just out
there—waiting for the chance.
Next day. Yet take this morning, for instance. I don’t want
to write anything. It’s grey; it’s heavy and dull. And short
stories seem unreal, and not worth doing. I don’t want to
write? I want to _live_. What does one mean by that? It’s not
too easy to say. But there you are!
Aug. 21. All this that I write, all that I am, is on the border
of the sea. It’s a kind of playing. I want to put all my force
behind it, but somehow I _cannot_.
And again in the autumn of the year her incessant effort towards an
inward purity—who but she would have dreamed that she lacked it?—as a
condition of soul essential to writing as she purposed to write, becomes
still more manifest.
Oct. 16. Another radiant day. J. is typing my last story, _The
Garden Party_, which I finished on my birthday. It took me
nearly a month to ‘recover’ from _At the Bay_. I made at least
four false starts. But I could not get away from the sound
of the sea and Beryl fanning her hair at the window. These
things would not _die down_. But now I am not at all sure about
that story. It seems to me it is a little ‘wispy’—not what
it might have been. The _G. P._ is better. But that is not
_good enough_, either.... The last few days, what one notices
more than anything is the blue. Blue sky, blue mountains—all
is a heavenly blueness! And clouds of all kinds—wings, soft
white clouds, almost hard little golden islands, great
mock-mountains. The gold deepens on the slopes. In fact, in
sober fact, it is perfection. But the late evening is the time
of times. Then, with that unearthly beauty before one, it is
not hard to realize how far one has to go. To write something
that will be worthy of that rising moon, that pale light. To be
‘simple’ enough as one would be simple before God.
Nov. 21. Since then I have only written _The Doll’s House_.
A bad spell has been on me. I have begun two stories, but
then told them and they felt betrayed. It is absolutely fatal
to give way to this temptation.... Today I begin to write,
seriously, _The Weak Heart_—a story which fascinates me
_deeply_. What I feel it needs so peculiarly is a very subtle
variation of tense from the present to the past and back
again—and softness, lightness, and the feeling that all is in
bud, with a play of humour over the character of Roddie. And
the feeling of the Thorndon Baths, the wet, moist, oozy ... no,
I know how it must be done.
May I be found worthy to do it! Lord, make me crystal clear for
thy light to shine through.
The two stories which she told and then was forced to abandon “because
they felt betrayed” were _Honesty_ and _All Serene_. Of _Weak Heart_, as
she subsequently called it, only fragments remain. There is the opening
copied in careful writing, a few hurriedly written sentences from the
middle—themes, as it were, hastily noted—and then, obviously written at
top speed and decipherable only with great difficulty, the end.
The two following passages from her journal belong to the same months,
October and November 1921. But they were written in another book, and
one of them should be placed in point of time between the two previous
entries. Katherine Mansfield’s attempts at keeping a regular journal were
intermittent. Nearly all the passages quoted here as from her “journal”
were written on random pages of the little copy-books in which she
composed her stories. In order to appreciate the first of the following
passages fully it should be remembered that it was written immediately
after she had finished _At the Bay_.
Oct. 1921. I wonder why it should be so difficult to be humble.
I do not think I am a good writer; I realise my faults better
than any one else could realise them. I know exactly when I
fail. And yet, when I have finished a story and before I
have begun another, I catch myself _preening_ my feathers.
It is disheartening. There seems to be some bad old pride in
my heart; a root of it that puts out a thick shoot on the
slightest provocation.... This interferes very much with work.
One can’t be calm, clear, good as one must be, while it goes
on. I look at the mountains, I try to pray—and I think of
something _clever_. It’s a kind of excitement within one which
shouldn’t be there. Calm yourself. Clear yourself. And anything
that I write in this mood will be no good; it will be full of
_sediment_. If I were well, I would go off by myself somewhere
and sit under a tree. One must learn, one must practice to
_forget_ oneself. I can’t tell the truth about Aunt Anne unless
I am free to enter into her life without self-consciousness.
Oh, God! I am divided still, I am bad, I fail in my personal
life. I lapse into impatience, temper, vanity, and so I fail as
thy priest. Perhaps poetry will help.
I have just thoroughly cleaned and attended to my fountain pen.
If after this it leaks, then it is _no_ gentleman!
Nov. 13, 1921. It is time I started a new journal. Come my
unseen, my unknown, let us talk together. Yes, for the last
two weeks I have written scarcely anything. I have been
idle; I have _failed_. Why? Many reasons. There has been
a kind of confusion in my consciousness. It has seemed as
though there was no time to write. The mornings, if they are
sunny, are taken up with sun-treatment; the post eats away the
afternoon. And at night I am tired. But it goes deeper. Yes,
you are right. I haven’t felt able to yield to the kind of
contemplation that is necessary. I haven’t felt pure in heart,
not humble, not good. There’s been a stirring up of sediment.
I look at the mountains and I see nothing but mountains. Be
frank! I read rubbish.... Out of hand? Yes, that describes
it. Dissipated, vague, not _positive_, and above all, above
everything, not working as I should be working—wasting time.
Wasting time! The old cry—the first and last cry. Why do ye
tarry? Ah, why indeed? My deepest desire is to be a writer, to
have “a body of work” done—and there the work is, there the
stories wait for me, _grow tired_, wilt, fade, because I will
not come. When first they knock, how eager and fresh they are!
And I hear and I _acknowledge_ them, and still I go on sitting
at the window, playing with the ball of wool. What is to be
done?
I must make another effort at once. I must begin all over
again. I must try and write simply, fully, freely, from my
heart. _Quietly_, caring nothing for success or failure, but
just going on....
But now to resolve! And especially to keep in touch with life.
With the sky, this moon, these stars, these cold candid peaks.
During the following summer at Sierre in Switzerland one could have
believed that Katherine Mansfield had finally accomplished the task of
inward purification she had set herself, and to me it seems that there
is a halcyon clarity and calm diffused through the unfinished stories
written there. But she was still secretly dissatisfied with herself
and her work, and in the autumn, after a brief return to London, she
deliberately decided to risk everything, to abandon the writing that was
dearer than all else to her, in order to achieve that newness of heart
without which her work and her life seemed to her unprofitable. At the
end of October she retired, by herself, to a settlement at Fontainebleau,
where she found what she sought. A few days after she had taken this
final step, she wrote in a letter:—
“No treatment on earth is any good to me really. It’s all
pretence. M. did make me heavier and a trifle stronger. But
that was all, if I really face the facts. The miracle never
came near happening. It couldn’t. And as for my spirit—well as
a result of that life at the Victoria-Palace I stopped being
a writer. I have only written long or short scraps since _The
Fly_. If I had gone on with my old life, I never would have
written again, for I was dying of poverty of life.
I wish, when one writes about things, one didn’t dramatize them
so. I feel awfully happy about all this—And it’s all as simple
as can be....
But in any case I shan’t write any stories for three months,
and I’ll not have a book ready before the spring. It doesn’t
matter....”
And again, in reply to a friend who pleaded with her not to abandon
writing, she wrote, on October 26:—
“As for writing stories and being true to one’s gift—I could
not write them if I were not here, even. I am at an end of my
source for a time. Life has brought me no _flow_. I want to
write, but differently,—far more steadily.”
She believed that she could not express the change that had taken place
in her even in letters, though indeed her letters were radiant with
happiness:
“And yet I realize as I write, all this is no use. An old
personality is trying to get back to the outside and observe,
and it’s not true to the facts at all. What I write seems so
petty. In fact I cannot express myself in writing just now. The
old mechanism isn’t mine any longer and I can’t control the
new. I just have to talk this baby talk.”
“I am not in the mood for books at present,” she wrote finally, shortly
before Christmas, “though I know that in future I shall want to write
them more than anything else. But different books.”
What those “different books” would have been we shall never know. She
was seized by a sudden and fatal haemorrhage on the evening of January
9th. She is buried in the communal cemetery of Avon near Fontainebleau.
On her gravestone are inscribed the words of Shakespeare she chose for
the title-page of “Bliss,” words which had long been cherished by her and
were to prove prophetic:
“But I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we
pluck this flower, safety.”
THE DOLL’S HOUSE
When dear old Mrs. Hay went back to town after staying with the Burnells
she sent the children a doll’s house. It was so big that the carter and
Pat carried it into the courtyard, and there it stayed, propped up on
two wooden boxes beside the feed-room door. No harm could come to it;
it was summer. And perhaps the smell of paint would have gone off by
the time it had to be taken in. For, really, the smell of paint coming
from that doll’s house (“Sweet of old Mrs. Hay, of course; most sweet
and generous!”)—but the smell of paint was quite enough to make any one
seriously ill, in Aunt Beryl’s opinion. Even before the sacking was taken
off. And when it was....
There stood the doll’s house, a dark, oily, spinach green, picked out
with bright yellow. Its two solid little chimneys, glued on to the roof,
were painted red and white, and the door, gleaming with yellow varnish,
was like a little slab of toffee. Four windows, real windows, were
divided into panes by a broad streak of green. There was actually a tiny
porch, too, painted yellow, with big lumps of congealed paint hanging
along the edge.
But perfect, perfect little house! Who could possibly mind the smell? It
was part of the joy, part of the newness.
“Open it quickly, some one!”
The hook at the side was stuck fast. Pat pried it open with his penknife,
and the whole house-front swung back, and—there you were, gazing at one
and the same moment into the drawing-room and dining-room, the kitchen
and two bedrooms. That is the way for a house to open! Why don’t all
houses open like that? How much more exciting than peering through the
slit of a door into a mean little hall with a hatstand and two umbrellas!
That is—isn’t it?—what you long to know about a house when you put your
hand on the knocker. Perhaps it is the way God opens houses at dead of
night when He is taking a quiet turn with an angel....
“O-oh!” The Burnell children sounded as though they were in despair.
It was too marvellous; it was too much for them. They had never seen
anything like it in their lives. All the rooms were papered. There were
pictures on the walls, painted on the paper, with gold frames complete.
Red carpet covered all the floors except the kitchen; red plush chairs
in the drawing-room, green in the dining-room; tables, beds with real
bedclothes, a cradle, a stove, a dresser with tiny plates and one big
jug. But what Kezia liked more than anything, what she liked frightfully,
was the lamp. It stood in the middle of the dining-room table, an
exquisite little amber lamp with a white globe. It was even filled all
ready for lighting, though, of course, you couldn’t light it. But there
was something inside that looked like oil, and that moved when you shook
it.
The father and mother dolls, who sprawled very stiff as though they
had fainted in the drawing-room, and their two little children asleep
upstairs, were really too big for the doll’s house. They didn’t look as
though they belonged. But the lamp was perfect. It seemed to smile at
Kezia, to say, “I live here.” The lamp was real.
The Burnell children could hardly walk to school fast enough the next
morning. They burned to tell everybody, to describe, to—well—to boast
about their doll’s house before the school-bell rang.
“I’m to tell,” said Isabel, “because I’m the eldest. And you two can join
in after. But I’m to tell first.”
There was nothing to answer. Isabel was bossy, but she was always right,
and Lottie and Kezia knew too well the powers that went with being
eldest. They brushed through the thick buttercups at the road edge and
said nothing.
“And I’m to choose who’s to come and see it first. Mother said I might.”
For it had been arranged that while the doll’s house stood in the
courtyard they might ask the girls at school, two at a time, to come and
look. Not to stay to tea, of course, or to come traipsing through the
house. But just to stand quietly in the courtyard while Isabel pointed
out the beauties, and Lottie and Kezia looked pleased....
But hurry as they might, by the time they had reached the tarred palings
of the boys’ playground the bell had begun to jangle. They only just
had time to whip off their hats and fall into line before the roll was
called. Never mind. Isabel tried to make up for it by looking very
important and mysterious and by whispering behind her hand to the girls
near her, “Got something to tell you at playtime.”
Playtime came and Isabel was surrounded. The girls of her class nearly
fought to put their arms round her, to walk away with her, to beam
flatteringly, to be her special friend. She held quite a court under
the huge pine trees at the side of the playground. Nudging, giggling
together, the little girls pressed up close. And the only two who stayed
outside the ring were the two who were always outside, the little
Kelveys. They knew better than to come anywhere near the Burnells.
For the fact was, the school the Burnell children went to was not at
all the kind of place their parents would have chosen if there had been
any choice. But there was none. It was the only school for miles. And
the consequence was all the children in the neighbourhood, the Judge’s
little girls, the doctor’s daughters, the store-keeper’s children, the
milkman’s, were forced to mix together. Not to speak of there being an
equal number of rude, rough little boys as well. But the line had to
be drawn somewhere. It was drawn at the Kelveys. Many of the children,
including the Burnells, were not allowed even to speak to them. They
walked past the Kelveys with their heads in the air, and as they set
the fashion in all matters of behaviour, the Kelveys were shunned by
everybody. Even the teacher had a special voice for them, and a special
smile for the other children when Lil Kelvey came up to her desk with a
bunch of dreadfully common-looking flowers.
They were the daughters of a spry, hardworking little washerwoman, who
went about from house to house by the day. This was awful enough. But
where was Mr. Kelvey? Nobody knew for certain. But everybody said he was
in prison. So they were the daughters of a washerwoman and a gaolbird.
Very nice company for other people’s children! And they looked it.
Why Mrs. Kelvey made them so conspicuous was hard to understand. The
truth was they were dressed in “bits” given to her by the people for
whom she worked. Lil, for instance, who was a stout, plain child, with
big freckles, came to school in a dress made from a green art-serge
table-cloth of the Burnells’, with red plush sleeves from the Logans’
curtains. Her hat, perched on top of her high forehead, was a grown-up
woman’s hat, once the property of Miss Lecky, the postmistress. It was
turned up at the back and trimmed with a large scarlet quill. What a
little guy she looked! It was impossible not to laugh. And her little
sister, our Else, wore a long white dress, rather like a nightgown, and
a pair of little boy’s boots. But whatever our Else wore she would have
looked strange. She was a tiny wishbone of a child, with cropped hair and
enormous solemn eyes—a little white owl. Nobody had ever seen her smile;
she scarcely ever spoke. She went through life holding on to Lil, with
a piece of Lil’s skirt screwed up in her hand. Where Lil went our Else
followed. In the playground, on the road going to and from school, there
was Lil marching in front and our Else holding on behind. Only when she
wanted anything, or when she was out of breath, our Else gave Lil a tug,
a twitch, and Lil stopped and turned round. The Kelveys never failed to
understand each other.
Now they hovered at the edge; you couldn’t stop them listening. When the
little girls turned round and sneered, Lil, as usual, gave her silly,
shamefaced smile, but our Else only looked.
And Isabel’s voice, so very proud, went on telling. The carpet made a
great sensation, but so did the beds with real bedclothes, and the stove
with an oven door.
When she finished Kezia broke in. “You’ve forgotten the lamp, Isabel.”
“Oh, yes,” said Isabel, “and there’s a teeny little lamp, all made of
yellow glass, with a white globe that stands on the dining-room table.
You couldn’t tell it from a real one.”
“The lamp’s best of all,” cried Kezia. She thought Isabel wasn’t making
half enough of the little lamp. But nobody paid any attention. Isabel was
choosing the two who were to come back with them that afternoon and see
it. She chose Emmie Cole and Lena Logan. But when the others knew they
were all to have a chance, they couldn’t be nice enough to Isabel. One by
one they put their arms round Isabel’s waist and walked her off. They had
something to whisper to her, a secret. “Isabel’s _my_ friend.”
Only the little Kelveys moved away forgotten; there was nothing more for
them to hear.
* * * * *
Days passed, and as more children saw the doll’s house, the fame of it
spread. It became the one subject, the rage. The one question was, “Have
you seen Burnells’ doll’s house? Oh, ain’t it lovely!” “Haven’t you seen
it? Oh, I say!”
Even the dinner hour was given up to talking about it. The little girls
sat under the pines eating their thick mutton sandwiches and big slabs
of johnny cake spread with butter. While always, as near as they could
get, sat the Kelveys, our Else holding on to Lil, listening too, while
they chewed their jam sandwiches out of a newspaper soaked with large red
blobs....
“Mother,” said Kezia, “can’t I ask the Kelveys just once?”
“Certainly not, Kezia.”
“But why not?”
“Run away, Kezia; you know quite well why not.”
* * * * *
At last everybody had seen it except them. On that day the subject rather
flagged. It was the dinner hour. The children stood together under the
pine trees, and suddenly, as they looked at the Kelveys eating out of
their paper, always by themselves, always listening, they wanted to be
horrid to them. Emmie Cole started the whisper.
“Lil Kelvey’s going to be a servant when she grows up.”
“O-oh, how awful!” said Isabel Burnell, and she made eyes at Emmie.
Emmie swallowed in a very meaning way and nodded to Isabel as she’d seen
her mother do on those occasions.
“It’s true—it’s true—it’s true,” she said.
Then Lena Logan’s little eyes snapped. “Shall I ask her?” she whispered.
“Bet you don’t,” said Jessie May.
“Pooh, I’m not frightened,” said Lena. Suddenly she gave a little squeal
and danced in front of the other girls. “Watch! Watch me! Watch me now!”
said Lena. And sliding, gliding, dragging one foot, giggling behind her
hand, Lena went over to the Kelveys.
Lil looked up from her dinner. She wrapped the rest quickly away. Our
Else stopped chewing. What was coming now?
“Is it true you’re going to be a servant when you grow up, Lil Kelvey?”
shrilled Lena.
Dead silence. But instead of answering, Lil only gave her silly,
shamefaced smile. She didn’t seem to mind the question at all. What a
sell for Lena! The girls began to titter.
Lena couldn’t stand that. She put her hands on her hips; she shot
forward. “Yah, yer father’s in prison!” she hissed, spitefully.
This was such a marvellous thing to have said that the little girls
rushed away in a body, deeply, deeply excited, wild with joy. Some one
found a long rope, and they began skipping. And never did they skip
so high, run in and out so fast, or do such daring things as on that
morning.
In the afternoon Pat called for the Burnell children with the buggy
and they drove home. There were visitors. Isabel and Lottie, who liked
visitors, went upstairs to change their pinafores. But Kezia thieved out
at the back. Nobody was about; she began to swing on the big white gates
of the courtyard. Presently, looking along the road, she saw two little
dots. They grew bigger, they were coming towards her. Now she could see
that one was in front and one close behind. Now she could see that they
were the Kelveys. Kezia stopped swinging. She slipped off the gate as if
she was going to run away. Then she hesitated. The Kelveys came nearer,
and beside them walked their shadows, very long, stretching right across
the road with their heads in the buttercups. Kezia clambered back on the
gate; she had made up her mind; she swung out.
“Hullo,” she said to the passing Kelveys.
They were so astounded that they stopped. Lil gave her silly smile. Our
Else stared.
“You can come and see our doll’s house if you want to,” said Kezia, and
she dragged one toe on the ground. But at that Lil turned red and shook
her head quickly.
“Why not?” asked Kezia.
Lil gasped, then she said, “Your ma told our ma you wasn’t to speak to
us.”
“Oh, well,” said Kezia. She didn’t know what to reply. “It doesn’t
matter. You can come and see our doll’s house all the same. Come on.
Nobody’s looking.”
But Lil shook her head still harder.
“Don’t you want to?” asked Kezia.
Suddenly there was a twitch, a tug at Lil’s skirt. She turned round. Our
Else was looking at her with big, imploring eyes; she was frowning; she
wanted to go. For a moment Lil looked at our Else very doubtfully. But
then our Else twitched her skirt again. She started forward. Kezia led
the way. Like two little stray cats they followed across the courtyard to
where the doll’s house stood.
“There it is,” said Kezia.
There was a pause. Lil breathed loudly, almost snorted; our Else was
still as a stone.
“I’ll open it for you,” said Kezia kindly. She undid the hook and they
looked inside.
“There’s the drawing-room and the dining-room, and that’s the—”
“Kezia!”
Oh, what a start they gave!
“Kezia!”
It was Aunt Beryl’s voice. They turned round. At the back door stood Aunt
Beryl, staring as if she couldn’t believe what she saw.
“How dare you ask the little Kelveys into the courtyard?” said her cold,
furious voice. “You know as well as I do, you’re not allowed to talk to
them. Run away, children, run away at once. And don’t come back again,”
said Aunt Beryl. And she stepped into the yard and shooed them out as if
they were chickens.
“Off you go immediately!” she called, cold and proud.
They did not need telling twice. Burning with shame, shrinking together,
Lil huddling along like her mother, our Else dazed, somehow they crossed
the big courtyard and squeezed through the white gate.
“Wicked, disobedient little girl!” said Aunt Beryl bitterly to Kezia, and
she slammed the doll’s house to.
The afternoon had been awful. A letter had come from Willie Brent, a
terrifying, threatening letter, saying if she did not meet him that
evening in Pulman’s Bush, he’d come to the front door and ask the reason
why! But now that she had frightened those little rats of Kelveys and
given Kezia a good scolding, her heart felt lighter. That ghastly
pressure was gone. She went back to the house humming.
When the Kelveys were well out of sight of Burnells’, they sat down to
rest on a big red drain-pipe by the side of the road. Lil’s cheeks were
still burning; she took off the hat with the quill and held it on her
knee. Dreamily they looked over the hay paddocks, past the creek, to the
group of wattles where Logan’s cows stood waiting to be milked. What were
their thoughts?
Presently our Else nudged up close to her sister. But now she had
forgotten the cross lady. She put out a finger and stroked her sister’s
quill; she smiled her rare smile.
“I seen the little lamp,” she said, softly.
Then both were silent once more.
HONEYMOON
And when they came out of the lace shop there was their own driver and
the cab they called their own cab waiting for them under a plane tree.
What luck! Wasn’t it luck? Fanny pressed her husband’s arm. These things
seemed always to be happening to them ever since they—came abroad. Didn’t
he think so too? But George stood on the pavement edge, lifted his stick,
and gave a loud “Hi!” Fanny sometimes felt a little uncomfortable about
the way George summoned cabs, but the drivers didn’t seem to mind, so it
must have been all right. Fat, good-natured, and smiling, they stuffed
away the little newspaper they were reading, whipped the cotton cover off
the horse, and were ready to obey.
“I say,” George said as he helped Fanny in, “suppose we go and have tea
at the place where the lobsters grow. Would you like to?”
“Most awfully,” said Fanny, fervently, as she leaned back, wondering why
the way George put things made them sound so very nice.
“R-right, _bien_.” He was beside her. “_Allay_,” he cried gaily, and off
they went.
Off they went, spanking along lightly, under the green and gold shade
of the plane trees, through the small streets that smelled of lemons
and fresh coffee, past the fountain square where women, with water-pots
lifted, stopped talking to gaze after them, round the corner past the
café, with its pink and white umbrellas, green tables, and blue siphons,
and so to the sea front. There a wind, light, warm, came flowing over
the boundless sea. It touched George, and Fanny it seemed to linger over
while they gazed at the dazzling water. And George said, “Jolly, isn’t
it?” And Fanny, looking dreamy, said, as she said at least twenty times a
day since they—came abroad: “Isn’t it extraordinary to think that here we
are quite alone, away from everybody, with nobody to tell us to go home,
or to—to order us about except ourselves?”
George had long since given up answering “Extraordinary!” As a rule he
merely kissed her. But now he caught hold of her hand, stuffed it into
his pocket, pressed her fingers, and said, “I used to keep a white mouse
in my pocket when I was a kid.”
“Did you?” said Fanny, who was intensely interested in everything George
had ever done. “Were you very fond of white mice?”
“Fairly,” said George, without conviction. He was looking at something,
bobbing out there beyond the bathing steps. Suddenly he almost jumped in
his seat. “Fanny!” he cried. “There’s a chap out there bathing. Do you
see? I’d no idea people had begun. I’ve been missing it all these days.”
George glared at the reddened face, the reddened arm, as though he could
not look away. “At any rate,” he muttered, “wild horses won’t keep me
from going in to-morrow.”
Fanny’s heart sank. She had heard for years of the frightful dangers of
the Mediterranean. It was an absolute death-trap. Beautiful, treacherous
Mediterranean. There it lay curled before them, its white, silky paws
touching the stones and gone again.... But she’d made up her mind long
before she was married that never would she be the kind of woman who
interfered with her husband’s pleasures, so all she said was, airily, “I
suppose one has to be very up in the currents, doesn’t one?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said George. “People talk an awful lot of rot about
the danger.”
But now they were passing a high wall on the land side, covered with
flowering heliotrope, and Fanny’s little nose lifted. “Oh, George,” she
breathed. “The smell! The most divine....”
“Topping villa,” said George. “Look, you can see it through the palms.”
“Isn’t it rather large?” said Fanny, who somehow could not look at any
villa except as a possible habitation for herself and George.
“Well, you’d need a crowd of people if you stayed there long,” replied
George. “Deadly, otherwise. I say, it is ripping. I wonder who it belongs
to.” And he prodded the driver in the back.
The lazy, smiling driver, who had no idea, replied, as he always did on
these occasions, that it was the property of a wealthy Spanish family.
“Masses of Spaniards on this coast,” commented George, leaning back
again, and they were silent until, as they rounded a bend, the big,
bone-white hotel-restaurant came into view. Before it there was a small
terrace built up against the sea, planted with umbrella palms, set out
with tables, and at their approach, from the terrace, from the hotel,
waiters came running to receive, to welcome, Fanny and George, to cut
them off from any possible kind of escape.
“Outside?”
Oh, but of course they would sit outside. The sleek manager, who was
marvellously like a fish in a frock coat, skimmed forward.
“Dis way, sir. Dis way, sir. I have a very nice little table,” he gasped.
“Just the little table for you, sir, over in de corner. Dis way.”
So George, looking most dreadfully bored, and Fanny, trying to look as
though she’d spent years of life threading her way through strangers,
followed after.
“Here you are, sir. Here you will be very nice,” coaxed the manager,
taking the vase off the table, and putting it down again as if it
were a fresh little bouquet out of the air. But George refused to sit
down immediately. He saw through these fellows; he wasn’t going to be
done. These chaps were always out to rush you. So he put his hands in
his pockets, and said to Fanny, very calmly, “This all right for you?
Anywhere else you’d prefer? How about over there?” And he nodded to a
table right over the other side.
What it was to be a man of the world! Fanny admired him deeply, but all
she wanted to do was to sit down and look like everybody else.
“I—I like this,” said she.
“Right,” said George, hastily, and he sat down almost before Fanny, and
said quickly, “Tea for two and chocolate éclairs.”
“Very good, sir,” said the manager, and his mouth opened and shut as
though he was ready for another dive under the water. “You will not ’ave
toasts to start with? We ’ave very nice toasts, sir.”
“No,” said George, shortly. “You don’t want toast, do you, Fanny?”
“Oh, no, thank you, George,” said Fanny, praying the manager would go.
“Or perhaps de lady might like to look at de live lobsters in de tank
while de tea is coming?” And he grimaced and smirked and flicked his
serviette like a fin.
George’s face grew stony. He said “No” again, and Fanny bent over the
table, unbuttoning her gloves. When she looked up the man was gone.
George took off his hat, tossed it on to a chair, and pressed back his
hair.
“Thank God,” said he, “that’s chap’s gone. These foreign fellows bore me
stiff. The only way to get rid of them is simply to shut up as you saw
I did. Thank Heaven!” sighed George again, with so much emotion that if
it hadn’t been ridiculous Fanny might have imagined that he had been as
frightened of the manager as she. As it was she felt a rush of love for
George. His hands were on the table, brown, large hands that she knew so
well. She longed to take one of them and squeeze it hard. But, to her
astonishment, George did just that thing, leaning across the table, put
his hand over hers, and said, without looking at her, “Fanny, darling
Fanny.”
“Oh, George!” It was in that heavenly moment that Fanny heard a
_twing-twing-tootle-tootle_, and a light strumming. There’s going to
be music, she thought, but the music didn’t matter just then. Nothing
mattered except love. Faintly smiling she gazed into that faintly smiling
face, and the feeling was so blissful that she felt inclined to say
to George, “Let us stay here—where we are—at this little table. It’s
perfect, and the sea is perfect. Let us stay.” But instead her eyes grew
serious.
“Darling,” said Fanny. “I want to ask you something fearfully important.
Promise me you’ll answer. Promise.”
“I promise,” said George, too solemn to be quite as serious as she.
“It’s this.” Fanny paused a moment, looked down, looked up again. “Do
you feel,” she said, softly, “that you really know me now? But really,
really know _me_?”
It was too much for George. Know his Fanny? He gave a broad, childish
grin. “I should jolly well think I do,” he said, emphatically. “Why,
what’s up?”
Fanny felt he hadn’t quite understood. She went on quickly: “What I mean
is this. So often people, even when they love each other, don’t seem
to—to—it’s so hard to say—know each other perfectly. They don’t seem to
want to. And I think that’s awful. They misunderstand each other about
the most important things of all.” Fanny looked horrified. “George, we
couldn’t do that, could we? We never could.”
“Couldn’t be done,” laughed George, and he was just going to tell her how
much he liked her little nose, when the waiter arrived with the tea and
the band struck up. It was a flute, a guitar, and a violin, and it played
so gaily that Fanny felt if she wasn’t careful even the cups and saucers
might grow little wings and fly away. George absorbed three chocolate
éclairs, Fanny two. The funny-tasting tea—“Lobster in the kettle,”
shouted George above the music—was nice all the same, and when the tray
was pushed aside and George was smoking, Fanny felt bold enough to look
at the other people. But it was the band grouped under one of the dark
trees that fascinated her most. The fat man stroking the guitar was like
a picture. The dark man playing the flute kept raising his eyebrows as
though he was astonished at the sounds that came from it. The fiddler was
in shadow.
The music stopped as suddenly as it had begun. It was then she noticed a
tall old man with white hair standing beside the musicians. Strange she
hadn’t noticed him before. He wore a very high, glazed collar, a coat
green at the seams, and shamefully shabby button boots. Was he another
manager? He did not look like a manager, and yet he stood there gazing
over the table as though thinking of something different and far away
from all this. Who could he be?
Presently, as Fanny watched him, he touched the points of his collar with
his fingers, coughed slightly, and half-turned to the band. It began
to play again. Something boisterous, reckless, full of fire, full of
passion, was tossed into the air, was tossed to that quiet figure, which
clasped its hands, and still with that far-away look, began to sing.
“Good Lord!” said George. It seemed that everybody was equally
astonished. Even the little children eating ices stared, with their
spoons in the air.... Nothing was heard except a thin, faint voice, the
memory of a voice, singing something in Spanish. It wavered, beat on,
touched the high notes, fell again, seemed to implore, to entreat, to beg
for something, and then the tune changed, and it was resigned, it bowed
down, it knew it was denied.
Almost before the end a little child gave a squeak of laughter, but
everybody was smiling—except Fanny and George. Is life like this too?
thought Fanny. There are people like this. There is suffering. And she
looked at that gorgeous sea, lapping the land as though it loved it, and
the sky, bright with the brightness before evening. Had she and George
the right to be so happy? Wasn’t it cruel? There must be something else
in life which made all these things possible. What was it? She turned to
George.
But George had been feeling differently from Fanny. The poor old boy’s
voice was funny in a way, but, God, how it made you realize what a
terrific thing it was to be at the beginning of everything, as they were,
he and Fanny! George, too, gazed at the bright, breathing water, and his
lips opened as if he could drink it. How fine it was! There was nothing
like the sea for making a chap feel fit. And there sat Fanny, his Fanny,
leaning forward, breathing so gently.
“Fanny!” George called to her.
As she turned to him something in her soft, wondering look made George
feel that for two pins he would jump over the table and carry her off.
“I say,” said George, rapidly, “let’s go, shall we? Let’s go back to the
hotel. Come. Do, Fanny darling. Let’s go now.”
The band began to play. “Oh, God!” almost groaned George. “Let’s go
before the old codger begins squawking again.”
And a moment later they were gone.
A CUP OF TEA
Rosemary Fell was not exactly beautiful. No, you couldn’t have called
her beautiful. Pretty? Well, if you took her to pieces.... But why be so
cruel as to take anyone to pieces? She was young, brilliant, extremely
modern, exquisitely well dressed, amazingly well read in the newest of
the new books, and her parties were the most delicious mixture of the
really important people and ... artists—quaint creatures, discoveries of
hers, some of them too terrifying for words, but others quite presentable
and amusing.
Rosemary had been married two years. She had a duck of a boy. No, not
Peter—Michael. And her husband absolutely adored her. They were rich,
really rich, not just comfortably well off, which is odious and stuffy
and sounds like one’s grandparents. But if Rosemary wanted to shop she
would go to Paris as you and I would go to Bond Street. If she wanted to
buy flowers, the car pulled up at that perfect shop in Regent Street,
and Rosemary inside the shop just gazed in her dazzled, rather exotic
way, and said: “I want those and those and those. Give me four bunches
of those. And that jar of roses. Yes, I’ll have all the roses in the
jar. No, no lilac. I hate lilac. It’s got no shape.” The attendant bowed
and put the lilac out of sight, as though this was only too true; lilac
was dreadfully shapeless. “Give me those stumpy little tulips. Those
red and white ones.” And she was followed to the car by a thin shopgirl
staggering under an immense white paper armful that looked like a baby in
long clothes....
One winter afternoon she had been buying something in a little antique
shop in Curzon Street. It was a shop she liked. For one thing, one
usually had it to oneself. And then the man who kept it was ridiculously
fond of serving her. He beamed whenever she came in. He clasped his
hands; he was so gratified he could scarcely speak. Flattery, of course.
All the same, there was something....