Chapter II: Part 2

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

Pat trailed the whip over the mare’s back and he coaxed her: “Goop now. Goop now.”

It wanted a few minutes to sunset. Everything stood motionless bathed in bright, metallic light and from the paddocks on either side there streamed the milky scent of ripe grass. The iron gates were open. They dashed through and up the drive and round the island, stopping at the exact middle of the verandah.

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

“Very well indeed, Pat,” said Stanley.

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

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

“Yes, I’m home again. Is everything all right?”

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

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

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

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” said she. “Wait a moment. Let me put down these silly things,” and she put the bottle of oysters and the pine on a little carved chair. “What have you got in your button-hole—cherries?” She took them out and hung them over his ear.

“Don’t do that, darling. They are for you.”

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

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

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

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

“We are, Stanley. We are very snug,” said Mrs. Fairfield, cutting Kezia’s bread into fingers.

“Like it better than town—eh, children?” asked Burnell.

“Oh, yes,” said the three little girls, and Isabel added as an after-thought: “Thank you very much indeed, father dear.”

“Come upstairs,” said Linda. “I’ll bring your slippers.”

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

“I’ve got some, darling. I’ll light the candles.”

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

“I’m so confoundedly happy,” he said.

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

“I don’t know what has come over me,” he protested.

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

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

In the dining-room, by the flicker of a wood fire, Beryl sat on a hassock playing the guitar. She had bathed and changed all her clothes. Now she wore a white muslin dress with black spots on it and in her hair she had pinned a black silk rose.

Nature has gone to her rest, love,
See, we are alone.
Give me your hand to press, love,
Lightly within my own.

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

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

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

Even the moon is aweary . . .

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

“Please, Miss Beryl, I’ve got to come and lay.”

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

“Well, I have had a job with that oving,” said she. “I can’t get nothing to brown.”

“Really!” said Beryl.

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

“Why must you suffer so?” said the face in the mirror. “You were not made for suffering. . . . Smile!”

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

8

“Good morning, Mrs. Jones.”

“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Smith. I’m so glad to see you. Have you brought your children?”

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

“Oh, he is very well, thank you. At least he had a nawful cold but Queen Victoria—she’s my godmother, you know—sent him a case of pineapples and that cured it im—mediately. Is that your new servant?”

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

“Good morning, Mrs. Smith. Dinner won’t be ready for about ten minutes.”

“I don’t think you ought to introduce me to the servant. I think I ought to just begin talking to her.”

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

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

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

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

But someone called from the front of the house and the luncheon party melted away, leaving the charming table, leaving the rissoles and the poached eggs to the ants and to an old snail who pushed his quivering horns over the edge of the garden seat and began to nibble a geranium plate.

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

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

“It’s because he is such a grand fighting dog,” Pip would say. “All fighting dogs smell.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Nearly,” said Rags faintly.

“Stand on your head on the verandah. That’s quite flat,” said Kezia.

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

“Oh, do let’s play something,” said Kezia.

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

Lottie didn’t want to play that, because last time Pip had squeezed something down her throat and it hurt awfully.

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

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

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

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

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

“Whatever is that for?” asked Lottie.

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

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

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

9

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

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

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

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

“Is it a real duck’s head? One from the paddock?”

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

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

“Do you think we ought to go?” whispered Isabel. “We haven’t asked or anything. Have we?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Lid. Lid—lid—lid—lid——” he called.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the children saw the blood they were frightened no longer. They crowded round him and began to scream. Even Isabel leaped about crying: “The blood! The blood!” Pip forgot all about his duck. He simply threw it away from him and shouted, “I saw it. I saw it,” and jumped round the wood block.

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

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

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

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

“It’s like a little engine. It’s like a funny little railway engine,” squealed Isabel.

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

“Put head back! Put head back!” she screamed.

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

“It’s stopped. It’s tumbled over. It’s dead,” said Pip.

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

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

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

But Pip got very cross: “Bah! You baby.” He whistled to Snooker and went off.

When Isabel went up to Lottie, Lottie snatched away.

“What are you always touching me for, Isabel?”

“There now,” said Pat to Kezia. “There’s the grand little girl.”

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

“Do they come on and off?” she asked huskily.

10

Up in the house, in the warm tidy kitchen, Alice, the servant girl, was getting the afternoon tea. She was “dressed.” She had on a black stuff dress that smelt under the arms, a white apron like a large sheet of paper, and a lace bow pinned on to her hair with two jetty pins. Also her comfortable carpet slippers were changed for a pair of black leather ones that pinched her corn on her little toe something dreadful. . . .

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

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

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

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

“Spiders. To dream of spiders creeping over you is good. Signifies large sum of money in near future. Should party be in family way an easy confinement may be expected. But care should be taken in sixth month to avoid eating of probable present of shell fish. . . .”

How many thousand birds I see.

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

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

“Oh, Alice,” said Miss Beryl. “There’s one extra to tea, so heat a plate of yesterday’s scones, please. And put on the Victoria sandwich as well as the coffee cake. And don’t forget to put little doyleys under the plates—will you? You did yesterday, you know, and the tea looked so ugly and common. And, Alice, don’t put that dreadful old pink and green cosy on the afternoon teapot again. That is only for the mornings. Really, I think it ought to be kept for the kitchen—it’s so shabby, and quite smelly. Put on the Japanese one. You quite understand, don’t you?”

Miss Beryl had finished.

That sing aloud from every tree . . .

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

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

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

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

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

11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How remote they looked, those two, from where Linda sat and rocked. The green table, the polished cards, Stanley’s big hands and Beryl’s tiny ones, all seemed to be part of one mysterious movement. Stanley himself, big and solid, in his dark suit, took his ease, and Beryl tossed her bright head and pouted. Round her throat she wore an unfamiliar velvet ribbon. It changed her, somehow—altered the shape of her face—but it was charming, Linda decided. The room smelled of lilies; there were two big jars of arums in the fire-place.

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

“I’ve nothing but two pairs,” said Beryl, exaggerating her woe because she knew how he loved winning.

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

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

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

“What a shame,” said she, picking up the pansies. “Just as they had a chance to fly into each other’s arms.”

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

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

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

“Fly away before it is too late. Fly out again.”

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

“I’ve two kings,” said Stanley. “Any good?”

“Quite good,” said Beryl.

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

“No, nothing. I’m going to find mother.”

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

The moon that Lottie and Kezia had seen from the storeman’s wagon was full, and the house, the garden, the old woman and Linda—all were bathed in dazzling light.

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

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

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

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

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

“I believe those are buds,” said she. “Let us go down into the garden, mother. I like that aloe. I like it more than anything here. And I am sure I shall remember it long after I’ve forgotten all the other things.”

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

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

“Not even my Newfoundland dog,” thought she, “that I’m so fond of in the daytime.”

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

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

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

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

“Stanley, would you light a candle?”

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

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

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

“What am I guarding myself for so preciously? I shall go on having children and Stanley will go on making money and the children and the gardens will grow bigger and bigger, with whole fleets of aloes in them for me to choose from.”

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

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

“What have you been thinking about?” said Linda. “Tell me.”

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

12

“MY DARLING NAN,

Don’t think me a piggy wig because I haven’t written before. I haven’t had a moment, dear, and even now I feel so exhausted that I can hardly hold a pen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What rot. What nonsense. It wasn’t her nature at all. Good heavens, if she had ever been her real self with Nan Pym, Nannie would have jumped out of the window with surprise. . . . My dear, you know that white satin of mine. . . . Beryl slammed the letter-case to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lovely, lovely hair. And such a mass of it. It had the colour of fresh fallen leaves, brown and red with a glint of yellow. When she did it in a long plait she felt it on her backbone like a long snake. She loved to feel the weight of it dragging her head back, and she loved to feel it loose, covering her bare arms. “Yes, my dear, there is no doubt about it, you really are a lovely little thing.”

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

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

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

“Oh,” she cried, “I am so miserable—so frightfully miserable. I know that I’m silly and spiteful and vain; I’m always acting a part. I’m never my real self for a moment.” And plainly, plainly, she saw her false self running up and down the stairs, laughing a special trilling laugh if they had visitors, standing under the lamp if a man came to dinner, so that he should see the light on her hair, pouting and pretending to be a little girl when she was asked to play the guitar. Why? She even kept it up for Stanley’s benefit. Only last night when he was reading the paper her false self had stood beside him and leaned against his shoulder on purpose. Hadn’t she put her hand over his, pointing out something so that he should see how white her hand was beside his brown one.

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

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

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

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

Kezia crossed too, and unscrewed a little pot of cream and sniffed it. Under her arm she carried a very dirty calico cat.

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

“Now look at yourself,” said she sternly.

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

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

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

Je ne Parle pas Français

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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