Bliss, and other stories
the roof and dive in by another door; to hang out of the window and
look for the hotel through the wrong end of a broken telescope, which
was also a peculiarly ear-splitting trumpet.
I watched myself do all this, you understand, and even managed to
applaud in a private way by putting my gloved hands gently together,
while I said to Mouse: “And is this your first visit to Paris?”
“Yes, I’ve not been here before.”
“Ah, then you have a great deal to see.”
And I was just going to touch lightly upon the objects of interest and
the museums when we wrenched to a stop.
Do you know—it’s very absurd—but as I pushed open the door for them and
followed up the stairs to the bureau on the landing I felt somehow that
this hotel was mine.
There was a vase of flowers on the window sill of the bureau and I even
went so far as to re-arrange a bud or two and to stand off and note the
effect while the manageress welcomed them. And when she turned to me
and handed me the keys (the _garçon_ was hauling up the boxes) and
said: “Monsieur Duquette will show you your rooms”—I had a longing to
tap Dick on the arm with a key and say, very confidentially: “Look
here, old chap. As a friend of mine I’ll be only too willing to make a
slight reduction . . .”
Up and up we climbed. Round and round. Past an occasional pair of boots
(why is it one never sees an attractive pair of boots outside a door?).
Higher and higher.
“I’m afraid they’re rather high up,” I murmured idiotically. “But I
chose them because . . .”
They so obviously did not care why I chose them that I went no further.
They accepted everything. They did not expect anything to be different.
This was just part of what they were going through—that was how I
analysed it.
“Arrived at last.” I ran from one side of the passage to the other,
turning on the lights, explaining.
“This one I thought for you, Dick. The other is larger and it has a
little dressing-room in the alcove.”
My “proprietary” eye noted the clean towels and covers, and the bed
linen embroidered in red cotton. I thought them rather charming rooms,
sloping, full of angles, just the sort of rooms one would expect to
find if one had not been to Paris before.
Dick dashed his hat down on the bed.
“Oughtn’t I to help that chap with the boxes?” he asked—nobody.
“Yes, you ought,” replied Mouse, “they’re dreadfully heavy.”
And she turned to me with the first glimmer of a smile: “Books, you
know.” Oh, he darted such a strange look at her before he rushed out.
And he not only helped, he must have torn the box off the _garçon’s_
back, for he staggered back, carrying one, dumped it down and then
fetched in the other.
“That’s yours, Dick,” said she.
“Well, you don’t mind it standing here for the present, do you?” he
asked, breathless, breathing hard (the box must have been tremendously
heavy). He pulled out a handful of money. “I suppose I ought to pay
this chap.”
The _garçon_, standing by, seemed to think so too.
“And will you require anything further, Monsieur?”
“No! No!” said Dick impatiently.
But at that Mouse stepped forward. She said, too deliberately, not
looking at Dick, with her quaint clipped English accent: “Yes, I’d like
some tea. Tea for three.”
And suddenly she raised her muff as though her hands were clasped
inside it, and she was telling the pale, sweaty _garçon_ by that action
that she was at the end of her resources, that she cried out to him to
save her with “Tea. Immediately!”
This seemed to me so amazingly in the picture, so exactly the gesture
and cry that one would expect (though I couldn’t have imagined it) to
be wrung out of an Englishwoman faced with a great crisis, that I was
almost tempted to hold up my hand and protest.
“No! No! Enough. Enough. Let us leave off there. At the word—tea. For
really, really, you’ve filled your greediest subscriber so full that he
will burst if he has to swallow another word.”
It even pulled Dick up. Like someone who has been unconscious for a
long long time he turned slowly to Mouse and slowly looked at her with
his tired, haggard eyes, and murmured with the echo of his dreamy
voice: “Yes. That’s a good idea.” And then: “You must be tired, Mouse.
Sit down.”
She sat down in a chair with lace tabs on the arms; he leaned against
the bed, and I established myself on a straight-backed chair, crossed
my legs and brushed some imaginary dust off the knees of my trousers.
(The Parisian at his ease.)
There came a tiny pause. Then he said: “Won’t you take off your coat.
Mouse?”
“No, thanks. Not just now.”
Were they going to ask me? Or should I hold up my hand and call out in
a baby voice: “It’s my turn to be asked.”
No, I shouldn’t. They didn’t ask me.
The pause became a silence. A real silence.
“. . . Come, my Parisian fox-terrier! Amuse these sad English! It’s no
wonder they are such a nation for dogs.”
But, after all—why should I? It was not my “job,” as they would say.
Nevertheless, I made a vivacious little bound at Mouse.
“What a pity it is that you did not arrive by daylight. There is such a
charming view from these two windows. You know, the hotel is on a
corner and each window looks down an immensely long, straight street.”
“Yes,” said she.
“Not that that sounds very charming,” I laughed. “But there is so much
animation—so many absurd little boys on bicycles and people hanging out
of windows and—oh, well, you’ll see for yourself in the morning. . . .
Very amusing. Very animated.”
“Oh, yes,” said she.
If the pale, sweaty _garçon_ had not come in at that moment, carrying
the tea-tray high on one hand as if the cups were cannon-balls and he a
heavy weight lifter on the cinema. . . .
He managed to lower it on to a round table.
“Bring the table over here,” said Mouse. The waiter seemed to be the
only person she cared to speak to. She took her hands out of her muff,
drew off her gloves and flung back the old-fashioned cape.
“Do you take milk and sugar?”
“No milk, thank you, and no sugar.”
I went over for mine like a little gentleman. She poured out another
cup.
“That’s for Dick.”
And the faithful fox-terrier carried it across to him and laid it at
his feet, as it were.
“Oh, thanks,” said Dick.
And then I went back to my chair and she sank back in hers.
But Dick was off again. He stared wildly at the cup of tea for a
moment, glanced round him, put it down on the bed-table, caught up his
hat and stammered at full gallop: “Oh, by the way, do you mind posting
a letter for me? I want to get it off by to-night’s post. I must. It’s
very urgent. . . .” Feeling her eyes on him, he flung: “It’s to my
mother.” To me: “I won’t be long. I’ve got everything I want. But it
must go off to-night You don’t mind? It . . . it won’t take any time.”
“Of course I’ll post it. Delighted.”
“Won’t you drink your tea first?” suggested Mouse softly.
. . . Tea? Tea? Yes, of course. Tea. . . . A cup of tea on the
bed-table. . . . In his racing dream he flashed the brightest, most
charming smile at his little hostess.
“No, thanks. Not just now.”
And still hoping it would not be any trouble to me he went out of the
room and closed the door, and we heard him cross the passage.
I scalded myself with mine in my hurry to take the cup back to the
table and to say as I stood there: “You must forgive me if I am
impertinent . . . if I am too frank. But Dick hasn’t tried to disguise
it—has he? There is something the matter. Can I help?”
(Soft music. Mouse gets up, walks the stage for a moment or so before
she returns to her chair and pours him out, oh, such a brimming, such a
burning cup that the tears come into the friend’s eyes while he
sips—while he drains it to the bitter dregs. . . .)
I had time to do all this before she replied. First she looked in the
teapot, filled it with hot water, and stirred it with a spoon.
“Yes, there is something the matter. No, I’m afraid you can’t help,
thank you.” Again I got that glimmer of a smile. “I’m awfully sorry. It
must be horrid for you.”
Horrid, indeed! Ah, why couldn’t I tell her that it was months and
months since I had been so entertained?
“But you are suffering,” I ventured softly, as though that was what I
could not bear to see.
She didn’t deny it. She nodded and bit her under-lip and I thought I
saw her chin tremble.
“And there is really nothing I can do?” More softly still.
She shook her head, pushed back the table and jumped up.
“Oh, it will be all right soon,” she breathed, walking over to the
dressing-table and standing with her back towards me. “It will be all
right. It can’t go on like this.”
“But of course it can’t.” I agreed, wondering whether it would look
heartless if I lit a cigarette; I had a sudden longing to smoke.
In some way she saw my hand move to my breast pocket, half draw out my
cigarette case and put it back again, for the next thing she said was:
“Matches . . . in . . . candlestick. I noticed them.”
And I heard from her voice that she was crying.
“Ah! thank you. Yes. Yes. I’ve found them.” I lighted my cigarette and
walked up and down, smoking.
It was so quiet it might have been two o’clock in the morning. It was
so quiet you heard the boards creak and pop as one does in a house in
the country. I smoked the whole cigarette and stabbed the end into my
saucer before Mouse turned round and came back to the table.
“Isn’t Dick being rather a long time?”
“You are very tired. I expect you want to go to bed,” I said kindly.
(And pray don’t mind me if you do, said my mind.)
“But isn’t he being a very long time?” she insisted.
I shrugged. “He is, rather.”
Then I saw she looked at me strangely. She was listening.
“He’s been gone ages,” she said, and she went with little light steps
to the door, opened it, and crossed the passage into his room.
I waited. I listened too, now. I couldn’t have borne to miss a word.
She had left the door open. I stole across the room and looked after
her. Dick’s door was open, too. But—there wasn’t a word to miss.
You know I had the mad idea that they were kissing in that quiet room—a
long comfortable kiss. One of those kisses that not only puts one’s
grief to bed, but nurses it and warms it and tucks it up and keeps it
fast enfolded until it is sleeping sound. Ah! how good that is.
It was over at last. I heard some one move and tip-toed away.
It was Mouse. She came back. She felt her way into the room carrying
the letter for me. But it wasn’t in an envelope; it was just a sheet of
paper and she held it by the corner as though it was still wet.
Her head was bent so low—so tucked in her furry collar that I hadn’t a
notion—until she let the paper fall and almost fell herself on to the
floor by the side of the bed, leaned her cheek against it, flung out
her hands as though the last of her poor little weapons was gone and
now she let herself be carried away, washed out into the deep water.
Flash! went my mind. Dick has shot himself, and then a succession of
flashes while I rushed in, saw the body, head unharmed, small blue hole
over temple, roused hotel, arranged funeral, attended funeral, closed
cab, new morning coat. . . .
I stooped down and picked up the paper and would you believe it—so
ingrained is my Parisian sense of _comme il faut_—I murmured “pardon”
before I read it.
“MOUSE, MY LITTLE MOUSE,
It’s no good. It’s impossible. I can’t see it through. Oh, I do love
you. I do love you. Mouse, but I can’t hurt her. People have been
hurting her all her life. I simply dare not give her this final blow.
You see, though she’s stronger than both of us, she’s so frail and
proud. It would kill her—kill her, Mouse. And, oh God, I can’t kill my
mother! Not even for you. Not even for us. You do see that—don’t you.