Bliss, and other stories
It all seemed so possible when we talked and planned, but the very
moment the train started it was all over. I felt her drag me back to
her—calling. I can hear her now as I write. And she’s alone and she
doesn’t know. A man would have to be a devil to tell her and I’m not a
devil, Mouse. She mustn’t know. Oh, Mouse, somewhere, somewhere in you
don’t you agree? It’s all so unspeakably awful that I don’t know if I
want to go or not. Do I? Or is Mother just dragging me? I don’t know.
My head is too tired. Mouse, Mouse—what will you do? But I can’t think
of that, either. I dare not. I’d break down. And I must not break down.
All I’ve got to do is—just to tell you this and go. I couldn’t have
gone off without telling you. You’d have been frightened. And you must
not be frightened. You won’t—will you? I can’t bear—but no more of
that. And don’t write. I should not have the courage to answer your
letters and the sight of your spidery handwriting——
Forgive me. Don’t love me any more. Yes. Love me. Love me. Dick.”
What do you think of that? Wasn’t that a rare find? My relief at his
not having shot himself was mixed with a wonderful sense of elation. I
was even—more than even with my “that’s very curious and interesting”
Englishman. . . .
She wept so strangely. With her eyes shut, with her face quite calm
except for the quivering eyelids. The tears pearled down her cheeks and
she let them fall.
But feeling my glance upon her she opened her eyes and saw me holding
the letter.
“You’ve read it?”
Her voice was quite calm, but it was not her voice any more. It was
like the voice you might imagine coming out of a tiny, cold sea-shell
swept high and dry at last by the salt tide. . . .
I nodded, quite overcome, you understand, and laid the letter down.
“It’s incredible! incredible!” I whispered.
At that she got up from the floor, walked over to the wash-stand,
dipped her handkerchief into the jug and sponged her eyes, saying: “Oh,
no. It’s not incredible at all.” And still pressing the wet ball to her
eyes she came back to me, to her chair with the lace tabs, and sank
into it.
“I knew all along, of course,” said the cold, salty little voice. “From
the very moment that we started. I felt it all through me, but I still
went on hoping—” and here she took the handkerchief down and gave me a
final glimmer—“as one so stupidly does, you know.”
“As one does.”
Silence.
“But what will you do? You’ll go back? You’ll see him?”
That made her sit right up and stare across at me.
“What an extraordinary idea!” she said, more coldly than ever. “Of
course I shall not dream of seeing him. As for going back—that is quite
out of the question. I can’t go back.”
“But . . .”
“It’s impossible. For one thing all my friends think I am married.”
I put out my hand—“Ah, my poor little friend.”
But she shrank away. (False move.)
Of course there was one question that had been at the back of my mind
all this time. I hated it.
“Have you any money?”
“Yes, I have twenty pounds—here,” and she put her hand on her breast. I
bowed. It was great deal more than I had expected.
“And what are your plans?”
Yes, I know. My question was the most clumsy, the most idiotic one I
could have put. She had been so tame, so confiding, letting me, at any
rate spiritually speaking, hold her tiny quivering body in one hand and
stroke her furry head—and now, I’d thrown her away. Oh, I could have
kicked myself.
She stood up. “I have no plans. But—it’s very late. You must go now,
please.”
How could I get her back? I wanted her back. I swear I was not acting
then.
“Do feel that I am your friend,” I cried. “You will let me come
to-morrow, early? You will let me look after you a little—take care of
you a little? You’ll use me just as you think fit?”
I succeeded. She came out of her hole . . . timid . . . but she came
out.
“Yes, you’re very kind. Yes. Do come to-morrow. I shall be glad. It
makes things rather difficult because—” and again I clasped her boyish
hand—“_je ne parle pas français._”
Not until I was half-way down the boulevard did it come over me—the
full force of it.
Why, they were suffering . . . those two . . . really suffering. I have
seen two people suffer as I don’t suppose I ever shall again. . . .
Of course you know what to expect. You anticipate, fully, what I am
going to write. It wouldn’t be me, otherwise.
I never went near the place again.
Yes, I still owe that considerable amount for lunches and dinners, but
that’s beside the mark. It’s vulgar to mention it in the same breath
with the fact that I never saw Mouse again.
Naturally, I intended to. Started out—got to the door—wrote and tore up
letters—did all those things. But I simply could not make the final
effort.
Even now I don’t fully understand why. Of course I knew that I couldn’t
have kept it up. That had a great deal to do with it. But you would
have thought, putting it at its lowest, curiosity couldn’t have kept my
fox-terrier nose away . . .
_Je ne parle pas français._ That was her swan song for me.
But how she makes me break my rule. Oh, you’ve seen for yourself, but I
could give you countless examples.
. . . Evenings, when I sit in some gloomy café, and an automatic piano
starts playing a “mouse” tune (there are dozens of tunes that evoke
just her) I begin to dream things like . . .
A little house on the edge of the sea, somewhere far, far away. A girl
outside in a frock rather like Red Indian women wear, hailing a light,
barefoot boy who runs up from the beach.
“What have you got?”
“A fish.” I smile and give it to her.
. . . The same girl, the same boy, different costumes—sitting at an
open window, eating fruit and leaning out and laughing.
“All the wild strawberries are for you, Mouse. I won’t touch one.”
. . . A wet night. They are going home together under an umbrella. They
stop on the door to press their wet cheeks together.
And so on and so on until some dirty old gallant comes up to my table
and sits opposite and begins to grimace and yap. Until I hear myself
saying: “But I’ve got the little girl for you, _mon vieux._ So little .
. . so tiny.” I kiss the tips of my fingers and lay them upon my heart.
“I give you my word of honour as a gentleman, a writer, serious, young,
and extremely interested in modern English literature.”
I must go. I must go. I reach down my coat and hat. Madame knows me.
“You haven’t dined yet?” she smiles.
“No, not yet, Madame.”
Bliss
Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when
she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the
pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it
again, or to stand still and laugh at—nothing—at nothing, simply.
What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own
street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss—absolute
bliss!—as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late
afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower
of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe? . . .
Oh, is there no way you can express it without being “drunk and
disorderly”? How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you
have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?
“No, that about the fiddle is not quite what I mean,” she thought,
running up the steps and feeling in her bag for the key—she’d forgotten
it, as usual—and rattling the letter-box. “It’s not what I mean,
because—— Thank you, Mary”—she went into the hall. “Is nurse back?”
“Yes, M’m.”
“And has the fruit come?”
“Yes, M’m. Everything’s come.”
“Bring the fruit up to the dining-room, will you? I’ll arrange it
before I go upstairs.”
It was dusky in the dining-room and quite chilly. But all the same
Bertha threw off her coat; she could not bear the tight clasp of it
another moment, and the cold air fell on her arms.
But in her bosom there was still that bright glowing place—that shower
of little sparks coming from it. It was almost unbearable. She hardly
dared to breathe for fear of fanning it higher, and yet she breathed
deeply, deeply. She hardly dared to look into the cold mirror—but she
did look, and it gave her back a woman, radiant, with smiling,
trembling lips, with big, dark eyes and an air of listening, waiting
for something . . . divine to happen . . . that she knew must happen .
. . infallibly.
Mary brought in the fruit on a tray and with it a glass bowl, and a
blue dish, very lovely, with a strange sheen on it as though it had
been dipped in milk.
“Shall I turn on the light, M’m?”
“No, thank you. I can see quite well.”
There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some
yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver
bloom and a big cluster of purple ones. These last she had bought to
tone in with the new dining-room carpet. Yes, that did sound rather
far-fetched and absurd, but it was really why she had bought them. She
had thought in the shop: “I must have some purple ones to bring the
carpet up to the table.” And it had seemed quite sense at the time.
When she had finished with them and had made two pyramids of these
bright round shapes, she stood away from the table to get the
effect—and it really was most curious. For the dark table seemed to
melt into the dusky light and the glass dish and the blue bowl to float
in the air. This, of course in her present mood, was so incredibly
beautiful. . . . She began to laugh.
“No, no. I’m getting hysterical.” And she seized her bag and coat and
ran upstairs to the nursery.
Nurse sat at a low table giving Little B her supper after her bath. The
baby had on a white flannel gown and a blue woollen jacket, and her
dark, fine hair was brushed up into a funny little peak. She looked up
when she saw her mother and began to jump.
“Now, my lovey, eat it up like a good girl,” said Nurse, setting her
lips in a way that Bertha knew, and that meant she had come into the
nursery at another wrong moment.
“Has she been good, Nanny?”
“She’s been a little sweet all the afternoon,” whispered Nanny. “We
went to the park and I sat down on a chair and took her out of the pram
and a big dog came along and put its head on my knee and she clutched
its ear, tugged it. Oh, you should have seen her.”
Bertha wanted to ask if it wasn’t rather dangerous to let her clutch at
a strange dog’s ear. But she did not dare to. She stood watching them,
her hands by her side, like the poor little girl in front of the rich
little girl with the doll.
The baby looked up at her again, stared, and then smiled so charmingly
that Bertha couldn’t help crying:
“Oh, Nanny, do let me finish giving her her supper while you put the
bath things away.”
“Well, M’m, she oughtn’t to be changed hands while she’s eating,” said
Nanny, still whispering. “It unsettles her; it’s very likely to upset
her.”
How absurd it was. Why have a baby if it has to be kept—not in a case
like a rare, rare fiddle—but in another woman’s arms?
“Oh, I must!” said she.
Very offended, Nanny handed her over.
“Now, don’t excite her after her supper. You know you do, M’m. And I
have such a time with her after!”
Thank heaven! Nanny went out of the room with the bath towels.
“Now I’ve got you to myself, my little precious,” said Bertha, as the
baby leaned against her.
She ate delightfully, holding up her lips for spoon and then waving her
hands. Sometimes she wouldn’t let the spoon go; and sometimes, just as
Bertha had filled it, she waved it away to the four winds.
When the soup was finished Bertha turned round to the fire.
“You’re nice—you’re very nice!” said she, kissing her warm baby. “I’m
fond of you. I like you.”