Bliss, and other stories
of the road outside Mr. Bullen’s gate she can hear the sea sob: “Ah! .
. . Ah! . . . Ah-h!” But Mr. Bullen’s drawing-room is as quiet as a
cave. The windows are closed, the blinds half pulled, and she is not
late. The-girl-before-her has just started playing MacDowell’s “To an
Iceberg.” Mr. Bullen looks over at her and half smiles.
“Sit down,” he says. “Sit over there in the sofa corner, little lady.”
How funny he is. He doesn’t exactly laugh at you . . . but there is
just something. . . . Oh, how peaceful it is here. She likes this room.
It smells of art serge and stale smoke and chrysanthemums . . . there
is a big vase of them on the mantelpiece behind the pale photograph of
Rubinstein . . . _à mon ami Robert Bullen._ . . . Over the black
glittering piano hangs “Solitude”—a dark tragic woman draped in white,
sitting on a rock, her knees crossed, her chin on her hands.
“No, no!” says Mr. Bullen, and he leans over the other girl, put his
arms over her shoulders and plays the passage for her. The stupid—she’s
blushing! How ridiculous!
Now the-girl-before-her has gone; the front door slams. Mr. Bullen
comes back and walks up and down, very softly, waiting for her. What an
extraordinary thing. Her fingers tremble so that she can’t undo the
knot in the music satchel. It’s the wind. . . . And her heart beats so
hard she feels it must lift her blouse up and down. Mr. Bullen does not
say a word. The shabby red piano seat is long enough for two people to
sit side by side. Mr. Bullen sits down by her.
“Shall I begin with scales,” she asks, squeezing her hands together. “I
had some arpeggios, too.”
But he does not answer. She doesn’t believe he even hears . . . and
then suddenly his fresh hand with the ring on it reaches over and opens
Beethoven.
“Let’s have a little of the old master,” he says.
But why does he speak so kindly—so awfully kindly—and as though they
had known each other for years and years and knew everything about each
other.
He turns the page slowly. She watches his hand—it is a very nice hand
and always looks as though it had just been washed.
“Here we are,” says Mr. Bullen.
Oh, that kind voice—Oh, that minor movement. Here come the little
drums. . . .
“Shall I take the repeat?”
“Yes, dear child.”
His voice is far, far too kind. The crotchets and quavers are dancing
up and down the stave like little black boys on a fence. Why is he so .
. . She will not cry—she has nothing to cry about. . . .
“What is it, dear child?”
Mr. Bullen takes her hands. His shoulder is there—just by her head. She
leans on it ever so little, her cheek against the springy tweed.
“Life is so dreadful,” she murmurs, but she does not feel it’s dreadful
at all. He says something about “waiting” and “marking time” and “that
rare thing, a woman,” but she does not hear. It is so comfortable . . .
for ever . . .
Suddenly the door opens and in pops Marie Swainson, hours before her
time.
“Take the allegretto a little faster,” says Mr. Bullen, and gets up and
begins to walk up and down again.
“Sit in the sofa corner, little lady,” he says to Marie.
The wind, the wind. It’s frightening to be here in her room by herself.
The bed, the mirror, the white jug and basin gleam like the sky
outside. It’s the bed that is frightening. There it lies, sound asleep.
. . . Does Mother imagine for one moment that she is going to darn all
those stockings knotted up on the quilt like a coil of snakes? She’s
not. No, Mother. I do not see why I should. . . . The wind—the wind!
There’s a funny smell of soot blowing down the chimney. Hasn’t anyone
written poems to the wind? . . . “I bring fresh flowers to the leaves
and showers.” . . . What nonsense.
“Is that you, Bogey?”
“Come for a walk round the esplanade, Matilda. I can’t stand this any
longer.”
“Right-o. I’ll put on my ulster. Isn’t it an awful day!” Bogey’s ulster
is just like hers. Hooking the collar she looks at herself in the
glass. Her face is white, they have the same excited eyes and hot lips.
Ah, they know those two in the glass. Good-bye, dears; we shall be back
soon.
“This is better, isn’t it?”
“Hook on,” says Bogey.
They cannot walk fast enough. Their heads bent, their legs just
touching, they stride like one eager person through the town, down the
asphalt zigzag where the fennel grows wild and on to the esplanade. It
is dusky—just getting dusky. The wind is so strong that they have to
fight their way through it, rocking like two old drunkards. All the
poor little pahutukawas on the esplanade are bent to the ground.
“Come on! Come on! Let’s get near.”
Over by the breakwater the sea is very high. They pull off their hats
and her hair blows across her mouth, tasting of salt. The sea is so
high that the waves do not break at all; they thump against the rough
stone wall and suck up the weedy, dripping steps. A fine spray skims
from the water right across the esplanade. They are covered with drops;
the inside of her mouth tastes wet and cold.
Bogey’s voice is breaking. When he speaks he rushes up and down the
scale. It’s funny—it makes you laugh—and yet it just suits the day. The
wind carries their voices—away fly the sentences like little narrow
ribbons.
“Quicker! Quicker!”
It is getting very dark. In the harbour the coal hulks show two
lights—one high on a mast, and one from the stern.
“Look, Bogey. Look over there.”
A big black steamer with a long loop of smoke streaming, with the
portholes lighted, with lights everywhere, is putting out to sea. The
wind does not stop her; she cuts through the waves, making for the open
gate between the pointed rocks that leads to . . . It’s the light that
makes her look so awfully beautiful and mysterious. . . . _They_ are on
board leaning over the rail arm in arm.
“. . . Who are they?”
“. . . Brother and sister.”
“Look, Bogey, there’s the town. Doesn’t it look small? There’s the post
office clock chiming for the last time. There’s the esplanade where we
walked that windy day. Do you remember? I cried at my music lesson that
day—how many years ago! Good-bye, little island, good-bye. . . .”
Now the dark stretches a wing over the tumbling water. They can’t see
those two any more. Good-bye, good-bye. Don’t forget. . . . But the
ship is gone, now.
The wind—the wind.
Psychology
When she opened the door and saw him standing there she was more
pleased than ever before, and he, too, as he followed her into the
studio, seemed very very happy to have come.
“Not busy?”
“No. Just going to have tea.”
“And you are not expecting anybody?”
“Nobody at all.”
“Ah! That’s good.”
He laid aside his coat and hat gently, lingeringly, as though he had
time and to spare for everything, or as though he were taking leave of
them for ever, and came over to the fire and held out his hands to the
quick, leaping flame.
Just for a moment both of them stood silent in that leaping light.
Still, as it were, they tasted on their smiling lips the sweet shock of
their greeting. Their secret selves whispered:
“Why should we speak? Isn’t this enough?”
“More than enough. I never realized until this moment . . .”
“How good it is just to be with you. . . .”
“Like this. . . .”
“It’s more than enough.”
But suddenly he turned and looked at her and she moved quickly away.
“Have a cigarette? I’ll put the kettle on. Are you longing for tea?”
“No. Not longing.”
“Well, I am.”
“Oh, you.” He thumped the Armenian cushion and flung on to the
_sommier._ “You’re a perfect little Chinee.”
“Yes, I am,” she laughed. “I long for tea as strong men long for wine.”
She lighted the lamp under its broad orange shade, pulled the curtains
and drew up the tea table. Two birds sang in the kettle; the fire
fluttered. He sat up clasping his knees. It was delightful—this
business of having tea—and she always had delicious things to
eat—little sharp sandwiches, short sweet almond fingers, and a dark,
rich cake tasting of rum—but it was an interruption. He wanted it over,
the table pushed away, their two chairs drawn up to the light, and the
moment came when he took out his pipe, filled it, and said, pressing
the tobacco tight into the bowl: “I have been thinking over what you
said last time and it seems to me . . .”
Yes, that was what he waited for and so did she. Yes, while she shook
the teapot hot and dry over the spirit flame she saw those other two,
him, leaning back, taking his ease among the cushions, and her, curled
up _en escargot_ in the blue shell arm-chair. The picture was so clear
and so minute it might have been painted on the blue teapot lid. And
yet she couldn’t hurry. She could almost have cried: “Give me time.”
She must have time in which to grow calm. She wanted time in which to
free herself from all these familiar things with which she lived so
vividly. For all these gay things round her were part of her—her
offspring—and they knew it and made the largest, most vehement claims.
But now they must go. They must be swept away, shooed away—like
children, sent up the shadowy stairs, packed into bed and commanded to
go to sleep—at once—without a murmur!
For the special thrilling quality of their friendship was in their
complete surrender. Like two open cities in the midst of some vast
plain their two minds lay open to each other. And it wasn’t as if he
rode into hers like a conqueror, armed to the eyebrows and seeing
nothing but a gay silken flutter—nor did she enter his like a queen
walking soft on petals. No, they were eager, serious travellers,
absorbed in understanding what was to be seen and discovering what was
hidden—making the most of this extraordinary absolute chance which made
it possible for him to be utterly truthful to her and for her to be
utterly sincere with him.
And the best of it was they were both of them old enough to enjoy their
adventure to the full without any stupid emotional complication.
Passion would have ruined everything; they quite saw that. Besides, all
that sort of thing was over and done with for both of them—he was
thirty-one, she was thirty—they had had their experiences, and very
rich and varied they had been, but now was the time for
harvest—harvest. Weren’t his novels to be very big novels indeed? And
her plays. Who else had her exquisite sense of real English Comedy? . .
.
Carefully she cut the cake into thick little wads and he reached across
for a piece.
“Do realize how good it is,” she implored. “Eat it imaginatively. Roll
your eyes if you can and taste it on the breath. It’s not a sandwich
from the hatter’s bag—it’s the kind of cake that might have been
mentioned in the Book of Genesis. . . . And God said: ‘Let there be
cake. And there was cake. And God saw that it was good.’”
“You needn’t entreat me,” said he. “Really you needn’t. It’s a queer
thing but I always do notice what I eat here and never anywhere else. I
suppose it comes of living alone so long and always reading while I
feed . . . my habit of looking upon food as just food . . . something
that’s there, at certain times . . . to be devoured . . . to be . . .
not there.” He laughed. “That shocks you. Doesn’t it?”
“To the bone,” said she.
“But—look here——” He pushed away his cup and began to speak very fast.
“I simply haven’t got any external life at all. I don’t know the names
of things a bit—trees and so on—and I never notice places or furniture
or what people look like. One room is just like another to me—a place
to sit and read or talk in—except,” and here he paused, smiled in a
strange naive way, and said, “except this studio.” He looked round him
and then at her; he laughed in his astonishment and pleasure. He was
like a man who wakes up in a train to find that he has arrived,
already, at the journey’s end.