Bliss, and other stories
unknown country, along new roads with high clay banks on either side,
up steep, steep hills, down into bushy valleys, through wide shallow
rivers. Further and further. Lottie’s head wagged; she drooped, she
slipped half into Kezia’s lap and lay there. But Kezia could not open
her eyes wide enough. The wind blew and she shivered; but her cheeks
and ears burned.
“Do stars ever blow about?” she asked.
“Not to notice,” said the storeman.
“We’ve got a nuncle and a naunt living near our new house,” said Kezia.
“They have got two children, Pip, the eldest is called, and the
youngest’s name is Rags. He’s got a ram. He has to feed it with a
nenamuel teapot and a glove top over the spout. He’s going to show us.
What is the difference between a ram and a sheep?”
“Well, a ram has horns and runs for you.”
Kezia considered. “I don’t want to see it frightfully,” she said. “I
hate rushing animals like dogs and parrots. I often dream that animals
rush at me—even camels—and while they are rushing, their heads swell
e-enormous.”
The storeman said nothing. Kezia peered up at him, screwing up her
eyes. Then she put her finger out and stroked his sleeve; it felt
hairy. “Are we near?” she asked.
“Not far off, now,” answered the storeman. “Getting tired?”
“Well, I’m not an atom bit sleepy,” said Kezia. “But my eyes keep
curling up in such a funny sort of way.” She gave a long sigh, and to
stop her eyes from curling she shut them. . . . When she opened them
again they were clanking through a drive that cut through the garden
like a whip lash, looping suddenly an island of green, and behind the
island, but out of sight until you came upon it, was the house. It was
long and low built, with a pillared verandah and balcony all the way
round. The soft white bulk of it lay stretched upon the green garden
like a sleeping beast. And now one and now another of the windows
leaped into light. Someone was walking through the empty rooms carrying
a lamp. From a window downstairs the light of a fire flickered. A
strange beautiful excitement seemed to stream from the house in
quivering ripples.
“Where are we?” said Lottie, sitting up. Her reefer cap was all on one
side and on her cheek there was the print of an anchor button she had
pressed against while sleeping. Tenderly the storeman lifted her, set
her cap straight, and pulled down her crumpled clothes. She stood
blinking on the lowest verandah step watching Kezia who seemed to come
flying through the air to her feet.
“Ooh!” cried Kezia, flinging up her arms. The grandmother came out of
the dark hall carrying a little lamp. She was smiling.
“You found your way in the dark?” said she.
“Perfectly well.”
But Lottie staggered on the lowest verandah step like a bird fallen out
of the nest. If she stood still for a moment she fell asleep, if she
leaned against anything her eyes closed. She could not walk another
step.
“Kezia,” said the grandmother, “can I trust you to carry the lamp?”
“Yes, my granma.”
The old woman bent down and gave the bright breathing thing into her
hands and then she caught up drunken Lottie. “This way.”
Through a square hall filled with bales and hundreds of parrots (but
the parrots were only on the wall-paper) down a narrow passage where
the parrots persisted in flying past Kezia with her lamp.
“Be very quiet,” warned the grandmother, putting down Lottie and
opening the dining-room door. “Poor little mother has got such a
headache.”
Linda Burnell, in a long cane chair, with her feet on a hassock, and a
plaid over her knees, lay before a crackling fire. Burnell and Beryl
sat at the table in the middle of the room eating a dish of fried chops
and drinking tea out of a brown china teapot. Over the back of her
mother’s chair leaned Isabel. She had a comb in her fingers and in a
gentle absorbed fashion she was combing the curls from her mother’s
forehead. Outside the pool of lamp and firelight the room stretched
dark and bare to the hollow windows.
“Are those the children?” But Linda did not really care; she did not
even open her eyes to see.
“Put down the lamp, Kezia,” said Aunt Beryl, “or we shall have the
house on fire before we are out of the packing cases. More tea,
Stanley?”
“Well, you might just give me five-eighths of a cup,” said Burnell,
leaning across the table. “Have another chop, Beryl. Tip-top meat,
isn’t it? Not too lean and not too fat.” He turned to his wife. “You’re
sure you won’t change your mind, Linda darling?”
“The very thought of it is enough.” She raised one eyebrow in the way
she had. The grandmother brought the children bread and milk and they
sat up to table, flushed and sleepy behind the wavy steam.
“I had meat for my supper,” said Isabel, still combing gently.
“I had a whole chop for my supper, the bone and all and Worcester
sauce. Didn’t I, father?”
“Oh, don’t boast, Isabel,” said Aunt Beryl.
Isabel looked astounded. “I wasn’t boasting, was I, Mummy? I never
thought of boasting. I thought they would like to know. I only meant to
tell them.”
“Very well. That’s enough,” said Burnell. He pushed back his plate,
took a tooth-pick out of his pocket and began picking his strong white
teeth.
“You might see that Fred has a bite of something in the kitchen before
he goes, will you, mother?”
“Yes, Stanley.” The old woman turned to go.
“Oh, hold on half a jiffy. I suppose nobody knows where my slippers
were put? I suppose I shall not be able to get at them for a month or
two—what?”
“Yes,” came from Linda. “In the top of the canvas hold-all marked
‘urgent necessities.’”
“Well you might get them for me will you, mother?”
“Yes, Stanley.”
Burnell got up, stretched himself, and going over to the fire he turned
his back to it and lifted up his coat tails.
“By Jove, this is a pretty pickle. Eh, Beryl?”
Beryl, sipping tea, her elbows on the table, smiled over the cup at
him. She wore an unfamiliar pink pinafore; the sleeves of her blouse
were rolled up to her shoulders showing her lovely freckled arms, and
she had let her hair fall down her back in a long pig-tail.
“How long do you think it will take to get straight—couple of
weeks—eh?” he chaffed.
“Good heavens, no,” said Beryl airily. “The worst is over already. The
servant girl and I have simply slaved all day, and ever since mother
came she has worked like a horse, too. We have never sat down for a
moment. We have had a day.”
Stanley scented a rebuke.
“Well, I suppose you did not expect me to rush away from the office and
nail carpets—did you?”
“Certainly not,” laughed Beryl. She put down her cup and ran out of the
dining-room.
“What the hell does she expect us to do?” asked Stanley. “Sit down and
fan herself with a palm leaf fan while I have a gang of professionals
to do the job? By Jove, if she can’t do a hand’s turn occasionally
without shouting about it in return for . . .”
And he gloomed as the chops began to fight the tea in his sensitive
stomach. But Linda put up a hand and dragged him down to the side of
her long chair.
“This is a wretched time for you, old boy,” she said. Her cheeks were
very white but she smiled and curled her fingers into the big red hand
she held. Burnell became quiet. Suddenly he began to whistle “Pure as a
lily, joyous and free”—a good sign.
“Think you’re going to like it?” he asked.
“I don’t want to tell you, but I think I ought to, mother,” said
Isabel. “Kezia is drinking tea out of Aunt Beryl’s cup.”
4
They were taken off to bed by the grandmother. She went first with a
candle; the stairs rang to their climbing feet. Isabel and Lottie lay
in a room to themselves, Kezia curled in her grandmother’s soft bed.
“Aren’t there going to be any sheets, my granma?”
“No, not to-night.”
“It’s tickly,” said Kezia, “but it’s like Indians.” She dragged her
grandmother down to her and kissed her under the chin. “Come to bed
soon and be my Indian brave.”
“What a silly you are,” said the old woman, tucking her in as she loved
to be tucked.
“Aren’t you going to leave me a candle?”
“No. Sh—h. Go to sleep.”
“Well, can I have the door left open?”
She rolled herself up into a round but she did not go to sleep. From
all over the house came the sound of steps. The house itself creaked
and popped. Loud whispering voices came from downstairs. Once she heard
Aunt Beryl’s rush of high laughter, and once she heard a loud
trumpeting from Burnell blowing his nose. Outside the window hundreds
of black cats with yellow eyes sat in the sky watching her—but she was
not frightened. Lottie was saying to Isabel:
“I’m going to say my prayers in bed to-night.”
“No you can’t, Lottie.” Isabel was very firm. “God only excuses you
saying your prayers in bed if you’ve got a temperature.” So Lottie
yielded:
Gentle Jesus meek anmile,
Look pon a little chile.
Pity me, simple Lizzie
Suffer me to come to thee.
And then they lay down back to back, their little behinds just
touching, and fell asleep.
Standing in a pool of moonlight Beryl Fairfield undressed herself. She
was tired, but she pretended to be more tired than she really
was—letting her clothes fall, pushing back with a languid gesture her
warm, heavy hair.
“Oh, how tired I am—very tired.”
She shut her eyes a moment, but her lips smiled. Her breath rose and
fell in her breast like two fanning wings. The window was wide open; it
was warm, and somewhere out there in the garden a young man, dark and
slender, with mocking eyes, tip-toed among the bushes, and gathered the
flowers into a big bouquet, and slipped under her window and held it up
to her. She saw herself bending forward. He thrust his head among the
bright waxy flowers, sly and laughing. “No, no,” said Beryl. She turned
from the window and dropped her nightgown over her head.
“How frightfully unreasonable Stanley is sometimes,” she thought,
buttoning. And then, as she lay down, there came the old thought, the
cruel thought—ah, if only she had money of her own.
A young man, immensely rich, has just arrived from England. He meets
her quite by chance. . . . The new governor is unmarried. . . . There
is a ball at Government house. . . . Who is that exquisite creature in
_eau de nil_ satin? Beryl Fairfield. . . .
“The thing that pleases me,” said Stanley, leaning against the side of
the bed and giving himself a good scratch on his shoulders and back
before turning in, “is that I’ve got the place dirt cheap, Linda. I was
talking about it to little Wally Bell to-day and he said he simply
could not understand why they had accepted my figure. You see land
about here is bound to become more and more valuable . . . in about ten
years’ time . . . of course we shall have to go very slow and cut down
expenses as fine as possible. Not asleep—are you?”
“No, dear, I’ve heard every word,” said Linda.
He sprang into bed, leaned over her and blew out the candle.
“Good night, Mr. Business Man,” said she, and she took hold of his head
by the ears and gave him a quick kiss. Her faint far-away voice seemed
to come from a deep well.
“Good night, darling.” He slipped his arm under her neck and drew her
to him.
“Yes, clasp me,” said the faint voice from the deep well.
Pat the handy man sprawled in his little room behind the kitchen. His
sponge-bag coat and trousers hung from the door-peg like a hanged man.
From the edge of the blanket his twisted toes protruded, and on the
floor beside him there was an empty cane bird-cage. He looked like a
comic picture.
“Honk, honk,” came from the servant girl. She had adenoids.
Last to go to bed was the grandmother.
“What. Not asleep yet?”
“No, I’m waiting for you,” said Kezia. The old woman sighed and lay
down beside her. Kezia thrust her head under the grandmother’s arm and