Bliss, and other stories
Robert? Robert dear, more tea?”
“No, thanks, no. It was very good,” he drawled.
“Well mine wasn’t. Mine was just like chopped hay. Oh, here comes the
Honeymoon Couple.”
Half striding, half running, carrying a basket between them and rods
and lines, they came up the drive, up the shallow steps.
“My! have you been out fishing?” cried the American Woman.
They were out of breath, they panted: “Yes, yes, we have been out in a
little boat all day. We have caught seven. Four are good to eat. But
three we shall give away. To the children.”
Mrs. Salesby turned her chair to look; the Topknots laid the snakes
down. They were a very dark young couple—black hair, olive skin,
brilliant eyes and teeth. He was dressed “English fashion” in a flannel
jacket, white trousers and shoes. Round his neck he wore a silk scarf;
his head, with his hair brushed back, was bare. And he kept mopping his
forehead, rubbing his hands with a brilliant handkerchief. Her white
skirt had a patch of wet; her neck and throat were stained a deep pink.
When she lifted her arms big half-hoops of perspiration showed under
her arm-pits; her hair clung in wet curls to her cheeks. She looked as
though her young husband had been dipping her in the sea, and fishing
her out again to dry in the sun and then—in with her again—all day.
“Would Klaymongso like a fish?” they cried. Their laughing voices
charged with excitement beat against the glassed-in verandah like
birds, and a strange saltish smell came from the basket.
“You will sleep well to-night,” said a Topknot, picking her ear with a
knitting needle while the other Topknot smiled and nodded.
The Honeymoon Couple looked at each other. A great wave seemed to go
over them. They gasped, gulped, staggered a little and then came up
laughing—laughing.
“We cannot go upstairs, we are too tired. We must have tea just as we
are. Here—coffee. No—tea. No—coffee. Tea—coffee, Antonio!” Mrs. Salesby
turned.
“Robert! Robert!” Where was he? He wasn’t there. Oh, there he was at
the other end of the verandah, with his back turned, smoking a
cigarette. “Robert, shall we go for our little turn?”
“Right.” He stumped the cigarette into an ash-tray and sauntered over,
his eyes on the ground. “Will you be warm enough?”
“Oh, quite.”
“Sure?”
“Well,” she put her hand on his arm, “perhaps”—and gave his arm the
faintest pressure—“it’s not upstairs, it’s only in the hall—perhaps
you’d get me my cape. Hanging up.”
He came back with it and she bent her small head while he dropped it on
her shoulders. Then, very stiff, he offered her his arm. She bowed
sweetly to the people on the verandah while he just covered a yawn, and
they went down the steps together.
“_Vous avez voo ça!_” said the American Woman.
“He is not a man,” said the Two Topknots, “he is an ox. I say to my
sister in the morning and at night when we are in bed, I tell her—_No_
man is he, but an ox!”
Wheeling, tumbling, swooping, the laughter of the Honeymoon Couple
dashed against the glass of the verandah.
The sun was still high. Every leaf, every flower in the garden lay
open, motionless, as if exhausted, and a sweet, rich, rank smell filled
the quivering air. Out of the thick, fleshy leaves of a cactus there
rose an aloe stem loaded with pale flowers that looked as though they
had been cut out of butter; light flashed upon the lifted spears of the
palms; over a bed of scarlet waxen flowers some big black insects
“zoom-zoomed”; a great, gaudy creeper, orange splashed with jet,
sprawled against a wall.
“I don’t need my cape after all,” said she. “It’s really too warm.” So
he took it off and carried it over his arm. “Let us go down this path
here. I feel so well to-day—marvellously better. Good heavens—look at
those children! And to think it’s November!”
In a corner of the garden there were two brimming tubs of water. Three
little girls, having thoughtfully taken off their drawers and hung them
on a bush, their skirts clasped to their waists, were standing in the
tubs and tramping up and down. They screamed, their hair fell over
their faces, they splashed one another. But suddenly, the smallest, who
had a tub to herself, glanced up and saw who was looking. For a moment
she seemed overcome with terror, then clumsily she struggled and
strained out of her tub, and still holding her clothes above her waist.
“The Englishman! The Englishman!” she shrieked and fled away to hide.
Shrieking and screaming, the other two followed her. In a moment they
were gone; in a moment there was nothing but the two brimming tubs and
their little drawers on the bush.
“How—very—extraordinary!” said she. “What made them so frightened?
Surely they were much too young to . . .” She looked up at him. She
thought he looked pale—but wonderfully handsome with that great
tropical tree behind him with its long, spiked thorns.
For a moment he did not answer. Then he met her glance, and smiling his
slow smile, “_Très_ rum!” said he.
_Très_ rum! Oh, she felt quite faint. Oh, why should she love him so
much just because he said a thing like that. _Très_ rum! That was
Robert all over. Nobody else but Robert could ever say such a thing. To
be so wonderful, so brilliant, so learned, and then to say in that
queer, boyish voice. . . . She could have wept.
“You know you’re very absurd, sometimes,” said she.
“I am,” he answered. And they walked on.
But she was tired. She had had enough. She did not want to walk any
more.
“Leave me here and go for a little constitutional, won’t you? I’ll be
in one of these long chairs. What a good thing you’ve got my cape; you
won’t have to go upstairs for a rug. Thank you, Robert, I shall look at
that delicious heliotrope. . . . You won’t be gone long?”
“No—no. You don’t mind being left?”
“Silly! I want you to go. I can’t expect you to drag after your invalid
wife every minute. . . . How long will you be?”
He took out his watch. “It’s just after half-past four. I’ll be back at
a quarter past five.”
“Back at a quarter past five,” she repeated, and she lay still in the
long chair and folded her hands.
He turned away. Suddenly he was back again. “Look here, would you like
my watch?” And he dangled it before her.
“Oh!” She caught her breath. “Very, very much.” And she clasped the
watch, the warm watch, the darling watch in her fingers. “Now go
quickly.”
The gates of the Pension Villa Excelsior were open wide, jammed open
against some bold geraniums. Stooping a little, staring straight ahead,
walking swiftly, he passed through them and began climbing the hill
that wound behind the town like a great rope looping the villas
together. The dust lay thick. A carriage came bowling along driving
towards the Excelsior. In it sat the General and the Countess; they had
been for his daily airing. Mr. Salesby stepped to one side but the dust
beat up, thick, white, stifling like wool. The Countess just had time
to nudge the General.
“There he goes,” she said spitefully.
But the General gave a loud caw and refused to look.
“It is the Englishman,” said the driver, turning round and smiling. And
the Countess threw up her hands and nodded so amiably that he spat with
satisfaction and gave the stumbling horse a cut.
On—on—past the finest villas in the town, magnificent palaces, palaces
worth coming any distance to see, past the public gardens with the
carved grottoes and statues and stone animals drinking at the fountain,
into a poorer quarter. Here the road ran narrow and foul between high
lean houses, the ground floors of which were scooped and hollowed into
stables and carpenters’ shops. At a fountain ahead of him two old hags
were beating linen. As he passed them they squatted back on their
haunches, stared, and then their “A-hak-kak-kak!” with the slap, slap,
of the stone on the linen sounded after him.
He reached the top of the hill; he turned a corner and the town was
hidden. Down he looked into a deep valley with a dried up river bed at
the bottom. This side and that was covered with small dilapidated
houses that had broken stone verandahs where the fruit lay drying,
tomato lanes in the garden, and from the gates to the doors a trellis
of vines. The late sunlight, deep, golden, lay in the cup of the
valley; there was a smell of charcoal in the air. In the gardens the
men were cutting grapes. He watched a man standing in the greenish
shade, raising up, holding a black cluster in one hand, taking the
knife from his belt, cutting, laying the bunch in a flat boat-shaped
basket. The man worked leisurely, silently, taking hundreds of years
over the job. On the hedges on the other side of the road there were
grapes small as berries, growing wild, growing among the stones. He
leaned against a wall, filled his pipe, put a match to it. . . .
Leaned across a gate, turned up the collar of his mackintosh. It was
going to rain. It didn’t matter, he was prepared for it. You didn’t
expect anything else in November. He looked over the bare field. From
the corner by the gate there came the smell of swedes, a great stack of
them, wet, rank coloured. Two men passed walking towards the straggling
village. “Good day!” “Good day!” By Jove! he had to hurry if he was
going to catch that train home. Over the gate, across a field, over the
stile, into the lane, swinging along in the drifting rain and dusk. . .
. Just home in time for a bath and a change before supper. . . . In the
drawing-room; Jinnie is sitting pretty nearly in the fire. “Oh, Robert,
I didn’t hear you come in. Did you have a good time? How nice you
smell! A present?” “Some bits of blackberry I picked for you. Pretty
colour.” “Oh, lovely, Robert! Dennis and Beaty are coming to supper.”
Supper—cold beef, potatoes in their jackets, claret, household bread.
They are gay—everybody’s laughing. “Oh, we all know Robert,” says
Dennis, breathing on his eyeglasses and polishing them. “By the way,
Dennis, I picked up a very jolly little edition of . . .”
A clock struck. He wheeled sharply. What time was it. Five? A quarter
past? Back, back the way he came. As he passed through the gates he saw
her on the look-out. She got up, waved and slowly she came to meet him,
dragging the heavy cape. In her hand she carried a spray of heliotrope.
“You’re late,” she cried gaily. “You’re three minutes late. Here’s your
watch, it’s been very good while you were away. Did you have a nice
time? Was it lovely? Tell me. Where did you go?”
“I say—put this _on_,” he said, taking the cape from her.
“Yes, I will. Yes, it’s getting chilly. Shall we go up to our room?”
When they reached the lift she was coughing. He frowned.
“It’s nothing. I haven’t been out too late. Don’t be cross.” She sat
down on one of the red plush chairs while he rang and rang, and then,
getting no answer, kept his finger on the bell.
“Oh, Robert, do you think you ought to?”
“Ought to what?”
The door of the _salon_ opened. “What is that? Who is making that
noise?” sounded from within. Klaymongso began to yelp. “Caw! Caw! Caw!”
came from the General. A Topknot darted out with one hand to her ear,
opened the staff door, “Mr. Queet! Mr. Queet!” she bawled. That brought
the manager up at a run.
“Is that you ringing the bell, Mr. Salesby? Do you want the lift? Very
good, Sir. I’ll take you up myself. Antonio wouldn’t have been a
minute, he was just taking off his apron——” And having ushered them in,
the oily manager went to the door of the _salon._ “Very sorry you
should have been troubled, ladies and gentlemen.” Salesby stood in the
cage, sucking in his cheeks, staring at the ceiling and turning the
ring, turning the signet ring on his little finger. . . .
Arrived in their room he went swiftly over to the washstand, shook the
bottle, poured her out a dose and brought it across.