Bliss, and other stories
“Before I met you,” he said, “I had never spoken of myself to anybody.
How well I remember one night, the night that I brought you the little
Christmas tree, telling you all about my childhood. And of how I was so
miserable that I ran away and lived under a cart in our yard for two
days without being discovered. And you listened, and your eyes shone,
and I felt that you had even made the little Christmas tree listen too,
as in a fairy story.”
But of that evening she had remembered a little pot of caviare. It had
cost seven and sixpence. He could not get over it. Think of it—a tiny
jar like that costing seven and sixpence. While she ate it he watched
her, delighted and shocked.
“No, really, that is eating money. You could not get seven shillings
into a little pot that size. Only think of the profit they must make. .
. .” And he had begun some immensely complicated calculations. . . .
But now good-bye to the caviare. The Christmas tree was on the table,
and the little boy lay under the cart with his head pillowed on the
yard dog.
“The dog was called Bosun,” she cried delightedly.
But he did not follow. “Which dog? Had you a dog? I don’t remember a
dog at all.”
“No, no. I mean the yard dog when you were a little boy.” He laughed
and snapped the cigarette case to.
“Was he? Do you know I had forgotten that. It seems such ages ago. I
cannot believe that it is only six years. After I had recognized you
to-day—I had to take such a leap—I had to take a leap over my whole
life to get back to that time. I was such a kid then.” He drummed on
the table. “I’ve often thought how I must have bored you. And now I
understand so perfectly why you wrote to me as you did—although at the
time that letter nearly finished my life. I found it again the other
day, and I couldn’t help laughing as I read it. It was so clever—such a
true picture of me.” He glanced up. “You’re not going?”
She had buttoned her collar again and drawn down her veil.
“Yes, I am afraid I must,” she said, and managed a smile. Now she knew
that he had been mocking.
“Ah, no, please,” he pleaded. “Don’t go just for a moment,” and he
caught up one of her gloves from the table and clutched at it as if
that would hold her. “I see so few people to talk to nowadays, that I
have turned into a sort of barbarian,” he said. “Have I said something
to hurt you?”
“Not a bit,” she lied. But as she watched him draw her glove through
his fingers, gently, gently, her anger really did die down, and
besides, at the moment he looked more like himself of six years ago. .
. .
“What I really wanted then,” he said softly, “was to be a sort of
carpet—to make myself into a sort of carpet for you to walk on so that
you need not be hurt by the sharp stones and the mud that you hated so.
It was nothing more positive than that—nothing more selfish. Only I did
desire, eventually, to turn into a magic carpet and carry you away to
all those lands you longed to see.”
As he spoke she lifted her head as though she drank something; the
strange beast in her bosom began to purr. . . .
“I felt that you were more lonely than anybody else in the world,” he
went on, “and yet, perhaps, that you were the only person in the world
who was really, truly alive. Born out of your time,” he murmured,
stroking the glove, “fated.”
Ah, God! What had she done! How had she dared to throw away her
happiness like this. This was the only man who had ever understood her.
Was it too late? Could it be too late? _She_ was that glove that he
held in his fingers. . . .
“And then the fact that you had no friends and never had made friends
with people. How I understood that, for neither had I. Is it just the
same now?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “Just the same. I am as alone as ever.”
“So am I,” he laughed gently, “just the same.”
Suddenly with a quick gesture he handed her back the glove and scraped
his chair on the floor, “But what seemed to me so mysterious then is
perfectly plain to me now. And to you, too, of course. . . . It simply
was that we were such egoists, so self-engrossed, so wrapped up in
ourselves that we hadn’t a corner in our hearts for anybody else. Do
you know,” he cried, naive and hearty, and dreadfully like another side
of that old self again, “I began studying a Mind System when I was in
Russia, and I found that we were not peculiar at all. It’s quite a well
known form of . . .”
She had gone. He sat there, thunder-struck, astounded beyond words. . .
. And then he asked the waitress for his bill.
“But the cream has not been touched,” he said. “Please do not charge me
for it.”
The Little Governess
Oh, dear, how she wished that it wasn’t night-time. She’d have much
rather travelled by day, much much rather. But the lady at the
Governess Bureau had said: “You had better take an evening boat and
then if you get into a compartment for ‘Ladies Only’ in the train you
will be far safer than sleeping in a foreign hotel. Don’t go out of the
carriage; don’t walk about the corridors and _be sure_ to lock the
lavatory door if you go there. The train arrives at Munich at eight
o’clock, and Frau Arnholdt says that the Hotel Grunewald is only one
minute away. A porter can take you there. She will arrive at six the
same evening, so you will have a nice quiet day to rest after the
journey and rub up your German. And when you want anything to eat I
would advise you to pop into the nearest baker’s and get a bun and some
coffee. You haven’t been abroad before, have you?” “No.” “Well, I
always tell my girls that it’s better to mistrust people at first
rather than trust them, and it’s safer to suspect people of evil
intentions rather than good ones. . . . It sounds rather hard but we’ve
got to be women of the world, haven’t we?”
It had been nice in the Ladies’ Cabin. The stewardess was so kind and
changed her money for her and tucked up her feet. She lay on one of the
hard pink-sprigged couches and watched the other passengers, friendly
and natural, pinning their hats to the bolsters, taking off their boots
and skirts, opening dressing-cases and arranging mysterious rustling
little packages, tying their heads up in veils before lying down.
_Thud_, _thud_, _thud_, went the steady screw of the steamer. The
stewardess pulled a green shade over the light and sat down by the
stove, her skirt turned back over her knees, a long piece of knitting
on her lap. On a shelf above her head there was a water-bottle with a
tight bunch of flowers stuck in it. “I like travelling very much,”
thought the little governess. She smiled and yielded to the warm
rocking.
But when the boat stopped and she went up on deck, her dress-basket in
one hand, her rug and umbrella in the other, a cold, strange wind flew
under her hat. She looked up at the masts and spars of the ship black
against a green glittering sky and down to the dark landing stage where
strange muffled figures lounged, waiting; she moved forward with the
sleepy flock, all knowing where to go to and what to do except her, and
she felt afraid. Just a little—just enough to wish—oh, to wish that it
was daytime and that one of those women who had smiled at her in the
glass, when they both did their hair in the Ladies’ Cabin, was
somewhere near now. “Tickets, please. Show your tickets. Have your
tickets ready.” She went down the gangway balancing herself carefully
on her heels. Then a man in a black leather cap came forward and
touched her on the arm. “Where for, Miss?” He spoke English—he must be
a guard or a stationmaster with a cap like that. She had scarcely
answered when he pounced on her dress-basket. “This way,” he shouted,
in a rude, determined voice, and elbowing his way he strode past the
people. “But I don’t want a porter.” What a horrible man! “I don’t want
a porter. I want to carry it myself.” She had to run to keep up with
him, and her anger, far stronger than she, ran before her and snatched
the bag out of the wretch’s hand. He paid no attention at all, but
swung on down the long dark platform, and across a railway line. “He is
a robber.” She was sure he was a robber as she stepped between the
silvery rails and felt the cinders crunch under her shoes. On the other
side—oh, thank goodness!—there was a train with Munich written on it.
The man stopped by the huge lighted carriages. “Second class?” asked
the insolent voice. “Yes, a Ladies’ compartment.” She was quite out of
breath. She opened her little purse to find something small enough to
give this horrible man while he tossed her dress-basket into the rack
of an empty carriage that had a ticket, _Dames Seules_, gummed on
window. She got into the train and handed twenty centimes. “What’s
this?” shouted the man, glaring at the money and then at her, holding
it up to his nose, sniffing at it as though he had never in his life
seen, much less held, such a sum. “It’s a franc. You know that, don’t
you? It’s a franc. That’s my fare!” A franc! Did he imagine that she
was going to give him a franc for playing a trick like that just
because she was a girl and travelling alone at night? Never, never! She
squeezed her purse in her hand and simply did not see him—she looked at
a view of St. Malo on the wall opposite and simply did not hear him.
“Ah, no. Ah, no. Four sous. You make a mistake. Here, take it. It’s a
franc I want.” He leapt on to the step of the train and threw the money
on to her lap. Trembling with terror she screwed herself tight, tight,
and put out an icy hand and took the money—stowed it away in her hand.
“That’s all you’re going to get,” she said. For a minute or two she
felt his sharp eyes pricking her all over, while he nodded slowly,
pulling down his mouth: “Ve-ry well. _Trrrès bien._” He shrugged his
shoulders and disappeared into the dark. Oh, the relief! How simply
terrible that had been! As she stood up to feel if the dress-basket was
firm she caught sight of herself in the mirror, quite white, with big
round eyes. She untied her “motor veil” and unbuttoned her green cape.
“But it’s all over now,” she said to the mirror face, feeling in some
way that it was more frightened than she.
People began to assemble on the platform. They stood together in little
groups talking; a strange light from the station lamps painted their
faces almost green. A little boy in red clattered up with a huge tea
wagon and leaned against it, whistling and flicking his boots with a
serviette. A woman in a black alpaca apron pushed a barrow with pillows
for hire. Dreamy and vacant she looked—like a woman wheeling a
perambulator—up and down, up and down—with a sleeping baby inside it.
Wreaths of white smoke floated up from somewhere and hung below the
roof like misty vines. “How strange it all is,” thought the little
governess, “and the middle of the night, too.” She looked out from her
safe corner, frightened no longer but proud that she had not given that
franc. “I can look after myself—of course I can. The great thing is not
to——” Suddenly from the corridor there came a stamping of feet and
men’s voices, high and broken with snatches of loud laughter. They were
coming her way. The little governess shrank into her corner as four
young men in bowler hats passed, staring through the door and window.
One of them, bursting with the joke, pointed to the notice _Dames
Seules_ and the four bent down the better to see the one little girl in
the corner. Oh dear, they were in the carriage next door. She heard
them tramping about and then a sudden hush followed by a tall thin
fellow with a tiny black moustache who flung her door open. “If
mademoiselle cares to come in with us,” he said, in French. She saw the
others crowding behind him, peeping under his arm and over his
shoulder, and she sat very straight and still. “If mademoiselle will do