Bliss, and other stories
was, thought Monica. How dreadful. It is the loneliness which is so
appalling. We whirl along like leaves, and nobody knows—nobody cares
where we fall, in what black river we float away. The tugging feeling
seemed to rise into her throat. It ached, ached; she longed to cry.
“That will do,” she whispered. “Give me the pins.” As he stood beside
her, so submissive, so silent, she nearly dropped her arms and sobbed.
She couldn’t bear any more. Like a wooden man the gay young George
still slid, glided, handed her her hat and veil, took the note, and
brought back the change. She stuffed it into her bag. Where was she
going now?
George took a brush. “There is a little powder on your coat,” he
murmured. He brushed it away. And then suddenly he raised himself and,
looking at Monica, gave a strange wave with the brush and said: “The
truth is, Madame, since you are an old customer—my little daughter died
this morning. A first child”—and then his white face crumpled like
paper, and he turned his back on her and began brushing the cotton
kimono. “Oh, oh,” Monica began to cry. She ran out of the shop into the
taxi. The driver, looking furious, swung off the seat and slammed the
door again. “Where to?”
“Princes’,” she sobbed. And all the way there she saw nothing but a
tiny wax doll with a feather of gold hair, lying meek, its tiny hands
and feet crossed. And then just before she came to Princes’ she saw a
flower shop full of white flowers. Oh, what a perfect thought.
Lilies-of-the-valley, and white pansies, double white violets and white
velvet ribbon. . . . From an unknown friend. . . . From one who
understands. . . . For a Little Girl. . . . She tapped against the
window, but the driver did not hear; and, anyway, they were at Princes’
already.
The Escape
It was his fault, wholly and solely his fault, that they had missed the
train. What if the idiotic hotel people had refused to produce the
bill? Wasn’t that simply because he hadn’t impressed upon the waiter at
lunch that they must have it by two o’clock? Any other man would have
sat there and refused to move until they handed it over. But no! His
exquisite belief in human nature had allowed him to get up and expect
one of those idiots to bring it to their room. . . . And then, when the
_voiture_ did arrive, while they were still (Oh, Heavens!) waiting for
change, why hadn’t he seen to the arrangement of the boxes so that they
could, at least, have started the moment the money had come? Had he
expected her to go outside, to stand under the awning in the heat and
point with her parasol? Very amusing picture of English domestic life.
Even when the driver had been told how fast he had to drive he had paid
no attention whatsoever—just smiled. “Oh,” she groaned, “if she’d been
a driver she couldn’t have stopped smiling herself at the absurd,
ridiculous way he was urged to hurry.” And she sat back and imitated
his voice: “_Allez, vite, vite_”—and begged the driver’s pardon for
troubling him. . . .
And then the station—unforgettable—with the sight of the jaunty little
train shuffling away and those hideous children waving from the
windows. “Oh, why am I made to bear these things? Why am I exposed to
them? . . .” The glare, the flies, while they waited, and he and the
stationmaster put their heads together over the time-table, trying to
find this other train, which, of course, they wouldn’t catch. The
people who’d gathered round, and the woman who’d held up that baby with
that awful, awful head. . . . “Oh, to care as I care—to feel as I feel,
and never to be saved anything—never to know for one moment what it was
to . . . to . . .”
Her voice had changed. It was shaking now—crying now. She fumbled with
her bag, and produced from its little maw a scented handkerchief. She
put up her veil and, as though she were doing it for somebody else,
pitifully, as though she were saying to somebody else: “I know, my
darling,” she pressed the handkerchief to her eyes.
The little bag, with its shiny, silvery jaws open, lay on her lap. He
could see her powder-puff, her rouge stick, a bundle of letters, a
phial of tiny black pills like seeds, a broken cigarette, a mirror,
white ivory tablets with lists on them that had been heavily scored
through. He thought: “In Egypt she would be buried with those things.”
They had left the last of the houses, those small straggling houses
with bits of broken pot flung among the flower-beds and half-naked hens
scratching round the doorsteps. Now they were mounting a long steep
road that wound round the hill and over into the next bay. The horses
stumbled, pulling hard. Every five minutes, every two minutes the
driver trailed the whip across them. His stout back was solid as wood;
there were boils on his reddish neck, and he wore a new, a shining new
straw hat. . . .
There was a little wind, just enough wind to blow to satin the new
leaves on the fruit trees, to stroke the fine grass, to turn to silver
the smoky olives—just enough wind to start in front of the carriage a
whirling, twirling snatch of dust that settled on their clothes like
the finest ash. When she took out her powder-puff the powder came
flying over them both.
“Oh, the dust,” she breathed, “the disgusting, revolting dust.” And she
put down her veil and lay back as if overcome.
“Why don’t you put up your parasol?” he suggested. It was on the front
seat, and he leaned forward to hand it to her. At that she suddenly sat
upright and blazed again.
“Please leave my parasol alone! I don’t want my parasol! And anyone who
was not utterly insensitive would know that I’m far, far too exhausted
to hold up a parasol. And with a wind like this tugging at it. . . .
Put it down at once,” she flashed, and then snatched the parasol from
him, tossed it into the crumpled hood behind, and subsided, panting.
Another bend of the road, and down the hill there came a troop of
little children, shrieking and giggling, little girls with sun-bleached
hair, little boys in faded soldiers’ caps. In their hands they carried
flowers—any kind of flowers—grabbed by the head, and these they
offered, running beside the carriage. Lilac, faded lilac, greeny-white
snowballs, one arum lily, a handful of hyacinths. They thrust the
flowers and their impish faces into the carriage; one even threw into
her lap a bunch of marigolds. Poor little mice! He had his hand in his
trouser pocket before her. “For Heaven’s sake don’t give them anything.
Oh, how typical of you! Horrid little monkeys! Now they’ll follow us
all the way. Don’t encourage them; you _would_ encourage beggars”; and
she hurled the bunch out of the carriage with, “Well, do it when I’m
not there, please.”
He saw the queer shock on the children’s faces. They stopped running,
lagged behind, and then they began to shout something, and went on
shouting until the carriage had rounded yet another bend.
“Oh, how many more are there before the top of the hill is reached? The
horses haven’t trotted once. Surely it isn’t necessary for them to walk
the whole way.”
“We shall be there in a minute now,” he said, and took out his
cigarette-case. At that she turned round towards him. She clasped her
hands and held them against her breast; her dark eyes looked immense,
imploring, behind her veil; her nostrils quivered, she bit her lip, and
her head shook with a little nervous spasm. But when she spoke, her
voice was quite weak and very, very calm.
“I want to ask you something. I want to beg something of you,” she
said. “I’ve asked you hundreds and hundreds of times before, but you’ve
forgotten. It’s such a little thing, but if you knew what it meant to
me. . . .” She pressed her hands together. “But you can’t know. No
human creature could know and be so cruel.” And then, slowly,
deliberately, gazing at him with those huge, sombre eyes: “I beg and
implore you for the last time that when we are driving together you
won’t smoke. If you could imagine,” she said, “the anguish I suffer
when that smoke comes floating across my face. . . .”
“Very well,” he said. “I won’t. I forgot.” And he put the case back.
“Oh, no,” said she, and almost began to laugh, and put the back of her
hand across her eyes. “You couldn’t have forgotten. Not that.”
The wind came, blowing stronger. They were at the top of the hill.
“Hoy-yip-yip-yip,” cried the driver. They swung down the road that fell
into a small valley, skirted the sea coast at the bottom of it, and
then coiled over a gentle ridge on the other side. Now there were
houses again, blue-shuttered against the heat, with bright burning
gardens, with geranium carpets flung over the pinkish walls. The
coast-line was dark; on the edge of the sea a white silky fringe just
stirred. The carriage swung down the hill, bumped, shook. “Yi-ip,”
shouted the driver. She clutched the sides of the seat, she closed her
eyes, and he knew she felt this was happening on purpose; this swinging
and bumping, this was all done—and he was responsible for it,
somehow—to spite her because she had asked if they couldn’t go a little
faster. But just as they reached the bottom of the valley there was one
tremendous lurch. The carriage nearly overturned, and he saw her eyes
blaze at him, and she positively hissed, “I suppose you are enjoying
this?”
They went on. They reached the bottom of the valley. Suddenly she stood
up. “_Cocher! Cocher! Arrêtez-vous!_” She turned round and looked into
the crumpled hood behind. “I knew it,” she exclaimed. “I knew it. I
heard it fall, and so did you, at that last bump.”
“What? Where?”
“My parasol. It’s gone. The parasol that belonged to my mother. The
parasol that I prize more than—more than . . .” She was simply beside
herself. The driver turned round, his gay, broad face smiling.
“I, too, heard something,” said he, simply and gaily. “But I thought as
Monsieur and Madame said nothing . . .”
“There. You hear that. Then you must have heard it too. So _that_
accounts for the extraordinary smile on your face. . . .”
“Look here,” he said, “it can’t be gone. If it fell out it will be
there still. Stay where you are. I’ll fetch it.”
But she saw through that. Oh, how she saw through it! “No, thank you.”
And she bent her spiteful, smiling eyes upon him, regardless of the
driver. “I’ll go myself. I’ll walk back and find it, and trust you not
to follow. For”—knowing the driver did not understand, she spoke
softly, gently—“if I don’t escape from you for a minute I shall go
mad.”
She stepped out of the carriage. “My bag.” He handed it to her.
“Madame prefers . . .”
But the driver had already swung down from his seat, and was seated on
the parapet reading a small newspaper. The horses stood with hanging
heads. It was still. The man in the carriage stretched himself out,
folded his arms. He felt the sun beat on his knees. His head was sunk
on his breast. “Hish, hish,” sounded from the sea. The wind sighed in
the valley and was quiet. He felt himself, lying there, a hollow man, a
parched, withered man, as it were, of ashes. And the sea sounded,
“Hish, hish.”
It was then that he saw the tree, that he was conscious of its presence
just inside a garden gate. It was an immense tree with a round, thick
silver stem and a great arc of copper leaves that gave back the light
and yet were sombre. There was something beyond the tree—a whiteness, a
softness, an opaque mass, half-hidden—with delicate pillars. As he
looked at the tree he felt his breathing die away and he became part of
the silence. It seemed to grow, it seemed to expand in the quivering
heat until the great carved leaves hid the sky, and yet it was
motionless. Then from within its depths or from beyond there came the
sound of a woman’s voice. A woman was singing. The warm untroubled