Bliss, and other stories
plate of yesterday’s scones, please. And put on the Victoria sandwich
as well as the coffee cake. And don’t forget to put little doyleys
under the plates—will you? You did yesterday, you know, and the tea
looked so ugly and common. And, Alice, don’t put that dreadful old pink
and green cosy on the afternoon teapot again. That is only for the
mornings. Really, I think it ought to be kept for the kitchen—it’s so
shabby, and quite smelly. Put on the Japanese one. You quite
understand, don’t you?”
Miss Beryl had finished.
That sing aloud from every tree . . .
she sang as she left the kitchen, very pleased with her firm handling
of Alice.
Oh, Alice was wild. She wasn’t one to mind being told, but there was
something in the way Miss Beryl had of speaking to her that she
couldn’t stand. Oh, that she couldn’t. It made her curl up inside, as
you might say, and she fair trembled. But what Alice really hated Miss
Beryl for was that she made her feel low. She talked to Alice in a
special voice as though she wasn’t quite all there; and she never lost
her temper with her—never. Even when Alice dropped anything or forgot
anything important Miss Beryl seemed to have expected it to happen.
“If you please, Mrs. Burnell,” said an imaginary Alice, as she buttered
the scones, “I’d rather not take my orders from Miss Beryl. I may be
only a common servant girl as doesn’t know how to play the guitar, but
. . .”
This last thrust pleased her so much that she quite recovered her
temper.
“The only thing to do,” she heard, as she opened the dining-room door,
“is to cut the sleeves out entirely and just have a broad band of black
velvet over the shoulders instead. . . .”
11
The white duck did not look as if it had ever had a head when Alice
placed it in front of Stanley Burnell that night. It lay, in
beautifully basted resignation, on a blue dish—its legs tied together
with a piece of string and a wreath of little balls of stuffing round
it.
It was hard to say which of the two, Alice or the duck, looked the
better basted; they were both such a rich colour and they both had the
same air of gloss and strain. But Alice was fiery red and the duck a
Spanish mahogany.
Burnell ran his eye along the edge of the carving knife. He prided
himself very much upon his carving, upon making a first-class job of
it. He hated seeing a woman carve; they were always too slow and they
never seemed to care what the meat looked like afterwards. Now he did;
he took a real pride in cutting delicate shaves of cold beef, little
wads of mutton, just the right thickness, and in dividing a chicken or
a duck with nice precision. . . .
“Is this the first of the home products?” he asked, knowing perfectly
well that it was.
“Yes, the butcher did not come. We have found out that he only calls
twice a week.”
But there was no need to apologise. It was a superb bird. It wasn’t
meat at all, but a kind of very superior jelly. “My father would say,”
said Burnell, “this must have been one of those birds whose mother
played to it in infancy upon the German flute. And the sweet strains of
the dulcet instrument acted with such effect upon the infant mind. . .
. Have some more, Beryl? You and I are the only ones in this house with
a real feeling for food. I’m perfectly willing to state, in a court of
law, if necessary, that I love good food.”
Tea was served in the drawing-room, and Beryl, who for some reason had
been very charming to Stanley ever since he came home, suggested a game
of crib. They sat at a little table near one of the open windows. Mrs.
Fairfield disappeared, and Linda lay in a rocking-chair, her arms above
her head, rocking to and fro.
“You don’t want the light—do you, Linda?” said Beryl. She moved the
tall lamp so that she sat under its soft light.
How remote they looked, those two, from where Linda sat and rocked. The
green table, the polished cards, Stanley’s big hands and Beryl’s tiny
ones, all seemed to be part of one mysterious movement. Stanley
himself, big and solid, in his dark suit, took his ease, and Beryl
tossed her bright head and pouted. Round her throat she wore an
unfamiliar velvet ribbon. It changed her, somehow—altered the shape of
her face—but it was charming, Linda decided. The room smelled of
lilies; there were two big jars of arums in the fire-place.
“Fifteen two—fifteen four—and a pair is six and a run of three is
nine,” said Stanley, so deliberately, he might have been counting
sheep.
“I’ve nothing but two pairs,” said Beryl, exaggerating her woe because
she knew how he loved winning.
The cribbage pegs were like two little people going up the road
together, turning round the sharp corner, and coming down the road
again. They were pursuing each other. They did not so much want to get
ahead as to keep near enough to talk—to keep near, perhaps that was
all.
But no, there was always one who was impatient and hopped away as the
other came up, and would not listen. Perhaps the white peg was
frightened of the red one, or perhaps he was cruel and would not give
the red one a chance to speak. . . .
In the front of her dress Beryl wore a bunch of pansies, and once when
the little pegs were side by side, she bent over and the pansies
dropped out and covered them.
“What a shame,” said she, picking up the pansies. “Just as they had a
chance to fly into each other’s arms.”
“Farewell, my girl,” laughed Stanley, and away the red peg hopped.
The drawing-room was long and narrow with glass doors that gave on to
the verandah. It had a cream paper with a pattern of gilt roses, and
the furniture, which had belonged to old Mrs. Fairfield, was dark and
plain. A little piano stood against the wall with yellow pleated silk
let into the carved front. Above it hung an oil painting by Beryl of a
large cluster of surprised looking clematis. Each flower was the size
of a small saucer, with a centre like an astonished eye fringed in
black. But the room was not finished yet. Stanley had set his heart on
a Chesterfield and two decent chairs. Linda liked it best as it was. .
. .
Two big moths flew in through the window and round and round the circle
of lamplight.
“Fly away before it is too late. Fly out again.”
Round and round they flew; they seemed to bring the silence and the
moonlight in with them on their silent wings. . . .
“I’ve two kings,” said Stanley. “Any good?”
“Quite good,” said Beryl.
Linda stopped rocking and got up. Stanley looked across. “Anything the
matter, darling?”
“No, nothing. I’m going to find mother.”
She went out of the room and standing at the foot of the stairs she
called, but her mother’s voice answered her from the verandah.
The moon that Lottie and Kezia had seen from the storeman’s wagon was
full, and the house, the garden, the old woman and Linda—all were
bathed in dazzling light.
“I have been looking at the aloe,” said Mrs. Fairfield. “I believe it
is going to flower this year. Look at the top there. Are those buds, or
is it only an effect of light?”
As they stood on the steps, the high grassy bank on which the aloe
rested rose up like a wave, and the aloe seemed to ride upon it like a
ship with the oars lifted. Bright moonlight hung upon the lifted oars
like water, and on the green wave glittered the dew.
“Do you feel it, too,” said Linda, and she spoke to her mother with the
special voice that women use at night to each other as though they
spoke in their sleep or from some hollow cave—“Don’t you feel that it
is coming towards us?”
She dreamed that she was caught up out of the cold water into the ship
with the lifted oars and the budding mast. Now the oars fell striking
quickly, quickly. They rowed far away over the top of the garden trees,
the paddocks and the dark bush beyond. Ah, she heard herself cry:
“Faster! Faster!” to those who were rowing.
How much more real this dream was than that they should go back to the
house where the sleeping children lay and where Stanley and Beryl
played cribbage.
“I believe those are buds,” said she. “Let us go down into the garden,
mother. I like that aloe. I like it more than anything here. And I am
sure I shall remember it long after I’ve forgotten all the other
things.”
She put her hand on her mother’s arm and they walked down the steps,
round the island and on to the main drive that led to the front gates.
Looking at it from below she could see the long sharp thorns that edged
the aloe leaves, and at the sight of them her heart grew hard. . . .
She particularly liked the long sharp thorns. . . . Nobody would dare
to come near the ship or to follow after.
“Not even my Newfoundland dog,” thought she, “that I’m so fond of in
the daytime.”
For she really was fond of him; she loved and admired and respected him
tremendously. Oh, better than anyone else in the world. She knew him
through and through. He was the soul of truth and decency, and for all
his practical experience he was awfully simple, easily pleased and
easily hurt. . . .
If only he wouldn’t jump at her so, and bark so loudly, and watch her
with such eager, loving eyes. He was too strong for her; she had always
hated things that rush at her, from a child. There were times when he
was frightening—really frightening. When she just had not screamed at
the top of her voice: “You are killing me.” And at those times she had
longed to say the most coarse, hateful things. . . .
“You know I’m very delicate. You know as well as I do that my heart is
affected, and the doctor has told you I may die any moment. I have had
three great lumps of children already. . . .”
Yes, yes, it was true. Linda snatched her hand from mother’s arm. For
all her love and respect and admiration she hated him. And how tender
he always was after times like those, how submissive, how thoughtful.
He would do anything for her; he longed to serve her. . . . Linda heard
herself saying in a weak voice:
“Stanley, would you light a candle?”
And she heard his joyful voice answer: “Of course I will, my darling.”
And he leapt out of bed as though he were going to leap at the moon for
her.
It had never been so plain to her as it was at this moment. There were
all her feelings for him, sharp and defined, one as true as the other.
And there was this other, this hatred, just as real as the rest. She
could have done her feelings up in little packets and given them to
Stanley. She longed to hand him that last one, for a surprise. She
could see his eyes as he opened that . . .
She hugged her folded arms and began to laugh silently. How absurd life
was—it was laughable, simply laughable. And why this mania of hers to
keep alive at all? For it really was a mania, she thought, mocking and
laughing.
“What am I guarding myself for so preciously? I shall go on having
children and Stanley will go on making money and the children and the
gardens will grow bigger and bigger, with whole fleets of aloes in them
for me to choose from.”
She had been walking with her head bent, looking at nothing. Now she
looked up and about her. They were standing by the red and white
camellia trees. Beautiful were the rich dark leaves spangled with light
and the round flowers that perch among them like red and white birds.
Linda pulled a piece of verbena and crumpled it, and held her hands to
her mother.
“Delicious,” said the old woman. “Are you cold, child? Are you
trembling? Yes, your hands are cold. We had better go back to the
house.”
“What have you been thinking about?” said Linda. “Tell me.”
“I haven’t really been thinking of anything. I wondered as we passed
the orchard what the fruit trees were like and whether we should be
able to make much jam this autumn. There are splendid healthy currant
bushes in the vegetable garden. I noticed them to-day. I should like to