Bliss - Katherine Mansfield (paper ebook reader TXT) 📗

in, saw the body, head unharmed, small blue hole over temple, roused hotel, arranged funeral, attended funeral, closed cab, new morning coat….

I stooped down and picked up the paper and would you believe it—so ingrained is my Parisian sense of comme il faut — I murmured “pardon” before I read it.

“MOUSE, MY LITTLE MOUSE,

It’s no good. It’s impossible. I can’t see it through. Oh, I do love you. I do love you, Mouse, but I can’t hurt her. People have been hurting her all her life. I simply dare not give her this final blow. You see, though she’s stronger than both of us, she’s so frail and proud. It would kill her—kill her, Mouse. And, oh God, I can’t kill my mother! Not even for you. Not even for us. You do see that—don’t you.

It all seemed so possible when we talked and planned, but the very moment the train started it was all over. I felt her drag me back to her— calling. I can hear her now as I write. And she’s alone and she doesn’t know. A man would have to be a devil to tell her and I’m not a devil, Mouse. She mustn’t know. Oh, Mouse, somewhere, somewhere in you don’t you agree? It’s all so unspeakably awful that I don’t know if I want to go or not. Do I? Or is Mother just dragging me? I don’t know. My head is too tired. Mouse, Mouse—what will you do? But I can’t think of that, either. I dare not. I’d break down. And I must not break down. All I’ve got to do is—just to tell you this and go. I couldn’t have gone off without telling you. You’d have been frightened. And you must not be frightened. You won’t—will you? I can’t bear—but no more of that. And don’t write. I should not have the courage to answer your letters and the sight of your spidery handwriting—

Forgive me. Don’t love me any more. Yes. Love me. Love me. Dick.”

What do you think of that? Wasn’t that a rare find? My relief at his not having shot himself was mixed with a wonderful sense of elation. I was even—more than even with my “that’s very curious and interesting” Englishman….

She wept so strangely. With her eyes shut, with her face quite calm except for the quivering eyelids. The tears pearled down her cheeks and she let them fall.

But feeling my glance upon her she opened her eyes and saw me holding the letter.

“You’ve read it?”

Her voice was quite calm, but it was not her voice any more. It was like the voice you might imagine coming out of a tiny, cold sea-shell swept high and dry at last by the salt tide….

I nodded, quite overcome, you understand, and laid the letter down.

“It’s incredible! incredible! ” I whispered.

At that she got up from the floor, walked over to the washstand, dipped her handkerchief into the jug, and sponged her eyes, saying: “Oh, no. It’s not incredible at all.” And still pressing the wet ball to her eyes she came back to me, to her chair with the lace tabs, and sank into it.

“I knew all along, of course,” said the cold, salty little voice. “From the very moment that we started. I felt it all through me, but I still went on hoping”—and here she took the handkerchief down and gave me a final glimmer—“as one so stupidly does, you know.”

“As one does.”

Silence.

“But what will you do? You’ll go back? You’ll see him?”

That made her sit right up and stare across at me.

“What an extraordinary idea!” she said, more coldly than ever. “Of course I shall not dream of seeing him. As for going back—that is quite out of the question. I can’t go back.”

“But…”

“It’s impossible. For one thing all my friends think I am married.”

I put out my hand—“Ah, my poor little friend.”

But she shrank away. (False move.)

Of course there was one question that had been at the back of my mind all this time. I hated it.

“Have you any money?”

“Yes, I have twenty pounds—here,” and she put her hand on her breast. I bowed. It was a great deal more than I had expected.

“And what are your plans?”

Yes, I know. My question was the most clumsy, the most idiotic one I could have put. She had been so tame, so confiding, letting me, at any rate spiritually speaking, hold her tiny quivering body in one hand and stroke her furry head—and now, I’d thrown her away. Oh, I could have kicked myself.

She stood up. “I have no plans. But—it’s very late. You must go now, please.”

How could I get her back? I wanted her back. I swear I was not acting then.

“Do you feel that I am your friend,” I cried. “You will let me come tomorrow, early? You will let me look after you a little—take care of you a little? You’ll use me just as you think fit?”

I succeeded. She came out of her hole … timid … but she came out.

“Yes, you’re very kind. Yes. Do come tomorrow. I shall be glad. It makes things rather difficult because”—and again I clasped her boyish hand—”je ne parle pas francais. “

Not until I was half-way down the boulevard did it come over me—the full force of it.

Why, they were suffering… those two … really suffering. I have seen two people suffer as I don’t suppose I ever shall again….

Of course you know what to expect. You anticipate, fully, what I am going to write. It wouldn’t be me, otherwise.

I never went near the place again.

Yes, I still owe that considerable amount for lunches and dinners, but that’s beside the mark. It’s vulgar to mention it in the same breath with the fact that I never saw Mouse again.

Naturally, I intended to. Started out—got to the door—wrote and tore up letters—did all those things. But I simply could not make the final effort.

Even now I don’t fully understand why. Of course I knew that I couldn’t have kept it up. That had a great deal to do with it. But you would have thought, putting it at its lowest, curiosity couldn’t have kept my fox-terrier nose away …

Je ne parle pas francais. That was her swan song for me.

But how she makes me break my rule. Oh, you’ve seen for yourself, but I could give you countless examples.

… Evenings, when I sit in some gloomy caf�, and an automatic piano starts playing a “mouse” tune (there are dozens of tunes that evoke just her) I begin to dream things like…

A little house on the edge of the sea, somewhere far, far away. A girl outside in a frock rather like Red Indian women wear, hailing a light, barefoot boy who runs up from the beach.

“What have you got?”

“A fish.” I smile and give it to her.

… The same girl, the same boy, different costumes—sitting at an open window, eating fruit and leaning out and laughing.

“All the wild strawberries are for you, Mouse. I won’t touch one.”

… A wet night. They are going home together under an umbrella. They stop on the door to press their wet cheeks together.

And so on and so on until some dirty old gallant comes up to my table and sits opposite and begins to grimace and yap. Until I hear myself saying: “But I’ve got the little girl for you, mon vieux. So little… so tiny.” I kiss the tips of my fingers and lay them upon my heart. “I give you my word of honour as a gentleman, a writer, serious, young, and extremely interested in modern English literature.”

I must go. I must go. I reach down my coat and hat. Madame knows me. “You haven’t dined yet?” she smiles.

“No, not yet, Madame.”

BLISS

ALTHOUGH Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at—nothing—at nothing, simply.

What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss—absolute bliss!—as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe? …

Oh, is there no way you can express it without being “drunk and disorderly” ? How idiotic civilisation is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?

“No, that about the fiddle is not quite what I mean,” she thought, running up the steps and feeling in her bag for the key—she’d forgotten it, as usual—and rattling the letter-box. “It’s not what I mean, because—Thank you, Mary”—she went into the hall. “Is nurse back?”

“Yes, M’m.”

“And has the fruit come?”

“Yes, M’m. Everything’s come.”

“Bring the fruit up to the dining-room, will you? I’ll arrange it before I go upstairs.”

It was dusky in the dining-room and quite chilly. But all the same Bertha threw off her coat; she could not bear the tight clasp of it another moment, and the cold air fell on her arms.

But in her bosom there was still that bright glowing place—that shower of little sparks coming from it. It was almost unbearable. She hardly dared to breathe for fear of fanning it higher, and yet she breathed deeply, deeply. She hardly dared to look into the cold mirror—but she did look, and it gave her back a woman, radiant, with smiling, trembling lips, with big, dark eyes and an air of listening, waiting for something… divine to happen … that she knew must happen … infallibly.

Mary brought in the fruit on a tray and with it a glass bowl, and a blue dish, very lovely, with a strange sheen on it as though it had been dipped in milk.

“Shall I turn on the light, M’m?”

“No, thank you. I can see quite well.”

There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones. These last she had bought to tone in with the new dining-room carpet. Yes, that did sound rather far-fetched and absurd, but it was really why she had bought them. She had thought in the shop: “I must have some purple ones to bring the carpet up to the table.” And it had seemed quite sense at the time.

When she had finished with them and had made two pyramids of these bright round shapes, she stood away from the table to get the effect—and it really was most curious. For the dark table seemed to melt into the dusky light and the glass dish and the blue bowl to float in the air. This, of course, in her present mood, was so incredibly beautiful…. She began to laugh.

“No, no. I’m getting hysterical.” And she seized her bag and coat and ran upstairs to the nursery.

Nurse sat at a low table giving Little B her supper after her bath. The baby had on a white flannel gown and a blue woollen jacket, and her dark, fine hair was brushed up into a funny little peak. She looked up when she saw her mother and began to jump.

“Now, my lovey, eat it up like a good girl,” said nurse, setting her lips in a way that Bertha