Bliss - Katherine Mansfield (paper ebook reader TXT) 📗

Was there just a hint of mockery in his voice or was it her fancy? She could not be sure.

“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 meant 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 today—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 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 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 the window. She got into the train and handed him 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. Trrr�s 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.