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 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 français.”
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 français. 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 café, 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 civilization 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 knew, and that meant she had come into the nursery at another wrong moment.
“Has she been good, Nanny?”
“She’s been a little sweet all the afternoon,” whispered Nanny. “We went to the park and I sat down on a chair and took her out of the pram and a big dog came along and put its head on my knee and she clutched its ear, tugged it. Oh, you should have seen her.”
Bertha wanted to ask if it wasn’t rather dangerous to let her clutch at a strange dog’s ear. But she did not dare to. She stood watching them, her hands by her side, like the poor little