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The Aloe

Four — The Aloe

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Four
The Aloe

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Four
The Aloe

Good Morning, Mrs. Jones.'

'Oh, good morning, Mrs. Smith. I'm so glad to see you. Have you brought your children?'

'Yes, I've brought both my twins. I have had another baby since I saw you last, but she came so suddenly that I haven't had time to make her any new clothes yet, and so I left her at home. How's your husband?'

'Oh, he's very well, thank you. At least he had an page 88 awful sore throat, but Queen Victoria (she's my grandmother, you know) sent him a case of pineapples and they cured it immediately. Is that your new servant?'

'Yes, her name's Gwen. I've only had her two days. Oh, Gwen, this is my friend, Mrs. Smith.'

'Good morning, Mrs. Smith. Dinner won't not be ready for about ten minutes.'

'I don't think you ought to introduce me to the servant. I think I ought to just begin talking to her.'

'Well, she isn't really quite a servant. She's more of a lady help than a servant and you do introduce lady helps. I know, because Mrs. Samuel Josephs had one.'

'Oh, well, it doesn't matter,“ said the new servant airily, beating up a chocolate custard with half a broken clothes peg. The dinner was baking beautifully on a concrete step. She began to lay the cloth on a broad pink garden seat. In front of each person she put two geranium leaf plates, a pine needle fork and a twig knife. There were three daisy heads on a laurel leaf for poached eggs, some slices of fuchsia petals for cold meat—some beautiful little rissoles made of earth and water and dandelion seeds—and the chocolate custard which she decided to serve in the pawa shell she had cooked it in.

'You needn't trouble about my children,’ said

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Mrs. Smith graciously. ‘If you'll just take this bottil and fill it at the tap—I mean in the dairy.'

‘Oh, all right,’ said Gwen, and she whispered to Mrs. Jones—‘Shall I go an’ ask Alice for a little bit of real milk?'

But someone called from the front of the house, ‘Children! Children!’ and the luncheon party melted away, leaving the charming table, leaving the rissoles and the eggs on the stones to the little ants and to an old snail who pushed his quivering horns over the edge of the pink garden seat and began slowly to nibble a geranium plate.

‘Come round to the front door, children! Rags and Pip have come.'

The Trout boys were cousins to the Burnells. They lived about a mile away in a house called Monkey Tree Cottage. Pip was tall for his age, with lank black hair and a white face, but Rags was very small, and so thin that when he was undressed his shoulder blades stuck out like two little wings. They had a mongrel dog, too, with pale blue eyes and a long tail that turned up at the end, who followed them everywhere; he was called Snooker. They were always combing and brushing Snooker and treating page 90 him with various extraordinary mixtures concocted by Pip and kept secretly by him in a broken jug covered with an old kettle lid. Even Rags was not allowed to share the secret of these mixtures. He would see Pip mix some carbolic tooth powder and a bit of sulphur powdered fine and perhaps a pinch of starch to stiffen up Snooker's coat. But he knew that was not all. There was something else added that Pip wouldn't tell him of. Rags privately thought it was gunpowder. And he was never, never on any account permitted to help or to look on because of the danger. ‘Why, if a spot of this flew up,’ Pip would say, stirring the mixture with an iron spoon, ‘you'd be blinded to death. And there's always the chance—just the chance—of it exploding—if you whack it hard enough. Two spoonfuls of this will be enough in a kerosene tin of water to kill thousands of fleas.’ Nevertheless, Snooker spent all his leisure biting and nudging himself, and he stank abominably.

‘It's because he's such a grand fighting dog,’ Pip would say. ‘All fighting dogs smell—'

The Trout boys had often gone into town and spent the day with the Burnells, but now that they had become neighbours and lived in this big house and boncer garden, they were inclined to be very page 91 friendly. Besides, both of them liked playing with girls. Pip, because he could fox them so and because Lottie Burnell was so easily frightened, and Rags for a shameful reason, because he adored dolls. The way he would look at a doll as it lay asleep, speaking in a whisper and smiling timidly, and the great treat it was to him to stretch out his arms and be given a doll to hold!

‘Curl your arms around her. Don't keep them stiff out like that. You'll drop her,’ Isabel would command sternly.

Now they were standing on the verandah and holding back Snooker, who wanted to go into the house but wasn't allowed to because Aunt Linda hated decent dogs.

‘We came over in the ‘bus with Mum,’ they said, ‘and we're going to spend the afternoon and stay to tea. We brought over a batch of our gingerbread for Aunt Linda. Our Minnie made it. It's all over nuts—much more than yours ever has.’

‘I shelled the almonds,’ said Pip. ‘I just stuck my hand in a saucepan of boiling water and grabbed them out and gave them a kind of pinch and the nuts flew out of the skins, some of them as high as the ceiling. Didn't they, Rags?'

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‘When we make cakes at our place,’ said Pip, ‘we always stay in the kitchen, Rags and me, and I get the bowl and he gets the spoon and the egg-beater. Sponge cake's best—it's all frothy stuff then.'

He ran down the verandah steps on to the lawn, planted his hands on the grass, bent forward, and just did not stand on his head.

‘Pooh!’ he said, ‘that lawn's all bumpy; you have to have a flat place for standing on your head, I can walk all round the monkey tree on my head at our place—nearly, can't I, Rags?'

‘Nearly!’ said Rags faintly.

‘Stand on your head on the verandah. That's quite flat,’ said Lottie.

‘No, smarty,’ said Pip, ‘you have to do it on something soft, see? Because if you give a jerk—just a very little jerk and fall over like that and bump yourself, something in your neck goes click and it breaks right off. Dad told me….'

‘Oh, do let's have a game,’ said Kezia.

‘Do let's play something or other.'

‘Very well,’ said Isabel quickly, ‘we'll play hospitals. I'll be the nurse, and Pip can be the doctor and you and Rags and Lottie can be the sick people.'

But, no, Lottie didn't not want to play that, page 93 because last time Pip squirted something down her throat and it hurt awfully.

‘Pooh!’ said Pip, ‘it was only the juice out of a bit of orange peel.'

‘Well, let's play ladies,’ said Isabel, ‘and Pip can be my husband and you can be my three dear little children—Rags can be the baby.'

‘I hate playing ladies,’ said Kezia, ‘because you always make us go to Church hand in hand and come home again an’ go to bed.'

Suddenly Pip took a filthy handkerchief out of his pocket. ‘Snooker, here sir!’ he called. But Snooker, as usual, began to sneak away with his long bent tail between his legs. Pip leapt on top of him and held him by his knees.

‘Keep his head firm, Rags,’ he said as he tied the handkerchief round Snooker's head with a big funny sticking-up knot at the top.

‘Whatever is that for?’ asked Lottie.

‘It's to train his ears to grow more close to his head—see?’ said Pip. ‘All fighting dogs have ears that lie kind of back and they prick up. But Snooker's got rotten ears; they're too soft.'

‘I know,’ said Kezia. ‘They're always turning inside out. I hate that.'

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‘Oh, it isn't that,’ said Pip, ‘but I'm training his ears to look a bit more fierce, see?'

Snooker lay down and made one feeble effort with his paw to get the handkerchief off, but finding he could not, he trailed after the children with his head bound up in the dirty rag—shivering with misery.

Pat came swinging by. In his hand he held a little tomahawk that winked in the sun. ‘Come with me now,’ he said to the children, ‘and I'll show you how the Kings of Ireland chop off the head of a duck.'

They held back; they didn't believe him: it was one of his jokes, and, besides, the Trout boys had never seen Pat before.

‘Come on now,’ he coaxed, smiling and holding out his hand to Kezia.

‘A real duck's head?’ she said. ‘One from ours in the paddock where the fowls and ducks are?'

‘It is,’ said Pat.

She put her hand in his hard dry one, and he stuck the tomahawk in his belt and held out the other to Rags. He loved little children.

‘I'd better keep hold of Snooker's head if there's page 95 going to be any blood about,’ said Pip, trying not to show his excitement, ‘because the sight of blood makes him awfully wild sometimes.’ He ran ahead, dragging Snooker by the knot in the handkerchief.

‘Do you think we ought to?’ whispered Isabel to Lottie, ‘because we haven't asked Grandma or anybody, have we?'

‘But Pat's looking after us,’ said Lottie.

At the bottom of the orchard a gate was set in the paling fence. On the other side there was a steep bank leading down to a bridge that spanned the creek, and once up the bank on the other side you were on the fringe of the paddocks. A little disused stable in the first paddock had been turned into a fowl-house. All about it there spread wire-netting chick-runs new made by Pat. The fowls strayed far away across the paddock down to a little dumping ground in a hollow on the other side; but the ducks kept close to the part of the creek that flowed under the bridge and ran hard by the fowl-house. Tall bushes overhung the stream with red leaves and dazzling yellow flowers and clusters of red and white berries, and a little further on there were cresses and a water plant with a flower like a yellow foxglove. At some places the stream was wide and shallow page 96 enough to cross by stepping stones; but at other places it tumbled suddenly into a steep rocky pool like a little lake with foam at the edge and quivering bubbles. It was in these pools that the big white ducks loved to swim and guzzle along the weedy banks. Up and down they swam, preening their dazzling breasts, and other ducks with yellow bills and yellow feet swam upside down below them in the clear still water.

‘There they are,’ said Pat. ‘There's the little Irish Navy, and look at the old Admiral there with the green neck and the grand little flagstaff on his tail.'

He pulled a handful of grain out of his pocket and began to walk towards the fowl-house lazily, his broad straw hat with the broken crown pulled off his eyes.

‘Lid-lid-lid-lid-lid-lid,’ he shouted.

‘Qua! Qua-qua!’ answered the ducks, making for land and flopping and scrambling up the bank. They streamed after him in a long waddling line. He coaxed them, pretending to throw the grain, shaking it in his hands and calling to them until they swept round him, close round him, quacking and pushing against each other in a white ring. From far page 97 away the fowls heard the clamour and they, too, came across the paddock, their heads crooked forward, their wings spread, turning in their feet in the silly way fowls run and scolding as they came.

Then Pat scattered the grain and the greedy ducks began to gobble. Quickly he bent forward, seized two, tucked them quacking and struggling one under each arm, and strode across to the children. Their darting heads, their flat beaks and round eyes frightened the children, and they drew back, all except Pip.

‘Come on, sillies!’ he cried. ‘They can't hurt, they haven't got any teeth, have they, Pat? They've only got those two little holes in their heads to breathe through.'

‘Will you hold one while I finish with the other?’ asked Pat.

Pip leg go of Snooker. ‘Won't I! Won't I! Give us one. I'll hold him. I won't let him go. I don't care how much he kicks—give us, give us!'

He nearly sobbed with delight when Pat put the white lump in his arms.

There was an old stump beside the door of the fowl-shed. Pat carried over the other duck, grabbed it up in one hand, whipped out his little tomahawk, page 98 lay the duck flat on the stump, and suddenly down came the tomahawk and the duck's head flew off the stump—and up the blood spurted over the white feathers, over his hand. When the children saw it they were frightened no more. They crowded round him and began to scream—even Isabel leaped about and called out, ‘The blood, the blood!’ Pip forgot all about his duck. He simply threw it away from him, and shouted, ‘I saw it! I saw it!’ and jumped round the wood block.

Rags, with cheeks as white as paper, ran up to the little head and put out a finger as if he meant to touch it, then drew back again, and again put out a finger. He was shivering all over.

Even Lottie, frightened Lottie, began to laugh and point to the duck and shout, ‘Look, Kezia, look, look, look!'

‘Watch it,’ shouted Pat, and he put down the white body and it began to waddle with only a long spurt of blood where the head had been—it began to pad along dreadfully quiet towards the steep ledge that led to the stream. It was the crowning wonder.

‘Do you see that—do you see it?’ yelled Pip, and he ran among the little girls pulling at their pinafores.

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‘It's like an engine—it's like a funny little darling engine,’ squealed Isabel.

But Kezia suddenly rushed at Pat and flung her arms round his legs and butted her head as hard as she could against his knees.

‘Put head back, put head back,’ she screamed.

When he stooped to move her, she would not let go or take her head away. She held as hard as ever she could and sobbed, ‘Head back, head back,’ until it sounded like a loud, strange hiccough.

‘It's stopped, it's tumbled over, it's dead,’ said Pip.

Pat dragged Kezia up into his arms. Her sun-bonnet had fallen back, but she would not let him look at her face. No, she pressed her face into a bone in his shoulder and put her arms round his neck.

The children stopped squealing as suddenly as they had begun—they stood round the dead duck. Rags was not frightened of the head any more. He knelt down and stroked it with his finger and said, ‘I don't think perhaps the head is quite dead yet. It's warm, Pip. Would it keep alive if I gave it something to drink?'

But Pip got very cross and said, ‘Bah! you page 100 baby.’ He whistled to Snooker and went off. And when Isabel went up to Lottie, Lottie snatched away.

‘What are you always touching me for, Is-a-bel!'

‘There now,’ said Pat to Kezia. ‘There's a grand little girl.'

She put up her hands and touched his ear. She felt something. Slowly she raised her quivering face and looked. Pat wore little round gold earrings. How very funny. She never knew men wore earrings. She was very much surprised. She quite forgot about the duck.

‘Do they come off and on?’ she asked huskily.

Up at the house, in the warm tidy kitchen, Alice, the servant girl, had begun to get the afternoon tea ready. She was dressed. She had on a black cloth dress that smelt under the arms, a white apron so stiff that it rustled like paper to her every breath and movement—and a white muslin bow pinned on top of her head by two large pins—and her comfortable black felt slippers were changed for a pair of black leather ones that pinched the corn on her little toe ‘somethink dreadful.'

It was warm in the kitchen. A big blowfly buzzed page 101 round and round in a circle, bumping against the ceiling—a curl of white steam came out of the spout of the black kettle, and the lid kept up a rattling jig as the water bubbled. The kitchen clock ticked in the warm air, slow and deliberate like the click of an old woman's knitting needles, and sometimes, for no reason at all, for there wasn't any breeze outside, the heavy venetians swung out and back, tapping against the windows.

Alice was making water-cress sandwiches. She had a plate of butter on the table before her and a big loaf called a ‘barracouta,’ and the cresses tumbled together in the white cloth she had dried them in. But propped against the butter dish there was a dirty, greasy little book, half unstitched, with curled edges—and while she mashed some butter soft for spreading she read:

‘To dream of four black-beetles dragging a hearse is bad. Signifies death of one you hold near or dear, either father, husband, brother, son or intended. If the beetles crawl backwards as you watch them, it means death by fire or from great height, such as flight of stairs, scaffolding, etc.

Spiders. To dream of spiders creeping over you is good. Signifies large sum of money in the near page 102 future. Should party be in family way an easy confinement may be expected. But care should be taken in the sixth month to avoid eating of probable present of shell fish …’

How many thousand birds I see …'

Oh Life, there was Miss Beryl! Alice dropped the knife and stuffed her Dream Book under the butter dish, but she hadn't time to hide it quite, for Beryl ran into the kitchen and up to the table, and the first thing her eye lighted on, although she didn't say anything, was the grey edges sticking out from the plate. Alice saw Miss Beryl's scornful, meaning little smile, and the way she raised her eyebrows and screwed up her eyes as though she couldn't quite make out what that was under the plate edge. She decided to answer if Miss Beryl should ask her what it was: ‘Nothing as belongs to you, Miss,’ but she knew Miss Beryl would not ask her.

Alice was a mild creature in reality, but she always had the most marvellous retorts ready for the questions she knew would never be put to her. The composing of them and the turning of them over and over in her brain, comforted her just as much as if she'd really expressed them, and kept her self-respect page 103 alive in places where she had been that chivvied, she'd been afraid to go to bed at night with a box of matches on the chair by her in case she bit the tops off in her sleep—as you might say.

‘Oh, Alice,’ said Miss Beryl, ‘there's one extra to tea, so heat a plate of yesterday's scones, please, and put on the new Victoria sandwich as well as the coffee cake. And don't forget to put little doilys under the plates, will you? You did yesterday again, you know, and the tea looked so ugly and common. And Alice, please 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 had better be kept for kitchen use—it's so shabby and quite smelly. Put on the Chinese one out of the drawer in the dining-room sideboard. You quite understand—don't you? We'll have tea as soon as it is ready.'

Miss Beryl turned away.

That sing aloft on 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.

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It made her curl up inside, as you might say, and she fair trembled. But what Alice really hated Miss Beryl for was—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—never; even when Alice dropped anything or forgot anything she seemed to have expected it to happen…. ‘If you please, Mrs. Burnell,’ said an imaginary Alice, as she went on buttering 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 …’ This last thrust pleased her so much that she quite recovered her temper. She carried the tray along the passage to the dining-room.

‘The only thing to do,’ she heard as she opened the door, ‘is to cut the sleeves out entirely and just have a broad band of black velvet over the shoulders and round the arms instead.’ Mrs. Burnell with her elder and younger sister leaned over the table in the act of performing a very severe operation upon a white satin dress spread out before them. Old Mrs. Fairfield sat by the window in the sun with a roll of pink knitting in her lap.

‘My dears,’ said Beryl, ‘here comes the tea at last,’ and she swept a place clear for the tray. ‘But, page 105 Doady,’ she said to Mrs. Trout, ‘I don't think I should dare to appear without any sleeves at all, should I?'

‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Trout, ‘all I can say is that there isn't one single evening dress in Mess’ Reading's last catalogue that has even a sign of a sleeve. Some of them have a rose on the shoulder and a piece of black velvet, but some of them haven't even that—and they look perfectly charming! What would look very pretty on the black velvet straps of your dress would be red poppies. I wonder if I can spare a couple out of this hat.'

She was wearing a big cream leghorn hat trimmed with a wreath of poppies and daisies—and as she spoke she unpinned it and laid it on her knee, and ran her hands over her dark silky hair.

'Oh, I think two poppies would look perfectly heavenly,’ said Beryl, ‘and just be the right finish, but of course I won't hear of you taking them out of that new hat, Doady—not for worlds.'

‘It would be sheer murder,’ said Linda, dipping a water-cress sandwich into the salt-cellar, and smiling at her sister.

‘But I haven't the faintest feeling about this hat —or any other for the matter of that,’ said Doady, page 106 and she looked mournfully at the bright thing on her knee and heaved a profound sigh.

The three sisters were very unlike as they sat round the table. Mrs. Trout, tall and pale with heavy eyelids that drooped over her grey eyes, and rare, slender hands and feet, was quite a beauty. But Life bored her. She was sure that something very tragic was going to happen to her soon. She had felt it coming on for years. What it was she could not exactly say, but she was ‘fated’ somehow. How often when she had sat with Mother, Linda and Beryl, as she was sitting now, her heart had said: ‘How little they know!’ or, as it had then: ‘What a mockery this hat will be one day!’ and she had heaved just such a profound sigh …

And each time before her children were born she had thought that the tragedy would be fulfilled then. Her child would be born dead, or she saw the nurse going in to Richard, her husband, and saying: ‘Your child lives but'—and here the nurse pointed one finger upwards like the illustration of Agnes in ‘David Copperfield'—‘your wife is no more.’ But no, nothing particular had happened except that they had been boys and she had wanted girls, tender little caressing girls, not too strong, with hair to curl and page 107 sweet little bodies to dress in white muslin threaded with pale blue.

Ever since her marriage she had lived at Monkey Tree Cottage. Her husband left for town at eight o'clock every morning and did not return until half-past six at night. Minnie was a wonderful servant. She did everything there was to be done in the house and looked after the little boys and even worked in the garden…. So Mrs. Trout became a perfect martyr to headaches. Whole days she spent on the drawing-room sofa with the blinds pulled down and a linen handkerchief steeped in eau-de-Cologne on her forehead. And as she lay there she used to wonder why it was that she was so certain that life had something terrible for her, and to try to imagine what that terrible thing could be … until by and by she made up perfect novels with herself for the heroine, all of them ending with some shocking catastrophe. ‘Dora'—for in these novels she always thought of herself in the third person: it was more touching somehow—‘Dora felt strangely happy that morning. She lay on the verandah looking out on the peaceful garden, and she felt how sheltered and how blest her life had been after all. Suddenly the gate opened. A working man, a perfect stranger page 108 to her, pushed up the path, and standing in front of her, he pulled off his cap, his rough face full of pity.

‘“I've bad news for you, Ma'am …

‘“Dead?” cried Dora, clasping her hands. “Both dead? …”’

Or since the Burnells had come to live at Tarana … she woke in the middle of the night. The room was full of a strange glare. ‘Richard! Richard, wake! Tarana is on fire’ … At last all were taken out. They stood on the blackened grass watching the flames rage. Suddenly the cry went up: Where was Mrs. Fairfield? God! where was she? ‘Mother!’ cried Dora, dropping on to her knees on the wet grass. ‘Mother!’ And she saw her Mother appear at an upper window. Just for a moment she seemed to faintly waver…. There came a sickening crash….

These dreams were so powerful that she would turn over, bury her face in the ribbon work cushion and sob. But they were a profound secret; and Doady's melancholy was always put down to her dreadful headaches….

‘Hand over the scissors, Beryl, and I'll snip them off now.'

‘Doady, you are to do nothing of the kind,’ said Beryl, handing her two pairs of scissors to choose from.

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The poppies were snipped off. ‘I hope you will really like Tarana,’ she said, sitting back in her chair and sipping her tea. ‘Of course it is at its best now, but I can't help feeling a little afraid that it will be very damp in the winter. Don't you feel that, Mother? The very fact that the garden is so lovely is a bad sign in a way—and then of course it is quite in the valley, isn't it? I mean it is lower than any of the other houses.'

‘I expect it will be flooded from the autumn to the spring,’ said Linda. ‘We shall have to set little frog traps, Doady—little mouse traps in bowls of water baited with a sprig of water-cress instead of a piece of cheese. And Stanley will have to row to the office in an open boat. He'd love that. I can imagine the glow he would arrive in and the way he'd measure his chest twice a day to see how fast it was expanding.'

‘Linda, you are very silly—very,’ said Mrs. Fairfield.

‘What can you expect from Linda,’ said Doady, ‘she laughs at everything—everything. I often wonder if there will ever be anything that Linda will not laugh at.'

‘Oh, I'm a heartless creature!’ said Linda. She got up and went over to her Mother. ‘Your cap is page 110 just a tiny wink crooked, Mamma,’ said she, and she patted it straight with her quick little hands and kissed her Mother. ‘A perfect little icicle,’ she said, and kissed her again.

‘You mean you love to think you are,’ said Beryl, and she blew into her thimble, popped it on and drew the white satin dress towards her—and in the silence that followed she had a strange feeling—she felt her anger like a little serpent dart out of her bosom and strike at Linda. ‘Why do you always pretend to be so indifferent to everything?’ she said. ‘You pretend you don't care where you live, or if you see anybody or not, or what happens to the children or even what happens to you. You can't be sincere and yet you keep it up—you've kept it up for years. In fact'—and she gave a little laugh of joy and relief to be so rid of the serpent, she felt positively delighted—‘I can't even remember when it started now. Whether it started with Stanley or before Stanley's time, or after you had rheumatic fever, or when Isabel was born.'

‘Beryl!’ said Mrs. Fairfield sharply. ‘That's quite enough, quite enough!'

But Linda jumped up. Her cheeks were very white. ‘Don't stop her, Mother,’ she cried. ‘She's got page 111 a perfect right to say whatever she likes. Why on earth shouldn't she?'

‘She has not,’ said Mrs. Fairfield. ‘She has no right whatever.'

Linda opened her eyes at her Mother. ‘What a way to contradict anybody,’ she said. ‘I'm ashamed of you—and how Doady must be enjoying herself! The very first time she comes to see us at our new house we sit hitting one another over the head.'

The door handle rattled and turned. Kezia looked tragically in. ‘Isn't it ever going to be tea time?’ she asked.

‘No, never!’ said Linda.

‘Your Mother doesn't care, Kezia, whether you ever set eyes on her again. She doesn't care if you starve. You are all going to be sent to the Home for Waifs and Strays to-morrow.'

‘Don't tease,’ said Mrs. Fairfield. ‘She believes every word.’ And she said to Kezia, ‘I'm coming, darling. Run upstairs to the bathroom and wash your face, your hands and your knees.'

On the way home with the children Mrs. Trout began an entirely new novel. It was night. Richard was out somewhere. (He always was on these occasions.) page 112 She was sitting in the drawing-room by candlelight, playing over ‘Solveig's Song,’ when Stanley Burnell appeared—hatless—pale. At first he could not speak. ‘Stanley, tell me, what is it?’ And she put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Linda has gone,’ he said hoarsely. Even Mrs. Trout's imagination could not question this flight. She had to accept it very quickly and pass on. ‘She never cared,’ said Stanley. ‘God knows I did all I could. But she wasn't happy. I knew she wasn't happy.'

‘Mum,’ said Rags, ‘which would you rather be if you had to—a duck or a fowl?'

‘I'd rather be a fowl—much rather,’ said she.

The white duck did not look as if it had ever had a head when Alice placed it in front of Stanley Burnell that evening. It lay, in beautifully basted resignation, on the 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 stain. Alice a peony red and the duck a Spanish mahogany. Burnell ran his eye along the edge of the carving knife; he prided page 113 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 after they'd done with it. Now, he did; he really took it seriously—he really took a pride in cutting delicate shaves of beef, little slices of mutton just the right thickness, and in dividing a chicken or a duck with nice precision, so that it could appear a second time and still look a decent member of society.

‘Is this one of the home products?’ he asked, knowing perfectly well that it was.

‘Yes, dear, the butcher didn't come; we have discovered that he only comes three times a week.'

But there wasn't any need to apologise for it; it was a superb bird, it wasn't meat at all, it was a kind of very superior jelly.

‘Father would say,’ said Burnell, ‘that this was one of those birds whose mother must have 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? Beryl, you and I are the only people in this house with a real feeling for food—I am page 114 perfectly willing to state, in a court of law if the necessity arises, that I love good food.'

Tea was served in the drawing-room after dinner and Beryl, who, for some reason, had been very charming to Stanley ever since he came home, suggested he and she should play a game of crib. They sat down at a little table near one of the open windows. Mrs. Fairfield had gone upstairs, 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, and she moved the tall lamp to her side, so that she sat under its soft light.

How remote they looked, those two, from where Linda watched and rocked. The green table, the bright polished cards, Stanley's big hands and Beryl's tiny white ones, moving the tapping red and white pegs along the little board, seemed all to be part of one mysterious movement. Stanley himself sat at ease, big and solid in his loose fitting dark suit, a look of health and well-being about him. And there was Beryl in the white and black muslin dress, with her bright head bent under the lamplight. Round her throat she wore a black velvet ribbon. It changed her—altered the shape of her face and throat somehow—but page 115 it was very charming, Linda decided. The room smelled of lilies. There were two big jars of white arums in the fireplace.

‘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 woefulness, 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, 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 one always who was impatient and hopped away as the other came up and wouldn't listen. Perhaps one was frightened of the other, or perhaps the white one was cruel and did not want to hear and would not even give him a chance to speak.

In the bosom of her dress Beryl wore a bunch of black pansies, and once, just as the little pegs were close side by side, as she bent over, the pansies dropped out and covered them.

‘What a shame to stop them,’ said she, as she page 116 picked up the pansies, ‘just when they had a moment to fly into each other's arms!'

‘Good-bye, my girl,’ laughed Stanley, and away the red peg hopped.

The drawing-room was long and narrow with two windows and a glass door that gave on to the verandah. It had a cream paper with a pattern of gilt roses, and above the white marble mantelpiece was the big mirror in a gilt frame wherein Beryl had seen her drowned reflection. A white polar-bear skin lay in front of the fireplace, 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 back. Above it there hung an oil painting by Beryl of a large cluster of surprised looking clematis—for 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 meant to buy a Chesterfield and two decent chairs and—goodness only knows … 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, sillies, before it is too late. Fly out again.'

page 117

But no, round and round they flew, and they seemed to bring the silence of the moonlight in with them on their tiny 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?’ Perhaps he felt her restlessness.

‘No, nothing; I'm going to find Mother.'

She went out of the room and, standing at the foot of the stairs, she called: ‘Mother!’ But Mrs. Fairfield's voice came across the hall from the verandah.

The moon that Lottie and Kezia had seen from the storeman's wagon was nearly full, and the house, the garden, old Mrs. Fairfield and Linda, all were bathed in a dazzling light.

‘I have been looking at the aloe,’ said Mrs. Fairfield. ‘I believe it is going to flower, this year. Wouldn't that be wonderfully lucky? Look at the top there! All 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 page 118 aloe seemed to ride upon it like a ship with the oars lifted. Bright moonlight hung upon those lifted oars like water, and on the green wave glittered the dew.

‘Do you feel too?’ said Linda, and she spoke, like her mother with the special voice that women use at night to each other, as though they spoke in their sleep, or from the bottom of a deep well—‘Don't you feel that it is coming towards us?'

And she dreamed that she and her mother were caught up on the cold water and into the ship with the lifted oars and the budding mast. But now the oars fell striking quickly, quickly and they rowed far away over the tops of the garden trees, over the paddocks and the dark bush beyond. She saw her mother, sitting quietly in the boat, sunning herself in the moonlight, as she expressed it. No, after all, it would be better if her mother did not come, for she heard herself cry: ‘Faster! Faster!’ to those who were rowing.

How much more natural this dream was than that she should go back to the house where the children lay sleeping and where Stanley and Beryl sat playing cribbage!

‘I believe there are buds,’ said she. ‘Let us go down into the garden, Mother, I like that aloe. I like page 119 it more than anything else 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 sight of them her heart grew hard. She particularly liked the long sharp thorns. Nobody would dare to come near her ship or to follow after. ‘Not even my Newfoundland dog,’ thought she, ‘whom I'm so fond of in the day time.'

For she really was fond of him. She loved and admired and respected him tremendously; and she understood him—Oh, better than anybody else in the world! She knew him through and through. He was the soul of truth and sincerity and, for all his practical experience, he was awfully simple, easily pleased and easily hurt.

If only he didn't jump at her so, and bark so loudly, and thump with his tail, and watch her with such eager, loving eyes! He was too strong for her; she always had hated things that rushed at her, even when she was a child. There were times when he page 120 was frightening—really frightening, when she just hadn't screamed at the top of her voice: ‘You are killing me!’ and when 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 seriously affected, and Doctor Dear has told you that I may die at any moment. I've had three great lumps of children already.'

Yes, yes, it was true, and, thinking of it, she snatched her hand away from her Mother's arm. For all her love and respect and admiration, she hated him.

It had never been so plain to her as it was at this moment. There were all her feelings about Stanley, one just as true as the other, sharp defined. She could have done them up in little packets, and there was this other—just as separate as the rest, this hatred, and yet just as real. She wished she could have done them up in little packets and given them to Stanley—especially the last one—she would like to watch him while he opened that …

She hugged her folded arms and began to laugh silently. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! How absurd it all was! It really was funny—simply funny. And the idea of her hating Stanley (she could see his astonishment if page 121 she had cried out, or given him the packet) was funniest of all. Yes, it was perfectly true, what Beryl had said that afternoon—she didn't care for anything. But it wasn't a pose; Beryl was wrong there—she laughed because she couldn't help laughing….

And why this mania to keep alive? For it really was mania! ‘What am I guarding myself so preciously for,’ she thought, mocking and silently laughing. ‘I shall go on having children and Stanley will go on making money, and the children and the houses will grow bigger and bigger, with larger and larger gardens—and whole fleets of aloe trees in them for me to choose from….’ Why this mania to keep alive indeed? In the bottom of her heart she knew that now she was not being perfectly sincere. She had a reason but she couldn't express it—no, not even to herself.

She had been walking with her head bent looking at nothing; now she looked up and about her. Her mother and she were standing by the red and white camellia trees. Beautiful were the rich dark leaves spangled with light and the round flowers that perched among the leaves like red and white birds. Linda pulled a piece of verbena and crumbled it and held up the cup of her hands to her mother.

page 122

‘Delicious!’ said Mrs. Fairfield, bending over to smell. ‘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 of?’ said Linda. ‘Tell me.'

But Mrs. Fairfield said: ‘I haven't really been thinking of anything at all. 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 black-currant and gooseberry bushes in the vegetable garden. I noticed them to-day. I should like to see the pantry shelves thoroughly well stocked with our own jam….'

At this point in the manuscript the following note occurs:

This is a strange fact about Madame Allègre. She walks very well—quite beautifully. I saw her just now go down to the bottom of the garden with a pail in one hand and a basket in the other.

Prepare charcoal fire every night before turning in. Then one has only to go down, put a match to it and stick on the funnel, and it's ready by the time you're dressed! How clever.

I must break through again. I feel so anxious and so worried about the Sardinia* that I can't write. What I have

* TheSardiniawas the P. & O. liner in which Katherine's sister was returning from India, at the moment of the intensified submarine campaign of Germany.

page 123 done seems to me to be awfully, impossibly good compared to the Stuff I wrote yesterday. I believe if I had another shock (!)—if for instance Mlle Marthe* turned up I might manage, but at present, je veux mourir. I ought to write a letter from Beryl to Nan Fry.

This is all too laborious.

‘My Darling Nan,

‘Don't think me a piggy-wig because I haven't written before: I haven't had a moment, dear, and even now I feel so exhausted that I can hardly hold a pen.

‘Well, the dreadful deed is done. We have actually left the giddy whirl of town (!) and I can't see how we shall ever go back again, for my brother-in-law has bought this house “lock, stock and barrel,” to use his own words.

‘In a way it's an awful relief, for he's been threatening to take a place in the country ever since I've lived with them—and I must say the house and garden are awfully nice—a million times better than that dreadful cubby hole in town.

‘But buried, my dear. Buried isn't the word!

‘We have got neighbours, but they're only farmers—big louts of boys who always seem to be milking, and two dreadful females with protruding teeth who came over when we were moving and brought us some scones and said they were sure they'd be very willing to help. My sister, who lives

* For Mlle Marthe, see “Letters,” Vol. I, pp. 55 and 61.

page 124 a mile away, says she doesn't really know a soul here, so I'm sure we never, never shall, and I'm certain nobody will ever come out from town to see us, because though there is a ‘bus it's an awful old rattling thing with black leather sides that any decent person would rather die than ride in for six miles.

‘Such is life! It's a sad ending for poor little B. I'll get to be a most frightful frump in a year or two, and come and see you in a mackintosh with a sailor hat tied on with a white China silk motor veil!

‘Stanley says that now we're settled—for after the most ghastly fortnight of my life we really are settled—he is going to bring out a couple of men from the club each week for tennis, on Saturday afternoons. In fact, two are promised us as a Great Treat to-day. But, my dear, if you could see Stanley's men from the club … rather fattish, the type who look frightfully indecent without waistcoats—always with toes that turn in rather—so conspicuous, too, when you're walking about a tennis court in white shoes—and pulling up their trousers every minute—don't you know—and whacking at imaginary things with their racquets.

‘I used to play with them at the Club Court last summer, and I'm sure you'll know the type when I tell you that after I'd been there about three times they all called me Miss Beryl! It's a weary world. Of course Mother simply loves this place, but then when I am Mother's age I suppose I page 125 shall be quite content to sit in the sun and shell peas into a basin. But I'm not—not—not.

‘What Linda really thinks about the whole affair, per usual, I haven't the slightest idea. She is as mysterious as ever….

‘My dear, you know that white satin dress of mine, I've taken the sleeves out entirely, put straps of black velvet across the shoulders and two big red poppies out of my dear sister's chapeau. It's a great success, though when I shall wear it I do not know….'

Beryl sat writing this letter at a little table in front of the window in her room. In a way of course it was all perfectly true, but in another way it was all the greatest rubbish and she didn't mean a word of it. No, that wasn't right. She felt all those things, but she didn't really feel them like that. The Beryl who wrote that letter might have been leaning over her shoulder and guiding her hand—so separate was she: and yet in a way, perhaps she was more real than the other, the real Beryl. She had been getting stronger and stronger for a long while.

There had been a time when the real Beryl had just made use of the false one to get her out of awkward positions—to glide her over hateful moments—to help her to bear the stupid, ugly, page 126 sometimes beastly, things that happened. She had, as it were, called to the unreal Beryl, and seen her coming, and seen her going away again, quite definitely and simply. But that was long ago. The unreal Beryl was greedy and jealous of the real one. Gradually she took more and stayed longer. Gradually she came more quickly, and now the real Beryl was hardly certain sometimes if she were there or not.

Days, weeks at a time passed without her ever for a moment ceasing to act a part, for that was really what it came to, and then, quite suddenly, when the unreal self had forced her to do something she did not want to do at all, she had come into her own again, and for the first time realised what had been happening.

Perhaps it was because she was not leading the life that she wanted to—she had not a chance to really express herself—she was always living below her power, and therefore she had no need of her real self, her real self only made her wretched.

At this point in the manuscript the following note occurs:

What is it that I'm getting at? It is really Beryl's Sosie. The fact that for a long time now, she hasn't been even able to control her second self: it's her second self who now controls her…. There was a kind of radiant being who wasn't either spiteful or malicious, of whom she'd had a glimpse—whose very page 127 voice was different to hers—who was grave—who never would have dreamed of doing the things that she did. Had she banished this being, or had it really got simply tired and left her? I want to get at all this through her, just as I got at Linda through Linda. To suddenly merge her into herself.

In a way of course it was all perfectly true, but in another way it was all the greatest rubbish, and she didn't believe a word of it. No, that wasn't right: she felt all those things, but she didn't really feel them like that.

It was her other self, whose slave or whose mistress she was—which? who had written that letter. It not only bored—it rather disgusted her real self.

‘Flippant and silly,’ said her real self, yet she knew she'd send it and that she'd always write that kind of twaddle to Nan Fry. In fact, it was a very mild example of the kind of letter she generally wrote.

Beryl leaned her elbows on the table and read it through again—the voice of the letter seemed to come up to her from the page—faint already, like a voice heard over a telephone wire, high, gushing, with something bitter in the sound. Oh, she detested it to-day.

‘You've always got so much animation,’ said Nan Fry. ‘That's why men are so keen on you.' page 128 And she had added, rather mournfully (for men weren't keen on Nan—she was a solid kind of girl with fat hips and a high colour), ‘I can't understand how you keep it up, but it's your nature, I suppose.'

What rot! What nonsense! It wasn't her nature at all! Good Heavens! If she'd ever been her real self with Nan Fry, Nannie would have jumped out of the window with surprise. ‘My dear, you know that white satin dress of mine'—Ugh! Beryl slammed her letter-case to.

She jumped up, and half consciously, half unconsciously, she drifted over to the looking glass. There stood a slim girl dressed in white—a short white serge skirt, a white silk blouse and a white leather belt drawn in tight round her tiny waist. She had a heart-shaped face, wide at the brows and with a pointed chin—but not too pointed…. Her eyes, her eyes were perhaps her best feature: such a strange, uncommon colour too, greeny blue with little gold spots in them.

She had fine black eyebrows and long black lashes—so long that when they lay on her cheeks they positively caught the light, someone or other had told her.

Her mouth was rather large—too large? No, page 129 not really. Her underlip protruded a little. She had a way of sucking it in that somebody else had told her was awfully fascinating.

Her nose was her least satisfactory feature. Not that it was really ugly—but it wasn't half as fine as Linda's. Linda really had a perfect little nose. Hers spread rather—not badly—and in all probability she exaggerated the spreadness of it just because it was her nose and she was so awfully critical of herself. She pinched it with her thumb and second finger and made a little face.

Lovely long hair. And such masses of it. It was the colour of fresh fallen leaves, brown and red, with a glint of yellow. Almost it seemed to have a life of its own, it was so warm and there was such a deep ripple in it. When she plaited it in one thick plait it hung on her back just like a long snake. She loved to feel the weight of it drag her head back; she loved to feel it loose, covering her bare arms.

It had been the fashion among the girls at Miss Birch's to brush Beryl's hair. ‘Do, do let me brush your hair, darling Beryl.’ But nobody brushed it as beautifully as Nan Fry. Beryl would sit in front of the dressing table in her cubicle, wearing a white linen wrapper, and behind her stood Nannie in a page 130 dark red woollen gown buttoned up to her chin. Two candles gave a pointing, flickering light.

Her hair streamed over the chair back. She shook it out, she yielded it up to Nannie's adoring hands. In the glass Nannie's face above the dark gown was like a round sleeping mask. Slowly she brushed, with long, caressing strokes. Her hand and the brush were like one thing upon the warm hair. She would say with a kind of moaning passion, laying down the brush and looping the hair in her hands: ‘It's more beautiful than ever, B. It really is lovelier than last time.’ And then she would brush again. She seemed to send herself to sleep with the movement and the gentle sound—she had something of the look of a blind cat, as though it were she who was being stroked, and not Beryl.

But nearly always these brushings came to an unpleasant ending. Nannie did something silly. Quite suddenly she would snatch up Beryl's hair and bury her face in it, and kiss it, or clasp her hands round Beryl's head and press it back against her firm breast, sobbing: ‘You are so beautiful! You don't know how beautiful you are—beautiful, beautiful!'

And at these moments Beryl had such a feeling of horror, such a violent thrill of physical dislike for page 131 Nan Fry. ‘That's enough. That's quite enough. Thank you. You've brushed it beautifully. Good-night, Nan.’ She didn't even try to suppress her contempt and her disgust…. And the curious thing was that Nan Fry seemed to understand this, even to expect it, never protesting, but stumbling away out of the cubicle, and perhaps whispering ‘Forgive me’ at the door. And the more curious thing was that Beryl let her brush her hair again, and let this happen again … and again there was this silly scene between them, always ending in the same way, more or less, and never, never referred to in the day time.

But she did brush hair so beautifully.

Was her hair less bright now? No, not a bit!

At this point in the manuscript the following note occurs:

Robin Sends To Beryl—

Lives like logs of driftwood
Tossed on a watery main
Other logs encounter,
Drift, touch, part again.

And so it is with our lives
On life's tempestuous sea.
We meet, we greet, we sever,
Drifting eternally.…;

‘Yes, my dear, there's no denying it, you really are a lovely little thing.'

page 132

At the words her breast lifted, she took a long breath, smiling with delight, and half closing her eyes as if she held a sweet, sweet bouquet up to her face—a fragrance that made her faint.

But even as she looked the smile faded from her lips and eyes—and, oh God! there she was, back again, playing the same old game. False, false as ever! False as when she'd written to Nan Fry. False even when she was alone with herself now.

What had that creature in the glass to do with her really, and why on earth was she staring at her? She dropped down by the side of her bed and buried her head in her arms.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I'm so miserable, so frightfully miserable. I know I'm silly and spiteful and vain. I'm always acting a part. I'm never my real self for a minute.’ And plainly, plainly she saw her false self running up and down the stairs, laughing a special trilling laugh if they had visitors, standing under the lamp if a man came to dinner, so that he should see how the light shone on her hair, pouting and pretending to be a little girl when anybody asked her to play the guitar. Why, she even kept it up for Stanley's benefit! Only last night, when he was reading the paper, she had stood beside him and leaned page 133 against his shoulder on purpose, and she had put her hand over his pointing out something, and said at the same time: ‘Heavens! Stanley, how brown your hands are,’ only that he should notice how white hers were!

How despicable! Her heart grew cold with rage!

‘It's marvellous how you keep it up!’ she had said to her false self. But then it was only because she was so miserable—so miserable! If she'd been happy—if she'd been living her own life, all this false life would simply cease to be. And now she saw the real Beryl, a radiant shadow … a shadow…. Faint and unsubstantial shone the real self. What was there of her except that radiance? And for what tiny moments she was really she! Beryl could almost remember every one of them…. She did not mean that she was exactly happy then, it was a feeling that overwhelmed her at certain times … certain nights when the wind blew with a forlorn cry and she lay cold in her bed, wakeful and listening … certain lovely evenings when she passed down a road where there were houses and big gardens and the sound of a piano came from one of the houses. And then certain Sunday nights in Church, when the gas flickered and the pews were shadowy and the lines of the hymns were almost too sweet and sad to bear … page 134 and rare, rare times, rarest of all, when it was not the voice of outside things that had moved her so—she remembered one of them, when she had sat up one night with Linda. Linda was very ill. She had watched the pale dawn come in through the blinds and she had seen Linda, lying propped up high with pillows, her arms outside the quilt and the shadow of her hair dusky against the white. And at all these times she had felt: ‘Life is wonderful—life is rich and mysterious. But it is good, too, and I am rich and mysterious and good.’ Perhaps that is what she might have said … but she did not say those things. Then she knew her false self was quite, quite gone, and she longed to be always as she was just at that moment, to become that Beryl for ever…. ‘Shall I? How can I? And did I ever not have a false self?'

But just when she had got that far she heard the sound of wheels coming up the drive, and little steps running along the passage to her room and Kezia's voice calling:

‘Aunt Beryl! Aunt Beryl!'

She got up. Botheration! How she had crumpled her skirt! Kezia burst in.

‘Aunt Beryl, Mother says will you please come down because Father's home and lunch is ready.'

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‘Very well, Kezia.’ She went over to the dressing table and powdered her nose.

Kezia crossed over, too, and unscrewed a little pot of cream and sniffed it. Under her arm Kezia carried a very dirty calico cat.

When Aunt Beryl had run out of the room she sat the cat up on the dressing table and stuck the top of the cream jar over one of its ears.

Now look at yourself,’ said she sternly.

The calico cat was so appalled at the effect that it toppled backwards and bumped and bounced on the floor, and the top of the cream jar flew through the air and rolled like a penny in a round on the linoleum—and did not break.

But for Kezia it had broken the moment it flew through the air; and she picked it up, hot all over, put it on the dressing table and walked away, far too quickly and airily.

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