The Katherine Mansfield MEGAPACK ®. Katherine Mansfield
we were together and he got up and left a little woman just when she did not expect him to get up and leave her, but quite the contrary, I would explain: “He can’t help it, Baby. He has to go back to his ship.” And I believed it far more than she did.
All the while we were together Dick never went with a woman. I sometimes wondered whether he wasn’t completely innocent. Why didn’t I ask him? Because I never did ask him anything about himself. But late one night he took out his pocket-book and a photograph dropped out of it. I picked it up and glanced at it before I gave it to him. It was of a woman. Not quite young. Dark, handsome, wild-looking, but so full in every line of a kind of haggard pride that even if Dick had not stretched out so quickly I wouldn’t have looked longer.
“Out of my sight, you little perfumed fox-terrier of a Frenchman,” said she.
(In my very worst moments my nose reminds me of a fox-terrier’s.)
“That is my Mother,” said Dick, putting up the pocket-book.
But if he had not been Dick I should have been tempted to cross myself, just for fun.
* * * *
This is how we parted. As we stood outside his hotel one night waiting for the concierge to release the catch of the outer door, he said, looking up at the sky: “I hope it will be fine tomorrow. I am leaving for England in the morning.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Perfectly. I have to get back. I’ve some work to do that I can’t manage here.”
“But—but have you made all your preparations?”
“Preparations?” He almost grinned. “I’ve none to make.”
“But—enfin, Dick, England is not the other side of the boulevard.”
“It isn’t much farther off,” said he. “Only a few hours, you know.” The door cracked open.
“Ah, I wish I’d known at the beginning of the evening!”
I felt hurt. I felt as a woman must feel when a man takes out his watch and remembers an appointment that cannot possibly concern her, except that its claim is the stronger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He put out his hand and stood, lightly swaying upon the step as though the whole hotel were his ship, and the anchor weighed.
“I forgot. Truly I did. But you’ll write, won’t you? Good night, old chap. I’ll be over again one of these days.”
And then I stood on the shore alone, more like a little fox-terrier than ever.…
“But after all it was you who whistled to me, you who asked me to come! What a spectacle I’ve cut wagging my tail and leaping round you, only to be left like this while the boat sails off in its slow, dreamy way.… Curse these English! No, this is too insolent altogether. Who do you imagine I am? A little paid guide to the night pleasures of Paris?… No, monsieur. I am a young writer, very serious, and extremely interested in modern English literature. And I have been insulted—insulted.”
* * * *
Two days after came a long, charming letter from him, written in French that was a shade too French, but saying how he missed me and counted on our friendship, on keeping in touch.
I read it standing in front of the (unpaid for) wardrobe mirror. It was early morning. I wore a blue kimono embroidered with white birds and my hair was still wet; it lay on my forehead, wet and gleaming.
“Portrait of Madame Butterfly,” said I, “on hearing of the arrival of ce cher Pinkerton.”
According to the books I should have felt immensely relieved and delighted. “…Going over to the window he drew apart the curtains and looked out at the Paris trees, just breaking into buds and green.… Dick! Dick! My English friend!”
I didn’t. I merely felt a little sick. Having been up for my first ride in an aeroplane I didn’t want to go up again, just now.
* * * *
That passed, and months after, in the winter, Dick wrote that he was coming back to Paris to stay indefinitely. Would I take rooms for him? He was bringing a woman friend with him.
Of course I would. Away the little fox-terrier flew. It happened most usefully, too; for I owed much money at the hotel where I took my meals, and two English people requiring rooms for an indefinite time was an excellent sum on account.
Perhaps I did rather wonder, as I stood in the larger of the two rooms with Madame, saying “Admirable,” what the woman friend would be like, but only vaguely. Either she would be very severe, flat back and front, or she would be tall, fair, dressed in mignonette green, name—Daisy, and smelling of rather sweetish lavender water.
You see, by this time, according to my rule of not looking back, I had almost forgotten Dick. I even got the tune of his song about the unfortunate man a little bit wrong when I tried to hum it.…
* * * *
I very nearly did not turn up at the station after all. I had arranged to, and had, in fact, dressed with particular care for the occasion. For I intended to take a new line with Dick this time. No more confidences and tears on eyelashes. No, thank you!
“Since you left Paris,” said I, knotting my black silver-spotted tie in the (also unpaid for) mirror over the mantelpiece, “I have been very successful, you know. I have two more books in preparation, and then I have written a serial story, Wrong Doors, which is just on the point of publication and will bring me in a lot of money. And then my little book of poems,” I cried, seizing the clothes-brush and brushing the velvet collar of my new indigo-blue overcoat, “my little book—Left Umbrellas—really did create,” and I laughed and waved the brush, “an immense sensation!”
It was impossible not to believe this of the person who surveyed himself finally, from top to toe, drawing on his soft grey gloves. He was looking the part; he was the part.
That gave me an idea. I took out my notebook, and still in full view, jotted down a note or two.… How can one look the part and not be the part? Or be the part and not look it? Isn’t looking—being? Or being—looking? At any rate who is to say that it is not?…
This seemed to me extraordinarily profound at the time, and quite new. But I confess that something did whisper as, smiling, I put up the notebook: “You—literary? you look as though you’ve taken down a bet on a racecourse!” But I didn’t listen. I went out, shutting the door of the flat with a soft, quick pull so as not to warn the concierge of my departure, and ran down the stairs quick as a rabbit for the same reason.
* * * *
But ah! the old spider. She was too quick for me. She let me run down the last little ladder of the web and then she pounced. “One moment. One little moment, Monsieur,” she whispered, odiously confidential. “Come in. Come in.” And she beckoned with a dripping soup ladle. I went to the door, but that was not good enough. Right inside and the door shut before she would speak.
There are two ways of managing your concierge if you haven’t any money. One is—to take the high hand, make her your enemy, bluster, refuse to discuss anything; the other is—to keep in with her, butter her up to the two knots of the black rag tying up her jaws, pretend to confide in her, and rely on her to arrange with the gas man and to put off the landlord.
I had tried the second. But both are equally detestable and unsuccessful. At any rate whichever you’re trying is the worse, the impossible one.
It was the landlord this time.… Imitation of the landlord by the concierge threatening to toss me out.… Imitation of the concierge by the concierge taming the wild bull.… Imitation of the landlord rampant again, breathing in the concierge’s face. I was the concierge. No, it was too nauseous. And all the while the black pot on the gas ring bubbling away, stewing out the hearts and livers of every tenant in the place.
“Ah!” I cried, staring at the clock on the mantelpiece, and then,