Stories by Katherine Mansfield

Author:Katherine Mansfield [Mansfield, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49805-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

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.…

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