Strange Bliss by Katherine Mansfield

Author:Katherine Mansfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

It was over at last. And: ‘Come and see my new coffee machine,’ said Bertha.

‘We only have a new coffee machine once a fortnight,’ said Harry. Face took her arm this time; Miss Fulton bent her head and followed after.

The fire had died down in the drawing-room to a red, flickering ‘nest of baby phoenixes’, said Face.

‘Don’t turn up the light for a moment. It is so lovely.’ And down she crouched by the fire again. She was always cold … ‘without her little red flannel jacket, of course,’ thought Bertha.

At that moment Miss Fulton ‘gave the sign’.

‘Have you a garden?’ said the cool, sleepy voice.

This was so exquisite on her part that all Bertha could do was to obey. She crossed the room, pulled the curtains apart, and opened those long windows.

‘There!’ she breathed.

And the two women stood side by side looking at the slender, flowering tree. Although it was so still it seemed, like the flame of a candle, to stretch up, to point, to quiver in the bright air, to grow taller and taller as they gazed—almost to touch the rim of the round, silver moon.

How long did they stand there? Both, as it were, caught in that circle of unearthly light, understanding each other perfectly, creatures of another world, and wondering what they were to do in this one with all this blissful treasure that burned in their bosoms and dropped, in silver flowers, from their hair and hands?

For ever—for a moment? And did Miss Fulton murmur: ‘Yes. Just that.’ Or did Bertha dream it?

Then the light was snapped on and Face made the coffee and Harry said: ‘My dear Mrs Knight, don’t ask me about my baby. I never see her. I shan’t feel the slightest interest in her until she has a lover,’ and Mug took his eye out of the conservatory for a moment and then put it under glass again and Eddie Warren drank his coffee and set down the cup with a face of anguish as though he had drunk and seen the spider.

‘What I want to do is to give the young men a show. I believe London is simply teeming with first-chop, unwritten plays. What I want to say to ’em is: “Here’s the theatre. Fire ahead.”’

‘You know, my dear, I am going to decorate a room for the Jacob Nathans. Oh, I am so tempted to do a fried-fish scheme, with the backs of the chairs shaped like frying pans and lovely chip potatoes embroidered all over the curtains.’

‘The trouble with our young writing men is that they are still too romantic. You can’t put out to sea without being seasick and wanting a basin. Well, why won’t they have the courage of those basins?’

‘A dreadful poem about a girl who was violated by a beggar without a nose in a lit-tle wood….’

Miss Fulton sank into the lowest, deepest chair and Harry handed round the cigarettes.

From the way he stood in front of her shaking the silver box

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