Katherine Mansfield - The Complete Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield

“I wonder what the time is,” asked the little governess. “My watch has stopped. I forgot to wind it in the train last night. We’ve seen such a lot of things that I feel it must be quite late.” “Late!” He stopped in front of her laughing and shaking his head in a way she had begun to know. “Then you have not really enjoyed yourself. Late! Why, we have not had any ice cream yet!” “Oh, but I have enjoyed myself,” she cried, distressed, “more than I can possibly say. It has been wonderful! Only Frau Arnholdt is to be at the hotel at six and I ought to be there by five.” “So you shall. After the ice cream I shall put you into a cab and you can go there comfortably.” She was happy again. The chocolate ice cream melted—melted in little sips a long way down. The shadows of the trees danced on the table cloths, and she sat with her back safely turned to the ornamental clock that pointed to twenty-five minutes to seven. “Really and truly,” said the little governess earnestly, “this has been the happiest day of my life. I’ve never even imagined such a day.” In spite of the ice cream her grateful baby heart glowed with love for the fairy grandfather.

So they walked out of the garden down a long alley. The day was nearly over. “You see those big buildings opposite,” said the old man. “The third storey—that is where I live. I and the old housekeeper who looks after me.” She was very interested. “Now just before I find a cab for you, will you come and see my little ‘home’ and let me give you a bottle of the attar of roses I told you about in the train? For remembrance?” She would love to. “I’ve never seen a bachelor’s flat in my life,” laughed the little governess.

The passage was quite dark. “Ah, I suppose my old woman has gone out to buy me a chicken. One moment.” He opened a door and stood aside for her to pass, a little shy but curious, into a strange room. She did not know quite what to say. It wasn’t pretty. In a way it was very ugly—but neat, and, she supposed, comfortable for such an old man. “Well, what do you think of it?” He knelt down and took from a cupboard a round tray with two pink glasses and a tall pink bottle. “Two little bedrooms beyond,” he said gaily, “and a kitchen. It’s enough, eh?” “Oh, quite enough.” “And if ever you should be in Munich and care to spend a day or two—why there is always a little nest—a wing of a chicken, and a salad, and an old man delighted to be your host once more and many many times, dear little Fräulein!” He took the stopper out of the bottle and poured some wine into the two pink glasses. His hand shook and the wine spilled over the tray. It was very quiet in the room. She said: “I think I ought to go now.” “But you will have a tiny glass of wine with me—just one before you go?” said the old man. “No, really no. I never drink wine. I—I have promised never to touch wine or anything like that.” And though he pleaded and though she felt dreadfully rude, especially when he seemed to take it to heart so, she was quite determined. “No, really , please.” “Well, will you just sit down on the sofa for five minutes and let me drink your health?” The little governess sat down on the edge of the red velvet couch and he sat down beside her and drank her health at a gulp. “Have you really been happy to-day?” asked the old man, turning round, so close beside her that she felt his knee twitching against hers. Before she could answer he held her hands. “And are you going to give me one little kiss before you go?” he asked, drawing her closer still.

It was a dream! It wasn’t true! It wasn’t the same old man at all. Ah, how horrible! The little governess stared at him in terror. “No, no, no!” she stammered, struggling out of his hands. “One little kiss. A kiss. What is it? Just a kiss, dear little Fräulein. A kiss.” He pushed his face forward, his lips smiling broadly; and how his little blue eyes gleamed behind the spectacles! “Never—never. How can you!” She sprang up, but he was too quick and he held her against the wall, pressed against her his hard old body and his twitching knee and, though she shook her head from side to side, distracted, kissed her on the mouth. On the mouth! Where not a soul who wasn’t a near relation had ever kissed her before. . . .

She ran, ran down the street until she found a broad road with tram lines and a policeman standing in the middle like a clockwork doll. “I want to get a tram to the Hauptbahnhof,” sobbed the little governess. “Fräulein?” She wrung her hands at him. “The Hauptbahnhof. There—there’s one now,” and while he watched very much surprised, the little girl with her hat on one side, crying without a handkerchief, sprang on to the tram—not seeing the conductor’s eyebrows, nor hearing the hochwohlgebildete Dame talking her over with a scandalized friend. She rocked herself and cried out loud and said “Ah, ah!” pressing her hands to her mouth. “She has been to the dentist,” shrilled a fat old woman, too stupid to be uncharitable. “ Na, sagen Sie ’mal , what toothache! The child hasn’t one left in her mouth.” While the tram swung and jangled through a world full of old men with twitching knees.

When the little governess reached the hall of the Hotel Grunewald the same waiter who had come into her room in the morning was standing by table, polishing a tray of glasses. The sight of the little governess seemed to fill him out with some inexplicable important content. He was ready for her question; his answer came pat and suave. “Yes, Fräulein, the lady has been here. I told her that you had arrived and gone out again immediately with a gentleman. She asked me when you were coming back again—but of course I could not say. And then she went to the manager.” He took up a glass from the table, held it up to the light, looked at it with one eye closed, and started polishing it with a corner of his apron. “. . . ?” “Pardon, Fräulein? Ach, no, Fräulein. The manager could tell her nothing—nothing.” He shook his head and smiled at the brilliant glass. “Where is the lady now?” asked the little governess, shuddering so violently that she had to hold her handkerchief up to her mouth. “How should I know?” cried the waiter, and as he swooped past her to pounce upon a new arrival his heart beat so hard against his ribs that he nearly chuckled aloud. “That’s it! that’s it!” he thought. “That will show her.” And as he swung the new arrival’s box on to his shoulders—hoop!—as though he were a giant and the box a feather, he minced over again the little governess’s words, “ Gehen Sie. Gehen Sie sofort. Shall I! Shall I!” he shouted to himself.

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FROM eight o’clock in the morning until about half-past eleven Monica Tyrell suffered from her nerves, and suffered so terribly that these hours were—agonizing, simply. It was not as though she could control them. “Perhaps if I were ten years younger . . .” she would say. For now that she was thirty-three she had queer little way of referring to her age on all occasions, of looking at her friends with grave, childish eyes and saying: “Yes, I remember how twenty years ago . . .” or of drawing Ralph’s attention to the girls—real girls—with lovely youthful arms and throats and swift hesitating movements who sat near them in restaurants. “Perhaps if I were ten years younger . . .”

“Why don’t you get Marie to sit outside your door and absolutely forbid anybody to come near your room until you ring your bell?”

“Oh, if it were as simple as that!” She threw her little gloves down and pressed her eyelids with her fingers in the way he knew so well. “But in the first place I’d be so conscious of Marie sitting there, Marie shaking her finger at Rudd and Mrs. Moon, Marie as a kind of cross between a wardress and a nurse for mental cases! And then, there’s the post. One can’t get over the fact that the post comes, and once it has come, who—who—could wait until eleven for the letters?”