Katherine Mansfield - The Complete Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield

Bliss, The Garden Party, The Dove's Nest, Something Childish, In a German Pension, The Aloe

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musaicumbooks@okpublishing.info2017 OK Publishing ISBN 978-80-7583-211-5

Bliss, and Other Stories BLISS, AND OTHER STORIES Table of Contents

Bliss

Prelude

Je ne Parle pas Français

The Wind Blows

Psychology

Pictures

The Man without a Temperament

Mr. Reginald Peacock’s Day

Sun and Moon

Feuille d’Album

A Dill Pickle

The Little Governess

Revelations

The Escape

The Garden Party, and Other Stories

The Garden Party

At The Bay

The Daughters of the Late Colonel

Mr. and Mrs. Dove

The Young Girl

Life of Ma Parker

Marriage A La Mode

The Voyage

Miss Brill

Her First Ball

The Singing Lesson

The Stranger

Bank Holiday

An Ideal Family

The Lady's Maid

The Doves' Nest, and Other Stories

The Doves’ Nest

The Doll’s House

Honeymoon

A Cup of Tea

Taking the Veil

The Fly

The Canary

Something Childish, and Other Stories

Something Childish but very Natural

The Tiredness of Rosabel

How Pearl Button was Kidnapped

The Journey to Bruges

A Truthful Adventure

New Dresses

The Woman at the Store

Ole Underwood

The Little Girl

Millie

Pension Séguin

Violet

Bains Turcs

An Indiscreet Journey

Spring Picturesv

Late at Night

Two Tuppenny Ones, Please

The Black Cap

A Suburban Fairy Tale

Carnation

See-Saw

This Flower

The Wrong House

Sixpence

Poison

In a German Pension, and Other Stories

Germans at Meat

The Baron

The Sister of the Baroness

Frau Fischer

Frau Brechenmacher Attends A Wedding

The Modern Soul

At Lehmann's

The Luft Bad

A Birthday

The Child-Who-Was-Tired

The Advanced Lady

The Swing of the Pendulum

A Blaze

The Aloe

Last Moments Before

A Journey With The Storeman

The Day After

The Aloe

Unfinished Stories

A Married Man’s Story

Six Years After

Daphne

Father and the Girls

All Serene!

A Bad Idea

A Man and His Dog

Such a Sweet Old Lady

Honesty

Susannah

Second Violin

Mr. and Mrs. Williams

Weak Heart

Widowed

Table of Contents

“. . . but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle danger, we pluck this flower, safety. ”

Table of Contents

ALTHOUGH Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at—nothing—at nothing, simply.

What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss—absolute bliss!—as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe? . . .

Oh, is there no way you can express it without being “drunk and disorderly”? How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?

“No, that about the fiddle is not quite what I mean,” she thought, running up the steps and feeling in her bag for the key—she’d forgotten it, as usual—and rattling the letter-box. “It’s not what I mean, because—— Thank you, Mary”—she went into the hall. “Is nurse back?”

“Yes, M’m.”

“And has the fruit come?”

“Yes, M’m. Everything’s come.”

“Bring the fruit up to the dining-room, will you? I’ll arrange it before I go upstairs.”

It was dusky in the dining-room and quite chilly. But all the same Bertha threw off her coat; she could not bear the tight clasp of it another moment, and the cold air fell on her arms.

But in her bosom there was still that bright glowing place—that shower of little sparks coming from it. It was almost unbearable. She hardly dared to breathe for fear of fanning it higher, and yet she breathed deeply, deeply. She hardly dared to look into the cold mirror—but she did look, and it gave her back a woman, radiant, with smiling, trembling lips, with big, dark eyes and an air of listening, waiting for something . . . divine to happen . . . that she knew must happen . . . infallibly.

Mary brought in the fruit on a tray and with it a glass bowl, and a blue dish, very lovely, with a strange sheen on it as though it had been dipped in milk.

“Shall I turn on the light, M’m?”

“No, thank you. I can see quite well.”

There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones. These last she had bought to tone in with the new dining-room carpet. Yes, that did sound rather far-fetched and absurd, but it was really why she had bought them. She had thought in the shop: “I must have some purple ones to bring the carpet up to the table.” And it had seemed quite sense at the time.

When she had finished with them and had made two pyramids of these bright round shapes, she stood away from the table to get the effect—and it really was most curious. For the dark table seemed to melt into the dusky light and the glass dish and the blue bowl to float in the air. This, of course in her present mood, was so incredibly beautiful. . . . She began to laugh.

“No, no. I’m getting hysterical.” And she seized her bag and coat and ran upstairs to the nursery.

Nurse sat at a low table giving Little B her supper after her bath. The baby had on a white flannel gown and a blue woollen jacket, and her dark, fine hair was brushed up into a funny little peak. She looked up when she saw her mother and began to jump.

“Now, my lovey, eat it up like a good girl,” said Nurse, setting her lips in a way that Bertha knew, and that meant she had come into the nursery at another wrong moment.

“Has she been good, Nanny?”

“She’s been a little sweet all the afternoon,” whispered Nanny. “We went to the park and I sat down on a chair and took her out of the pram and a big dog came along and put its head on my knee and she clutched its ear, tugged it. Oh, you should have seen her.”

Bertha wanted to ask if it wasn’t rather dangerous to let her clutch at a strange dog’s ear. But she did not dare to. She stood watching them, her hands by her side, like the poor little girl in front of the rich little girl with the doll.

The baby looked up at her again, stared, and then smiled so charmingly that Bertha couldn’t help crying:

“Oh, Nanny, do let me finish giving her her supper while you put the bath things away.”

“Well, M’m, she oughtn’t to be changed hands while she’s eating,” said Nanny, still whispering. “It unsettles her; it’s very likely to upset her.”