The Garden Party and Other Stories - Katherine Mansfield [68]
The band had been having a rest. Now they started again. And what they played was warm, sunny, yet there was just a faint chill – a something what was it? – not sadness – no, not sadness – a something that made you want to sing. The tune lifted, lifted, the light shone; and it seemed to Miss Brill that in another moment all of them, all the whole company, would begin singing. The young ones, the laughing ones who were moving together, they would begin, and the men’s voices, very resolute and brave, would join them. And then she too, she too, and the others on the benches – they would come in with a kind of accompaniment – something low that scarcely rose or fell, something so beautiful – moving… And Miss Brill’s eyes filled with tears and she looked smiling at all the other members of the company. Yes, we understand, we understand, she thought – though what they understood she didn’t know.
Just at that moment a boy and a girl came and sat down where the old couple had been. They were beautifully dressed; they were in love. The hero and heroine, of course, just arrived from his father’s yacht. And still soundlessly singing, still with that trembling smile, Miss Brill prepared to listen.
‘No, not now,’ said the girl. ‘Not here, 1 can’t.’
‘But why? Because of that stupid old thing at the end there?’ asked the boy. ‘Why does she come here at all – who wants her? Why doesn’t she keep her silly old mug at home?’
‘It’s her fu-fur which is so funny,’ giggled the girl. ‘It’s exactly like a fried whiting.
‘Ah, be off with you!’ said the boy in an angry whisper. Then: ‘Tell me, ma petite chère – ’
‘No, not here,’ said the girl. ‘Not yet’
On her way home she usually bought a slice of honey-cake at the baker’s. It was her Sunday treat. Sometimes there was an almond in her slice, sometimes not. It made a great difference. If there was an almond it was like carrying home a tiny present – a surprise – something that might very well not have been there. She hurried on the almond Sundays and struck the match for the kettle in quite a dashing way.
But today she passed the baker’s by, climbed the stairs, went into the little dark room – her room like a cupboard – and sat down on the red eiderdown. She sat there for a long time. The box that the fur came out of was on the bed. She unclasped the necklet quickly; quickly, without looking, laid it inside. But when she put the lid on she thought she heard something crying.
Her First Ball
Exactly when the ball began Leila would have found it hard to say. Perhaps her first real partner was the cab. It did not matter that she shared the cab with, the Sheridan girls and their brother.1 She sat back in her own little corner of it, and the bolster on which her hand rested felt like the sleeve of an unknown young man’s dress suit; and away they bowled, past waltzing lamp-posts and houses and fences and trees.
‘Have you really never been to a ball before, Leila? But, my child, how too weird – ‘ cried the Sheridan girls.
‘Our nearest neighbour was fifteen miles,’ said Leila softly, gently opening and shutting her fan.
Oh, dear, hew hard it was to be indifferent like the others! She tried not to smile too much; she tried not to care. But every single thing was so new and exciting… Meg’s tuberoses, Jose’s long loop of amber, Laura’s little dark head, pushing above her white fur like a flower through snow. She would remember for ever. It even gave her a pang to see her cousin Laurie throw away the wisps of tissue paper he pulled from the fastenings of his new gloves. She would like to have kept those wisps as a keepsake, as a remembrance. Laurie leaned forward and put his hand on Laura’s knee.
‘Look here, darling,’ he said. ‘The third and the ninth as usual. Twig?’2
Oh, how marvellous to have a brother! In her excitement Leila felt that if there hid been time, if it hadn’t been impossible, she couldn’t have helped coving because she was an only child, and no brother had ever said ‘Twig?’ to her; no sister would ever say, as Meg said to Jose that moment. ‘. I’ve never known