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leaving her; I knew I’d be worrying all the time. At last I asked her if she’d rather I put it off. ‘Oh no, Ellen,’ she said, ‘you mustn’t mind about me. You mustn’t disappoint your young man.’ And so cheerful, you know, madam, never thinking about herself. It made me feel worse than ever. I began to wonder… then she dropped her handkerchief and began to stoop down to pick it up herself – a thing she never did. ‘Whatever are you doing!’ I cried, running to stop her. ‘Well,’ she said, smiling, you know, madam, ‘I shall have to begin to practise.’ Oh, it was all I could do not to burst out crying. I went over to the dressing-table and made believe to rub up the silver, and I couldn’t keep myself in, and I asked her if she’d rather I… didn’t get married. ‘No, Ellen,’ she said – that was her voice, madam, like I’m giving you – ‘No, Ellen, not for the wide world!’ But while she said it, madam – I was looking in her glass; of course, she didn’t know I could see her – she put her little hand on her heart just like her dear mother used to, and lifted her eyes… Oh, madam!

When Harry came I had his letters all ready, and the ring and a ducky little brooch he’d given me – a silver bird it was, with a chain in its beak, and on the end of the chain a heart with a dagger. Quite the thing! I opened the door to him. I never gave him time for a word. ‘There you are,’ I said. ‘Take them all back,’ I said, ‘it’s all over. I’m not going to marry you,’ I said, ‘I can’t leave my lady.’ White! he turned as white as a woman. I had to slam the door, and there I stood, all of a tremble, till I knew he had gone. When I opened the door – believe me or not, madam – that man was gone! I ran out into the road just as I was, in my apron and my house-shoes, and there I stayed in the middle of the road… staring. People must have laughed if they saw me…

… Goodness gracious! – What’s that? It’s the clock striking! And here I’ve been keeping you awake. Oh, madam, you ought to have stopped me… Can I tuck in your feet? I always tuck in my lady’s feet, every night, just the same. And she says, ‘Good night, Ellen. Sleep sound and wake early!’ I don’t know what I should do if she didn’t say that, now.

… Oh dear, I sometimes think… whatever should I do if anything were to… But, there, thinking’s no good to anyone – is it, madam? Thinking won’t help. Not that I do it often. And if ever I do I pull myself up sharp, ‘Now then, Ellen. At it again – you silly girl! If you can’t find anything better to do than to start thinking!…

Notes

AT THE BAY

1. At the Bay: the story is set in Karori, the small seaside community outside Wellington, where K.M.’s family moved in 1893, when she was four years old. Her father leased a large house there called ‘Chesney Wold’ after a stately home in Dickens’s novel Bleak House.

2. bush-covered hills… bungalows began: Mansfield never explicitly tells us when a story is set in New Zealand, but relies on indirect clues. ‘Bush’ was a word used in the British colonies – particularly in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand – for uncleared or untilled land, or simply land outside towns, whether there were trees or shrubs on it or not. And ‘bungalows’ meant, in Mansfield’s day, country cottages erected by settlers in the colonies (the word comes from India and derives from Hindustani).

3. toi-toi: a native New Zealand name for cabbage palms – a Maori variant on a Polynesian word. Like the gum-tree on p. 6, with its eucalyptus smell, the toi-toi are a reminder that we are emphatically not in England, despite the familiar-sounding fuchsias, nasturtiums, marigolds and pinks.

4. telegraph poles: Antony Alpers points out that these should be telegraph wires, and in his ‘Definitive Edition’ of The Stories of Katherine Mansfield (Oxford University Press, 1984) he changes the text accordingly.

5. summer colony: the transplanted community at the sea for the summer. In fact K. M.’s family lived at the sea all the year round for five years, and her father – like Stanley here – commuted to work every day. The word ‘colony’ was used at the