Something Childish and other Stories. Katherine Mansfield

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СКАЧАТЬ a fortnight—perhaps a month.” I shrugged my shoulders.

      “One moment,” said Madame. “I shall see what I can do.” She disappeared, I am sure not further than the other side of the door, for she reappeared immediately and told me I might have a room at her private house— “just round the corner and kept by an old servant who, although she has a wall eye, has been in our family for fifteen years. The porter will take you there, and you can have supper before you go.”

      I was the only guest in the dining-room. A tired waiter provided me with an omelette and a pot of coffee, then leaned against a sideboard and watched me while I ate, the limp table napkin over his arm seeming to symbolise the very man. The room was hung with mirrors reflecting unlimited empty tables and watchful waiters and solitary ladies finding sad comfort in omelettes, and sipping coffee to the rhythm of Mendelssohn’s Spring Song played over three times by the great chiming belfry.

      “Are you ready, Madame?” asked the waiter. “It is I who carry your luggage.”

      “Quite ready.”

      He heaved the suit case on to his shoulder and strode before me—past the little pavement cafés where men and women, scenting our approach, laid down their beer and their post-cards to stare after us, down a narrow street of shuttered houses, through the Place van Eyck, to a red-brick house. The door was opened by the wall-eyed family treasure, who held a candle like a minature frying-pan in her hand. She refused to admit us until we had both told the whole story.

      “C’est ça, c’est ça,” said she. “Jean, number five!”

      She shuffled up the stairs, unlocked a door and lit another minature frying-pan upon the bed-table. The room was papered in pink, having a pink bed, a pink door and a pink chair. On pink mats on the mantelpiece obese young cherubs burst out of pink eggshells with trumpets in their mouths. I was brought a can of hot water; I shut and locked the door. “Bruges at last,” I thought as I climbed into a bed so slippery with fine linen that one felt like a fish endeavouring to swim over an ice pond, and this quiet house with the old “typical” servant,—the Place van Eyck, with the white statue surrounded by those dark and heavy trees,—there was almost a touch of Verlaine in that...

      Bang! went a door. I started up in terror and felt for the frying-pan, but it was the room next to mine suddenly invaded. “Ah! home at last,” cried a female voice. “Mon Dieu, my feet! Would you go down to Marie, mon cher, and ask her for the tin bath and some hot water?”

      “No, that is too much,” boomed the answer. “You have washed them three times to-day already.”

      “But you do not know the pain I suffer; they are quite inflamed. Look only!”

      “I have looked three times already; I am tired. I beg of you come to bed.”

      “It would be useless; I could not sleep. Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, how a woman suffers!” A masculine snort accompanied by the sounds of undressing.

      “Then, if I wait until the morning will you promise not to drag me to a picture gallery?”

      “Yes, yes, I promise.”

      “But truly?”

      “I have said so.”

      “Now can I believe you?”

      A long groan.

      “It is absurd to make that noise, for you know yourself the same thing happened last evening and this morning.”

      ...There was only one thing to be done. I coughed and cleared my throat in that unpleasant and obtrusive way of strange people in next door bedrooms. It acted like a charm, their conversation sifted into a whisper for female voice only! I fell asleep.

      “Barquettes for hire. Visit the Venice of the North by boat. Explore the little known and fascinating by-ways.” With the memory of the guide book clinging about me I went into the shop and demanded a boat. “Have you a small canoe?”

      “No, Mademoiselle, but a little boat—very suitable.”

      “I wish to go alone and return when I like.”

      “Then you have been here before?”

      “No.”

      The boatman looked puzzled. “It is not safe for Mademoiselle to go without a guide for the first time.”

      “Then I will take one on the condition that he is silent and points out no beauties to me.”

      “But the names of the bridges?” cried the boatman— “the famous house fronts?”

      I ran down to the landing stage. “Pierre, Pierre!” called the waterman. A burly young Belgian, his arms full of carpet strips and red velvet pillows, appeared and tossed his spoil into an immense craft. On the bridge above the landing stage a crowd collected, watching the proceedings, and just as I took my seat a fat couple who had been hanging over the parapet rushed down the steps and declared they must come too. “Certainly, certainly,” said Pierre, handing in the lady with charming grace. “Mademoiselle will not mind at all.” They sat in the stern, the gentleman held the lady’s hand, and we twisted among these “silver ribbons” while Pierre threw out his chest and chanted the beauties of Bruges with the exultant abandon of a Latin lover. “Turn your head this way—to the left—to the right—now, wait one moment—look up at the bridge—observe this house front. Mademoiselle do you wish to see the Lac d’Amour?”

      I looked vague; the fat couple answered for me.

      “Then we shall disembark.”

      We rowed close into a little parapet. We caught hold of a bush and I jumped out. “Now, Monsieur,” who successfully followed, and, kneeling on the bank, gave Madame the crook of his walking-stick for support. She stood up, smiling and vigorous, clutched the walking-stick, strained against the boat side, and the next moment had fallen flat into the water. “Ah! what has happened—what has happened!” screamed Monsieur, clutching her arm, for the water was not deep, reaching only to her waist mark. Somehow or other we fished her up on to the bank where she sat and gasped, wringing her black alpaca skirt.

      “It is all over—a little accident!” said she, amazingly cheerful.

      But Pierre was furious. “It is the fault of Mademoiselle for wishing to see the Lac d’Amour,” said he. “Madame had better walk through the meadow and drink something hot at the little café opposite.”

      “No, no,” said she, but Monsieur seconded Pierre.

      “You will await our return,” said Pierre, loathing me. I nodded and turned my back, for the sight of Madame flopping about on the meadow grass like a large, ungainly duck, was too much. One cannot expect to travel in upholstered boats with people who are enlightened enough to understand laughter that has its wellspring in sympathy. When they were out of sight I ran as fast as I could over the meadow, crawled through a fence, and never went near the Lac d’Amour again. “They may think me as drowned as they please,” thought I, “I have had quite enough of canals to last me a lifetime.”

      In the Béguinage meadow at evensong little groups of painters are dotted about in the grass with spindle-legged easles which seem to possess a separate individuality, and stand rudely defying their efforts and returning their long, long gaze with an unfinished stare. English СКАЧАТЬ