KATHERINE MANSFIELD

Youth and Age walked hand in hand beneath the trees. A strange, half-frozen day, yet the air was drenched with thin sunshine, and the blue sky full of white winged clouds…The garden beds were smothered under a mauve mist of Michaelmas daisies, burning with the dusky fires of chrysanthemum blossoms. In the dew pearled grass white daisies, like butterflies, quivered and shone.

Age walked slowly. The riotous Autumn wind blew her black skirt about her shapeless body; her strange face gleamed like ivory in the silver setting of her hair. And she stared with faded eyes at the blackened boughs of the trees, at the leaves, falling in a fluttering crowd upon the dew pearled grass. One leaf touched her cheek - God! it was like a kiss from the withered mouth of Death! And in the bare trees she saw her naked soul, to be tossed, defenceless, in the fury of a thousand tempests, to be torn, limb from limb, by Winter, by her last lover, by Death…Her heart beat in her body like a frightened bird - a caged bird that beat its wings - in vain - in vain-

Youth suddenly stood still, her laughing child face lit with sunlight, and stretched out her white arms, her rosy tipped fingers to the blackened boughs. Ever the leaves fell in a shining shower upon her radiant face and bosom. Her heart beat in her body like a restless bird, like a strong bird that if it did but spread its wings would fly away - away - “See,” she cried to Age, “see the kisses of Summer, the golden leaves from the fairy book of Spring.”

I look out through the window. A rhododendron bush sways restlessly, mysteriously, to and fro…The bare trees stand crucified against the opalescent sky.

In the next room someone is playing the piano. The sun shines whitely, touches the rhododendron leaves with soft color. To and fro the branches sway, stretching upwards, outwards, so mysteriously; it is as though they moved in a dream.

Through the open windows, the cold air, blowing in, stirs the heavy folds of the curtains…What is being played in the next room…Does the music float through this room - and out of the window to the garden? Does the plant hear it, and answer to the sound? The music, too, is strangely restless…it is seeking something…perhaps this mystic, green plant, so faintly touched with sun color…

…I dream…And there is no plant, no music - only a restless mysterious seeking, a stretching upwards to the light - and outwards - a dream like movement.

What is it?

I look out into the garden at the bare trees crucified against the opalescent sky…The sun is smothered under the white wing of a cloud - in the shadowed garden the plant is trembling.

Honeysuckle, roses pink & white, periwinkles, syringas, red hot pokers, those yellow flowers - the ground is smothered. Fruit trees with promise of harvest, the hot lake & pools, even the homely clothes-prop in the lush grass - & more mimosa. The birds are magical. I feel I cannot leave but pluck the honeysuckle, & the splashes of light lie in the pine wood.

Grey, grey…there is no light at all, and the autumn air is cold with the coldness of traceless spaces. Out of the grey sea creeps the ghastly, drowned body of Night. Her long dark hair swam among the branches of the pine trees, her dead body walks along the little mauve ribbon of an asphalt path. She stretches out her arms and the autumn world sinks into that frozen embrace, pillows its tired head upon the pulseless heart.

We sat on the top of the cliff overlooking the open sea. Our backs turned to the little town. Each of us had a basket of strawberries. We had just bought them from a dark woman with quick eyes—berry-picking eyes.

“They’re fresh picked” said she, “from our own garden.” The tips of her fingers were stained a bright red. But what strawberries! Each one was the finest—the perfect berry—the strawberry Absolute—the fruit of our childhood! The very air came fanning on Strawberry wings. And down below, in the pools, little children were bathing, with strawberry faces…

Over the blue, swinging water, came a three masted sailing ship—with nine, ten, eleven sails. Wonderfully beautiful! She came riding by as though every sail were taking its fill of the sun and the light.

And “Oh how I’d love to be on board!” said Anne. (The captain was below, but the crew lay about, idle and handsome. “Have some strawberries!” we said, slipping and sliding on the rocking decks, and shaking the baskets. They ate them in a kind of dream…) And the ship sailed on. Leaving us in a kind of dream, too. With the empty baskets…

Four o’clock. Is it light now at four o’clock? I jump out of bed and run over to the window. It is half-light, neither black nor blue. The wing of the coast is violet; in the lilac sky there are dark banners and little black boats manned by black shadows put out on the purple water. Oh! how often I have watched this hour when I was a girl! But then—I stayed at the window until I grew cold—until I was icy—thrilled by something—I did not know what! Now I fly back into bed, pulling up the clothes, tucking them into my neck. And suddenly my feet find the hot water bottle. Heavens! it is still beautifully warm. That really is thrilling.

The man in the room next to mine has got the same complaint as I. When I wake in the night I hear him turning. And then he coughs. And I cough. And after a silence I cough. And he coughs again. This goes on for a long time. Until I feel we are like two roosters calling to each other at a false dawn. From far-away hidden farms.

Dawn broke, long in coming. She lay in the bed on her back, one arm behind her head, one hand on the counterpane—the window became blue, then suffused with gold light, but when she looked at her watch she was horrified to find that it was only half past five o’clock. Hours had to [be] got through somehow—hours and hours—and you must remember that time was not the sort of thing you could count on at the last to be faithful or to be just. No, it behaved as it liked—it had infinite capacities for lengthening out, for hanging on like a while ribbon of road under your too tired feet. Oh, to have done with it. To run like a little child over the long white places, to be there and in his arms!

Life is not gay. But at last she was conscious that a choice had to be made—that before dawn these shadows would appear less real making way for something quite different. There was no hesitation now. She simply knew that she wanted him near her, that he was to her the meaning of love and of others, that without him all the world was a little ball rolling over a dark sky.

I spat - it tasted strange - it was bright red blood. Since then I’ve gone on spitting each time I cough a little more. Oh, yes, of course I am frightened…I shan’t have my work written. That’s what matters. How unbearable it would be to die, to leave ‘scraps,’ ‘bits,’ nothing really finished.

Love and fellowship—work and delicious fascinating pleasures—must exist for me—if I only search for them.