Katherine Mansfield

“ Of course, the car was there. She’d only to cross the pavement. But still she waited. There are moments, horrible moments in life, when one emerges from shelter and looks out, and it’s awful. One oughtn’t to give way to them. One ought to go home and have an extra-special tea. But at the very instant of thinking that, a young girl, thin, dark, shadowy—where had she come from?—was standing at Rosemary’s elbow and a voice like a sigh, almost like a sob, breathed: “Madame, may I speak to you a moment?” ”

“ The bridegroom wrenched the pot away from her and drew forth a baby’s bottle and two little cradles holding china dolls. As he dandled these treasures before Theresa the hot room seemed to heave and sway with laughter.
Frau Brechenmacher did not think it funny. She stared round at the laughing faces, and suddenly they all seemed strange to her. She wanted to go home and never come out again. She imagined that all these people were laughing at her, more people than there were in the room even—all laughing at her because they were so much stronger than she was. ”

“ His dark-blue, baby eyes were open; he looked as though he was peeping at his mother. And suddenly his face dimpled; it broke into a wide, toothless smile, a perfect beam, no less.
“I’m here!” that happy smile seemed to say. “Why don’t you like me?”
There was something so quaint, so unexpected about that smile that Linda smiled herself. But she checked herself and said to the boy coldly, “I don’t like babies.”
“Don’t like babies?” The boy couldn’t believe her. “Don’t like me?” He waved his arms foolishly at his mother.
Linda dropped off her chair on to the grass. ”

“ The sight of them, so intent and so quick, gave Bertha a curious shiver.
"What creepy things cats are!" she stammered, and she turned away from the window and began walking up and down. . . .
How strong the jonquils smelled in the warm room. Too strong? Oh, no. And yet, as though overcome, she flung down on a couch and pressed her hands to her eyes.
"I'm too happy–too happy!" she murmured.
And she seemed to see on her eyelids the lovely pear tree with its wide open blossoms as a symbol of her own life.
Really–really–she had everything. She was young. ”

“ Even Lottie, frightened little Lottie, began to laugh and pointed at the duck and shrieked: “Look, Kezia, look.”
“Watch it!” shouted Pat. He put down the body and it began to waddle—with only a long spurt of blood where the head had been; it began to pad away without a sound towards the steep bank that led to the stream. . . . That was the crowning wonder.
“Do you see that? Do you see that?” yelled Pip. He ran among the little girls tugging at their pinafores.
“It’s like a little engine. It’s like a funny little railway engine,” squealed Isabel. ”

“ She was trying on a new hat.
"Mother, a man's been killed," began Laura.
"Not in the garden?" interrupted her mother.
"No, no!"
"Oh, what a fright you gave me!" Mrs. Sheridan sighed with relief, and took off the big hat and held it on her knees.
"But listen, mother," said Laura. Breathless, half-choking, she told the dreadful story. "Of course, we can't have our party, can we?" she pleaded. "The band and everybody arriving. They'd hear us, mother; they're nearly neighbours!"
To Laura's astonishment her mother behaved just like Jose; it was harder to bear because she seemed amused. ”

“ The grey chairs with the fuchsia-coloured cushions, the black and gold carpet, the bright green silk curtains might have belonged to anybody. It was like a stage setting with the curtain still down. She had no right to be there, and as she thought that a queer little chill caught her; it seemed so extraordinary that anything, even a chair, should turn away from, should not respond to her happiness.
“I don’t like this room in the morning, I don’t like it at all,” she decided, and she ran upstairs to finish dressing. Ran into their big shadowy bedroom ... ”

“ But Josephine felt they were not sparrows, not on the window-ledge. It was inside her, that queer little crying noise. Yeep—eyeep—yeep. Ah, what was it crying, so weak and forlorn?
If mother had lived, might they have married? But there had been nobody for them to marry. There had been father’s Anglo-Indian friends before he quarrelled with them. But after that she and Constantia never met a single man except clergymen. How did one meet men? Or even if they’d met them, how could they have got to know men well enough to be more than strangers? ”

“ It was almost dark in the kitchen. She laid the baby on the wooden settle, covering him with a shawl, then poured the coffee from the earthenware jug into the saucepan, and set it on the spirit lamp to boil.
“I’m sleepy,” nodded the Child-Who-Was-Tired, kneeling on the floor and splitting the damp pine logs into little chips. “That’s why I’m not awake.”
The oven took a long time to light. Perhaps it was cold, like herself, and sleepy.... Perhaps it had been dreaming of a little white road with black trees on either side, a little road that led to nowhere. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Lottie and Kezia stood on the patch of lawn just inside the gate all ready for the fray in their coats with brass anchor buttons and little round caps with battleship ribbons. Hand in hand, they stared with round solemn eyes first at the absolute necessities and then at their mother.
“We shall simply have to leave them. That is all. We shall simply have to cast them off,” said Linda Burnell. A strange little laugh flew from her lips; she leaned back against the buttoned leather cushions and shut her eyes, her lips trembling with laughter. ”

“ Elsa, in a white velvet tea-gown, lay curled up on the sofa—a book of fashions on her lap, a box of creams beside her.
The curtains were not yet drawn before the windows and a blue light shone through, and the white boughs of the trees sprayed across.
A woman’s room—full of flowers and photographs and silk pillows—the floor smothered in rugs—an immense tiger-skin under the piano—just the head protruding—sleepily savage.
“It was good enough,” said Max. “Victor can’t be in till late. He told me to come up and tell you.” ”

“ Pat pried it open with his penknife, and the whole house-front swung back, and—there you were, gazing at one and the same moment into the drawing-room and dining-room, the kitchen and two bedrooms. That is the way for a house to open! Why don’t all houses open like that? How much more exciting than peering through the slit of a door into a mean little hall with a hatstand and two umbrellas! That is—isn’t it?—what you long to know about a house when you put your hand on the knocker. Perhaps it is the way God opens houses at dead of night when He is taking a quiet turn with an angel.... ”

“ She jumped off her bed, ran over to the window and kneeled on the window-seat, with her elbows on the sill. But the beautiful night, the garden, every bush, every leaf, even the white palings, even the stars, were conspirators too. So bright was the moon that the flowers were bright as by day; the shadow of the nasturtiums, exquisite lily-like leaves and wide-open flowers, lay across the silvery veranda. The manuka-tree, bent by the southerly winds, was like a bird on one leg stretching out a wing.
But when Beryl looked at the bush, it seemed to her the bush was sad. ”