Why? She even kept it up for Stanley’s benefit. Only last night when he was reading the paper her false self had stood beside him and leaned against his shoulder on purpose. Hadn’t she put her hand over his, pointing out something so that he should see how white her hand was beside his brown one?
How despicable! Despicable! Her heart was cold with rage. “It’s marvellous how you keep it up,” said she to the false self. But then it was only because she was so miserable — so miserable. If she had been happy and leading her own life, her false life would cease to be. She saw the real Beryl — a shadow … a shadow. Faint and unsubstantial she shone. What was there of her except the radiance? And for what tiny moments she was really she. Beryl could almost remember every one of them. At those times she had felt: “Life is rich and mysterious and good, and I am rich and mysterious and good, too.” Shall I ever be that Beryl for ever? Shall I? How can I? And was there ever a time when I did not have a false self? … But just as she had got that far she heard the sound of little steps running along the passage; the door handle rattled. Kezia came in.
“Aunt Beryl, mother says will you please come down? Father is home with a man and lunch is ready.”
Botheration! How she had crumpled her skirt, kneeling in that idiotic way.
“Very well, Kezia.” She went over to the dressing-table and powdered her nose.
Kezia crossed too, and unscrewed a little pot of cream and sniffed it. Under her arm she carried a very dirty calico cat.
When Aunt Beryl ran out of the room she sat the cat up on the dressing-table and stuck the top of the cream jar over its ear.
“Now look at yourself,” said she sternly.
The calico cat was so overcome by the sight that it toppled over backwards and bumped and bumped on to the floor. And the top of the cream jar flew through the air and rolled like a penny in a round on the linoleum — and did not break.
But for Kezia it had broken the moment it flew through the air, and she picked it up, hot all over, and put it back on the dressing-table.
Then she tiptoed away, far too quickly and airily….
— 1920 —
Suddenly — dreadfully — she wakes up. What has happened? Something dreadful has happened. No — nothing has happened. It is only the wind shaking the house, rattling the windows, banging a piece of iron on the roof and making her bed tremble. Leaves flutter past the window, up and away; down in the avenue a whole newspaper wags in the air like a lost kite and falls, spiked on a pine tree. It is cold. Summer is over — it is autumn — everything is ugly. The carts rattle by, swinging from side to side; two Chinamen lollop along under their wooden yokes with the straining vegetable baskets — their pigtails and blue blouses fly out in the wind. A white dog on three legs yelps past the gate. It is all over! What is? Oh, everything! And she begins to plait her hair with shaking fingers, not daring to look in the glass. Mother is talking to grandmother in the hall.
“A perfect idiot! Imagine leaving anything out on the line in weather like this…. Now my best little Teneriffe-work teacloth is simply in ribbons. What is that extraordinary smell? It’s the porridge burning. Oh, heavens — this wind!”
She has a music lesson at ten o’clock. At the thought the minor movement of the Beethoven begins to play in her head, the trills long and terrible like little rolling drums…. Marie Swainson runs into the garden next door to pick the “chrysanths” before they are ruined. Her skirt flies up above her waist; she tries to beat it down, to tuck it between her legs while she stoops, but it is no use — up it flies.
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