Free The Aloe by Katherine Mansfield Page B

performing a very severe operation upon a white satin dress spread out before them. Old Mrs Fairfield sat by the window in the sun with a roll of pink knitting in her lap. “My dears” said Beryl, “here comes the tea at last” and she swept a place clear for the tray. “But Doady” she said to Mrs Trout, “I don’t think I should dare to appear without any sleeves at all should I?” “My dear” said Mrs Trout “all I can say is that there isn’t one single evening dress in Mess’ Readings last catalogue that has even a sign of a sleeve. Some of them have a rose on the shoulder and a piece of black velvet but some of them haven’t even that – and they look perfectly charming! What would look very pretty on the black velvet straps of your dress would be red poppies. I wonder if I can spare a couple out of this hat –” She was wearing a big cream leghorn hat trimmed with a wreath of poppies and daisies – and as she spoke she unpinned it and laid it on her knee and ran her hands over her dark silky hair. “Oh I think two poppies would look perfectly heavenly –” said Beryl, “and just be the right finish but of course I won’t hear of you taking them out of that new hat, Doady – Not for worlds.”
    “It would be sheer murder,” said Linda dipping a water cress sanwich into the salt cellar – and smiling at her sister – “But I haven’t the faintest feeling about this hat, or any other for the matter of that,” said Doady – and she looked mournfully at the bright thing on her knees and heaved a profound sigh. The three sisters were very unlike as they sat round the table – Mrs Trout, tall and pale with heavy eyelids that dropped over her grey eyes, and rare, slender hands and feet was quite a beauty. But Life bored her. She was sure that something very tragic was going to happen to her soon – She had felt it coming on for years – What it was she could not exactly say but she was “fated” somehow. How often, when she had sat with Mother Linda and Beryl as she was sitting now her heart had said “How little they know” – or as it had then – “What a mockery this hat will be one day,” and she had heaved just such a profound sigh . . . And each time before her children were born she had thought that the tragedy would be fulfilled then – her child would be bom dead or she saw the nurse going into Richard her husband and saying “Your child lives but” – and here the nurse pointed one finger upwards like the illustration of Agnes in David Copperfield – your wife is no more” – But no, nothing particular had happened except that they had been boys and she had wanted girls, tender little caressing girls, not too strong with hair to curl and sweet little bodies to dress in white muslin threaded with pale blue – Ever since her marriage she had lived at Monkey Tree Cottage – Her husband left for town at eight o’clock every morning and did not return until half-past six at night. Minnie was a wonderful servant. She did everything there was to be done in the house and looked after the little boys and even worked in the garden – So Mrs Trout became a perfect martyr to headaches. Whole days she spent on the drawing room sofa with the blinds pulled down and a linen handkerchief steeped in eau de cologne on her forehead. And as she lay there she used to wonder why it was that she was so certain that life held something terrible for her and to try to imagine what that terrible thing could be – until by and by she made up perfect novels with herself for the heroine, all of them ending with some shocking catastrophe. “Dora” (for in these novels she always thought of herself in the third person: it was more “touching” somehow) “Dora felt strangely happy that morning. She lay on the verandah looking out on the peaceful garden and she felt how sheltered and how blest her life had been after all. Suddenly the gate opened: A working man, a perfect stranger to her