The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen by Elizabeth Bowen

Author:Elizabeth Bowen [Bowen, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

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Next morning, pale milky sunshine flooded the façade of Lord Thingummy’s house. In a bedroom behind the parapet Mrs Bennington, fully dressed under the eiderdown, lay breathing spirituously. The solitary housemaid, having risen at nine, opened the shutters all over the house, and long shafts of misty sunshine slid through the rooms. Patiently stooping, she picked up the cigarette-ends stamped out on the floors. In the grand saloon she sheeted up again an unsheeted sofa and picked up a lady’s handkerchief and a striped woollen scarf. Downstairs, in the ante-room, the gilt clock had stopped at ten minutes to four: the hearth was white with cold wood-ash. The housemaid flung up a window and let out on to the morning the stale, cold fumes that hung like lead in the air. She sniffed each of the bottles and swept up some broken glass: a cigarette had burnt out in the trough of a brocade cushion. Fine dust lay everywhere; the sleepy housemaid bumped vaguely round with her broom, swirling the dust up and letting it settle again.

The housemaid’s steps in the hollow house, her violence with the shutters and the knock of her broom, woke Oliver up. He woke saying ‘She’s gone,’ and lay sprawled rigidly sideways across his bed with his eyes shut, unwilling to wake, while thoughts of his own ignobility raced through his brain…The grass of the park rolled fawn-pale to the horizon in the veiled sunshine; the lake stretched bright white against a brown belt of trees, fringed with papery pale windless reeds. A swan slowly turned on the lake and a man on horseback rode along the bare skyline: nothing else moved. The outdoor world lay reflected in the dark glass of Oliver’s mind as he lay, with his eyes shut, sideways across his bed; he groaned at the still morning scene as though he stood at his window. For himself he could see no reason. He had, unwillingly, deluded her with his tears; one cannot weep all the time. He longed to see himself otherwise, like any other man, with a sound and passionate core. He thought of the grand saloon with alarm and pity, as though she lay dead in there. Opening his eyes a moment on the accusing daylight, he rolled over to reach for his first cigarette…He never finished Lord Thingummy’s catalogue.

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