The Garden Party
AND OTHER STORIES
by Katherine Mansfield
Montaigne dit que les hommes vont béant
aux choses futures; j’ai la manie de béer
aux choses passées
To John Middleton Murry
Contents
At the Bay
I
Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent Baywas hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered hills at the back weresmothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks and bungalowsbegan. The sandy road was gone and the paddocks and bungalows the other side ofit; there were no white dunes covered with reddish grass beyond them; there wasnothing to mark which was beach and where was the sea. A heavy dew had fallen.The grass was blue. Big drops hung on the bushes and just did not fall; thesilvery, fluffy toi-toi was limp on its long stalks, and all the marigolds andthe pinks in the bungalow gardens were bowed to the earth with wetness.Drenched were the cold fuchsias, round pearls of dew lay on the flat nasturtiumleaves. It looked as though the sea had beaten up softly in the darkness, asthough one immense wave had come rippling, rippling—how far? Perhaps ifyou had waked up in the middle of the night you might have seen a big fishflicking in at the window and gone again....
Ah-Aah! sounded the sleepy sea. And from the bush there came the sound oflittle streams flowing, quickly, lightly, slipping between the smooth stones,gushing into ferny basins and out again; and there was the splashing of bigdrops on large leaves, and something else—what was it?—a faintstirring and shaking, the snapping of a twig and then such silence that itseemed some one was listening.
Round the corner of Crescent Bay, between the piled-up masses of broken rock, aflock of sheep came pattering. They were huddled together, a small, tossing,woolly mass, and their thin, stick-like legs trotted along quickly as if thecold and the quiet had frightened them. Behind them an old sheep-dog, hissoaking paws covered with sand, ran along with his nose to the ground, butcarelessly, as if thinking of something else. And then in the rocky gateway theshepherd himself appeared. He was a lean, upright old man, in a frieze coatthat was c