She said suddenly, in an enormous voice which she had obviously been husbanding for the purpose: “No one wants me. …” And I think, but I am not sure, that she would have giggled if she could.
“Iris, you’ll have Masters in here if you go shouting like that.”
“He didn’t want me, even. …”
“Who didn’t? Masters didn’t?”
“No. God.”
“Oh, I see,” I said.
She panted breathlessly, eager to be talking: “I made my application, all … all in order. Forms all filled in and everything. But … Oh, they weren’t impressed. Not a bit, they weren’t—”
“Oi, you’re talking too much, Iris!”
“Oi to you. Listen. … The old man said to me: ‘Well, young woman, and what do you want?’ I wasn’t afraid, not a bit. Had all my forms ready and everything. … ‘What do I want, Father?’ says I. ‘Why, I’m as good as dead, that’s what I am. Doctor’s face all of a blur, nurse’s face all of a blur, temperature 106—why, I am dead, if it comes to that!’ ‘Nonsense,’ says God. ‘Never saw a woman more alive in all my life. Ho, Gabriel! Expel this woman!’ ‘Yes, but!’ I said, ‘I want to die, I do, I do!’ ‘In that case,’ says He, ‘death will be a great disappointment to you. We want none of your sort here, young woman. Ho, Michael, Gabriel! Eject this sinner. She’s still alive. …’ ”
After a long pause I found those great eyes looking at me very seriously. She whispered: “Owe it to you. I mean, life. Thank you.”
“Iris, to me! My dear, what rot!”
“Not rot at all. If you hadn’t been kind enough to come round again that night to … inquire, he’d have called and found only that old nun there and she would have said … assez bien, and away he’d have gone. And me, too. … See?
“And,” she said, “that ptomaine poisoning. You dear, you dear! Oh, how I like you when you’re not looking! Genius, I call that. And when … Masters told me, I laughed so they had to give me morphia. Darling, these piqûres! I got holes all over me. …”
“Piqûre du cœur,” I let slip.
“Piqûre du what?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“You’re laughing at me,” she whispered, “that’s what you’re doing. I’m going to close my eyes now for five minutes. But don’t go. Don’t go. …”
It was the fifteenth afternoon of February, as I remember well, and Mademoiselle Printemps was dancing in the sunlight that fell in a shower of gold on the windowsill, on which now stood three nectarines and a large pear on a plate. But the blind was drawn so that she could dance only in a bright splash across the little mountain which, I ventured to suppose, was made by Iris’s toes. In the shade of the room stood the small table, and on the small table the doll with the red silk handkerchief round her wrist sat sleeping beneath tall sprays of mimosa, sprays of bright yellow powdered with fresh gold. …
“Yes,” I heard her voice, faint, faint, and when I looked round from the mimosa to her I saw that her eyes had followed mine to a garden in the South.
“Iris, I was to say goodbye. …”
“I know,” she said gravely; and she smiled. “I heard him. …”
“You heard him, Iris?”
“Dreams, clouds, mists. Faces, phantoms, fates, words. Yes, I heard him. …” And she smiled, with every bit of her eyes, as though to reassure me. “That’s quite all right,” she said.
“Iris, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Do you … promise that that’s quite all right?”
She was looking at me with a smile. …
“Promise,” she suddenly sobbed, and her eyes were streaming with tears. I was terrified.
“Lie here,” she sobbed, “like a mummy … no inside left, nothing left … thinking and thinking and thinking … trying to lie to myself right and left, north and south … can’t have what I want, so must make up stories … and you sit there stiff as a pole saying ‘Promise’ … call yourself a friend. … You don’t know how ill I’ve been!”
“I do, I do, Iris! For pity’s sake! If that man comes in and finds you like th—”
“And you think I’m awful,” she whispered helplessly. She stared at me. “You think I’m awful,” she said quite calmly.
“Iris,” I said, “I like you. Of course, if I didn’t. …”
“Of course,” she said, “he doesn’t know. …”
“Of course,” I said.
“And he’ll never know. …”
“Good,” I said.
“As for me,” she whispered …
On her forehead there were little beads of wet. I wiped them off with my handkerchief, and she said: “My nose, too, please. Had my hair waved … but it never stays when you’re not well. Got to be well to have curly hair. …”
“And, Iris, if you don’t have it cut soon it will be as long as a woman’s hair.”
“As for me,” she whispered, “all this effort wasted … no playmate, no nothing. Masters warned me, too. … Dead as dead, the poor darling was. …” Slowly, slowly, tears were crawling down the tiny grey cheeks. Hastily I wiped them away, hearing a step outside. “Nothing, nothing …” she kept on whispering with closed eyes, and I barely had time to whisk away a tear from her eyelash as the door opened.
“Well?” that man muttered. “Killed her yet?”
“I think she’s asleep,” I whispered. “Ssh.”
“Stuff!” snapped Masters. “She’s been crying. Out you go.”
Suddenly Iris said in that enormous, preserved voice: “I have not been crying.”
Masters, whose great brown coat filled the whole side of the bed, so that I was nowhere, looked down at her like a worried bird. …
“I’d like,” she pleaded, “to say
