The Wooden Shepherdess Read Online Free PDF Page B

wisteria, dripping with bees; and a bee stung Gilbert’s neck, which took their minds off the rift for a while.
    *
    Once tea was over, Mary went up to her room. There the baby was brought for its six o’clock feed, and although it was really her bedtime Polly came too (it was good for Polly to take an interest).
    â€œMy birfday tomorrow!” said Polly.
    â€œBir th day, dear,” Nanny corrected, and crackled her starch. “You’re old enough now to talk properly: tomorrow you’ll be ...”
    â€œI saw you!” Polly interrupted, triumphant: “There was six!”
    â€œâ€˜Little-Miss-Sharpeyes,’” said Nanny (Polly had caught her getting out the colored cake-candles for Minta to take down to Cook).
    Once Mary had lifted her breast and fitted the strong little mouth to her nipple it instantly started to suck; and “Who’ve you invited to come to your birthday, darling?” she asked.
    â€œOnly dogs,” said Polly with finality.
    â€œWhat—no Mrs. Winter?” said Nanny: “No Mr. Wantage?”
    â€œYes of course them! But, and only dogs.”
    â€œNot even your Father and Mother, Miss Polly?”
    Polly looked up in surprise at so silly a question, and didn’t bother to answer. But after a long pause she added: “I do wish Gusting would come!” and sighed from the depths of her heart. Augustine—the key performer erstwhile at all Polly’s birthdays....
    With Susan’s prehensile little sucker dragging her nipple the mother lapsed into a daze; but in spite of her mind’s increasing milkiness all her thoughts (like Polly’s) went back to the distant Augustine.
    Indeed what on earth was he up to? For even this latest letter said nothing; and ever since going abroad his letters were all of them like that, they never said what you wanted to know. His letters from Paris had talked about nothing but Art—not a word about even why he’d left Germany!
    Art indeed seemed to have suddenly gone to his head: Modern Art, “Significant Form” and all that from Clive Bell. A Cézanne, a late Van Gogh and a little Renoir: Picabia—he seemed to be buying the lot! And as for the really aberrant eccentrics, the ones even he called the Wild-cats—the Cubists and so on: while frankly admitting he couldn’t make head-or-tail of their painting he still flopped about near the flame, like a moth! Cock-a-hoop at even seeing Derain afar in some café, let alone really meeting Matisse....
    Augustine was hoping to meet a certain “Miss Stein” whose salon these fanatics all frequented; but that apparently never came off, for his last Paris letter of all had said he was leaving post-haste for St. Malo (it seemed some young French poet who lived there might take him to visit that eminent Cubist across the water at Dinard). He must have dashed off to St. Malo without even stopping to ask if Picasso this year was at Dinard at all (which he wasn’t, as Jeremy later discovered); and there—from St. Malo—he’d just disappeared!
    She shifted Susan across.
    Her husband, her brother.... So much poor Mary did love and admire them both; but she’d long ago given up hoping to cope with the way those two underrated each other. Probably Gilbert expected Augustine would end up in jail—an American jail, and in all the American papers! Dear Gilbert, on this sort of issue he could be his own worst caricature....
    All the same, whatever Augustine was up to was very certainly Hush—and Gilbert had got to be stopped !
    The conviction struck Mary so forcibly she almost cried it aloud: her milk ceased coming, and Susan set up a howl.
6
    In the ovenish midnight dark the ominous sound of a rogue mosquito grew higher and shriller the closer it drew to the sleeping head on the pillow. Augustine stirred at the sound, and woke just before the brute could alight to feed on his ear.
    He woke from a