Mrs. Kemp was in the habit of slumbering somewhat heavily on Sunday
mornings, or Liza would not have been allowed to go on sleeping as she
did. When she woke, she rubbed her eyes to gather her senses together
and gradually she remembered having gone to the theatre on the
previous evening; then suddenly everything came back to her. She
stretched out her legs and gave a long sigh of delight. Her heart was
full; she thought of Jim, and the delicious sensation of love came
over her. Closing her eyes, she imagined his warm kisses, and she
lifted up her arms as if to put them round his neck and draw him down
to her; she almost felt the rough beard on her face, and the strong
heavy arms round her body. She smiled to herself and took a long
breath; then, slipping back the sleeves of her nightdress, she looked
at her own thin arms, just two pieces of bone with not a muscle on
them, but very white and showing distinctly the interlacement of blue
veins: she did not notice that her hands were rough, and red and dirty
with the nails broken, and bitten to the quick. She got out of bed and
looked at herself in the glass over the mantelpiece: with one hand she
brushed back her hair and smiled at herself; her face was very small
and thin, but the complexion was nice, clear and white, with a
delicate tint of red on the cheeks, and her eyes were big and dark
like her hair. She felt very happy.
She did not want to dress yet, but rather to sit down and think, so
she twisted up her hair into a little knot, slipped a skirt over her
nightdress, and sat on a chair near the window and began looking
around. The decorations of the room had been centred on the
mantelpiece; the chief ornament consisted of a pear and an apple, a
pineapple, a bunch of grapes, and several fat plums, all very
beautifully done in wax, as was the fashion about the middle of this
most glorious reign. They were appropriately coloured the apple
blushing red, the grapes an inky black, emerald green leaves were
scattered here and there to lend finish, and the whole was mounted on
an ebonised stand covered with black velvet, and protected from dust
and dirt by a beautiful glass cover bordered with red plush. Liza's
eyes rested on this with approbation, and the pineapple quite made her
mouth water. At either end of the mantelpiece were pink jars with blue
flowers on the front; round the top in Gothic letters of gold was
inscribed: 'A Present from a Friend' these were products of a later, but not less artistic age. The intervening spaces were taken up with little jars and cups and saucers gold inside, with a view of a town outside, and surrounding them, 'A Present from Clacton-on-Sea,' or, alliteratively, 'A Memento of Margate.' Of these many were broken, but they had been mended with glue, and it is well known that pottery in the eyes of the connoisseur loses none of its value by a crack or two. Then there were portraits innumerable little yellow cartes-de-visite in velvet frames, some of which were decorated with shells; they showed strange people with old-fashioned clothes, the women with bodices and sleeves fitting close to the figure, stern-featured females with hair carefully parted in the middle and plastered down on each side, firm chins and mouths, with small, pig-like eyes and wrinkled faces, and the men were uncomfortably clad in Sunday garments, very stiff and uneasy in their awkward postures, with large whiskers and shaved chins and upper lips and a general air of horny-handed toil. Then there were one or two daguerreotypes, little full-length figures framed in gold paper. There was one of Mrs. Kemp's father and one of her mother, and there were several photographs of betrothed or newly-married couples, the lady sitting down and the man standing behind her with his hand on the chair, or the man sitting and the woman with her hand on his shoulder. And from all sides of the room, standing on the mantelpiece, hanging above it, on the wall and over the bed, they stared full-face into the room, self-consciously fixed for ever in their stiff discomfort.