HOTEL BARSTOW
253
gave the impression of being flat to the skull or slightly convex, that
they had a container more like a plate than a socket. They were "on"
her head rather than "in" it. I suppose in her passport they were
called "gray" or "hazel," but to me they were "cold gold" and were
like the yellow haze that followed sundown when the shine of the
sand was gone.
I hesitated a moment in the hope that she might tum and greet
me. A sigh, involuntary and profound, ruffled up through my lips and
when it had passed, I ran to the back of the Hotel. Without ex–
plaining to the head chambermaid that my mother was ill, I snatched
a mop and a broom and a dust-cloth from the closet off the kitchen
and ran up the backstairs two at a time. For I wanted to repeat the
strange experience I had once had of regarding Miss Pride through
the windows of her very own bedroom. She was still on the beach
when I stole to the central window. Now a few bathers had come for
an early dip and Miss Pride wa'> plowing up and down through
the sand, fixing them with her clear, indifferent eyes as though, with–
out loss of dignity to herself, her gaze could penetrate them to their
very giblets.
As
I watched her, taking in with admiration each detail
of her immaculate attire and her proud carriage, I heard, from the
adjoining room, embedded in a yawn, the waking squeal of Mrs.
McKenzie, a garrulous and motherly old woman whom I had always
disliked. Her room was no pleasure to clean: her bed was strewn
with corsets and short-sleeved nightdresses, and on her bedside table,
I often found drying apple cores which I removed gingerly, having
in my mind an image of her with her sparse hair unpinned sitting up
in bed cropping with her large false teeth. Upon the bureau, amongst
sticky bottles of vile black syrups and tonics and jars of fetid salve,
there lay her bunion plasters and her ropes of brown hair which she
sometimes arranged in a lofty cone on top of her head. Usually she
was in the room when I entered and she saluted me with disgusting
moonshine as "mother's little helper" or asked me if my "beauteous
mamma" was sick.
Now in Mi'>S Pride's room, there was never anything amiss. Per–
haps once or twice a summer, I found a bottle of imported wine or
whiskey on her writing desk; thic; was the only medicine she took
and she took it regularly in small quantities. On the bureau, the
china hair receiver did not receive a wisp of hair, and there were
neither spots nor foreign objects upon the white linen runner. A hat–
pin holder, sprouting long, knobbed needles, two cut-glass cologne
bottles, and a black glove-box, shaped like a small casket, were re–
flected in the clear swinging mirror. Though I should have loved to
