Читать книгу Our Little Life - Jessie Georgina Sime - Страница 10

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The acquaintance between Miss McGee and Robert Fulton had formed itself in the most casual manner. One day Robert had encountered Miss McGee on the stairs. He was going, after his day's work, up to his solitary room; and Miss McGee, who had returned a little earlier from her work, was struggling up the stairs as well as she could in front of him with a bag of coal in her arms. She looked bent and frail and unable to cope with such work; and Robert, without giving himself time for reflection, had run up the stairs that divided him from her, and lifting his hat, as Miss McGee said afterwards, "like a gen'leman," had offered to carry her burden up the rest of the way. Miss McGee had faltered and blushed (not at being spoken to by a "gen'leman" but because she was "caught" in the actual carrying-out of one of her shifts of poverty); it was a little time before she gave way, but in the end she had allowed him to carry her coal for her—even allowed him to carry it into her flat: and no one in Penelope's Buildings, except Miss Healy from her garret-room at the top of the Building and Mrs. Morphy from the other side of the court, had ever been allowed to cross Miss McGee's threshold. Miss McGee was a great believer in keeping oneself to oneself and not having truck with the neighbors. But when Robert Fulton at the door of her "apartment" had said to her in that quiet way of his that rarely awakened opposition, "Let me carry it in for you," she had not said no. He penetrated right into the very fastness of Miss McGee's kitchenette (a black hole of a cupboard which she dignified by that name), dumped the coal there, and made his way out again. After that Miss McGee and Robert Fulton "bowed" when they met on the stairs; and occasionally one of them would say "a frosty night," or "a lovely morning," as the case might be—and the subject of the weather, approached in this way, seemed to one of them less repellent than usual.

Miss McGee in a rather lonely life was not accustomed to having much done for her; and this incident of the coal, when something had been done, stuck in her mind. She thought about it a great deal. On her way to work it would come into her mind and she would ponder over it. When she was "doing out" her flat, either before she went out in the morning or after she came home at night, it would cross her brain and she would entreat it to stay. Sometimes when she was lying in bed unable to sleep (she was not a remarkable sleeper) she would lie and think of Mr. Fulton two flats up on the O'Neil Street side, and wonder about him and his family and how he came to be where he was. "He's the round peg in the square hole be-lieve me," said Miss McGee to herself—her sharp eyes had seen at once that Robert was a misfit where he was. "Sure, I wonder where he comes from," she would further say to herself. "I wonder what his fam'ly eh'll be loike. I wonder what's brought um here." Miss McGee's wonders on the subject of Robert Fulton were great and inextinguishable, so it is not surprising, perhaps, that an acquaintance so casually begun, should have gradually ripened into something like a friendship; let a woman wonder enough about a man and the acquaintance may end anywhere. The desire to be acquainted was mainly on Miss McGee's side, it is true; but when she made overtures—quite nice and modest overtures—Robert did not rebuff them. He submitted to them—welcomed them indeed: even a Miss McGee is an oasis in the desert when you are in a large city with no one to talk to and nowhere to go.

After slight interchanges of civility on the stairs came slight invitations to "come in a minnut." The minnut lengthened itself, perhaps, into half an hour: then sundry unlooked-for meetings in the street ripened the acquaintance: and then Miss McGee took her courage into her two hands and said one day, "Would ye drink a cup o' tea with me Sunday, eh?"—and Robert had gone. The first step is, we know, the step that counts. After the first visit came a second: gradually it had become a matter of course that no week should go by without Robert Fulton paying some visit two floors down—and drinking tea there.

These tea-drinkings were resting-places in Miss McGee's busy life. She was as busy as Robert himself, and engaged in just as uncongenial work. She was "a woman who went out sewing by the day." She left her home betimes in the morning and reached her customer's house at 8:30. Then she sat down to a breakfast, sometimes nice and sometimes nasty, according to the house she happened to be working in. Sometimes she had her breakfast by herself in the dining-room (at the same table that the family had already taken breakfast at) and sometimes she had it in the kitchen with the maids. Sometimes she went straight to the work-room, and her breakfast was brought in to her there on a tray. And when that was the case the lady of the house usually accompanied the tray in order to evolve her views. There is nothing about which even the best women are less conscientious than their clothes. They all want to be well-dressed. Sooner than throw away a thing when it is worn out, seven women out of ten will hire a woman to rip it and sew it up again, and to what such women expect—both from the garment and from the woman in by the day—there is no boundary-line. An aged petticoat will cut up well into an evening gown; an evening-gown can become a mantle: a mantle can be turned into a kimono—their husbands' old pyjamas can be "arranged" (a great word of Miss McGee's) as "dainty little house-gowns" for the morning. Miss McGee's was a difficult position. She needed the address and the balance of a ballet-dancer and the astuteness and slippery eloquence of a diplomatist to keep up with her customers' views. But she managed it. While she sat sipping her cup of tea or coffee at half past eight in the morning, she would watch the lady of the house spreading out the garment that was to become something else, and she would deliver her judgment. First she would take a corner of the material in her hand and feel it. "A foine stuff, sure," she would say. "Pre-War that, Madam." (She too said Madam.) "We must do our best with that. . . ." And slowly and regretfully she would let the piece of stuff slide out of her hand, and return to her tea. This put the lady (any lady) into a good temper and paved the way to telling her later what couldn't be done.

In her life Miss McGee had wrought many a transformation. Many an odd bit and scrap had she "worked up" (another of her expressions) into something elegant—or "darling" as she said. She would turn and fit, snip here, round a corner there; she would patiently sit, hour after hour, trying the effect of this—of that: she would rip—and join . . . make a little unnecessary ornament to hide the join: and then at the end she would say to the lady, "I'm ready for you now, Madam," or "Mrs. So-and-So," according to the length of time she had worked for her: and together they would go into the customer's bed-room, and there, before the long mirror, Miss McGee would "fit" her customer. She would kneel on the floor grading the hem of the skirt. She would reach up and pin and unpin and pin again, arranging and rearranging the bodice, and then, from her kneeling posture on the ground, she would look up and say with her mouth full of pins, "How's that, Madam? How does that strike you, Mrs. So-and-So?" And at an indication from Madam, a wave of the hand from Mrs. So-and-So, the whole thing would have to be undone again, and Miss McGee would be back where she was in the early morning. And the lady, conscious that her dollar and a half was running to waste, would become snappish and cross. "Can't you fix it, McGee," she would ask: and at lunch, perhaps, she would say to her daughter, "I guess McGee's going some awf, my dear. She don't seem as if she could stick a pin straight this morning."

Lunch-time was Miss McGee's moment of deliverance. There again it depended on what house she was working in what lunch she got. Sometimes she went down and shared the servants' lunch—and that was usually comfortable. Sometimes she went in with "the family" to lunch—and that was usually constrained. Sometimes the tray was once more brought into the work-room, and Miss McGee cleared a space amidst the remnants on the table and the threads and pickings on the floor, and ate her midday meal amidst these ruins of Carthage. The worst of this arrangement was that the lady, hot on some new evolution-theory, usually came back into the room before the lunch was finished, and watched Miss McGee rapidly swallowing her little mess of pudding or hurriedly munching her cake. "Through, Miss McGee?" the lady would sweetly ask perhaps. "Oh, yes, Madam," Miss McGee would reply; and then, while the lady carried off the tray, Miss McGee would shake the crumbs off her lap and move back to her working-seat, and for the rest of the afternoon, without one minute's rest or grace, she would continue making something out of something else.

At about five a lonely tea-pot on a tray would make its appearance; at six she would rise and shake herself and take off her apron and begin to fold up her work, and then the lady would say, "Oh, Miss McGee, I wonder would you mind looking at this." And from some unexpected place of concealment she would produce something entirely and utterly new—or rather, not new but up to that moment unrevealed; and Miss McGee, standing on one leg and shivering with eagerness to be off, would have to stand and watch—finger the stuff, pronounce it excellent—listen to all the lady's thoughts and aspirations . . . she was lucky if she got away without the lady trying it on, or hunting out the pattern for the thing it was destined to become and laying it on the pattern to see if it would make it. . . .

If Robert Fulton had something to complain of in the world's commercialism, what about Miss McGee? Robert Fulton, if the worst came to the worst, could leave his firm and try another one; but Miss McGee couldn't leave her customers. She couldn't venture to refuse to go to one of them—she dared not offend the least of them. For if she did, that customer would make it a point of honor to go round all Miss McGee's other customers with whom she was acquainted and say to them, "Say, you know that McGee there, eh? Well, she done the most ah-ful thing!" And the other customers would believe every word and begin to look for another woman who went sewing by the day—and Miss McGee's profession would be gone. The sword of Damocles hung over her head every minute of every working day. It was the sword that made her agreeable to her customers. She was agreeable. In some houses they wanted her to be quiet—there she sat and sewed. In other houses they wanted her to amuse them, talk, gossip—there she chatted. In other houses still she was required to listen while the lady streamed on all day long—and then Miss McGee sat as mum as a mouse. Sometimes people offered to "help," and Miss McGee's heart sank. Sometimes they sent the housemaid up to sew and the housemaid was saucy. Sometimes the baby had to be fitted, and the baby cried and was naughty. And in all these circumstances Miss McGee was expected to be perfection: when they had done their worst by her all she could do was to put on her hat and say, "Good evening, Madam. Thank you, Madam," and go away. Day after day she ended what other people had begun and began what other people were to end. There was nothing she hadn't done—or tried to do. In her time she had made a ball-dress out of the kitchen dusters; she had "turned" sheets, when work was slack; she had fitted out maids in aprons and alpaca dresses; she had fixed over many a "model gown" that her ladies had bought at bargain sales. Ever since she had learned her business more than thirty years before (she had been a "trotter" at twelve and now she was forty-six) she had been doing these things and a thousand things more: and all this she expected to go on doing until the day when she should be carried out of the Buildings feet first, as she said—with her heart at rest at last.

It wasn't a bright life and it wasn't an interesting life, but Miss McGee made the best of it. It had gone on such a long time that she was used to it. She had forgotten—almost—what it meant to be riotously happy. She had forgotten—almost—the fresh days of her youth and the hope that had filled her heart then. She had grown accustomed to leaving Penelope's Buildings at eight o'clock or a little sooner and to coming back there at seven o'clock or a little later. She regarded the Buildings as "home." She was glad to get back there.

On the day when she had pushed the letter under Robert Fulton's door, Miss McGee came home a little bit later than usual. She had had a trying day. The lady she had been working for was one of her oldest customers, a Mrs. Barclay of Wellston Road. Miss McGee did not dislike her in general, in fact she liked her: there had been a time in the far-back past when Mrs. Barclay had known how to be kind and thoughtful, and a true friend. But this did not prevent her from being excessively irritating at times. She was, when the fit took her, what Miss McGee was accustomed to call "a moral blister." This had been one of the days. On Miss McGee's arrival in the morning she had found a heterogeneous mass and mess of clothes awaiting her. Mrs. Barclay seemed to have unearthed all the clothes she had ever had—she was one of the older-fashioned kind who preserved everything in case it might "come in useful sometime." Out of the mess three gowns were segregated on the couch of the work-room: and while Miss McGee was at breakfast (with the family) Mrs. Barclay had tried to recall to her memory the three gowns in succession, and how exquisite each had been. And Miss McGee had gone steadily on with her breakfast, while Mr. Barclay from the head of the table (a great favorite of Miss McGee's and "a thorough gen'leman as ever lived") had repeatedly said, "Mother, mother, get on with your breakfast, and talk of the gowns when ye've finished yer meal."

All day long Miss McGee had sat ripping the gowns. She knew that ripping was not the worst of it for, when they were ripped, she had to make them up into one "new" gown: and how she was to do it she did not know. It is work like that that makes the heart sick. She was on sufficiently good terms with Mrs. Barclay to say what she thought, and she had said what she thought, and Mrs. Barclay hadn't liked it. Lunch in consequence had not been a pleasant meal. Tea had been drunk in the state of bottled-up irritation that dislocates the soul. Miss McGee and Mrs. Barclay had parted coldly—though Miss Barclay had come running with a pot of jam at the last—and this distressed Miss McGee, for she liked Mrs. Barclay and remembered a hundred proofs of her goodness. "For the sake of Mike," she said to herself as she made her way back to Penelope's Buildings, "what do they think I'm made of, eh! Good lines! How could I? How could anybody? Why, she's old!" And she went along in a loitering listless fashion quite unlike her usual brisk business-like gait. She felt discouraged—tired inside and out. She hardly noticed even the radiant gold and amber leaves that had lighted Robert Fulton's way in the morning.

As she turned into Drayton Place, however, and saw the Buildings standing before her, she brightened. The thought that Robert Fulton was coming to tea with her flashed suddenly into her mind—and she smiled. "My," she said to herself, glancing at the big clock over the cut-rate drug-store at the corner, "I'm all behind toime. I shall only do ut ef I hurry-rush." And forthwith she began to hurry-rush. She went across the street at the double, passed through the dark, dank entrance to the Buildings, hurried over the little ill-kept passage-way that led to the stairs, and set her foot on the metal inset of the first wooden step. "Sure," she said to herself, "I wouldn't for a million have um come and me not fixed." She quickened her pace till she was running up stairs, feeling as she ran in her little wrist-bag for her big door-key; when she had pushed her key into the old, worn key-hole and opened her door, it looked black and dark, and it smelled cold and close. "Oh my!" Miss McGee said to herself. She felt for the matches where she always left them on the table, lighted the gas, ran to the window, glanced once more at the clock, pulled down the shade. "Sure," she said, "I'll do ut. But I'll only just do ut, God help me." And then once more she said, "I'd not have um come an' catch me fer . . ." And, still in her coat and hat, she knelt down at the fireplace to make her fire. The thought of Mrs. Barclay and her three gowns in one and the pot of jam Miss Barclay had pushed into her hand as she was coming away faded out of her mind. "Sure, she thinks she'll make ut up to me with jam, eh!" was what she had said as she left Wellston Road, and it was with an effort that she had not thrown the jam into the gutter. Now she was smiling and radiant as she knelt in the cold ill-lighted room making up the fire that was to welcome Robert Fulton. "It's good to have comp'ny comin'," she said to herself, "sure, it's noice not to have to spend me evenin' alone." She looked perfectly happy as she rose from her knees, and the fire crackled and spat as if it were happy too. "I'll put um there," Miss McGee said to herself, surveying the table, "it's the warmest cor'rner . . ."

The thought that she had to tidy herself as well as her house made her hurry still more. "I must give me hair a wave," she thought as she set his knife and fork and laid the little paper table-napkin by the side of them. "It makes the difference in ye . . ."—and she looked ten years younger than she had done three hours before when they had been trying on the first rough sketch of the three gowns in one before the mirror and Mrs. Barclay had said, "Guess you ain't fixed ut good, McGee. You ain't caught the idea." Miss McGee had looked an old woman then: it had taken all her good feeling of years gone by to prevent her saying, "Take yer idea and make ut yerself." Now, as she went bustling about her "apartment" she looked, not young perhaps, but a good deal less than her age. She was happy. Mrs. Barclay had faded into nothingness.