Читать книгу Our Little Life - Jessie Georgina Sime - Страница 12

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When Robert had finished reading there was the usual disturbed pause that occurs at the end of anyone's reading anything. Reading aloud one's own wares is fascinating, but it is also a risky business. Reading, for one thing—however well the reading may be done—is not calculated to arouse enthusiasm. Eloquence, the spoken word, the suggestion of improvisation, the touch of heart on heart, will arouse an audience, whoever it may be, so that it is able to shake off its self-consciousness and—be articulate. An audience addressed by someone with the kindling gift is set on fire—when an orator has done speaking those who listen rise, and, burned out of all consciousness of self, acclaim the man who has wrought this miracle on them: the orator feels his power, the people he has addressed do homage, all goes merrily as the classical marriage-bell. When, however, someone sits down and in cold blood reads something, with his eyes necessarily glued to his paper, this kind of enthusiasm is not evoked. The end of the reading is apt to be greeted rather by the sound of the funeral-bell. The audience is mute, oppressed, very conscious of self; and with all its energies bent on trying to think of something appropriate to say, it sits very unhappy indeed—and making the reader yet unhappier than itself by its silence. Even Tennyson himself, of whose reading of "Maud" we have all heard so often, may have suffered occasionally from this recalcitrancy on the part of his audience.

Robert's reading was no exception to the rule. When he had finished there was an intense silence. Poor Miss McGee sat at the other side of her waning fire, tied up in a knot and wondering what on earth she could say. She wanted to say something very nice indeed and, naturally, the more she wanted, the less she could attain. She sat tense, inelastic, pulled together—though outwardly calm and peaceful. As the moments went on she began to feel a sense of desperation. What was she to say? What could she say?

The fact was, of course, that there was a great deal of Robert Fulton's manuscript she hadn't understood. It was above her. What could she do with a sentence like this, 'The two countries (Canada and England) are so alike and at the same time so very different that any power of thinking you may possess will almost inevitably be forced to the surface by the change from the one to the other; one of the drawbacks of general travel is that the lands you visit are so totally different from what you are accustomed to at home that all capacity for just comparison is taken away from you for the time being, and your power of thinking is more or less in abeyance—we need only recall the traveling letters of any ordinary mortal to convince ourselves of that truth.' To Miss McGee travel was the ideal way of spending some, at least, of life. She hadn't known before that it had a drawback. And then what did 'in abeyance' mean? What were 'traveling letters'? Miss McGee got on an average one letter in the year—a Christmas epistle from her cousin in New York, and it said to begin with "hoping you are well," and to end with "no more at present from yours." Was that a 'traveling letter'? It traveled a long way—from New York to Regalia. No treat was greater to Miss McGee than a book; she had spoken truthfully enough when she had said she was fond of reading. But what kind of reading? On Saturday night, on the way back from work, Miss McGee was accustomed to call in at one of the great Departmental Stores and make her way to the Library Section. There she would say good evening to the "young lady" in charge, and then, wandering aimlessly in front of the bookshelves she would take down a volume here and a volume there and dip casually into them; and then, ten to one, she would turn at last to the young lady and say, "What's a nice book, eh? Could ye fix me one for Sunday"? And the young lady, affable to all literature, would pull out a volume and say, "Gee, that is one cracker-jack, you bet," or words to that effect. And Miss McGee, meekly accepting the judgment of authority, would pay her deposit of two cents for the night's read of the masterpiece and go off with it under her arm. And she liked it. She considered the cracker-jack was a cracker-jack; she formed one of the public who so generously create best-sellers. She cried at the places indicated by the author and laughed at the places where wit was provided, and when on the Monday morning, on her way to work, she carried back the cracker-jack and paid the remaining two cents for the treat she had had, she said to the young lady, "Say, my dear, that's a well-wrote book, eh?" And the young lady would reply, "I believe you," or "I should worry," or "true as steel," or something of that kind: and the author had walked up one more step of the ladder of fame.

Seeing that this was the case, it will be perceived that Miss McGee was hardly up to Robert Fulton's literary standard; he had been perfectly correct in his diagnosis of her intellectual state. She had had a vague idea while the reading was going on that it was a fine thing she was listening to; Miss McGee, in common with a good many other people, whenever she didn't understand a thing concluded that on that very account it must be fine. Robert had besprinkled his literary garden too from a watering-pot of quotations (he thought, poor soul, they were patent to the sparrow on the house-top) and these, Greek as they were to Miss McGee, complicated the situation. She had never read "Little Dorrit," so what was she to make of 'life in Canada is the antithesis (and what on earth was that!) to the sort of officialized existence led in the Circumlocution Office.' The immortal Tite Barnacles were for Miss McGee as if they were not and had never been. Odd as it may seem, she hadn't even heard of "David Copperfield," and therefore Robert's sentiment that you cannot look at Canada without feeling a little as Littimer did towards David 'though Canada has not the perception or sensitiveness of David, so neither guesses your thoughts nor would be interested in them if she did,' was lost on her. As for La Fontaine's frog, which in Robert's manuscript was made a symbol for 'that inflation of the New World which is so distinct from growth,' it was not even a name to her. How should Miss McGee have heard of La Fontaine? His Fables would have bored her, anyway. It was impossible for a man like Robert Fulton, accustomed to books from his infancy (and perhaps before it) to realize the position of a Miss McGee—who read, as the Scotchman jokes, with deeficulty, and whose literary taste was bounded on the North by "Evesham Bobby" (a synonym for the Duke of Tynmouth), on the South by "Great Love Gets There Every Time," and on the East and West I will not say by what. He simply, with the best will in the world, could not throw himself into the area of sentimentality and obviousness, false reasoning and bad grammar that Miss McGee regarded as the literature of the age, and he was unable to quote from any of the books she knew—because he had not read them.

Miss McGee was in a hole. She was tempted—in one-half of her—to wish that Robert had never come to tea. However, there was another half of her that was quite different from the first half; and that half, most irresponsibly and unreasonably, was glad he had come. It didn't matter that he said, 'In Canada's atmosphere there is something young; something of that awakening self-consciousness and ambition and vague sense of latent power that exercises a fascination over many of us. It is the spirit of aroused egoism walking abroad, but just as the first conscious manifestations of the ego in himself are fascinating to the individual, so Canadian life is fascinating to those who come to it in something of a kindred spirit. The liking for Canada is largely temperamental.' She hadn't the slightest idea what all that was about, but at the same time she was proud that he should have selected her to read it to. She loved sitting there listening to things she didn't understand, in the half of her that was glad he had come; and she wished—oh how she wished!—she could prove worthy of his confidence. Had Robert been able to say what his Paper said in burning personal words, the one half of Miss McGee would have risen and cast the other half from it and answered him in words as burning as his own. It was Robert's method that got between him and his listener. It was the technicality of his writing—the literary form in which he chose to en-wrap his thought—that put Miss McGee off. She had never been taught the use of specialized tools like that—she didn't understand; how could she? And, being hit hard with the intellectuality of it all and rendered in her turn self-conscious to the last degree, she was afraid of saying anything at all in case she made a fool of herself. Possibly Miss McGee is not an isolated case of such feeling as this. Possibly she was quite as much sinned against as sinning. If Shakespeare (let us say) had written Robert Fulton's little criticism on Canada and its ways and had sat by Miss McGee's fireside reading it aloud, Miss McGee might never have been self-conscious at all.

For a while it was a drawn battle between Miss McGee's two halves: and then, after a minute or so of complete silence (which seemed like an eternity to both of them), she said in a small voice, "Oh my, Mr. Fulton, that's lovely, eh!"

It was not a very stimulating remark. It was even a rather silly remark. But Robert Fulton felt a good deal heartened and even stimulated by it. He also had been feeling a complete fool in the small (and at the same time eternal) silence that had greeted the end of his reading; he had felt so much of a fool that if the silence had lasted much longer he would have gathered up his ill-fated manuscript and with it he would have escaped to his own den, two stairs up: and there in company with his literary work he would have spent a suicidal night. However, by speaking at all Miss McGee broke the evil spell, and by saying, "Oh my, Mr. Fulton, that's lovely, eh!" she indicated at least her good-will. Good-will is something. It is a good deal. Robert Fulton felt suddenly saved—calmed—cheerful. His artistic streak went up with a bound, the "prespiration," as Miss McGee always called it, ceased rolling down him in the secret recesses of his being; he looked up with his candid blue eyes and right into the dark mysterious queer eyes of Miss McGee and he said naïvely, "Did you like it?"

He couldn't have said anything better. With that remark Miss McGee became assured once more (a thing she had doubted while he was reading his manuscript) of his humanity. The fact that he was able to write things that other people couldn't understand dropped away from her and she was able to look upon him almost, though not quite, as she had looked before. It hardly seemed possible that the same thing that had written 'What is lacking in Canada in spite of her youthfulness, is the spirit of fertility—fertility of brain and imagination, without which the fertility of field and forest and stream are of little profit' could also have said, "Did you like it?" in that gentle humble tone of voice. "Oh, bless um, he's just an innocent young man," Miss McGee said to herself, and she felt reassured. Out loud she said, "Like it! Why, I think it's great. It's a grand thing you've wrote there, Mr. Fulton. I never thought," (and this time she said it) "you had it in ye."

As soon as she had said that she felt she shouldn't have said it, and she wished she could retract it. But Robert Fulton, responding to the tone of her voice (which was warm and human), said "Oh!" And stayed where he was, looking into her deep eyes with his lighter ones. And they sat a while like that, he perfectly unself-conscious and she almost so, looking deep, deep into one another.

It was Miss McGee who came back first. She straightened up, and moved in her chair, and colored a little, and removed her eyes: and then she said, "You must have went about the wor'rld a lot, eh, Mr. Fulton, before ye could write that."

Robert Fulton felt at a loss. His moment of complete unself-consciousness had been snatched from him. He could have sat a long time looking into Miss McGee's eyes; not because they were the eyes of a woman—not at all—but because they were something human to look into: and that, by means of them, he could get—somewhere. He felt this possibility, as I say, torn away. He felt his eyes left in mid-air, so to speak. He took possession of them again, removed them from where they were, and turned them to where Miss McGee had turned hers—to the dying fire. "Oh well," he said vaguely, "yes, I suppose I've seen things."

Now, this to Miss McGee was a facer. She had sized up Robert at their first meeting when he had carried the coal upstairs for her as "an inexperienced fella." Miss McGee knew only one kind of experience—that of actual life. She had knocked about the world for a long time, and in that knocking about she had encountered most things there are to encounter. There were few things in the commercial world and in the sex world (though Miss McGee herself was chaste) that she didn't know. She had been born into the world with an agile brain. She had used that brain on anything and everything she came across; and the result was that in the two spheres that were open to her there were few things she didn't know. You couldn't have shocked Miss McGee by telling her anything about those two spheres. It would have been impossible. She knew the worst that was to be known, and in a sort of half-cynical, half-melancholy way (with a dash of humor superadded) she accepted it. "Men are men and women are women," she would have said. "God made them that way and you can't make them different." And what men did to women and women to men in the sex world, what men did to men in the commercial world and women to women in a mixture of the two worlds—she took for granted. Her being a devout believer didn't impinge somehow on her view of this world. This world is as it is—and the next world will be as it will be; different in every respect, Miss McGee would have said, and having no connection with here and now.

Being deeply experienced in this limited way she naturally sized up everybody else from the depths of her limitations. She saw Robert Fulton, neat, quiet, shy, gentle—with the occasional quick naïve artistic kindling that distinguished him—and she took for granted that he was inexperienced in every way. She saw that he was unaccustomed to women (and women size up a man almost completely from that) and she said to herself, "He's a boy. He knows nothin'. . . ."

Judge then of her surprise that this "young fella" whom she had taken to be a sort of Schüler in Faust (only she had never heard of either Faust or Schüler) should evidently have not only thought and felt, but have actually gone about the world and seen it in a way she—Miss McGee—had never done. Reading, to a person of Miss McGee's experience—is a sort of by-way; if it be a highway at all it doesn't seem to her to be leading anywhere special. But traveling, the actual seeing of other countries and mingling with the inhabitants, that, to a Miss McGee, means . . . well, it means "an elegant education." As she sat on the other side of the dying fire from Robert Fulton, all sorts of new ideas and apprehensions about him were flooding her mind. As she sat there indeed a sort of French Revolution was taking place inside her. This young inexperienced creature had been about the world; he had seen things and thought about them—he was able to put his ideas together so as not to be able to convey them to someone else . . . Miss McGee guillotined on the spot all her preconceived ideas about Robert Fulton and placed him on the pedestal on which women always place men when they begin to care for them. That night, in the most unexpected way, Robert Fulton walked out of a certain place in Miss McGee's consciousness and into another part. She suddenly felt for him—and she knew she felt it—an impulse of the most tender admiration. He could write like that! He could say 'possibly money is fertile: it certainly does beget money, once you have the proper start . . .' He could, without rhyme or reason, define the Canadian climate as 'brilliant sunshine and a diamond quality in the air.' He could (bless um!) burst into things like this, 'Canada has not emerged from the early spoilt-child stage, the stage of noise and grab and acquisitiveness and intense appetite for the material things of life'—and God only knew what he meant by that! Still, he could say things like that! He could "write"! All that she had previously read seemed to her suddenly worthless. She felt that she never would be able to say again to anyone that she was fond of reading—she who could not understand this wonder that Robert Fulton had put before her.

"Say, that's a grand thing, Mr. Fulton," she said. "It's—sure, it's foine. I—I didn't know ye'd read a thing like that to me . . . or I'd never've asked ye to come down."

It was well that Robert Fulton was perceptive, or he might not have understood what Miss McGee was driving at. He did understand. And he glanced over gratefully at her.

"It's—it's only a very little thing," he said stammeringly.

"It's a big thing, Mr. Fulton," Miss McGee said, and her voice was grave. "Sure, it's the great big grand everlastin' koind of thing." She stopped a minute. "Ef ye'd have the koindness," she said, "to come down Sunday noight" (in her mind she had already resurrected the remains of the chicken into creamed chicken on toast) "an' read out loud again—I . . . p'raps I'd take hold some better."

"I guess I'm stupid, Mr. Fulton," she went on. "I've not had the elegant wor'rk you've had put in ye. But I'd loike to git ut . . . ef ye'd explain."

She paused.

"If ye'd come Sunday," she said, "it would be a great agreement."

She meant "agrément." She mixed with the French-Canadians in St. Patrick's church, and she caught up their words and used them, anglified, as her own.

Robert Fulton felt something warm and soothing run into his heart.

"Thank you, Miss McGee," he said. "Thank you. If it doesn't bore you, I'd—I'd like to come on Sunday."

And then, on another impulse of self-consciousness, he took out his nineteenth-century watch and looked at it.

"My goodness," said he. "Look at the time . . . !"

He sprang to his feet and stood opposite Miss McGee.

"Good night," he said.

His self-consciousness had once more left him.

"Good night," Miss McGee said. She didn't offer to get up, nor did she stretch out her hand as usual. She merely sat where she was and looked up at Robert Fulton from under her long dark eyelashes.

"Won't you shake hands?" said he. He couldn't have told you why he said it. They always did shake hands, and he had never thought anything about it before. But now it suddenly seemed to him that he would like to shake hands with Miss McGee. "Won't you shake hands?" he said smilingly; and he stretched out his slender womanlike hand.

Miss McGee slowly put her plump warm soft hand into his. She let it lie there, and she allowed him to clasp it and hold it—and then shake it warmly. She felt that he only shook it as he would have shaken any other human being's hand that had praised him. It might have been a man's hand in his—or his mother's—or his aunt's . . .

When her hand dropped back into her lap she rose up and went with Robert to the door.

"You'll be in Sunday then," she said. "But come ahead of toime, eh, Mr. Fulton, an' we'll have the good evenin's read. Come in at six, eh?"

She watched him run rapidly up the stairs, and then she closed her door slowly.

"I'm old," she said to herself. "I'm old."

The thought seemed to her for the moment almost too bitter to be borne. The thought of her ardent youth that she had sacrificed to her mother came rushing over her like a torrent. She went about mechanically putting the room in order, mechanically getting out the tea-things to wash——and the hot tears coursed down her cheeks.

"I'm old," she said to herself. "I'm old . . ."