Читать книгу Our Little Life - Jessie Georgina Sime - Страница 13

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On Saturday night (just twenty-four hours after the famous reading-party) Miss McGee came homewards with a lagging step. The three gowns had proved more trying than ever. All day long she had sat endeavoring to weld them into one, and all day long they wouldn't weld. "What's the matter," Mrs. Barclay had said, on her periodical visits to the work-room to see how things were getting on. "You'd used to be so clever, McGee. What's the matter, eh?" Whenever anyone said anything like that Miss McGee, who had a fearful strain in her (own sister to the superstitious strain that coursed in her veins), saw herself on the streets. She knew Mrs. Barclay wouldn't really go back on her. She always had been and always would be, in spite of everything, a true friend. Still, if she—"McGee"—failed to please, where was she? Was her right hand really losing its cunning? Was her skill departing from her? Mrs. Barclay didn't, of course, mean what she said but, for all that, disparaging remarks always seemed to Miss McGee to be casting their shadow before.

Whenever Mrs. Barclay had paid a visit to her therefore, she had redoubled her efforts on the gowns. "Darn the thing," she had said to herself, "whyever don't she buy herself somethin' new!" And she had seized "it" more firmly in her hands and struggled—wrestled—with it to make it look something like a tunic—which was Mrs. Barclay's desire: and it wouldn't look like one. No, it wouldn't. It seemed to have a life of its own, foreign and antagonistic to hers. Do what she would not an atom of "style" or "pep" would come into it. It remained, in her own word, "dumphy." By the afternoon the tunic that wasn't one raised despair in its creator's soul and ire in its possessor's. "Whatever's the matter!" Mrs. Barclay had kept saying. It had been a miserable day.

To complete the tragedy, the weather had broken. The clear golden days had suddenly gone as if they never could have been; and in their place had come a fierce black stormy day—precursor of the long months of the Canadian winter. The few leaves—amber only yesterday—turned a sickly yellow or a withered brown as you looked at them; they detached themselves from their branches one by one in a heart-sick sort of manner, and came fluttering to the ground. The bare branches that they left looked flaccid, soaked with the down-pouring rain. The world had looked a dejected world as Miss McGee surveyed it out of the Barclay window; it had looked a world with an inky sky out of which fierce torrents of rain had come swishing and pouring, a world with soaked side-walks, and swamped passers-by, and tired dripping horses.

Miss McGee was dependent on the weather for her cheerfulness in life. A clear sunny day, and she was "keyed up" as she said to enjoyment; a wet heavy day, and she went so out of tune that you couldn't believe she would ever ring clear again. She had sat all this day in a sort of stupor of wretchedness. The gown—the sky above and the earth beneath—the periodical visits and ejaculatory remarks of Mrs. Barclay—roused in her moments of acute misery: and when the misery was not acute it was chronic. It was most unusual for Miss McGee to feel this way at the Barclay's house. She regularly spent two weeks of her life there each year—one week in the spring and another in the fall—"fixing over" all Mrs. Barclay's and Miss Barclay's "things." And she was accustomed to look forward to these weeks. They were amongst the pleasantest things that came into her life. For the keynote of the Barclay's house was comfort—there were good meals and lots of them and a warm upholstered homey sort of atmosphere. Then Miss McGee was on a comfortable footing at the Barclays'. She shared the family nourishment in the dining-room, and Mr. Barclay, who always came home when he could "from business" for the family noonday dinner, carved with a liberal hand and always urged a second helping. There was no constraint about the Barclay weeks. Miss McGee ate as much as she could, and often at night, when she left after her day's work, she carried a basket loaded with "things." The "things" in this instance were not clothes to fix over, but bits of cold joints, odds and ends of chickens, remains of layer cakes . . . pots of jam, such as that Miss Barclay had thrust into her hand to make up the quarrel. And Miss McGee liked all this. She did not enjoy the Barclay food as she enjoyed food that she ate at her "best" customer's. That food—Mrs. Glassridge's food—was for the hierarchy alone. But Mrs. Barclay's dinners were good solid things, well put together and comfortably served: Jennet, in the kitchen, looked forward to her share of them and took care of that. Possibly Barclay dinners were better for humanity than Glassridge food every day. Mrs. Barclay's dishes had not the "goût" that Mrs. Glassridge's chef knew how to put into his cooking. They bore no resemblance to what the archangels must eat the one time in the year they feel hungry. But then Mrs. Glassridge's food was on the same grade as the little gowns that were wafted over from Paris for her to wear, while Mrs. Barclay's gowns at their best, when they were one gown and one alone, were merely good solid articles—like Jennet's dinners. Still, Miss McGee was certainly more at home at Mrs. Barclay's then at Mrs. Glassridge's. In the Glassridge establishment she was conscious—resentfully conscious—of being out of place, the square peg in the round hole that Robert was in Canada: whereas at the Barclays' she was pleasantly in her element. The days as a rule passed quickly. Miss Barclay, a thoroughly good-natured girl, often took her out shopping with her and gave her tea and hot cakes in the tea-room of some Departmental Store. And now look! See what had happened! Mrs. Barclay had taken a fit of economics and her three gowns had turned into an Athanasian Creed on their maker's hands.

Not even lunch (as Miss McGee always named the noonday meal) cheered her. The good food tasted like dust and the cup of tea like liquid ashes, if there are such things. Mr. Barclay's husky kind voice saying, "Jes' a sma'all piece more cor'rn, Miss McGee!" seemed, in some mysterious way, to add insult to injury.

"What's the good of ut anyway," Miss McGee said to herself, splashing her way home. "Here's me workin' me head awf—and what for! To please her." All Mrs. Barclay's kindnesses, past, present, and to come, ceased for the moment to exist. "Her's not wor'rth pleasin'," Miss McGee said furiously to herself, "that's all about that. I wisht I was dead."

She trudged a bit further through the sloppy slush and sometimes deliberately plunged right into the big pools that were forming themselves on the uneven side-walks.

"Can't she buy somethin' new!" she said.

Naturally, it was not alone the three gowns in one that had wrought this transformation scene in Miss McGee. In women, when the world suddenly and quite inexplicably, as it seems, takes on mourning apparel, there is a reason. The three gowns were in Miss McGee's mind; she hated to make a mess. But there was something else. And it was a something that she was unwilling to confess—to put into so many words—even to herself.

When women are on the brink of the first step towards surrender—not necessarily bodily surrender, but the surrender of mind and soul—oneself—that accompanies the feeling of love—there is always at the back of their minds a big fear. When a woman is young such a surrender seems—and perhaps is—the natural thing. The fear (always there) is swamped then by the great rush of joyous feeling. The anticipation of "something" coming; "something" that is different from and worth all that the world has had to show before. But when a woman reaches Miss McGee's age—when she is, technically speaking, "old" . . . ah, then it is very different. The joyous anticipation is nowhere, for there is no anticipation at all except of grief and failure; and the fear of something even more disagreeable than usual coming into the life is paramount. Miss McGee had had a thoroughly disagreeable life. She had seen the world emphatically from the wrong side of the tapestry. All the odds and ends of unfinished thread had come her way, and she had spent her life in trying to fasten them off—and failing. As she looked back, especially, as now, on a dark rainy night after a day of ineffectual work, she seemed to see her life in no way except one of petty futile failure. "Oh, I'm a failure a'alroight," she said to herself, as she went splashing along. "I'm a failure. That's all about me. And," she added to herself after a minute, "I'm an old fool, too. That's what I am. A darned old fool."

Swearing is, after all, a confession of failure in itself. It is the expression of a weakness that fails to find adequate language for the consolation of its feelings. In Miss McGee's defense it can only be said that her vocabulary was limited. She had not, as she told Robert Fulton, had the advantages of an elegant education, and therefore she was not able, on acute occasions, to find the exact word to fit her thought. On such occasions (they were not very frequent) Miss McGee had recourse to what is called "strong" language in which to express her feelings. "I'm a darned old fool," she said to herself, and she felt that sort of miserable pleasure we all do when we say and do things we know we oughtn't to say and do; and, as she splashed her way along after this outburst, she more deliberately still chose the worst of the puddles to splash through. "I wisht to God," she said, "I could catch the cold an' get the peumonia an' be done with ut." And then after a second she said, "God forgive me!"—and felt better.

As she neared home, however, she felt as if it would not be possible for her to go back into her lonely room. "What will I do," she said to herself, "there all alone." She knew what she would do. She would take refuge in that feminine consolation—tears. Miss McGee knew very well that if she went back into her dark lonely room—if she opened the door and saw before her that vista of gloomy loneliness that she saw nightly on her return, she would (before she had time to stop herself as it were) burst into tears; and once having burst, as every woman knows, it is impossible to close up again. As well try to stop a cloud-burst before it has spent itself. Now Miss McGee had a particular objection to crying. She knew it was a relief—for the moment. She also knew, as all lonely women know, that such a cloud-burst left her with sightless eyes and a "sore head," as she herself called it, that her whole body seemed to smart and her whole soul to ache with misery; that not even a night's sleep could quite restore the balance she had upset; that it would take time to restore her, time which she had not got to give . . . and that the whole thing was silliness and not worth it. Miss McGee, in common with all other women who know what sorrow is, always tried to keep off a crying fit. Whenever she felt that such a thing was in front of her she took means to keep it off; if it were humanly possible, she prevented it. Trudging along, therefore, with the hot irrepressible tears welling up into her big blue-black eyes, she kept saying to herself, "What will I do, God help me? Where can I go to keep meself from thinkin'?" And after she had said this a sufficient number of times the idea flashed into her mind, "Sure I'll drop in on Mrs. Morphy and ta'alk with her a minnut. She'll distract me."

As soon as she had thought of this Miss McGee felt better. The thought of Mrs. Morphy acted like a charm on her sinking spirits so that they ran upward like the mercury in a clinical thermometer when the patient has a fever. "I'll drop roight in on the old lady," said Miss McGee, "an' see what she's doin'. She's cheery, bless her. An' ef she ain't, she'll keep me from thinkin'." The tears dried up like magic in Miss McGee's eyes (there is nothing like forming a plan, however small and poor, for making you feel better) and she walked on with a brisker step, now choosing deliberately the dryest spots to walk on, and evading as well as she could the splashes of mud she would have to brush off later from the hem of her skirts.

Mrs. Morphy, on the ground floor of the Buildings, across the court, had a bigger domain than most of the Penelopians. She had a fine kitchen (in which her life was spent) a good room off it which she rented to a professed cook, Maggie Chambers—Mrs. Morphy took "roomers"; Dan, "the nice young man who was always drunk," occupied the room to the side of that; and in a tiny place with a skylight window, dignified by the name of room but not much resembling the thing, "Mac" lived and did his best to move and keep his being going. And "Mac" was the pride and joy of the Morphy establishment, and in love with a niece of Miss McGee's.

"Come in, McGee," cried Mrs. Morphy, "come roight in an' set down. It's the worst wor'rld this, an' I'm wantin' someone to say it to in the wor'rst way. Set down and have the cup o' tea with me. Ye look wasted with want."

Mrs. Morphy leant across to where the tea-pot stood on the top of the stove and shook a good pinch of tea into it out of a paper bag that stood beside it. She filled up the pot out of the ever-boiling kettle. "Sure it's the cup o' tea'll do us both good," said she. "Set down, me dear, an' be welcome."

Miss McGee sat down. The kitchen was none too clean, there were stacks and piles of unwashed dishes lying about, the whole place looked sordid and uncared-for and unpleasant—but Miss McGee felt comforted. She needed human contact badly, and if Mrs. Morphy's home was on the squalid side, Mrs. Morphy herself was hearty. She sat in her rocking-chair beside the stove as if everything was in apple-pie order and she had nothing in the world to do but to rock in a leisurely manner back and forth; and her face (which had been a handsome one in its youth) looked on Miss McGee with a human smile of welcome. "Sit ye down," said Mrs. Morphy, "and make yerself at home. Glory be to God but I'm glad to see ye."

Miss McGee took the cup of tea that Mrs. Morphy held out to her. As she sat in her rocking-chair the hostess had merely to stretch out a hand first to one side and then to the other to reach all that was required. The milk was on the table to her right hand, in its bottle, just as it had been delivered by the milkman in the morning, except that it was only half-full now; the sugar was in a paper bag, a little to the left; and as to the cups and saucers themselves, they were on the sink-board amidst the stacks of unwashed dishes, and they just needed a rinse and a rub, God help them, to be ready for use. Miss McGee was not in a mood to be too particular. She took the cup of tea as it was offered her, and it tasted a great deal better in her mouth than the more elegantly served cup she had tried and rejected at lunch-time.

"'Tis the foine mess of a world this," said Mrs. Morphy, reaching for the loaf and the butter (also in its own piece of paper on the table) and cutting a slice. "There's Dan in his room as sick as a dog with the drink, and Maggie just bent on marryin' um and him not wantin' her. And there's Mac in love with your niece, McGee, and her not wantin' um through um not bein' Catholic. Where's the use of anythin'?" said Mrs. Morphy cheerfully, handing Miss McGee the slice of bread-and-butter in her fingers. "Where's the use of loife! That's what I ask."

She took a big sip of tea and seemed comforted.

"Ye well may ask," said Miss McGee.

It was frantically and furiously hot in Mrs. Morphy's kitchen. It was not a lofty apartment, nor was it a spacious one, and Mrs. Morphy, as long as she had a cent to do it with, stoked "like hell," as Dan said in lucid intervals. The window was tight shut, and as soon as Miss McGee was seated Mrs. Morphy pushed the door to behind her with a well-directed kick, and as Miss McGee sat drinking her tea she was simply sweltering. But she was glad she had come. The physical discomfort was counterbalanced and set at naught, as it were, by the hearty friendliness of Mrs. Morphy's hospitality.

"I don't know what's come to Dan," said Mrs. Morphy. "Here's him spendin' every cent he earns on the drink an' layin' awf till he has to git up to make some more to spend. 'Why in God's name don't ye marry Maggie?' I say to um, 'She's an honest woman as they go.' 'I don't loike Maggie, Mrs. M.,' says he. 'What's that to do with ut,' I says. 'Marry her an' the loikin'll maybe come after.'"

"I'd be sorry for Maggie," said Miss McGee uninterestedly. She wasn't thinking of Maggie.

"Take me wor'rd for ut now," said Mrs. Morphy, bending forward so that she might be close to Miss McGee's ear, "Maggie's not wor'rth yer bein' sawry for. She's the—(here Mrs. Morphy used a classic word) that'll run after any man. Dan's good enough for her. He's a deal too good," Mrs. Morphy went on after a second. "Dan's the noice bo'oy when he's out of the drink."

Mrs. Morphy was expressing the opinion about Dan that Miss McGee had expressed to Robert Fulton. They both sat silent for some moments listening to the snores of the nice bo'oy who was, as Mrs. Morphy put it, "sleepin' ut awf" in the adjoining room.

"He's the drunken beast," said Miss McGee unexpectedly: her nerves were set on edge by the constantly-recurring snores.

"Och," said Mrs. Morphy heartily, reaching for the empty cup, "bo'oys will be bo'oys." She threw the dregs of Miss McGee's cup into the sink, filled up the cup from the tea-pot, added sugar and milk with a generous hand, and passed the cup back again.

"Sure, what I'm worried about is Mac," she remarked, when she had refilled her own cup. "He's all set on Rose Garry, McGee. What for will she not have um, eh? He's the man a'alroight."

"I know ut," said Miss McGee, but still indifferently. It was impossible for her to concentrate her mind on any but her own concerns just then. "But Rose is the har'rd one, believe me. Ef she says no she means ut. An' Rose ear'rns her own mooney, too," Miss McGee added after a minute. "She kin say no ef she wants to, I guess."

"Och, ivery woman wants a man," said Mrs. Morphy.

She paused expecting Miss McGee to controvert this. But after a minute Miss McGee said, "That's true"—and the subject dropped.

"I've somethin' more I want to say to you," Mrs. Morphy said after a bit. Miss McGee had filled up the pause by gazing in between the bars of Mrs. Morphy's fire and seeing—things—in the glowing coal beyond the bars. Mrs. Morphy hitched her rocker a bit nearer to Miss McGee and once more lowered her voice—this time to a whisper. "Me leg's bad," she said.

At that Miss McGee came out of her abstraction. The love-affairs of Dan and Maggie, or Mac and Rose were not enough to rouse her from the study of her own preoccupation, but at the hint of physical trouble her heart gave a jump. "What's the matter with ut?" she said.

Mrs. Morphy with a free gesture (a gesture impossible to Miss McGee) turned up her skirts and showed a fair fat white leg. She showed her leg in a way that revealed many things—that she was a married woman—that she was a much-married woman—that she had "seen life," as it is called—that few things in a certain area of life were unknown to her. Had Miss McGee had to show a bad place on her leg to Mrs. Morphy she would have done so in a private secret manner, lifting her skirts delicately, showing as little of the leg as possible; but Mrs. Morphy; with a fine free gesture, showed all the trouble and all the leg at once. "Look here at me leg," she said, beginning to undo some singularly unappetizing-looking bandages. "Look at ut, Miss McGee, dear. It's sore . . ."

It was "sore." The sight of it reached far down in Miss McGee and touched a very kind spot in her. "My, Mrs. Morphy," she said, "that's ah-ful." (So Miss McGee pronounced that word.) "It's a bad place. Ye should take care of that. Will ye not have a man in to see to ut?" (She meant a doctor.)

"None of your men for me," said Mrs. Morphy emphatically. "Where's the money to pay for 'em . . . ?" She was beginning to wrap the unappetizing bandages round the leg again (it had been a fine well-shaped enticing limb before Mrs. Morphy let it get so fat) when Miss McGee stayed her hand.

"Wait a minnut, Mrs. Morphy, eh" she said. "Let me bandage ut for ye. I've often bandaged Ma'a's." She looked around. "Where's some clean stuff," she said, "that I can fix ut with?"

"There's none," Mrs. Morphy said.

A minute after that Miss McGee was on her way to Semple's drug-store. As she hurried along she never noticed the dreariness of the night, nor did she think of the condition of her own heart. The state of Mrs. Morphy's leg occupied the whole of her consciousness and there was no room for anything else. "The poor thing!" she kept murmuring to herself.

At the drug-store she bought the lint and a cooling liniment, recommended by the drug-man, as Miss McGee called him, and, with these in her hands, she went hurrying back to Mrs. Morphy's kitchen. She knelt down on Mrs. Morphy's none-too-clean floor, unwrapped the old bandages with careful hand from the fair soft white leg that had so emphatically seen better days, washed the threatening-looking sore tenderly, and then, very gently and very skilfully too (Miss McGee had what are called "good hands"), she bandaged up the wound with the clean linen she had brought from the chemist's—all soothingly steeped in the cooling liniment.

"There," she said, as she stood off a little from Mrs. Morphy, "is that easier now a bit?"

"It's grand, God bless ye," said Mrs. Morphy. "Thanks to you, McGee dear, I'll spend a better noight, God willin', than for the long toime past. It's the bad noights I been havin' of late. . . ."

"Why didn't you tell me before?" enquired Miss McGee.

"It's not after tellin' more than I can help, I am," said Mrs. Morphy evasively.

Miss McGee stood looking at her. This evasion, this unexpected secretiveness gave her sudden new lights on Mrs. Morphy's character. "It's the way I would be meself," said Miss McGee—to herself. And out loud she said, "I'll give ye a hand with yer dishes, Mrs. Morphy." And, turning up her sleeves she set the tap in the sink running in a business-like manner, feeling the water with her finger to see how hot it was.

"Niver mind the dishes," said Mrs. Morphy heartily. "They'll do to-morrow."

But Miss McGee, paying no attention to her, began to stack the dishes for washing in a professional manner—first the little ones, then the bigger, last of all the biggest and the pots and pans. Everything in Mrs. Morphy's ménage seemed to be collected for washing at one time, but Miss McGee went at the job and did it. After she had scraped and washed and rinsed and dried the dishes and put them away in Mrs. Morphy's cupboard (and she felt like cleaning that out when she looked into it) she turned to and scoured out the sink and scrubbed the sink-board; and then she washed through the dish-towels and the dish-rag she had washed the dishes with and set those to dry before the fire. "Is there somethin' else I can do?" she said, glancing round the kitchen. "If there is, say the word. I've toime. To-morrow's Sunday."

"Bless ye, me dear," Mrs. Morphy said. "Ye been sent to help me. I'd never have had the strength meself." Suddenly her gray-green eyes that had once been translucent and glancing, filled with tears. "I'm an old woman, McGee dear," she said, "an' none so strong as I onest was." And then in the same breath she went on, "but don't you be tellin' anyone, dear. I've kep' it to meself till now. So don't be tellin' anyone about me leg. They'd be sayin' things if they knew. . . ."

As Miss McGee went up-stairs—it was an extraordinary thing—she felt far less tired than when she had come in from her day's work and gone across the court to get some comfort from Mrs. Morphy. Since that time, when she had thought herself dead-beat, she had been out again in the rain and mud, she had done a good hour-and-a-half's work in Mrs. Morphy's kitchen, and she had done a nurse's work on Mrs. Morphy's leg.

"I feel fine now," Miss McGee said to herself, as she put the key in her door and opened it and went into her dark gloomsome room. Her tone was quite business-like—there wasn't the slightest hint of an Irish inflection in it. "I feel fine . . ."

There was, in no corner of her consciousness, the slightest idea of crying. Never had tears been further from her. "The poor soul," she said to herself. "Why don't them gir'rls of hers look better after her! She ain't fit to be there alone takin' roomers—an' drinkin' an' all." The gin bottle in the corner of the kitchen cupboard as she put the dishes away had been quite visible to Miss McGee's naked eye. "I'll step down bright an' early an' dress that leg to-morrow, eh," she thought; and all the time she was undressing she kept saying to herself meditatively, "I guess it ain't roight someway. That leg there ain't roight at all."

The room was cold and it felt damp and Miss McGee hurried to bed. "I'll not put me things to soak to-night," she thought. "To-morrow's Sunday, an' I kin git up a bit ahead o' toime an' wash them through."

By the time she had her things off and had said her prayers and looked at the little figure of the Madonna that she kept over her bed to "watch over her," as she said—she felt contented. She lay down and composed herself to sleep. As she thought of Mrs. Morphy a big pity filled her soul—and as she thought of Robert another kind of pity—a motherly kind—filled the place where the restless longing had been an hour or two before. "Sure, he's a bo'oy," she said, "an' a dear bo'oy." She saw him carrying up the coals and showing, by his way of doing it, that he had never done it before; and then she saw him coming in, as he would be coming in to-morrow, carrying his little roll of paper in his hand. "We'll have creamed chickun on toast," she said to herself, "an' that'll be noice." And her last waking thought was, "Thank God fer a comf'table bed. There's many's the one hasn't got that Thank God. . . ."

She went fast asleep.