Читать книгу Our Little Life - Jessie Georgina Sime - Страница 15

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When Miss McGee had been a young girl she had had attractions. Katie McGee had never been beautiful—"a beauty," as they had said of her fair stupid sister. She had never had Mary McGee's silky hair, nor her calm blue eyes, nor her soft pink-and-white skin, nor her slender straight figure, nor her supreme health. Katie McGee had always been what her mother called her, "the little black divil of the fam'ly"; and she had had those nervous disabilities that go with the sort of high-strung temperament she possessed. It had been no unusual thing for Katie McGee in the old days to be laid aside with a headache that seemed to go from one temple to the other, through her head, like a never-ceasing sword-thrust. She had suffered from moods—she had been full of eager excitement one day and speechless with depression the next; she had had neuralgias, fits of indigestion. Had Katie McGee been a "lady" she would have spent money taking rests at Sanitaria; she would have drunk this tonic, eaten that patent food, gone from one medicine-man to another. She would have been forever talking about her ailments. Being what she was—a working-woman—she had said very little about them. She had taken them about the world with her as a sort of inevitable possession and, as she had grown older, they had decreased in virulence and in violence. As an elderly woman Katie McGee had lost most of her headaches and neuralgias. She had become less exacting. She took life more as she found it. Her mental temperature was more often down at normal—and she suffered less.

But, after the cementing of the friendship between herself and Robert Fulton, as she went out of Penelope's Buildings to her work in the morning and as she came back to the Buildings at night, she seemed to feel conscious of something pushing up in her mind; something new, and yet something that roused the old Katie in her, that old Katie who had lain so quiet for so many years that Miss McGee had almost forgotten her. She was in a curious way unable to account for this feeling she was conscious of inside herself—pushing its way up into the world as you may see the slender spike of the hyacinth pushing its way out of the sheltering bulb. She was astonished. The more she thought the less could she comprehend this feeling, that, stronger each day, growing quietly within her without her help or volition, urged her to think more and more about Robert Fulton. Miss McGee recognized the outer aspect of the situation. She didn't think of herself as young or beautiful or as possessing any longer any sexual attraction whatsoever. She knew perfectly well she was forty-six; that she was old for her years; that she was uneducated and gray-haired; that such charms as she may once have had were far far behind her. She knew all this with a sad certainty; yet, notwithstanding, growing from her soul into consciousness was a desire—a great desire to help, to be of any possible service, to do away with herself altogether if need be, to push her own personality utterly aside to make room for this other personality that had suddenly become to her so much more precious than her own.

The question in Miss McGee's mind was—what was this feeling? It was unknown to her.

It was not, in her estimation, love. Love, as Miss McGee knew it, was a selfish thing. Love demanded. It took rather than gave. It stamped its egoism on everything it touched. It affirmed itself, denied any other personality but its own. Love, as Miss McGee had seen it throughout life, had been a tearing, rending, frantic sort of thing. A thing short-lived, but panting with life while it did live. A thing that wanted more and more—a thing that was insatiable, full of desire, unquenchable by anything it got, always demanding more, insisting. A furious, frightening sort of thing—and with death clear in front of it.

Such was Miss McGee's conception of love. She couldn't have put it into so many words since formulating feeling is an acquired art; we have to be taught to think, as we have to be taught to do everything else—but feel. Miss McGee had never been taught to think so she didn't think. She puzzled over things and tried to get somewhere, but, not possessing the tools that would bring her into the thought-region, nine times out of ten she was pushed back into the very place she was trying to get out of. As she went to and fro, however, and while she was sitting quiet in those houses in which she was permitted to sit quiet, she did try to think about this sentiment that was pushing its way up out of her heart—or was it her soul? What was it? What did it mean? Where was it taking her?

Sitting sewing this or that, at this time, Miss McGee thought a great deal about her youth; this constant close intimate feeling that seemed part of herself, and was at the same time something new, growing up out of herself, was like a reminiscence of her youth—with a difference; and it brought the old days back. She remembered the letter-carrier, Tim Donough, just out from the old country, that had wanted to marry her. She remembered the other Irish boy that she had met at "Old Nancy's," her mother's friend, that had sighed over her blue-black eyes. And she remembered Tully Bardwell—that she had wanted to marry. Yes, she had wanted to marry him. She had longed to marry him. Very nearly she had thrown discretion and duty to the winds and left her mother alone and gone off with Tully. And then—she couldn't do it. It had been a choice between her mother and Tully. Tully had been given to drink and Mrs. McGee had said, "Katie, you must choose between us. . . ."

As she sat in her customers' houses Miss McGee went over this episode, over and over it, a thing she hadn't thought of for years. She had loved Tully with all the hot blood that lay back of those blue-black eyes of hers. She had wanted him with the fire of her blood and the craving of her flesh. She had longed to touch him, to be touched by him, to lie in his arms . . . she had had all those desires that go with the love of the body. His body had tempted hers and she had wanted him.

And she had given him up. She had let him go and had stayed with her mother. Had she been right? Tully had gone off to "the States" and married a widow with money. He was happy—enough it seemed . . . but once, after years, they had met again and Tully, a middle-aged bloated man, still drinking hard, had said to her, "Kate, ye were wrong. Ye should have married me. . . ."

Out of these dreams Miss McGee would wake to her customers' demands, "Yes, Mrs. Glassridge, I guess a little collar of velvet would smarten it up some, eh. Will I bring ye samples to-morrow . . . ?" And when the little velvet collar had been definitely decided on she would tumble back into her own reflections.

Then there had been Mr. Mitt. He was a later "beau," as Miss McGee called such things. He had appeared just before her mother's death, when Miss McGee had been thirty-five. Mr. Mitt was an Englishman who had come out to Canada, expecting much; and, as happens to expectant Englishmen, nothing at all had happened, except a gradual declension into nothingness. Mr. Mitt had had Miss McGee's "elegant education." He bore all the marks of it. He read the papers and brought Miss McGee the magazines, and there wasn't a subject, as Miss McGee said, that you could ask him about that he didn't know. He was to all intents and purposes omniscient, and he wore a smart tie, and when you told him things, he said, "Really!" in an accent which went to Miss McGee's heart. "England an' Ireland's forever at war, God help them," said Miss McGee, "but if ye bring the roight Englishman an' the roight Irishwoman together they're the greatest friends that ever was." Mr. Mitt had been an assiduous suitor. He had come to the McGees' twice a week for a year; and at the end of the year he had asked Miss McGee to marry him. He had nothing and he did nothing, so he wasn't perhaps a great catch. But he had a beautiful way of speaking and a nice tie, and he said "Really!" as no Canadian could do it . . . and Miss McGee thought of it. However, this time, too, she stuck to her mother. "Mr. Mitt," she said, "me mother's not long for this world. I'll have to see her through. But if ye'll wait, I'll marry ye then."

Mr. Mitt had not waited. Poor old Mrs. McGee had taken a long time to die, and Mr. Mitt had tired of it. After her mother's death Miss McGee had found herself with nothing but her occupation to look forward to—and she had gone on with it. During the eleven years that had elapsed since then Miss McGee had never thought of a man. She had considered men as past her—or herself as past men, perhaps. She had thought of her work and whether she was going on getting any—of her food (increasingly); of the novel she took home from the Library on Saturday night, of her rheumatism. And that was about all. For all Miss McGee had thought of men since the departure of Mr. Mitt there mightn't have been any in the city she lived in.

And now, suddenly, without warning, the thought of a man had come into her mind again. The thought of Robert Fulton, younger than herself, far less experienced in the world's ways, the thought of his quiet blue eyes, his fair skin, his slender youthful figure, his neat feet and hands, had come into Miss McGee's mind to stay. The feeling she had for him was something quite distinct from the feeling she had had for Tully Bardwell and for Mr. Mitt. There was in her thought of Robert Fulton no trace of the fire she had felt for Tully. There was in her feeling no suggestion of the pride she had felt in Mr. Mitt—for Robert Fulton's culture, such as it was, was so unobtrusive that unless you had possessed at least an equal amount yourself, you would never have noticed it. This feeling that was springing up in her, and growing day by day and night by night, was something new—unexpected—unimagined before. It was a comprehensive feeling. Miss McGee felt as if she would like to cover up Robert Fulton from the world, as if she wanted him not to be hurt—as if she wanted this so passionately that there was nothing she would not do to prevent it. Miss McGee felt that if Robert Fulton were in danger she would thrust her life in between him and the danger . . . and find happiness in doing it.

We all speak of love as if it were one thing that we called by that name. It never seems to occur to us that love has more strings to its bow than the most complicated instrument ever devised by man. Love is what Miss McGee thought it. It is a rending, tearing, furious thing, but it is also a very gentle restful all-pervading thing. It is the shortest-lived thing on earth—but it is also eternal. It is hard and cruel—and it is self-sacrificing and kind. It is selfishness itself—and it is the obliteration of self. Up to this time Miss McGee had only seen love in its manifestations of wind and fury and desire. She had thought that a woman's love for a man or a man's love for a woman must be accompanied by the passionate thought of self—or it was not love. And now she guessed the truth.

Day after day she sat in her customers' rooms and worked hard all day long; and then she walked home through the ever-increasing cold of the early winter months and as she came and went, she kept asking herself, "What is this? Is it right? Is it a temptation of the devil . . . ?" She would go into St. Patrick's church and, making her way to the pillar she always leaned against she would kneel and pray and pray—she would beseech guidance; and, as she rose from her knees, she would feel within her—growing—growing—throwing out long spear-shaped leaves—this young thing, full of life and hope and strength . . . and she would wonder. It was as if she had conceived a spiritual child and was carrying it about with her. There were days when she went about carefully, as a woman goes when she carries life. The feeling grew and grew—a soft, still, reverent, loving feeling.

And one day it came to Miss McGee that she loved Robert Fulton. And she wept.