Читать книгу Our Little Life - Jessie Georgina Sime - Страница 18

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This all happened on the Thursday. By the following Sunday Miss McGee was still so upset that she slipped up in the early morning and pushed a note under Robert's door asking him not to come as usual on the Sunday evening. "I'm kinder tired," she wrote, "and I guess I got to git to bed. Purhaps" (spelling was not Miss McGee's strong point) "you will come in some night this week insted. I am not sick." And she signed herself as usual "Miss McGee."

She had hesitated a good deal before doing this. She wanted to see Robert very much. She had a sort of craving to see him: but, on the other hand, she thought he might ask for explanations (which showed how little she knew that part of him) and she didn't want to give explanations. She didn't want to think of the Mrs. Savourin episode ever again. On the whole she decided she preferred not to see him at all, and then, the moment after she had irrevocably pushed the note under his door, she wished she hadn't.

Having done it however, there was nothing for it but to go down stairs wearily and get into bed again. It was in such very early morning that Miss McGee had slipped upstairs that the slow wintry dawn wasn't even thinking of breaking; and she had deliberately chosen this time because she didn't want any inhabitant of Penelope's Buildings to see her pushing notes under Robert's door—she knew what they would say. Sunday morning, as she well knew, was the signal for a "long lie" on the part of every Penelopian, male and female (who was not working at munitions); she got upstairs and down again without meeting a soul and crept back into bed, feeling mentally and physically, yes, and morally too, upset. Lying there with her eyes wearily shut she felt as if she were a field of grain battered by the wind and rain. If sunshine were to come along, she said to herself, perhaps she might be able to make the effort to incline herself towards the light and air and warmth—and go on growing again. As it was there was nothing for it but to lie in bed, not sleeping or thinking of sleeping, merely dully aware of her existence in the world: and regretting it.

After what seemed a long time the reluctant light of a winter morning came dimly in at the window. She lay looking at it for a time (her bed-room window looked out, not at Drayton Place beyond which she could see St. Patrick's, but to the back where there was only the view of the dark court-yard) and then she began to get up. She dragged herself to the edge of the bed and sat there awhile, her legs dangling to the floor; and, for a bit, she put her hands before her face and kept them there. At last, with a sigh, she definitely "got up," put the kettle (she had filled it the night before at the common tap of water in the passage) on her lighted spirit-lamp—she began every day hygienically with a cup of hot water: and then, attiring herself in an ancient dust-habit of her own conspiring, she set to sifting the cinders. This was the start to every day. There was no central heating in Penelope's Buildings: each Penelopian had its own fire: and Miss McGee was unable to let any prodigal cinder escape her, for if she had let cinders go their way, she would have been unable to go hers: a dollar fifty a day is not a princely wage. With her head tied up in a cloth, and her body guarded by an armor of sackcloth, and her hands elastic-banded into paper bags, Miss McGee sifted the cinders from one end to the other. Clouds of dust rose and circled round her enswathed head. Most of it settled on the floor and furniture and some of it went out at the window she had opened for the purpose. There was an accumulation of cinders, as it happened, for Miss McGee had felt too miserable since Thursday to sift at all. Now, as she knelt in sackcloth amongst the ashes—she felt all of a sudden as if she were doing penance for her life.

When she was through she washed, drinking the hot water in sips as she did so: then, attiring herself much as the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge are said to do for a similar purpose, she went to church. St. Patrick's was not far; it is possible that God was just as pleased to see Miss McGee in her night-gown with a big coat over it as He would have been had she come to Him with an ostrich feather in her hat. She knelt, feeling very bruised and broken, her petitions, somehow, were formal; when she rose from her knees and made her way out of church she did not feel the same deep warmth of comfort as usual. She felt as if God were not friends with her—yet why? Because she had put Robert off for the evening? Because she was still furious with Mrs. Savourin? Because she still resented Mrs. Barclay's speech? Or was it because she felt at enmity with the whole world—and herself—and a little bit with God? Miss McGee had the sensation of having gone out of tune. She felt that her pitch had quite unexpectedly run down and that, though this was perhaps in a sense her own fault, yet that it was also somebody else's fault—possibly a little bit God's. She did not enjoy the early Mass as she usually enjoyed it; and when she got back to her own apartment and took off the big coat and put her kimono on, and took the tea-pot from its warm shawl (she always made the tea before she ran over to church—she liked her cup of tea strong) she did not enjoy that either. Something was lacking. Perhaps a bad leaf had got in. She drank mechanically and gazed out of her window with an unseeing eye. She had not provided herself with any week-end novel, she had no Sunday paper—she had nothing to read and nothing to think about (except disagreeable things) all day long. It was a dismal prospect.

She knew that before very long one of her nieces would come in for her on the way to church, and that they would go along to the ten o'clock Mass together. This was a family habit. Although Miss McGee had quarreled with her sister some Christmases before over a plate of cold turkey her sister had sent her (as a make-up, since Katie, on account of sickness, had been unable to attend the Christmas festivity) the family continued to think of Miss McGee as "Auntie" and bore her no malice. Miss McGee had resented the turkey as an alms-giving ("I ain't a beggar!") and she had ever since steadily and strenuously refused to see her sister, and so Mrs. Garry never came. But one of the girls—there were five of them—or sometimes a couple, called in on their way to church every Sunday and bore Auntie along. Miss McGee appreciated this, though she would never have acknowledged it. She liked her nieces. She had been at the birth of each, had received each, as it came into the world, in her arms. She had taken her share in the bringing-up—had played with them, whipped them, admonished them all through infancy and girlhood; and now that the Miss Garrys were grown-up young ladies, yes, even little Mae!—smart and self-respecting and ready to be married, she liked to look at them and think they were partly of her making. She would—though she would have died rather than say so—have been bitterly disappointed had one of them failed to come for her on the Sunday morning; and now, as she sat drearily drinking the tea that had a bad leaf in it, the thought that Rose or Nellie or fat comfortable Ag, or Katie that was named for "Auntie," or little Mae—but most probably Rose—would be here before long was the one bright spot on which Miss McGee could allow her thoughts to dwell.

Rose came. She was the one who usually did come. She was the eldest of the Garry girls, and she had a strong sense of duty. She was a good-looking girl—tall and fair-haired and calm, the spit and image of her mother, as Miss McGee said: and she was peaceful by temperament. If she leaned to the cold side, if she could be something that was not very far from being hard, still she was a "good" girl, and it was almost impossible to quarrel with her. Miss McGee did not understand Rose very well, but she had an admiration for her. Rose was so correct. At the Bank where she worked, she did her work well: quite mechanically, yet almost always without mistakes. Rose was entirely unadaptable. There was not much possibility of growth in her. Take her for what she was, and she was excellent: ask her to become something—even the smallest, tiniest—something else . . . and she couldn't. She was a kind, handsome, unable-to-put-herself-in-anyone-else's-place girl: and Mac, Mrs. Morphy's best roomer, seeing her through a cloud of illusion, loved her.

"Why won't ye have Mac, Rose?" Miss McGee said to her niece this morning, as they sat a minute before it was time to go to church. "Why won't ye have um, eh? He's the broight lad!"

"He's not a Catholic, Auntie," Rose said.

Beyond this point it was impossible to get her to go. Mac might have all the virtues in the world, but Rose would always be unable to see them because of this flaw. Mac was not a Catholic, and he never would be a Catholic. He was a good sound staunch Presbyterian, and if he had not been dazzled by Rose's complexion, he would have gone on thinking (as he had been brought up to think) that Roman Catholicism is another name for the devil. Mac's people, far away in Scotland, agreed in the main with Mrs. Barclay, though they might not have expressed themselves with the same strength. Mac spoke with the good Scotch accent he had been born to, he looked on life with the good Scottish eye; and Miss McGee knew well that when she and Rose did go out, they would find him (casually) on the side-walk. She knew how he would come up to them—much as a big dog approaches those whom he seeks to interest, with a wag of the tail and an ingratiating deprecating look of the eye. "Good mornin', Miss McGee," he would say with his eye on Rose. "It's a fine day, eh?" And when Miss McGee had answered, "'Deed but it is, Mr. Fisher Macpherson" (which was Mac's name), the conversation would languish and come to an end. Rose with her Sunday hat would seem to Mac more unapproachable than ever. She would view the heavens with her calm blue eyes (but longing, Auntie guessed, to speak to Mac all the time); and Mac, after a moment or so of ineffectual struggle to find something to round the conversation with, would give up the job—and the ghost. "Well, good-by just now," he would say—how well Miss McGee knew it! "See you later, eh, Miss Rose. I—I thought I'd just speak . . ." And he would melt away into the adjoining landscape and into the next Presbyterian church and into despondency and loneliness as he had so often melted before, and she and Rose would go on to church—and Rose would be miserable.

Miss McGee wanted Rose to marry Mac. She wanted it in defiance of all the ideas and views and religious convictions she had been brought up in. She wanted Rose just to marry and have a home of her own and children and a man to look after her—as she wanted few other things. Rose wasn't her favorite of the Garrys. Nellie, the wee black devil like herself—Nellie the school-teacher that Auntie should have been—was that: Nellie indeed, appreciated by the Nuns, and on the way, as it seemed, to success in her career, often seemed to Miss McGee to be herself in another generation, achieving what she would have achieved, had she only had the chance. Still Rose was Rose. Rose was the first Garry she had received into her arms twenty-three years ago. Rose was the one "Grandma'a"—old Mrs. McGee—had loved. Rose was fair and kind, she never missed coming for Auntie if she could possibly help it (whereas Nellie, the monkey, was seldom to be seen)—Miss McGee wanted Rose married. A Roman Catholic would have been better, certainly; but since no Roman Catholic was forthcoming, Mac was the next-best thing.

"Why will ye not think of um, Rose?" Miss McGee said once more, when they had come out of Mass. "Mac's the good fella. He'd make ye happy a'alroight, I guess. He's as fond of ye as the moon's fond of the stars—think of um, Rose." She hesitated a minute. "Ye don't know what ut means, me dear," she said, "to be lonesome an' an old woman all alone be yerself. Think of Mac, me choild," Miss McGee said. "Don't throw um awf loike an old shoe. Good men ain't so easy come by in this loife. Be civil to um . . ."

It was not often Miss McGee said as much as that: but Rose remained obdurate.

"He's not a Catholic, Auntie," she only said again; and, possibly because of Miss McGee's speech, she wouldn't come in for the usual cup of tea that heartened her up for the long car-ride home to Massonville, the suburb on the outskirts of the city where the Garrys lived. She just set her lips ("the very way Mary'd used to set hers!" Miss McGee said to herself) and a hard look came into her eyes—and she set off home. "I've got to go, Auntie," she said. "Mother hates ut when we don't get in on time fer dinner Sundays."

And she went.

This was not an inspiriting episode. Miss McGee once more thought of the field of grain and felt as if another hail-storm had battered it flatter than ever.

"Rose is one good gir'rl," she said to herself, "but she's the fool a'alroight."

And the idea of Rose at the Bank for ever, getting older and older and drier and drier as she did her work in her excellent way, became definitely repugnant to Rose's aunt. "The fool-gir'rl," she thought, "why wouldn't she think of um!" The remembrance of Mrs. Morphy's tone as she said, "Och, ivery woman wants a man!" came across her. Mac, looking so nice in his semi-ready suit, "he bought ut a purpose you bet your sweet loife," Miss McGee said to herself; the thought of him going on to his lonely church; the feeling of his disappointment, his sense that it was all "no good," the dull useless silly Sunday he must be spending—all this was transferred to Miss McGee's own mind: and, since we all feel other people's troubles far more when we have troubles of our own to feel, the world began to look to Miss McGee entirely out of joint—dislocated at its central line—breaking all to pieces.

"Sure," said Miss McGee to herself when she had finished the misery of economy that she called her dinner, "what will I be doin' next, in the name of God!" It seemed to her that stay in her own dull flat alone with her own dull thoughts she couldn't. "I'll be goin' down to Mrs. Morphy's there," she suddenly thought, with a sense of remorse that poor Mrs. Morphy's leg had hitherto escaped her mind. "Sure I'll be goin' down there an' dressin' the leg."

She slipped on the big coat of the morning once more, went down-stairs, crossed the court, knocked at the door of Mrs. Morphy's "suite."

"Come," cried Mrs. Morphy from the inside; one of the peculiarities of Mrs. Morphy's door was that it was always on the latch, hospitably undone so that anyone could enter, day or night.

"It'll be broighter here p'raps," said Miss McGee to herself, going in at the unlatched door.

But it wasn't. Mrs. Morphy was in the dumps too. She had been dining not at all economically. The dishes were scattered all about the kitchen in the most unpoetic disorder, and Mrs. Morphy herself, seated by the fire in an unpoetic negligée and not heartened as she should have been by her glass of gin, had big tears running out of her eyes and pouring down her cheeks.

"How's all with ye?" said Miss McGee, determined to ignore as far as she could the dirty slatternly place and the depression of its mistress. "How's loife, eh?" But when Mrs. Morphy's tears continued to pour, when Mrs. Morphy herself shook her head speechlessly without even attempting to answer, Miss McGee merely thought, "Sure, here's another. How could I look for somethin' else"—and she resigned herself to her fate. The world seemed more broken than ever . . .

Mrs. Morphy's leg was very bad. It was worse. The night before it seemed, when Mrs. Morphy had regained the power of speech, Mac and Bert Baird (a friend of Mac's) had said to the "Old Lady" as they called Mrs. Morphy, "See here, Old Lady, it's a change ye need. Come on with us an' we'll show ye."

Mrs. Morphy had gone. She had put on her best bonnet trimmed with bugles that her "swell" daughter, Mrs. McKennay, had given her. She had put on the best gown that, since she wore it last (Mrs. Morphy lived in a wrapper), had grown too small for her. "Sure, ut wouldn't button on me," Mrs. Morphy said, cheering up somewhat at the recital of her woes, "but the pins hild together be the help of God." Mac and Bert had taken her first of all in the street-car to a Movie. Then they had taken her to supper. The supper had been of an uproarious nature, with gin and oysters, and, by the time it was over, Mrs. Morphy's leg had become so sore that a street-car as a means of getting her home again seemed out of the question. Mac had risen to the occasion ("Sure, an' he would!" from Miss McGee); he had 'phoned for a sleigh and the bo'oys and she had come home in triumph, "singin'," as Mrs. Morphy said, "all the way." Once home, they had further celebrated the occasion "with a glass,"—and then Mrs. Morphy had gone to bed and lain awake all night with the pain.

"It's over me days of pleasure is," said she, and the tears coursed down her cheeks more rapidly than ever. "It's the old woman I am now, McGee, it's the grave that's before me."

She turned up her skirts and began showing her leg to Miss McGee. "Sure, it's me leg's gawn back on me," she said.

Miss McGee sighed. She was past saying much, and indeed the sympathy she felt for Mrs. Morphy had in it an element of pleasure. She wasn't glad Mrs. Morphy's leg hurt her—oh no!—but she would have been disappointed had she come and found Mrs. Morphy rejoicing in the world and all its ways. Now she could feel surer than ever that the world was a broken place. It wasn't just that she, Katie McGee, thought so—it was so: it was a place for which no rational creature could be expected to have anything but the strongest abhorrence.

"For the love o' Mike!" she said, bending over the leg, "yer leg's gawn back on ye a'alroight, eh." She dressed it tenderly and well.

"Sure, an' it's the angel ye are, McGee, dear," Mrs. Morphy said gratefully, putting her hand on Miss McGee's shoulder. "What would I be doin' an' you not here!" And in a whisper that began to have some enjoyment in it she detailed into Miss McGee's ear the brave fight for independence and bachelordom that Dan was putting up against Maggie's ever-stronger onslaughts. "He says he's promussed to a widow-woman," Mrs. Morphy said in conclusion, "with feather-beds an' napery of her own." "They're all widow-women," said Miss McGee bitterly—she was thinking of Tully.

Before she went, and quite against Mrs. Morphy's desires, she once more washed the dishes. "Sure, me da'ater Finn's comin', me dear," Mrs. Morphy kept saying. "She'll fix 'em."

"Nonnie Finn'll not come an' say ye've no one to help ye," Miss McGee answered decisively: and then, as she washed and rinsed, she said, "Why will Maggie not come an' give ye a hand, in God's name? Where's she that she'll not help?"

Mrs. Morphy pointed mysteriously towards Maggie's room. "She's sleepin' ut awf," she said. "Drunken beast!" said Miss McGee. "The foine wife she'd make any man."

"S-s-sh!" said Mrs. Morphy, but Miss McGee didn't care.

"The better ef she does wake," she said, louder than ever. "Sure, it'll do the punk good to hear what decent folks thinks of her."

Maggie giving no sign, however, and there being therefore no excuse for a fight—which Miss McGee felt would have done her good—there was nothing for it but to come away.

She went back to her own flat with a lagging step. As she reached her own door, it flashed through her mind how she might go up-stairs—go running lightly up—and tap with the softest of hands at Robert's door and ask him to come down to tea. She thought of his face as he would open the door; she saw those pale agate-blue eyes of his suddenly become suffused with light—as they sometimes did. She painted to herself, in the semi-darkness there of the stairway, the pleasant surprise it would be to him—the way his whole face would light up . . .

And then the remembrance of him standing there talking with Mrs. Savourin swept over her. "He loikes her!" she said to herself. The image of Robert at his own door faded away. She saw him merely standing talking to other women . . . Miss McGee put the key into the keyhole of her door and opened it with a violent push. "Sure," she said aloud, "it's the poor wor'rld. Why was we ever bor'rn into ut! That's the question."

And then, totally unconscious of the fact that she was quoting Hamlet—she prepared to go to bed. "It's the only place there is, God help me," she said, "that we kin lie quiet."

She undressed in the soft winter dusk, turned the key in her door, pulled down her blinds with a rattle, and got into bed. As she lay there waiting for the sleep that wouldn't come, she felt her cheeks wet.