Читать книгу Our Little Life - Jessie Georgina Sime - Страница 19

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The week went on—as weeks have a way of doing—as it began: very badly. Miss McGee went on sulking, and the world went on appearing broken. She had changed her environment. With the finishing of the Athanasian Creed, her work for the time at Wellston Road had finished too. There was a promise that she would be needed before long to make a gown for Miss Barclay—when Miss Barclay would be able to pick up suitable material at some bargain sale. When this event happened Miss McGee was to be telephoned for; but until it did happen she was free from any more theological disturbances.

She was spending this week—the week of grievance—at the house of her "best" customer, Mrs. Glassridge. At this house also Miss McGee was accustomed to be engaged for a spring week and a fall week; but it was not, as at Wellston Road, as an artist she was engaged. At Wellston Road Miss McGee's efforts were looked on with respect. She was regarded as a "good" dressmaker, one to whom material could be entrusted with no compunction or doubts as to her being able to make it up into suitable raiment. Mrs. Barclay and her daughter had not soared as yet above the happy medium, the mean average; they either bought their clothes ready-made—what Miss McGee called "little frocks"—or they had Miss McGee in and trusted to her scissors and needle for the result.

Mrs. Glassridge lived on another plane. She clothed herself in works of art, exquisite in design and charming in texture, that were, in exchange for Mr. Glassridge's dollars, tossed to her across the Atlantic ocean. She was a work of art herself when she emerged like Aphrodite number two, clad in what it had taken the intellect of Paris to produce. Mrs. Glassridge was "smart." She called Mr. Glassridge "Trot," whereas Mrs. Barclay always industriously referred to her husband as "Mr. Barclay." Mrs. Glassridge had what Miss McGee called a ly-mousine, and she went out in it when she felt like it; when she didn't she stopped at home and did whatever she had a mind to—nothing, usually. She would come sauntering into the work-room when Miss McGee was there, and throw herself on to the old couch that was allowed to remain there, and negligently ask Miss McGee questions. "Say, how ye gettin' on, McGee, eh?" she would say—not that she cared, or even waited for an answer, but just because she wanted to say something, and that was an easy thing to ask. Miss McGee never felt that Mrs. Glassridge was quite flesh and blood. She seemed made of something quite particular that had no connection with muscles and nerves and bones and commonplace things. As she reclined on the couch and asked questions to which she waited for no answers, she seemed hardly human at all. Just something lovely, exquisite, unimaginable, that Paris had taken it into its head to dress—and make. And yet Miss McGee remembered the time when this wonderful creature was just a manicure girl earning her living. Miss McGee knew that Mrs. Glassridge had once been Queenie MacGowan of the Barber's Shop—until Mr. Glassridge one fine day caught sight of her and wrought a transformation-scene.

Miss McGee was, of course, of no very definite use in this entourage. Mrs. Glassridge would as soon have thought of giving Miss McGee a dress to make as she would have thought of—wearing such a thing. Miss McGee put on little velvet collars, or took them off, or, very carefully, ripped some tulle or lisse where a capable French hand had put it in, and replaced it with fresh tulle, or lisse—as near to what the original had been as she possibly could. Miss McGee loved working on the gowns at "Culross," as the Glassridge mansion was rather inappropriately called (Culross—he called it "Kewross" himself—was the Scotch village from which Mr. Glassridge had emanated): she loved the feeling of them, and she adored the totally unexpected little bits of artistry and cleverness she came across. She realized, working on them—turning up a hem, perhaps, where it was worn, or fixing a cuff where a stitch had come undone, what a different ideal exists on the French side of the Atlantic, what finish is put into the work there, what brain there is behind those elaborately simple little gowns . . .

Miss McGee would as a matter of fact never have had the chance of working on these gowns at all had she not been something in the nature of a legacy in the Glassridge establishment. Mrs. Glassridge was a second wife; and, long ago, before Andrew Glassridge had made, or dreamed of making, his millions, Miss McGee had worked for the first Mrs. Glassridge, a plain kindly, unassuming woman who had borne Mr. Glassridge a family (at the coming of which old Mrs. McGee had punctually assisted); and now she was invited for the spring week and the fall week, not because Mrs. Glassridge the second wanted her, but because Mr. Glassridge himself saw to it that she came. Mr. Glassridge was "one good man." He was not a perfect gen'leman, as Mr. Barclay was, but Miss McGee liked him, respected him, was most grateful to him for his advice (freely given) as to the investment of a tiny sum of money she had once come into from an uncle, Mrs. McGee's "American" brother. Mr. Glassridge had put the legacy in "Steel," and one pleasant thing about the War to Miss McGee was that "Steel" was constantly going up and she was as constantly getting bonuses or a little more interest on her "mooney"—as she always pronounced that word.

Mrs. Glassridge was kind enough. She wasn't at all unkind: when she thought of it she told her maid to tell the chef to give McGee things, going home: and to this thoughtfulness on the part of Mrs. Glassridge, Miss McGee owed the nicest things she ever took home to Penelope's Buildings. Mrs. Glassridge's chef was "It." He did know how to cook. Miss McGee used to think, as she ate the little lunches and teas sent up to her (in the Glassridge establishment everything was sent up, of course), that this was really hardly food at all. It was like Mrs. Glassridge's gowns—like Mrs. Glassridge herself. It was something too delicious to be thought about much—in case you never could eat anything else again. And here came the point where Miss McGee resented Mrs. Glassridge.

While she was sitting ripping with the greatest care the little vests of tulle or lisse—"vestees" was what Miss McGee called them—sometimes she would think to herself (the thought seemed to come unbidden): "Why should she have all this! What's her that she should have everythin', an' me nothin' at all. She's only a manicure when all's said an' done . . ." Religion was vain when Miss McGee got into this mood. She resented then Mrs. Glassridge's carpets, her old Persian and Chinese rugs, her Pomenarian dog (as Miss McGee always called that animal) her maid, her husband—her ox and her ass and all that was hers. Why should she have a chef, in the name of all that was ridiculous? Wasn't she just a manicure, eh? What was that? Very often something it was better not to be. And yet, on this special week of grievance, Mrs. Glassridge had been more definitely kind than ever for she had taken—a thing she had never done before—Katie McGee down in her ly-mousine, yes, the real live ly-mousine, to a play, yes, a real play with music and singing and dancing and feminine legs innumerable.

Miss McGee was sitting in the work-room sewing obstinately. She was replacing a piece of embroidery that was worn, and as she did so she was thinking to herself, "Ain't ut the punk wor'rld!": when into this desert Mrs. Glassridge, in the most exquisite of exquisite gowns, had burst. "Come on, McGee," she had said. "Come on. You an' me's goin' to a matineeh." And, before Katie McGee could believe it was true, before she had time to regret that her best hat was at home, she and Mrs. Glassridge (the Glassridges lived in patrician splendor up on the hill that looked down on Regalia) had been rolling smoothly down towards town where the theater was.

Miss McGee never forgot that afternoon; indeed Robert Fulton, in the future, often wished she never had gone to that matineeh he was told so much and so often about it. He heard of the girls' legs and the little they had on, the ladies in the boxes, the chaw'clates Mrs. Glassridge laid on the ledge of their box, the way the Chaw-fure sat on his seat of the ly-mousine, the way his collar sat on him, the exquisiteness of Mrs. Glassridge's boots, the way she took the violets out of the cut-glass vase of the ly-mousine and pinned them in Katie's coat. It had been a glorious occasion, and Katie McGee was destined never to forget it as long as she lived.

The play had been silly—but Katie had enjoyed it. "Sure, Mr. Fulton," she said, "them legs of the women was somethin' to look at." The play had been chiefly legs of women. It had been centipedal in its dancing and showing of limbs. Miss McGee was not alone in her surprise; even Mrs. Glassridge, who had seen so much—of legs and other things—condescended to say, "Oh my, ain't ut some stunt, eh, McGee!" She retained her manicure way of talking.

After the play there was tea at Regalia's smart Hotel "Il Fornaro." Miss McGee had had china tea and 'way beyond elegant cakes, and she had sat, eating and drinking and listening to the band and the monkey-house chatter all round her. Yes, it had been a great day. Mrs. Glassridge was kind—once she had given Katie a couple of the Parisian gowns she had tired of, and Katie had never been satisfied with any dress since. She was kind, and it was silly to go on resenting the fact that she was rich and that Katie McGee wasn't. That was the way of the world after all . . . "an' a rotten way—a bad way—a punk way." So Miss McGee found herself suddenly thinking as she walked quickly home through the keen air (it had not occurred to Mrs. Glassridge to send her home in the ly-mousine—that would have been too great an effort for her imagination); as she went up the well-known stair, it had all come back. The quarrel with Robert, which she had forgotten for a moment in the heated air of the theater, Mrs. Savourin, the poor leg she had to go out again to dress—Mrs. Morphy's uncared-for state—Mrs. Glassridge's undeserved riches . . . she didn't think Mrs. Glassridge kind at all; the play was fool-stuff, the ly-mousine was wicked, the Chaw-fure was only a slave in disguise. Miss McGee went up her stair on the night that made a week from the date of poor Robert's original sin, a socialist, a syndicalist, a bolshevist—anything that wants to take from other people all that they have and grab it itself. She felt as if she hated Mrs. Glassridge with her exquisite gowns. She felt that Andrew Glassridge had had no business to make millions—she felt that if she had been a bull and seen the Glassridges coming along she would have gored them both. Yes, she would . . . !

Mrs. Morphy's leg once more calmed her. There is nothing that does calm us like seeing the real sores of humanity. She dressed it, and then, having heard from Mrs. Morphy that Cassie Healy, in her "attic apartment" was sick, she began to trail wearily upstairs, past her own flat, up, up to where poor Miss Healy paid nine dollars a month for a room you couldn't, as Mrs. Morphy said, swing a cat in, so help you God.

Cassie Healy was lying on her bed; not in it, just on the top of it, as Scotch people say. She had a bad cold and was breathing with difficulty; and, as Miss McGee questioned her, it seemed (reluctant as she was to admit it) that she had had no work for a week and that she was—starving.

The room Miss Healy occupied was exactly what it should have been. She and it, as she lay on her wretched bed, seemed exactly suited to one another. Cassie Healy was not bad: on the contrary she was good—a "good" girl, devoted to St. Patrick's, taking her chief joy in life out of the lights there and the smell of the incense; and consequently she was approved of by both Mrs. Morphy (who always meant to go to church) and by Miss McGee (who did go as often as she could).

"Sure, it looks loike the work's gawn underground," said Cassie Healy, coughing, and turning restlessly in bed. "It's the bad job for me, eh? I been round an' round an' tryin' an' tryin', an' there's nothin' to be had."

Cassie Healy worked in Jews' sweating-dens at stitching pants. She was a good worker—or "operator" as they said—she did her work capably and well; but there were too many capable workers and the Jews thought it salutary that all should know what being out of work meant, and so they changed round at times and took on relays of fresh workers: and then the old workers starved until they were taken on again.

"What does ut mane, for Gawd's sake, Miss McGee," said Miss Healy, edging herself up in bed, and supporting herself upon an elbow. "What's we here fer, eh? What d'ye s'pose is the manin' of ut all?"

To remarks such as these Miss McGee had only the answer of faith.

"Sure, Miss Healy," she said, "we must keep on b'lievin' an' goin' to the church. There's some meanin' in ut sure, or me name's not McGee."

Her anger against Mrs. Glassridge and a millionaire conception of life evaporated. It didn't seem real here somehow, that conception. It didn't seem worth while to be angry with it, to think about it at all, in the face of such poverty as this. This was real. Mrs. Glassridge, however you looked at her, wasn't quite that. She was wonderful and beautiful and marvelous and a sort of miracle—but like all miracles you had to believe in her more or less against the evidence of your senses.

"Sure I'll bring ye the cup o' tea," Miss McGee said: and then, forestalling Cassie Healy's objections—Miss Healy was "proud"—she added hastily, "I'll take me own tea with ye, ef ye ain't had yours. I've not had the bite, an' me head aches, an' I don't feel like eatin' at all, God help me, ef I've no comp'ny, it's the truth."

As she went downstairs to put the kettle on and make the tea and bring it all up again to Cassie Healy's attic, she said to herself, "I guess God knows a'alroight, eh. But He acts quare."

Miss Healy's remark, "What's the manin' of ut all!" kept ringing in her ears.