Читать книгу Our Little Life - Jessie Georgina Sime - Страница 9

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The first thing Robert saw when he waked up the morning after his busy evening was a letter slipped under the door. He recognized at once the postal service, as it plied from one "apartment" (as the Penelopians loved to call their flats) of Penelope's Buildings to another. And, as he knew quite well from whom the letter must come, he didn't trouble at first to get up and look inside it. He merely lay where he was and lazily contemplated it as it lay on the floor with its outer edge still under the door.

We can judge from Robert Fulton's way of regarding this letter that it was not a very important document—to him. If it had been a love-letter he would have been up in an instant, pressing it to his bosom; and if it had been that long envelope from the lawyer's firm, which so many of us pass our lives hoping for (and not getting), he would also have been up, not pressing it to his bosom but undoing it and taking out what was inside with trembling, eager hands. Knowing, as he did, that it was a letter from Miss McGee, on the first-floor flat on the Drayton Place side, he merely lay in his poor bed regarding it in the dim light of the October morning. He knew what the letter contained. An invitation to something. He said to himself that Miss McGee would be asking him in to evening "tea" perhaps, or that she Would be making some overture for the Sunday afternoon. He was glad to get her invitations—he didn't get so many that he could afford to throw away any: but he was also aware that these invitations of hers did not afford him any special pleasure. He was glad to go to Miss McGee's, as things were; but if things had been otherwise—and how he wished they were!—he wouldn't have been glad to go. And he knew it.

After a bit he stretched out his hand for his watch; that watch, which, like the porcupine-quill pen, had no connection at all with the twentieth century. It was a watch wound up in the good old way with a key (which went a-missing the moment you took your eye off it) and keeping excellent time so long as it was not put into the hands of a Canadian watchmaker. When Robert's hand had reached this watch of his and he had consulted it, he said "Oh!"—that expressive monosyllable by which those of us who live alone do so much conversation with ourselves. He put the watch back on the table beside his bed, and he got up. He didn't leap up. You don't leap unless you feel in a leaping mood. Robert Fulton got up slowly, one leg and one arm at a time, and when he was wholly out of bed he stretched and said "Oh!" again—and began to dress. He had no bath-room. In Penelope's Buildings there were no bath-rooms at all. Nobody thought of such things. The Penelopians went to their wash-basins as a matter of course, and, for better for worse, according to the way they were made, they washed themselves clean. Robert Fulton was made for better in that particular way. He was not one of those Englishmen, conventionalized in the Canadian mind, who on their arrival in the Dominion fall from a pinnacle of superfine cleanliness into a bottomless pit of dirt. He had not, from sheer desperation, ceased to use a tooth-brush; nor had he ceased to brush his hair. His clothes were poor and threadbare—he couldn't help that; but he brushed them and he brushed himself. In spite of the drawbacks of living as he did, he remained self-respecting. He looked neat. In so far as he could possibly manage it, in short, he triumphed over the wash-basin and made it seem as like a bath as he could. It was his one heroism.

It wasn't until he had got on his suit (which he would have to change for a white linen one as soon as he reached the store) that he approached the door of his room and stooped for the letter. As soon as he had got out of bed he had placed his small sauce-pan on the spirit-lamp, and now, before he read the letter, he took the tea-pot off the top of the sauce-pan (where it had been warming), placed in it the requisite teaspoonful and a half of tea, filled the tea-pot with the boiling water, extinguished the lamp: and sat down to breakfast. Breakfast is not a complicated meal when you live alone and have to get it in a hurry. Robert Fulton's breakfast consisted of a cup of tea and a piece of bread (and margarine with it) on weekdays all the year round. On Sundays he added to this anchorite repast another cup of tea and an egg—or some marmalade—or a little honey: and he eked out these delicacies with the reading of a book—which on ordinary mornings he couldn't afford to do. His Sunday morning breakfast was the pleasantest time of the whole week; and if, as the day went on, it proved rather a forlorn and desolate day (as Sundays in a strange land are apt to do), still it was Sunday, and that was a great thing. There was no mention of butter or cheese from morning till night; and he was not required to talk of the weather with anyone.

The present day was Friday and there was need for hurry. Robert Fulton had been five minutes too late in looking at his watch. He poured out his cup of tea, and between his rapid bites of bread and margarine he took up the letter. It was a small tidily-folded piece of paper. No envelope—such luxuries were not necessary in the simple postal service of Penelope's Buildings: merely a piece of paper of poor quality, torn off a "pad," folded in three, and addressed in a careful illiterate hand, "Mr. Robert Fulton."

Robert hastily unfolded it, with a knife in his hand. It contained what he had expected, an invitation to "tea."

"Well," he thought to himself, "all the better. I'll go." He went an buttering his bread while he was thinking this. "And," he said to himself suddenly, putting down his knife, "I know what I'll do. I'll take the manuscript down and read it to her."

He knew this was a desperate resolution. He was well enough aware that what he had been writing the night before (for it was of this he was thinking) was above Miss McGee's powers of comprehension. Miss McGee was intelligent, but her intelligence had never had a chance to get itself cultivated in any way. It was the native thing she had brought into the world with her: and Robert Fulton knew very well that what he had written the night before needed some cultivated as well as some native intelligence to comprehend as well as appreciate it. He knew Miss McGee would not understand a great deal of what he had written. He also knew he must read what he had written to somebody. The time had come to share, and he had nobody—nobody on earth—with whom he could share but Miss McGee. He had the unlucky artistic streak that demands sympathy . . . "She'll pretend to understand if she doesn't," he said to himself, definitely showing his artistic streak and glancing down at the letter before him; "she'll pretend—and that'll be something." He turned the poor little piece of paper round, wrote rapidly on the back of it in his legible practised hand, "I shall be delighted to come. Thank you. R. F."—and he rose up and washed the breakfast things and put them away, made up his bed (for he couldn't bear to come back at night to an untidy room), seized his hat, took a rapid glance round to see that nothing was in too-furious disorder, opened the door, went out, locked the door behind him—and made off. He ran down-stairs, stopping to slip the return letter under Miss McGee's door as he ran (he ran because he would have to pay a fine if he were late and he couldn't afford fines): and then, making his way out of the front door of Penelope's Buildings, he forged in the direction of the store. "Yes, I'll read it to her," he thought as he made his way through the clear fine transparent morning; "I'll know she doesn't understand, but it'll be nice of her to try." He knew she would try. He knew he would feel grateful to her for doing her best to please him. He knew he would even derive some benefit—some actual literary help—from the un-understanding warm human sympathy Miss McGee would be sure to shower out on him. "You gain things from reading aloud anyway," he further said to himself; and then, once more consulting the watch, he said, "Now then, get on. Don't talk. Hurry. You'll be late." The thought of the fine began to obscure all other thoughts and his pace quickened almost to a run.

There was a bite in the air as he went through it. The trees, which bordered the streets as he got further west, were hung with amber and golden leaves. The world looked lovely, and it seemed, as it so often unreasonably does, as if it should be a lovely and a happy world. Robert Fulton went along resolutely, more stoically perhaps than resignedly. He thought transitorily of the day before him, and the sensation came over him—as it often did—of hanging by his teeth and nails to life; and then his thoughts went back to Miss McGee's poor little invitation. "Mr. Fulton," she had put on the top of the paper; and a little lower down, "Will you come to tea to-night—7:30, if you can. I have a chickun." And then at the foot of the paper she had signed "Miss McGee." "Yes, I'll take the manuscript along," he said, reverting to the pleasantest thing in sight as he walked through the golden morning. "I'll take it—and read it to her." And, a moment afterwards, he added, "It'll be something to do."

He reached the store, passed through its fine marble portal, made his way to the cement back premises, and there changed into his professional linen suit and cap. You would hardly have recognized him when he was dressed for the day. He looked like a salesman; just like any other salesman—except for his eyes. But who casts eyes on the eyes of the man selling butter and cheese? No one. Robert Fulton took his place behind the sanitary glass-covered counter with the white tiled wall behind him and the cement floor beneath his feet. He prepared for his doom. "A beautiful morning!" "Yes, Madam." "I hope we shan't have rain, eh!" "No, Madam. Did you say one pound? We have beautiful honey—just come in." "How much is it a section?" "Forty cents, Madam." "Oh! Well, just pick me a good section, will you . . ."

Robert Fulton's day had begun.