Читать книгу The Magnetic Girl - Richard Marsh - Страница 7

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As I marched along—remembering mamma’s instructions to be as quick as I “decently” could, without, however, laying too much stress upon the “decently”—I became aware of something unusual—people were staring, especially male people.

Now I have been stared at in the street, but I do not remember that it was ever in what you could exactly call a flattering way.

There can be no doubt that my person is a striking one, after a fashion; but it is not precisely in the fashion. I am an extra large size all over. My legs are prodigious. I stride along in a style which some persons have said reminds them of the gentleman with the seven-league boots. Mr Morgan was once rude enough to tell me that it always seemed to him that it was the chief ambition of my life to cross Regent Street in a step and a half. When I am walking with the others I suffer agonies, and I am thankful to think that they are not altogether comfortable. They take about three steps to the yard—the kind of shoes they wear won’t permit of anything else. And at such a pace! I cannot keep up with them; and it is some satisfaction to know they cannot keep up with me. We jangle and wrangle all the time, until at last I go off by myself; and then we are happy. At least, I know I am.

This peculiarity of mine—because, I suppose, it is a peculiarity—has more than once been commented on by perfect strangers. I once heard one street boy remark to another, just as I was passing:

“What yer, Bill! ’ere comes the lady grenadier! Can’t she move ’em!—and ain’t she got ’em to move!”

Another time a dreadful creature asked of a companion:

“I wonder if that young lady’s got stilts underneath her clothes? They can’t be all her own.”

That was the sort of staring I had been used to. But this was different. Men of all sorts, of all ages, turned and looked at me. When their eyes reached my face, there was something in them which I did not altogether like. It gave me a curious sensation. I have seen men stare at the others with something like that look in their eyes. I wondered if they liked it. I was not by any means sure I did. Anyhow, I was not accustomed to that kind of thing. I wondered what they meant by it.

It was not any better when I reached the draper’s. The shop-walker opened the door for me—with such a smile. He was one of those pretty fellows, with moustache turned up at the ends, who really are most trying. His smile seemed to be a fixture. It kept growing larger and larger, and, I presume, sweeter. I hate your pretty fellows. I should like my man to be almost ugly; indeed, I should not mind if he was quite. I spoke to him in the most snubby fashion I could command, perceiving that this was another case in which snubbing might be required. There seemed to be something in the air that afternoon which made men behave in a most unusual manner.

“I want to see some lady’s hose!”

“For yourself?”

There was something in the way he put the question for which I really could have hit him. What did it matter to him who they were for? He led me to a counter behind which there was the usual girl, and on which there was a box full of silk things—such colours! He began to spread them out in front of me, with a smile for which I would have liked to stick a pin into him.

“Now, here is something particularly smart. I am sure it would suit you—pure silk; guaranteed—were fifteen-and-six, are eight-and-eleven. Amazing value. But you shall have them for—” he hesitated—“for one-and-ninepence-halfpenny. Indeed, it would afford me the greatest pleasure to give them to you.”

When he said that, the girl behind the counter stared; and I stared, too. Was he mad? Was he seriously proposing to present me—free, gratis, for nothing—with his master’s silk stockings? The man must have been drinking. I froze him.

“Thank you. The articles are not required by myself. And, if you don’t mind, I would rather that this young lady served me.” I turned to the young lady in question, who was wearing a peculiar look. “I want a pair of brown silk stockings, that shade”; and I handed her Lilian’s matching.

While the girl was endeavouring to find what I wanted, that shop-walker continued to pester me. And not only so, but the shop-walker from the opposite counter came and joined his attentions to the other’s, pressing on me the most ridiculous things. When I severely snubbed them both, they began to smile at one another. We were the centre of observation, alike to customers and assistants.

I was delighted to get out of the shop with Lilian’s stockings at last. I made no attempt to get Audrey’s ribbon. And I would have gone straight off home without Doris’s fringe-nets, had I dared; but I did not dare. Morrel’s was close at hand; practically on the way, and if I had returned without them, there would not only have been a tremendous disturbance, but they would probably have sent me back again.

The worst of it was that I disliked Morrel’s. I loathe hairdressers. They always seem to regard women as so many dummies, or, at least, lay-figures, of whom they can make anything they please. I am convinced that they despise us. What else can you expect? Thousands and thousands of us owe all our charms to them. They give countless women their complexions, their eyebrows—indeed, to all intents and purposes, their entire faces. Hundreds of thousands owe all their hair to them. Their little flirty curls, on pins, for all sorts of occasions—Lilian has rows of them, stuck on sheets of cork, like butterflies—their fringes, coils, switches, transformations, their entire wigs, not to speak of the foundations on which they build. Then think of the dyes, restorers, so-called washes, curling fluids, and all that kind of thing. Oh, dear! The girls spend heaps of money at Morrel’s. I believe that mamma would just as soon die as do without such places.

Why I particularly objected to Morrel’s was because there they were always at me to do as the others did; and I know that, in their politely insolent way, they jeered at me because I refused. Mr Morrel himself was a horror—a little, stoutish man, with his scanty, light-brown hair curled in rows. He reeked of perfume. I would far sooner have sat in a third-class smoking-carriage, full of horny-handed sons of toil, all “blowing” shag—I believe that that’s the proper word—than have occupied a chair next to him. And he, in his heart, I knew, despised me; first, for belonging to such a barber’s block family, and then for refusing to allow him to practise any of his arts to supply the charms which I was quite aware that I so plentifully lacked.

When I entered the shop, I found that he was alone in it. I was disgusted. He stood simpering behind his glass cases, twiddling a frightfully blonde curl, to which he was giving some finishing touches on its pin. As a rule, there was a young woman in the shop—with such a head of hair. It was never done twice in the same style; daily visits in search of packets of hairpins would have been as good as a course of hairdressing lessons—not to speak of his wife, who always seemed somewhere about. His special business was to look after the hairdressing rooms.

As he saw it was I, I believe he was going to ring for his assistant. It was beneath his dignity to personally attend on me. But, as he continued to look at me, on a sudden, he changed his mind. I was persuaded that, as it were, a wave of emotion crept over him; all at once he altered so completely. His simper assumed the dimensions of a beam. Putting his fingers to his oily hair, he regarded me in a manner which, whatever he might think to the contrary, far from became him.

“And what may I do for you, Miss O’Brady?”

“I want half-a-dozen fringe-nets for my sister Doris. She says that you know the shade.”

“And what do you want for yourself, Miss Norah?”

“Nothing, thank you. Will you please give them me as quickly as you can. I’m in a hurry.”

He put his head on one side like an owl. It was idiotic.

“Ah, Miss Norah, I am afraid that you despise my art. You are yourself so beautiful that you do not stand in need of it.”

“Are you aware what you are saying? Kindly give me those fringe-nets.”

“Yet I also am an artist. As many perfect pictures are the work of my fingers as you will find upon the walls of an Academy.”

“I never said they weren’t.”

“But, Miss Norah, you have towards me an air of aloofness. Yet I am more essential to a woman than her milliner—than her costumier. What is the most perfect toilette with an indifferent coiffure. Even beauty cannot safely scorn me. If you will do me the inestimable honour of entrusting your lovely head to me for a few brief minutes I do not think you will regret it when you perceive the result. It is true that nature has given you hair which is perfect in texture, exquisite in colour——”

“Mr Morrel, do you know what you are saying?”

Mamma had told me over and over again that Morrel had assured her that nothing could be done with my hair if I refused to have it “tinted”—which I always had refused, and always should refuse to permit. He had as good as hinted that, from his point of view, its colour was an atrocity, an outrage! Now he had the assurance to tell me, to my face, that he thought it exquisite. And he was not to be put down either.

“I, of all men in England, should know what I am saying on a subject on which I, among all my compeers, am best qualified to speak. As an artist there is no one living who is worthy to hold a comb with me. It were false modesty to pretend the contrary. As a lad I was a lightning shaver; I could remove a stubborn beard with an ease which was a rapture to its wearer. I was scarcely out of my apprenticeship when, on two occasions, I won first prizes in the National Competition in Artistic Hairdressing. I should have undoubtedly won a third, if for originality alone—the originality of my ideas has always been admitted—had not a cabal—all leaders of art become, sooner or later, the victims of a cabal—had not a cabal, I say, actuated by motives on which I will not enlarge, bestowed my prize upon a mere pretender. The desert they could not alienate. It was notorious.”

“This is very interesting, Mr Morrel; but would you mind giving me my sister’s fringe-nets?”

“One moment, Miss Norah, if you please. You continue to regard me with a scorn which blights. An artist’s is a sensitive soul. I implore you not to flash the arrows of your disdain in the tender target of my heart!”

“I shall tell mamma, Mr Morrel, if you talk to me like that. Will you give me my sister’s fringe-nets?”

“I will; certainly I will. After all, I am a man of business. Let me not forget it, even at such a moment as this. But, at the same time, let me prove to you that I am not only commercial. Let me entreat your personal acceptance of some trifle in evidence. For instance, this handglass, in its way a gem. Held at the proper angle it will give you a view of your back hair, the clarity of which will surprise you.”

“Thank you, Mr Morrel; but I don’t want a handglass.”

“Then this manicure set, mounted in gold. Its constant use might embellish even your hands—if it be possible to paint the lily.”

It made me so cross to hear him, when, all the while, he probably knew that it is only with anguish that I can cram my hands into six-and-threequarters.

“I want nothing except my sister’s fringe-nets. Will you, or will you not, give them to me?”

“Your coldness scorches me, if I may use a seeming paradox. In the most literal sense I will give them to you. Permit me to present you with six fringe-nets, for the use of Miss Doris O’Brady.”

“My sister tells me that you charge her a shilling each for them. Here is half-a-sovereign. Please give me the change.”

“I will not give you the change, nor will I take your half-sovereign. Do you wish to grind me beneath your heel—to insult me?”

“Insult you!”

“The fringe-nets are a present to you for your sister, since you will accept nothing for yourself—unless, at the eleventh hour, you will permit me to add the manicure set and the handglass.”

“I think, Mr Morrel, that you must be suffering from something this afternoon. Do you suppose, for one single instant, that either my sister or I wishes you to give us our fringe-nets? I insist upon paying for them.”

“You cannot. It is impossible. I decline to allow you to pay for them.”

“What’s that you decline to allow?”

Mrs Morrel’s appearance in the shop I hailed with a sensation of real relief.

“Mrs Morrel, I want six fringe-nets, and, for some reason or other, Mr Morrel won’t let me pay for one. They’re six shillings, and I want him to take for them out of this half-sovereign, and he won’t.”

“Give me the half-sovereign. I’ll soon make that right.”

Her husband interposed, or tried to:

“My dear, I must ask you not to intrude between this young lady and myself.”

She cut him relentlessly short.

“Here is your change, Miss O’Brady; and here are the fringe-nets.”

“Thank you. Good-afternoon.”

He tried again.

“My dear, I am master in my own shop, and you must permit me to state——”

I did not wait to hear what it was that he wished to state. I had heard more than enough of his statements already. Insincere, smooth-tongued, artificial creature! I had had no idea that he was so horrid, though I had known that he was horrid enough. I left the shop with the fringe-nets in one hand and the change in the other; and I make no doubt that directly my back was turned an animated discussion commenced as to who was and who was not master there, and how far that mastery went. Had I been Mrs Morrel I would have made it clear to her objectionable husband, when it came to presenting the stock to casual female customers, that his mastery ceased before it reached that point.