Sheila and Others/Mrs. Montrose
MRS. MONTROSE
SHE rose as I entered the room and remained standing until I asked her to be seated.
It certainly conduces to self-respect to be treated like a lady. I felt myself instinctively assuming a gentler manner as I crossed the room, at the same time marshaling to my aid such remnants of dignity as my long association with people of the "Good-as-you-or-better type" have left to me.
When I snapped on the light and saw her face I was almost startled. It was of a pure Madonna type, with soft, dark eyes, and lines of settled and perfect composure. A type suggestive of a long line of ancestors, and well-bred ones at that. It stirred the latent artist in one, winging one's thoughts back to the paradise of the Pitti, and to that majestic Roman Matron in the Naples Gallery with its air of magnificent completion and rounded repose. I wondered if she had ever posed, and a drifting thought of our portrait-friend Mr. Grier, made a snatch at my consciousness, followed by the chilling doubt as to whether she really was our new wash-lady or not, that Sally had implored me to try. She might even be a caller.
She was dressed in black, which is so noncommittal always, and her hat, though strictly unobstrusive, had really an air.
I approached negotiations with caution, using the weather as a preliminary medium. Her replies and manner were perfect. Her voice, low and essentially refined, had a rich modulation, unmistakably English, but without a stray h or misplaced accent, and her whole air conveyed just the right balance of responsiveness and reserve. I resolved on the plunge.
"You have come to see me about—a-about giving us some assistance?" I could not bring myself to say washing. It was too abrupt, and also too remote a contingency in the presence of this refined, well-bred lady.
But she met my overtures without hesitation, "I am experienced in laundry work."
My own eye faltered, if hers didn't. I pretended to read just a cushion and felt uncomfortably conscious after she had gone, that the light casualness with which I finished negotiations, had been overdone. Indeed, doubts assailed me in the remembered presence of this magnificent creature as to whether I could really lay claim to being a lady myself or not!
I made it a point to keep away from the laundry on the days she was there. It wasn't sentiment altogether, though I tried to put it down to that, but an unpleasant feeling of social dislocation. It produced distinctly disagreeable sensations to see those rounded arms bared to the elbow, and those shapely hands swollen and reddened with soap and water—my soap and water—and I don't like feeling inferior in my own house. Besides, what was the use of going? My nature argued with my avocation. It would only be an anomaly if not an actual intrusion, to tell a Madonna, even though merely a Madonna of tubs, how to conduct the renovation of your soiled linen. So I gave in, for I am a weak creature at best, ruled by the wants of life as much as by the oughts, and kept a safe distance from the laundry on wash-days. I issued instructions (unnecessary ones) to Janet that Mrs. Montrose was never to be allowed to leave without a good meal, and I left the money always in a respectfully sealed envelope on the kitchen shelf. I inquired punctiliously after the state of her family's health, too, on those rare occasions when I saw her, but refrained from giving her the advice which is usual in these connections, and which acts as a safety valve for the employer and is acceptable to the employed in proportion to the number of extra dimes accompanying it.
Then one day there came up a request from Mrs. Montrose that I would spare a few minutes for an interview. I was alarmed at first. There are always such incalculable elements in the situations below stairs. Our whole theory of domestic relations is built upon a wrong principle, and, explosions sooner or later, major or minor, are natural consequence. But it was not a dismissal of us as a "place" that Mrs. Montrose had come to give me, nor to ask for a "raise" nor yet to lodge complaint as to the kind of wringer we used, but to solicit my influence and interest on Mr. Montrose's behalf. I was requested to speak a word to the clergyman of a suburban church, whom I knew slightly, in favor of his appointment as organist, during the illness of the regular incumbent. I must say that it gave me something of a turn—in fact it really took my breath away. Mr. Montrose an organist! But the quiet composure, the even respect without servility, with which the request was proffered, helped to steady me and to accept the situation, as though it were a normal one. Incidentally I learned that Mr. Montrose was an architect by profession, but had been obliged to leave a lucrative "post" In England on account of his health. He required a drier climate. It was expected that the bracing air of Canada would do a great deal for him. He was engaged just now in clerical work in an accountant's office downtown.
These items of information led naturally to others. I could scarcely take my eyes from Mrs. Montrose's face while she related them. She had regular features, a fine luminous complexion and superb eyes. Some might have thought the expression wanting in animation, but to me there appeared far greater beauty in the repose her every motion revealed, not the negative repose of inhibition or defeat, but that of a nature at once large and restrained.
The facts she communicated were brief, but not told as if there were any wish to conceal. Reginald, the boy, was clerking downtown, and going to "the Tech" (still down on College Street in those days). The delicate color on the oval cheek deepened as she told me he had taken a scholarship in mathematics "at home" just before they sailed.
Louise, the fifteen-year-old girl, was in service, but only during the day. Her father or brother went for her every evening. The two younger ones were still going to school.
These were the bald facts; no embellishment, no explanation, no appeal. She was incapable, you realized at once, of the shiftiness, the heightened coloring, the subterfuge, that smaller natures resort to in such situations. Here was one who knew only how to bear, not to rebel. Her majestic calm silenced your own whimperings over the injustices of fate. You felt the invincible dignity of suffering silently borne.
Gradually a sort of unspoken understanding established itself between us. I took her situation for granted as if it were quite the natural thing, and it seemed to me she slowly began to lean back somewhat upon my friendliness. I may have fancied this, for there was not the slightest commitment of herself even to me. The troubled waters that shallower and less stable natures know, could never reach her. She had set sail upon that sea of calms into whose unplumbed depths the wreckage of past storms had long sunk from sight. She accepted such offerings as I ventured to make from time to time, with no undue expression of gratitude, but with becoming acknowledgment. A couple of supernumerary chairs a bed-couch that had retired from public view to the cellar (what a loss to the romance of modern literature the attic is!) and some odds and ends from the culinary department were, I remember, among the articles that changed hands in this way, more a relief to myself I suspect, than an acquisition to her.
The affair of the couch brought me the unexpected pleasure of coming face to face with Mr. Montrose. I looked him over with considerable interest. He was short and stocky after the manner of a certain type of Englishman and there proceeded from him the rankest smell of tobacco it was ever my lot to inhale. He wore a shabby great-coat and a stolid expression which from time to time relaxed into something that was to him evidently the equivalent of facetiousness. In fact it was borne in upon me before the episode of the couch (which he unwisely undertook to get out through the cellar window) was closed, that humor was Mr. Montrose's adopted rôle in life. He had the typical Englishman's belief in himself as the unassailable, authorized standard, made all the more invincible by his determination to take you light-heartedly in a jocular manner however obstructive your eccentricities might be.
He was a well-authenticated specimen of the upper class old-country ne'er-do-well, which before the War we had reason to feel England was producing and Canada importing on too large a scale.
We were used to them in every shade of (Aryan) complexion from ashy gray to molten red, and in every degree of shabbiness. One knew them from afar by their caps, for the Englishman though he produces both the name and the article, never wears a Derby. He leaps direct from cap to stove-pipe, if he leaps at all. This, of course, with other of his vagaries, may be of climatic origin. It never does to judge a people without living at least six months under their native skies. One may do them unwitting injustice.
By way of illustration, let me turn aside to tell you of an incident that occurred not long ago during one of our many winters which enjoy the reputation of being "the coldest on record." A native passing along St. George Street, just above Bloor, saw a gentleman in a voluminous fur-lined coat, emerge from a comfortable-looking abode and hasten down the walk. At the junction of the street he slipped, performing an involuntary acrobatic feat, which barely saved him from taking a header into the mountain of snow beyond. His feelings, when equilibrium was regained, found vent in the murmured ejaculation overheard by my friend, "This blawsted country!"
Now I consider that injustice was done our climate by this remark, and I repeat it only by way of warning. I, myself, have resided in England quite long enough to know that the Englishman may be justified of his cap.
But I have wandered from my point. I was going on to say that many of these gentry who used to come out to Canada for their health, were well versed in the art of mendicancy. For years I lived—or writhed—under the spell of one strong, able-bodied gentleman, who classified himself as "a school-master at 'ome," and who had a well-paying job in sight if only he could borrow a trifling sum in advance by way of palliating a heartless landlady, and with which to procure some fresh linen. It would make you weep (if you were of a tender heart) to see a strong man withstayed for want of such elementary needs as these. I helped him to his mythical job several times, not out of faith, but out of weakness. I also helped him (substantially) to get off to Montreal where he held out the alluring bait of transport overseas, the ticket for this most desirable climax having been provided by some anxious friend at 'ome.
Of course he turned up again and more belligerently than ever, the front hall requiring even longer airing after his periodic visits. He had a way of handing Janet a letter for me marked "personal" well written in a good business hand, in which he stated his requirements, and closed by saying he would call again in the course of an hour. This was neat. One so much preferred putting something in an envelope, to undergoing an interview. He certainly had brought the art of begging down to a fine point. It didn't ruffle him in the least to know that his absence had a marketable value. On the contrary, he marketed it.
Of course Mr. Montrose was not to be classed in with gentry of this stamp. By no means. Yet something in each did remind one of the other beside the odor of stale tobacco—a certain plausibility, a sauvity of manner, a valorous determination to ride the waves of misfortune (with which you somehow always felt yourself to be guiltily implicated) in true British fashion, undeterred by other people's opinions.
This, then, was the Madonna's portion dealt out by blind Fortune! Injustice befitting our station, that leaves us unbesmirched, we can endure, but to be tied down to inferior quality—to groveling cares and blind creators of them, that is to carry dead weight through all one's life.
Little by little the sordid tale unrolled itself. I saw that Mrs. Montrose's genius, denied opportunity to be Wife by the littleness of her husband's nature, had flowed into Motherhood. At this point of contact, at least, the world had not come to an end yet, but still held possibilities. Possibilities, did I say? When your boy of promise sells his youth at a counter, and your fifteen-year-old daughter stands at a sink washing other people's dishes? The silence of Mrs. Montrose was explained. There are situations no words are sufficient for, situations which they betray by their very inadequacies.
Twice only did I ever see traces of emotion in Mrs. Montrose's face. Once was when she told me that an English friend coming back from the "Coast" had written in advance to say that he hoped to call upon them in Toronto. There was something in the dark eyes that just for an instant made me think of some frightened, fluttering thing in the woods, some swift, wild thing at bay. But the habitual poise replaced it again and she said nothing more.
Mrs. Montrose at this period no longer officiated as our laundress. She had been replaced by an angular person of Scotch persuasion who washed inordinately well in half the time, but who intimidated us all with her beetling brows, and fierce concentrated gaze that seemed to say "you are a party to life's manifest intention to deal unjustly by me!" The very gaze incriminated you, driving you on to a conciliatory smile that had its guilty origin in hypocrisy.
But Mrs. Montrose still ministered to us in "extras" such as polishing the walnut which began to resume something of the marble-like finish it wore during earlier and more palmy, days. It was a task better suited to those fine, delicately-shaped fingers.
I never asked her about the visit of the English friend. I have many and sad reasons for knowing myself a fool, but I am not that particular kind of fool. It was a subject we both preferred to avoid.
The other occasion when I saw beneath the impassive surface in which this woman had taken refuge, was on the day she came to tell me a very surprising bit of news—that they had taken passage back to England, no less! She told me in the habitually quiet way, just as she would have told me the brass-polish was done. An Aunt of Mr. Montrose, it appeared, had recently died, and he was needed home on, business. I hoped it meant a legacy. All the Aunts in English stories exist, or rather non-exist, for this sole purpose. But nothing was vouchsafed me on the point. They were sailing in ten days.
Now it so happened that negotiations on my part were pending in respect to a summer position for Reginald, who had proved to be one of those open-faced, smiling lads whom everybody loves at a glance. The position, if gained, would immensely improve his prospects, and recalling this, I remarked without sufficient reflection, "It seems almost a pity Reginald could not stay in the new country. There is so much greater opportunity for youth here." A sudden flash of steel from the dark eyes, and a tightening of the sensitive mouth recalled me to myself and at the same time almost startled me by the intensity of feeling they revealed. "Leave my boy?" she said with one level, boring look at me.
I quailed, I groveled, I knew myself for the born idiot that I was and that the feeble, "Yes, of course, I wasn't thinking," with which I endeavored to palliate my fatuousness, failed to cover my inadequacy of soul.
I tried to make it up to her, or rather to myself—in the parting speed I gave her, well knowing the while, that substance without, never does nor ever can atone for poverty within, and he who fails to comprehend the majesty of motherhood belittles himself only.
This was six years ago and the natural end of the story, but a surprising sequel happened later. I was asked to assist at a war-work council of academic cast, where it was hoped to enlist the interest of women-students. After laying off my heavier wraps I crossed a hall to enter the room, whence proceeded the sound of many voices, and in the act came face to face with Mrs. Montrose. We both stopped involuntarily. I was never more taken aback in my life.
"Didn't you go?" I asked with something very like a gasp.
"Yes, but we came back again," she replied in a low tone, her old composure beginning to replace the startled look. She seemed many years older. The eyes had crow's feet around them, I had never seen before, and there was a furrow in the soft cheek. But her poise was the same; in the deep look there was the old inscrutable fire, and in her bearing was the same invincible calm. I took up a loose fold of her black sleeve with an inquiring gesture. I could not ask in words.
"My husband," she said in a faltering whisper, turning her eyes away. "He—he left us soon after we reached home."
"But why"—I began, and then remembered. I had no need to ask why she had not come to me to beg, or to accept charity. So I substituted—"Where are you staying?" She mentioned an east-end street, but before I could get any further particulars, a large and befurred lady (Russian sables, bought before the War, let us hope) loomed down upon us, and in a trice Mrs. Montrose had disappeared. After tea had been dispensed and the business of the afternoon well launched, I slipped out into the hall, and even explored the serving-room beyond, but no familiar black-robed figure was to be seen. I inquired of the maids. "Oh, yes, there was a person helping here at first, but she's gone. She had to leave early."
I haven't seen her since. I don't expect to see her again. After I got home I reckoned up the children's ages. Reginald was eighteen that fall—just drafting age.