Miss Grief and Other Stories (32 page)

“To-day? How can you possibly have it to-day? It's afternoon already,” said Mrs. Moore, surveying the big woman (as she always did) with fascinated eyes.

“I've one on hand, mum,” replied cook, with serene pride. “And an hexcellent one 'tis. 'Twere made a little over a year ago, and the materials being hof the best, 'tis better now than 'tever was; they himprove with keeping, mum. It's large, but what's left you can take with you in a tin box. With care 'twill be as good as hever another year, if you don't require to heat it all now, mum.”

Mrs. Moore gave a gasping glance at Miss Remington. Then she laughed, putting the veil which she held in her hand to her lips, to hide in part her merriment.

“I'll let you know later, cook,” she said. “I'll send word by nurse.”

And Mrs. Pollikett, unconscious of ridicule, calmly withdrew. Amy Moore put her head down upon the pile of sofa cushions beside her, and ground it into them as if in desperation.

“Plum-pudding a year old, and warranted to keep another year! Hard as a stone, of course, and black as lead. Think of ours at home! Think how light it will be, almost like a
soufflé!
And its delicate color and fragrance!” She took up her jacket, lifted her bonnet, and pinned the little lace veil to it with the long bonnet-pin; then, still laughing, she rose. On her way to the door her eyes caught sight of a figure which was passing the window outside. “There is Philip going out again. How he does slouch!”

“Slouch?” said Miss Remington, inquiringly. She also had seen the figure from her chair by the fire.

“I don't mean slouch exactly; I mean that he is so bent. Curiously enough, it isn't his back either. But up at the top of his shoulders behind, between there and the head, there's a stoop, or rather a lunge forward. But there's no hollow; it's a roll of flesh. The truth is that Philip is growing too stout.”

“That bend you speak of is the scholar's stoop,” observed Miss Remington.

“I suppose you mean writer's. He could stand when he writes, couldn't he? But probably it's too late now. How do
you
manage to be always so tremendously straight, Gertrude?”

“Don't you know that spinsters—those at least who have conquered the dejection of their lot—are always straight-backed?” said Miss Remington. “Their one little pride is a stiff spine and light step. Because, you know, the step of their married contemporaries is sometimes rather heavy.”

“You think you can say that because I happen to weigh only ninety-eight pounds,” answered Amy Moore. “But let me tell you one thing—
you
overdo your straightness; your shoulders in those tailor-made dresses you are so fond of look as though they were moulded of iron plate. You'd be a great deal more attractive and comfortable to look at, Gertrude, if you had a few cozy little habits, nice homelike little ways. You never lounge; you never lean back against anything—that is, with any thorough enjoyment. Who ever saw
you
stretched out lazily in a rocking chair by the fire, with a box of chocolate creams and a novel?”

Miss Remington laughed. “But if I don't care for chocolates?”

“That's just what I am saying: if you cared for them, you'd be much more cozy. A tall thin woman in a tailor-made gown, with her hair dragged tightly back from her face, and all sorts of deep books—why, naturally, all men are afraid of her.”

“Are you kind enough to be still thinking of matrimonial hopes for me?” inquired Miss Remington.

“Oh no! For what would become of Philip then?” said Philip's wife. “You are his chief incense-burner; you're awfully valuable to me just for that.” She was opening the door as she said this; she went out, closing it after her.

Left alone in the large room, Miss Remington took a newspaper from the table by her side, and vaguely glanced at its page. Her eyes rested by chance upon a series of short lines, each line beginning with a capital letter, like a poem. It was headed “Commercial Matters,” and the first four lines were as follows:

“Wool is weaker.

Leather is slow.

Hides are easy.

Rice is low.”

Presently the door opened, and Philip Moore entered.

“Oh, you've come back,” she said, letting the paper drop to her lap.

“Only went to the corner to put a letter in the box.”

“Very wet still, isn't it?”

“Very.”

Moore sat down before the fire, extended his legs, and watched the combat between the heat and the dampness of his trousers.

After a while Miss Remington remarked, “We've been to the National Gallery since lunch.”

He made no answer.

“We had intended to go to Highgate also,” she went on; “but it was too wet for so long a drive.”

“To Highgate?”

“Yes. To George Eliot's grave.”

Moore's gloom was lightened for the moment by a short laugh.

“You think that's absurd,” said his companion.

“Well—yes. Thoughts suitable for the occasion were to have been the attraction, I suppose. But if you can conjure them up in one place, why can't you in another, and save your cab fare? It was your idea, I know—the going to Highgate. Amy is not devoted to such excursions.”

“I suppose it was my idea,” answered Gertrude. “I thought you liked George Eliot,” she went on, after a moment.

“Do you mean her ghost? How can I like a person I have never seen?”

“I mean her books.”

“The first two, perhaps,” answered Moore, frowning impatiently. “I suppose I may have said so once—ages before the flood, and you never forget anything, you are merciless about that. But women's books—what are they? Women can't write. And they ought not to try.”

“What
can
you mean?”

“What I say,” answered Philip Moore. “Children's stories—yes; they can write for children, and for young girls, extremely well. And they can write little sketches and episodes if they will confine themselves rigidly to the things they thoroughly know, such as love-stories, and so forth. But the great questions of life, the important matters, they cannot render in the least. How should they? And when in their ignorance they begin, in addition, to preach—good heavens, what a spectacle!” Happening to look up and see the expression of his companion's face, he added, laughing: “
You
need not be troubled, you have never tried. And I'm thankful you haven't. It would be insupportable to me to have any of my personal friends among that band.”

“No, I have never tried,” Gertrude answered. She hesitated a moment, then added, “My ambition is all for other people.”

“You mean my things, of course. I should like you much better if you had never read a word of them,” responded Moore, his impatience returning. “After they're once done I
care nothing about them, they are no longer a part of me; they are detached—gone. By the time they're printed—and that is when
you
get hold of them—I'm taken up with something else, and miles away. Yet you always try to drag me back.”

Miss Remington bit her lip, a slight flush rose in her cheeks. But it faded as quickly as it had come, and her companion did not see it; he was staring at the fire.

He was a man of forty-five, with heavy features and thick dark hair. His eyes and head were fine. His forehead wore almost habitually a slight frown. He was somewhat under medium height, and his wife's description of his figure and bearing was true enough.

But Gertrude Remington saw him as he once was—the years when he had been full of life and hope and vigor. She also saw another vision of him as he might be now, perhaps, as he would be (so she told herself) under different influences. It was this possible vision which constantly haunted her, troubled her, tossed her about, and beckoned her hither and thither. She was three years younger than Philip, and she had known him from childhood, as her father's house was next to the house of the elder Philip Moore, in the embowered street of the Massachusetts town which was the home of both. When Philip married, he brought his little wife, the golden-haired, blue-eyed Amy, home to this old house, now his own, owing to the death of his father, and the intimacy of the two families had continued. It was almost a matter of course, therefore, that Miss Remington should be one of the party when the Moores came abroad for six months, their second visit to the Old World. Amy was twelve years younger than her husband, and nine years younger than Gertrude Remington.

To Moore's accusation, “You always try to drag me back,” Gertrude had replied in a light tone: “That is because one doesn't stop to think. ‘Never talk to an author about his books.' I saw that given somewhere as a wise maxim only the other day.”

“I saw it too, and in the very review in which you saw it,” replied Moore, in a sarcastic tone. “But you have not given the whole quotation; there was more of it. ‘Never talk to an author about his books unless you really believe (or can make him feel you believe) that they are the greatest of the great; he will accept
that!
' In your case there is no hypocrisy, I exonerate you on that score; you really do think my things the greatest of the great. And that's the very trouble with you, Gertrude; you have no sense of proportion, no discrimination. If I had believed you, I should have been a fool; I should have been sure that my books were the finest of the century, instead of their being what they are—and I know it, too—half failures, all of them.” He got up, went to the window, and looked out. Then he left the room.

Miss Remington lifted the newspaper from her lap, and again perused unconsciously the same column. This time her eyes rested on the second four lines:

“Beans are steady.

Sugars are down.

Truck is in good demand.

Sweet-potatoes are firm.”

This last item brought Florida to her mind, and she thought for a moment of the gray-white soil which produces the sweet
potatoes; of the breezy sweep of the pine-barrens, with their carpet of wild flowers; of the blue Florida sky. Then she put down the sheet (it was an American paper), rose, and going to the window in her turn, looked out. It was the 13th of December. The autumn had been warm, and even now it was not cold, though the air was damp and chilling; fine gray rain had been falling steadily ever since the sluggish daylight—slow and unwilling—had dawned over vast London. The large house was in the London quarter called S.W.; it stood at a corner of Sloane Street, and these American travellers were occupying, temporarily, its ground-floor; it was literally a ground-floor, for there was only one step at the outer door. Miss Remington surveyed Sloane Street. Its smooth wooden pavement was dark and slippery; the houses opposite had a brown-black hue—brown in the centre of each brick and black at its edges; a vine was attached to one of these dwellings, and its leaves, though dripping, had a dried appearance, which told of the long-lasting dusts of the summer. Omnibuses, with their outside seats empty, and their drivers enveloped in oil-skins, constantly succeeded each other; the glass of their windows was obscured by damp, and their sides bore advice (important in the blackest of towns) about soap; each carried on its top something that looked like a broomstick, from which floated mournfully a wet rag. Among the pedestrians, the women all had feet that appeared to be entirely unelastic, like blocks of wood; they came clumping and pounding along, clutching at their skirts behind with one hand, and holding an open umbrella with the other; the clutch was always ineffectual, the skirts were always draggled. These women all wore small
black bonnets; and the bonnets attached to the heads of the poorer class had a singularly battered appearance, as though they had been kicked across the floor—or even the street—more than once. Hansom cabs passed and repassed. The horse belonging to those which were empty walked slowly, his head hanging downward; the horse of those that carried a fare moved onward with a gait which had the air of being rapid, because he continually turned his high-held nose to the right or the left, according to the guidance of his driver, making a pretence at the same time of turning his body also; this last, however, he never really did unless compelled, for it would have been one step more. Huge covered carts, black and dripping, devoted (so said the white lettering on their sides) to the moving of furniture, rolled slowly by, taking with cynical despotism all the space they required, like Juggernauts. A red-faced milk-woman appeared, wearing a dirty white apron over her drabbled short skirt, with indescribable boots, and the inevitable small battered black bonnet. The gazer, finding the milk-woman more depressing even than the hansom cab-horses, turned and went to a fourth window, which overlooked the narrow street at the side of the house. Here the battered stone pavement held shallow pools of yellow water in each of its numerous depressions. On the opposite corner a baker's shop displayed in its windows portly loaves, made in the shape of the Queen's crown—loaves of a clay-colored hue, and an appearance which suggested endurance. There were also glass jars containing lady's-fingers of immemorial age, and, above these, a placard announcing “Mineral Waters.” Next came a green-grocer's stall, with piles of small, hard, dark
green apples. Miss Remington imagined a meal composed of one of the clay-colored loaves, the mineral waters, the lady's-fingers, and the hard apples. A hideous child now appeared, with a white face streaked with dirt, and white eyelashes; it wore a red feather in its torn wet gypsy hat, and it carried a skipping-rope, with which, drearily, it began to skip, after a while, in the rain. A younger child followed, equally hideous and dirty; it was sucking an orange as it trailed after its sister. Neither of the two looked hungry; but, oh! so unhealthy, so depraved. Miss Remington gave it up; she returned to her place by the fire.

Ten minutes later the door opened, and Mrs. Moore came in, freshly dressed. She drew an easy-chair forward and seated herself, putting out two dainty little shoes towards the blaze.