The Equations of Love (2 page)

“Well well well,” said Myrtle, “this won’t buy the child a frock.” And she got up and dressed and pulled the bedclothes over the bed, and did her face, and put on her hat, and went downstairs, and took the street car to Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne’s. She “gave” Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne three part days a week, and Mrs. Lemoyne, who was not very strong, cossetted Myrtle and apologized to her in a way that annoyed Mr. H. X. Lemoyne whose money Myrtle received.

When Myrtle got on the street car in a fairly good humour, she sat down behind a woman of about her own age, say forty-five, and this woman wore a nice suit and hat made of soft brown tweed. The woman sat there in a composed way and it would appear from her suede gloves and her alligator shoes and the well-made suit and becoming hat that she had a comfortable amount of money and was fairly successful in her undertakings and was happy and satisfied – for the moment – in her mind. This set up a faint irritation in Myrtle, and her angel heard Myrtle’s inner whisper that this woman should not be taking up working people’s places in street cars but should be driving herself. Myrtle and Mort became, for the purpose of argument, “working people,” as opposed to people wearing alligator shoes. The woman was actually a school teacher on leave of absence, and she had put her small house to rights, prepared dinner ahead of time, packed her nephews down to the beach with their lunches, put on her best clothes of which she was very proud, and was going to have lunch with her favourite sister-in-law to show her the new alligator shoes. Myrtle could not be expected to know this, and so she said within herself “A society woman! You can’t tell
me!
You can’t tell
me
anything
about society women! I know them. I’ll bet her husband’s no good. They make me smile, they certny do, society women.” Having endowed the woman in the brown suit with several unpleasant qualities, and having herself assumed the character of a woman universally put upon, Myrtle got off the street car virtuous but in a poor temper and walked to Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne’s and let herself in.

“Oh,
there
you are, Mrs. Johnson!” cried Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne, who was still in her dressing gown and anxious to please. “What a beautiful day!” She was terrified by Myrtle’s eyelids, and could be disciplined any minute that Myrtle chose.

Myrtle did not answer (Oh
Lord!
groaned Mrs. Lemoyne who felt silly at once), but walked to her cupboard, took off her things and put on a coverall which she kept there. She then went to Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne. “Anything special?” she asked, with her mood still upon her.

Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne had worked herself up considerably before Myrtle came, because last night an old school friend from Toronto had rung up, and she had enthusiastically arranged a small luncheon for the old school friend. Three other old school friends. “Just pot luck.” All this she now explained to Myrtle, becoming, as she did so, voluble and undignified. She explained that she had sent the children off to school with sandwiches and that her husband was not coming home to lunch. She kept on saying “Just pot luck!” Myrtle had not bargained for lunch parties, even pot luck. She patted the back of her hair and used her eyelids while avoiding looking at Mrs. Lemoyne who felt guilty and yet very angry with her own self for being so weak-minded.

“I’m not feeling so good this morning,” said Myrtle. “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay. Mr. Johnson brought me some tea this morning. When he saw how I looked
he begged me not to come. He said, ‘Gosh, you look awful,’ and I said, ‘Believe me, it’s nothing to the way I feel.’ He wanted to stay home with me but I made him go because he’s got a big contracting job up in West Vancouver, but he sure didn’t want me to come. If I’d a known there was a luncheon party on I’d a stayed home like he asked me. He said ‘Now you’ve no need to work like this.’ He doesn’t like me going out, and him getting good money. He thinks it reflects.”

Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne apologized for all of this and felt that she was not paying Myrtle enough for coming and then said she had the dessert ready and what else would Myrtle like her to do. (How cross Hughie would be if he heard me talking like this! But I can’t help it), and Myrtle, now that she had vented her ill-humour and also displayed Mort as a superior type of husband, and had tossed in an artful disparagement of other husbands including Mr. H. X. Lemoyne, now that she had done her bit of drama, became fairly co-operative and “did” the house while Mrs. Lemoyne prepared the lunch. Myrtle forgot that last time Mort had figured in her conversation with Mrs. Lemoyne, he was lazy and you just couldn’t ever depend on him, and she, Myrtle, was the sole provider for the two of them, and what her parents (who had brought her up in affluence) would ever have said, she did not know. Mrs. Lemoyne, who was a pleasant woman but temperamentally afraid of people, remembered this and was puzzled, but did not stop to argue as she ran about the kitchen.

M
ort had arrived earlier in the day at the home of Mr. and Mrs. H. Y. Dunkerley. Mr. Dunkerley was a man of affairs, chiefly lumber affairs, and had left the fall gardening in the hands of his wife who was a pretty little thing but not a gardener; he was expected home from Montreal this day, and Mrs. Dunkerley had busied herself in her inefficient way in getting a gardener (gardeners were scarce) and felt very much pleased that Horace would at least find on his return that she had got this good new gardener who seemed to know exactly what was wanted, and would take the whole matter out of her hands. She was a little apprehensive when for the second morning Mr. Johnson did not turn up, but when she saw him now approaching with his pleasantly rolling gait that inspired so much bonhomie and confidence, she felt happy and grateful. “Oh,
here
you are, Mr. Johnson!” she cried.

Mort was feeling contented and happy as he usually did at the beginning of a new job. He was efficient and experienced; he was a gardener; moreover, Myrtle had been in good humour; he was a good husband, the best of husbands, he had given her morning tea; Mrs. Dunkerley looked a nice little
thing and he knew how to manage her (you couldn’t tell him anything about women, no Sir!). So Mort strolled into the garden, where Mrs. Dunkerley had stood peering down the hill; he swept off his hat with natural grace, and turned flattering eyes upon Mrs. Dunkerley who thought I can see at once that he likes me – get them to like you and that’s half the battle! Was she not deluded!

“Sawry I’m late, Mrs. Dunkerley,” confessed Mort frankly. “Fact is, the wife was sick this morning. I done what I could for her (I’m as good as a woman round a sick bed) and I done up the house and left the house and made her promise she wouldn’t stir.” This was a lie and Mort’s angel gave an uneasy turn hardly noticed by Mort who could believe himself any minute that he wanted to.

Mrs. Dunkerley and Mort became fast friends of a kind, because each of them thought that the other had been impressed beyond the point of esteem. Each exploited his or her personal charm upon the other. After a good deal of walking round together and pointing and nodding and discussing, Mrs. Dunkerley left Mort who began to dig over the perennial bed and to change the line of the border as arranged. The day was hot with the sunshine of Indian summer. Occasionally Mrs. Dunkerley looked out of a window and saw Mort Johnson digging steadily, sometimes removing his hat and mopping his brow. “What a find!” she murmured, as she sped away to unpack the fur box and hang out the furs to take away the camphor smell.

Mrs. Dunkerley became very warm as she bent over the fur box and then flapped the furs about. She thought of Mr. Johnson again. I’ll take him a bottle of cold beer! she thought. Her admiration of herself rose as she tripped to the icebox. How thoughtful I am! How kind! And how favourably
I shall impress him as a good employer, she thought as she crossed the grass; and indeed she looked very kind and pretty as she crossed the grass with beer for the perspiring Mort who now rested on his long-handled spade.

He straightened himself up and shoved his hat back. He was not tall, but with the large masculine air that so became him he smiled down on her and said in a tone slightly, but not quite, familiar, “Say, Lady, aren’t you one little angel of mercy! Ever since I had that last go of malaria” (Oh dear, thought Mrs. Dunkerley, I do hope he’s not going to have malaria again and all my trouble wasted. I do want this garden to get done before the weather breaks! Such were her selfish thoughts.) “I haven’t been able to stand up so good to digging.”

“Take it easy, oh please take it easy, Mr. Johnson!” implored Mrs. Dunkerley unnecessarily, looking almost lovingly at him and still holding up the empty tray like a female Ganymede.

Mort tapped her on the wrist, which he should not have done, and said in the affectionate tone that he kept for women “None of this ‘Mr. Johnson,’ Mrs. Dunkerley! Mortimer, Mort, just plain Mort, that’s me!”

Mrs. Dunkerley smiled winningly and said “Very well, Mort!” when a change of expression on Mort’s face made her look behind her. A man, bald, red-faced, tubby, well-dressed, having an air of command and possession, stood at the top of the garden. Mrs. Dunkerley turned at once and “Darling!” she cried (with a slightly silly feeling, for she knew how much sillier her attitude must have looked than it really was), and fled across the grass to her husband who had arrived home by the earlier plane. She embraced him.

“Horace,” she whispered, “I’ve got us a marvellous gardener! The
nicest
man! Understands exactly what we want and doesn’t mind doing the work himself!”

“Well, why would he?” replied Mr. H. Y. Dunkerley who was known as a hard worker and a hard-headed business man who got good returns for his money. “I see you’re spoiling him at once, the way you always do.” But he gave her a pat, and as soon as they were in the house and out of Mort’s sight, he put both arms round her and kissed her affectionately and asked her how she was, and how about a Tom Collins before lunch. He was very fond of his wife, and forgave her most of her silly little fluttery ways. She loved him too, and nothing pleased her better than to see him at home again sitting on the verandah in a long chair, and to bring drinks for both of them, and to question, and interrupt, and tell him every single thing that she had not already told him in letters, and a good deal that she had. She also called him Darling at intervals, a conjugal term that Mort Johnson would have considered sissy and quite unsuited to Mr. Dunkerley’s type.

The only person who was not feeling pleased was Mort. While not dangerous to women, he had a way with him and was vain. He had just been experiencing the pleasant sensation of his male power working nicely and smoothly on a pretty little woman – the wife of a lumber magnate, at that – when the pretty little woman had dropped him flat and had disappeared into the house without even looking back. This nice woman had not even introduced him to her husband – a backward jerking finger had sufficed – and the husband had not seen fit to honour him at all, even with a nod. He was, of course, unreasonable, but there you are. He felt reduced in size. His sense of injury mounted, and as Mrs. Dunkerley continued on the front verandah to ply her husband with two drinks, and then with food, and hang upon his lips, and forgot to tell that dumb Chink to give him some lunch, Mort’s world changed. His angel, shuffling uneasily, was aware of this, and helplessly
saw the turnover of Mort from successful male, successful gardener, old and trusted employee, unique landscaper, the husband possessed of an ailing but doting wife, to a working man insulted and snubbed by a rich man who no doubt had made his money by graft, and the possessor of a wife who had to toil all day on account of people like Mrs. Dunkerley. He had been fawned upon, snubbed and forgotten by a rich woman for what digging she could get out of him. See what Myrt would say to this, and him slaving away in the heat! At this moment the Chinese cook came out and nonchalantly said “Lunch” and disappeared. Worse insult than any, to be ordered about by a Chink. Mort strode to a sheltered spot to eat his lunch. If this was the kind of place it was he wouldn’t stay.

W
hen Myrtle had finished her four hours, and had left the five ex-schoolgirls gabbling together, she departed from Mrs. H. X. Lemoyne’s house and took the street car home, getting off at the butcher’s for a pound and a half of minced round steak for supper and some left over. She got round steak instead of the pinkish grayish ready minced meat because this was Mort’s first day on his job which had already become a big contracting job and as she paid for the round steak she got fonder of Mort. She got some frozen peas and she would do french fried potatoes, and she got some ice cream and if she felt like it she would make some chocolate sauce. By this time she was very fond of Mort, and by the time she had climbed the two uncarpeted flights of stairs to the top of the house, she was the housewife, the loving wife unselfishly arranging a pleasant evening for Mortimer. She made herself a cup of tea and sat down in the rocker and kicked off her shoes. She looked around her as she drank her tea and thought she’d tidy up the room which was kitchen and sitting-room and wash room when she got around to it. She did not think of it as a room that could be made cosy and
pretty. She just thought that she would tidy up a bit when she got around to it. Steps were heard on the stairs.

These were not Mort’s steps, and Myrtle’s face hardened. She knew those heavy, soft, determined steps; they belonged to her maternal aunt Mrs. Emblem. Myrtle put on her shoes again. “Yoo-hoo, Myrtle!” called Aunty Emblem. “Yoo-hoo yourself,” muttered Myrtle and went to the door.

When Aunty Emblem came puffing luxuriously into the dingy room she was indeed the jewel in the dark ear of the Ethiope.

“Those stairs’ll be the death of me yet!” she said, smiling at Myrtle in ample fashion, with her plump white attractive hand spread upon her wide soft bosom. She sank into the rocker and it was a pleasure to look at Aunty Emblem as she sat, still panting a little, the rocker giving, forward and backward, to her large slow movement. What a beautiful golden women she was! What a beautiful gay soft-eyed girl she had been! That was your thought as you looked admiringly at Mrs. Emblem. She had decided to keep her hair a warm gold, and it suited her. Her rouge ran round the side and just below her eyes on her softly curving cheeks, like it tells you to do in the papers, and this suited her too and enhanced the soft pretty sparkle of her large, grey-blue eyes, still young although they seemed to know the world so well. Her little nose was indeterminate but pleasing, with a hint of the ridiculous in it. But her mouth was perhaps her most pleasant feature. No amount of lipstick could alter the fact that her mouth was well shaped and gay and made for happiness, with a catch and a dimple at one corner. When Mrs. Emblem laughed, as she often did, her eyes crinkled and vanished into dark lashes. The pleasant phenomenon of Mrs. Emblem’s soft laugh made you want her to laugh again. She must at one time have been a slip
of a girl, for her hands, ankles and feet were small and well shaped. She was a singularly single-minded person. From her pretty head and her features nearly buried in agreeable fat, and the long alluring vee of her black dress, to her neat black pumps she was good to look upon, a warming sight.