The Equations of Love (26 page)

When, two days later, the stubbled prairies spread around her far to the horizons, Lilly, sitting with folded hands, looked intently at the tiny buildings of lonely farms as the train sped on and left the farms behind, disclosing more. Afar off, remote from village or train, she saw small isolated dwellings. Was it there I lived? she thought with a slight sardonic smile, or there, with Walter Hughes? She took the train guide and memorized the names of stations through which the railroad passed. At least, she knew now where she had lived, and the unfamiliar and endless prairie was her nearest familiar friend.

W
hen Lilly arrived in Toronto she wasted no time in renting a small room and securing employment as a chambermaid in one of the lesser hotels. She did her work well and easily.

Eleanor wrote anxiously. “Are you all right, or shall I come? Tell me, dearest dearest M.” Lilly’s flat reassurance to Eleanor as to her aunt’s health and her mother’s easy circumstances. … “She’s doing pretty good now … it’s a bit of a change for me, but I’ll be coming back pretty soon,” satisfied her. The Matron was busy and wrote seldom. “We’re getting on,” she wrote, “but I never realized how much I rely on you. Mrs. Wilkes is filling in fairly well. The new Chinaman is an excellent cook but very bad-tempered. Poor Ruthie, he terrified her. You know Wong’s big kitchen knife? He twiddled it at her and said I killem you. I spoke sharply to him about it and he went black as thunder and said he was only fooling. I don’t want to lose him, he’s so clean and quick, but if that happens again, away he goes. Now don’t hurry, take a rest if you can, but how glad I shall be …”

Lilly’s mouth pulled down in a wry grimace. She contemplated the Matron’s letter. How clearly she saw it all. Matron, unknowing, had warned her away and she could not return. Lilly lay awake, night after night, looking into the darkness, seeking a way.

After her working hours she had nothing to do. Shows cost money, and she would not spend money, so she found in the shop windows her cheapest occupation. She wandered along Yonge Street and Bloor Street without any fear of recognition, and as she looked in the great shop windows a new world was disclosed to her in which all women were beautiful. All the models, standing sleek-haired and frozen in elegant attitude, seemed to be young. But as Lilly watched with interested eyes the women in the hotel, in the streets, in the cafés, she saw many older women also whose well-groomed heads seemed to be the key to an appearance which she admired. She’s been styled, I suppose, she thought, as she saw some white or grey neatly modelled head. As the days went on, a plan matured in her mind. Why wouldn’t I be styled so’s it would change me a bit? And it would please Eleanor; she wanted me to be styled. Lilly was desperately lonely. If she could see a time coming when she could go to her own home and people and not spend her life cleaning hotel bedrooms in a foreign city, walking the streets, and going back to a rooming house, then she could endure, for a time.

Late one afternoon Lilly walked into the most expensive looking Beauty Shop that she could find. She went up to the girl sitting at the desk and said “I want to be styled, and I’d like my hair dyed white. It’s kinda mousey now.”

The girl at the desk looked at her and said “You’d better see Miss Larue. I doubt whether she’ll dye your hair white, but if you’ll take a seat I’ll call her, and then she’ll tell you.”

Lilly was soon seated in a chair in a small and elegant booth whose appearance surprised her. She looked at herself in a large gilt-framed mirror and did not like what she saw. A small untidy woman in a crumpled white uniform entered the booth. “Good afternoon,” said the woman. “Good afternoon,” said Lilly, and thought Why don’t you style your own self? She did not know that this woman was a power, privileged, and an artist who modelled in human clay.

The woman surveyed Lilly’s dowdy figure in the mirror. She ran her fingers through Lilly’s sparse and faded hair, lifting it, dropping it. “Well?” she said, and surveyed her again.

“I want my hair dyed white, and styled,” said Lilly.

“I couldn’t dye your hair white. I could dye your hair platinum but I wouldn’t. It would look terrible. You wouldn’t suit it. It’d be a terror to the nations,” said Miss Larue, looking dispassionately up and down the figure in the glass. Lilly felt her every weakness magnified and revealed in the fine mirror as she, too, looked at herself.

“Well, what were you
really
wanting?” asked Miss Larue who had dyed innocents and thieves in her time, and had no illusions.

Guess I’d better tell her if I’m going to get anything out of this, thought Lilly. She said “I want to be styled. I come from out West. I live in the country and my daughter lives in the city. She’s married and she’s well fixed, and she’s got three fine boys and I figure their grandmother could do them a whole lot more credit. She’s been at me and at me to get styled so I thought while I was in Toronto I’d get something done about it. But I can see,” continued Lilly humbly, “that it wouldn’t be any good me having my hair fixed and everything else looking wrong.”

“You’re dead right it wouldn’t,” said Miss Larue. She leaned her elbow on a cupboard and nonchalantly regarded
Lilly. “I can tell you what to do, and I can do something for you, but it’s going to change you quite a bit if you do what I say.”

“My daughter won’t mind, and she’s the only one I care about,” said Lilly, and hope leapt within her.

“All right. I’ll tell you. Maybe you won’t like it, but you just listen to me.” Lilly nodded. “First, we make you a wig.” Lilly started, and began to say “A wig … !” But Miss Larue silenced her. “You listen to me. First we make you a wig, grey, a bit iron grey, not white, very neat, modelled waves, not curls – every woman starts bleating when I say ‘wig’ – well, call it what you like, call it an ‘adaptation’ if you like, but it’s a wig, and that’s the first thing we’d do. Then I’ll touch your eyebrows and lashes just a little, and you’ll have to wear a bit of lipstick …”

“I never use …” began Lilly.

“No, I know you don’t,” said Miss Larue with asperity, “but you should. Now am I telling you or are you telling me?” Lilly’s lips moved silently. “Okay. Then you’ve got to throw out that print you’re wearing. You go to one of the big stores and get you a plain black suit, no trimmings, no fancy sleeves, just plain classic tailored. You’ve got a good figure, slim in the hips but you might need a coupla cheaters.” (“Cheaters?” wondered Lilly.) “Then you get you a small – smaller the better – black hat, head-fitting cap effect, no trimming, no nothing. You can get ’em for seventy-five dollars or you can get ’em for four ninety-five – no veil, no nothing, you get a feather or a veil later when you’ve got more assurance. You get you black gloves, a plain black handbag, and plain black pumps,
not
fancy. You can wreck the whole outfit if you get fancy pumps. Do you know what court pumps are?” Lilly shook her head. “Well, you ask ’em for court pumps. Cold weather’s coming on. You get you a plain black coat,
warm, not fancy. I
think
, for you, better get form-fitting.” Lilly nodded. “If you could run to a short Persian lamb, loose back, as well, it …”

Lilly spoke. “No Persian lamb coat. What do you think …?” She could speak frankly with this woman.

“Okay, okay,” said Miss Larue soothingly, “you don’t
haf
to. I’m just telling you. You’ve got to get all black for a start. I wouldn’t trust you with colours. Your suit won’t cost you an awful lot. I can’t say about the coat, it all depends, your hat’ll come cheap, your bag and your shoes – don’t you try to scrimp on them. Your wig’ll come most expensive. But I’m telling you, when you’ve done those simple things, your own daughter’ll have to take three looks at you before she knows you, and then she’ll be crazy about you. And what’ll you have done? Nothing but make the best of yourself and it’s high time. You can’t do a thing with
that
hair, not to look like anything,” and she ran disparaging fingers again through Lilly’s wispy hair. “You’ve got to change the whole works and it’s easy if you can pay for it. There you are – take it or leave it, but don’t ask me to style your hair and then go round looking the way you do.”

“What’d the … what did you call it, well, the … wig … cost?” asked Lilly, bracing herself.

“Oh, anywheres from a hundred and fifty to about two hundred dollars, according,” said Miss Larue. Hundreds were nothing to her.

Lilly considered the wig. She would have to spend too much of her savings which were so precious to her. But with this money she could open a gate wide through which she could go safely home. What release, to walk Vancouver streets with Eleanor without fear! She must do it all, or not at all. She saw the justice of what Miss Larue had told her. With an effort she said “Okay.”

Miss Larue patted her shoulder. “Good for you, honey,” she said. “I like to see a woman who can make up her mind and not fuss.”

“I don’t fuss,” said Lilly.

“There’s one more thing I’ve got to tell you,” said Miss Larue, “if you can take it.”

“I can take it,” said Lilly.

“When you get your new outfit, pitch out that dress and that maroon coat … and that hat too. Give ’em away. Sell ’em. Don’t own ’em.” She saw Lilly’s lips move. “No,” she said, “don’t keep that dress nor any other, to wear working round the house. Forget ’em. Pitch ’em out even if you’ve only a coupla cotton uniforms to wear round the house. If you keep those clothes you keep some of your old-fashion self. And when you get kinda caught up, buy you a thin grey wool dress, plain, not fancy. That’ll do you for anything in the house except formal, and you can wait for that. You don’t mind me telling you, all this, do you, dearie? … Oh and …” she continued rather apologetically, for she had begun to like this slim silent practical woman who had, probably, little money to spare, “
if
you can run to it, when you’ve got the other things – but they’re the essentials – get you a pair of plain pearl or silver earrings, large buttons, or clips, nothing that dangles, silver with your hair not gold, and some pearls … no no no, imitation … or a silver link necklace … cost you one ninety-eight or a bit less or more. Oh, and you’d better stay home nights awhile and cream your skin. We’ll start you off with a coupla facials if you like but you don’t
haf
to. Your skin’s pretty good.” Miss Larue, on a fine creative spree, was assisting at the rebirth of a free woman, Mrs. Walter Hughes. She fell silent, looking Lilly over with her artist’s eyes. Lilly looked mistily past the woman in the glass to the new Mrs. Walter Hughes, hardly recognizable
even to Eleanor, yet justifiable to Eleanor. (“Why Mother … !” “Yes, I know, but I thought I might as well get styled while I had the chance.”) She was sure that Eleanor, after the first quick intake of surprise, would be pleased; she was not so sure of Matron, yet she thought Matron would be pleased. But, whether or not they were pleased, Lilly knew that she was committed, that she was glad, and that there would be no turning back. But will it change me? Shall I be safe? I think so.

M
r. J. B. Sprockett was one of the passengers who boarded the east-bound train at Winnipeg on a Monday evening. He was overcast, and in spite of the fact that he wished very much at this moment to leave his home in Winnipeg, his feeling was rather one of reprieve than relief. He found his car, shouldered himself on to the train, made his way to his seat, disposed of his bag, briefcase, coat and hat, sat down, looked through the dark and rather opaque window at nothing in particular, and said to himself What the hell.

I never knew before, he said to himself again, that you could go through your life, and be real happy, and then get to be sixty-four and have the most awful thing happen to you. It’s not fair, when you’re – he dismissed “elderly” and tried “getting older.” It’s not fair to have trouble when you’re getting older and can’t stand it the way maybe when you were young and had your way to make. And then he thought again that after all he was only one of the millions upon millions of people who are getting older for whom are reserved the most crushing indiscriminate and callous blows of life and fate. That don’t
make it any easier, he said to himself. And so he brooded. The train jerked, and after trying again, it started. He felt a faint sensation of release as the train drew out of the station. He took his evening paper and found that he didn’t care for it. Headlines, talk, advertisements, all were the same, yet all different because Bessy was dead, and Mr. Sprockett while suffering the almost irremediable homesickness of bereavement had now become trammelled in events to which he would never have thought it possible to be exposed. No more would Bessy, he thought. What had happened? Nothing out of the ordinary, yet he was now what is called a widower. Mr. Sprockett was shaken from time to time by such discoveries as that he was lost, that he was irrelevant, that he was no longer the self into which he had grown after thirty-nine years of living – not in rapture but in the perfect satisfaction which is one equation of love – round the days, the weeks, the years with Bessy Sprockett, and he knew now in an obscure way how taut yet tenuous are the filaments that bind our beings, and how death changes the aspect of a street, of a house, particularly of a room – yes, of everything in life. Bessy had been ripped away from him without warning (thirty-nine years of shared mortality had not served to warn him), and those filaments had been torn and only a vestigial Mr. Sprockett remained. And yet he appeared very much the same. He could see that in his mirror when he looked.

“Good evening,” said the man who took the seat opposite him.

“Good evening,” said Mr. Sprockett and chose to look at the blind dumb window. Gosh, those sure were two awful parties, Saturday night at Ed’s place when they had Bertha’s sister, and last night at Al’s place when they had that second Aldridge girl. Brrrr, went Mr. Sprockett, blowing through his lips and shaking his head rapidly, forgetting the man across
the way. He thought with distaste of Bertha’s sister, with her fat cheeks painted too bright (no brighter, if he had known it, than Bessy’s used to be), with her constant treble cry “Oh say!” (no more shrill than Bessy’s treble cry), and her air that was cosy, as if he and she understood. And the second Aldridge girl, I guess she’d be about fifty, or more’n that now, well, that’s okay, but … well, those Aldridge girls they all look the same to me, marry one, marry all three. Why can’t they leave me
alone!
he thought in a rage. Yet Mr. Sprockett could not bear to be alone, and he knew it. He almost felt that Bessy, taken away in surprise, had failed him and had not been faithful in this, but he checked the thought.