The Equations of Love (27 page)

“Make up your berth, sir,” said the porter in his rich husky voice. “Observation car’s three cars back.”

Mr. Sprockett, followed by his companion, walked lurching down the aisle of the train, steadying himself as he walked. It was surprising how much alike the two men were, and, as they entered the end car, an interested observer might notice two or three more Mr. Sprocketts already leaning back on the comfortable chairs, reading the magazines, looking through the dark windows at the Canadian landscape which they could not see but which fell backwards and backwards behind the moving cars, and contributing to the cloud of tobacco smoke that blended richly yet acridly with the smell of train.

It is all very well to say that Mr. Sprockett was a type, but that settles nothing for
him
. He was the only Mr. J. B. Sprockett on that train who had irrevocably lost his wife Bessy, and who could not live alone, and who was heading east through the night (this time alone) on a business trip which (his friends said to each other) would serve to take his mind off of things and would jolt him out of himself and would help him come to some decision about himself when he got back, so let’s give him
a send-off and a coupla little parties. Because (they said) it’s just terrible to see the way he’s going, I mean poor old J. B., he’s got to go through with it the way other people do. Everybody has to go through
some
thing
some
time. He’s no different.

So that’s what Mr. Sprockett was doing; he was going through with it. Sitting down in the observation car he continued to go through with it, and then when he thought the porter had had enough time he went back to the sleeper and climbed up into the upper berth and undressed in the discomfort that he could no longer make a good joke of because who cared, and he continued to go through with it until he slept.

When he arrived in Toronto he went to the hotel where he usually stayed. He covered a good deal of business in the first two days. He spoke to all the porters and waitresses and clerks and bell boys that he possibly could, and it cheered him a bit because to them he was just another travelling man and not someone who was going through with it and must be treated differently from other people. This disguise, or anonymity, was, unknown to Mr. Sprockett, of some service to him, and gave him back an entity, spurious perhaps and still vulnerable, but restoring.

He forgot, sometimes, that he had to return to Winnipeg and the grey unpalatable dish of life. But three or four days soon pass, and the inescapable moment was drawing near.

M
r. Sprockett looked gloomily out of his bedroom window. The day was fair, clouds raced, the wind blew the chimney smokes and the smoke of a far-off ship on the lake in flat streaming banners. Business was good. Two days more would finish it. Mr. Sprockett’s digestion was good, but he had no appetite, or perhaps food had no taste. Last year when he had made his annual trip east he had been alone but he had not been lonely. The year before that he had brought Bessy with him and her loud and cheerful presence had filled his space. Perhaps he had taken her for granted … well, perhaps he had. But he wouldn’t have done anything different, he had nothing to reproach himself with and neither had Bessy. I mean if it had been me that passed away and not Bessy she wouldn’t have had a thing to reproach herself with neither. It was like that.

In two days’ time Mr. Sprockett would board the train and go west to Winnipeg and open up the house whose air was lifeless and depleted. Once a week there were the signs that the cleaning woman had been there. But when he went home at nights never a thing was stirring in that house, empty
from wall to wall. Never a sound from the kitchen, never the long telephone conversation with “the girls” about Lodge, never the shrieks of laughter. Bessy had been a great laugher, like a great big girl, buxom, a bright dresser. Somehow he had never thought that life would not go on in the same way forever. He shrank from the harsh truth and finality of the words “Bessy died;” she had passed away, a refinement of speech which tempered the fact. And now because it was six months since Bessy had passed away the boys and their wives had begun to ask him out with their sisters or unmarried friends and the meaning was plain. And one of these days he would find himself marrying Bertha’s sister or Herb’s cousin or one of the Aldridge girls because he couldn’t help it. And the boys were beginning to joke him a bit about a nice young lady. He was not moping exactly but his empty house was desolate. Yet it was still a refuge, and sometimes he sat there and never even answered the telephone. It was no good. Maybe one of these days he’d come around to one of the Aldridge girls.

As he continued to gaze gloomily out of his bedroom window, revolving his unprofitable thoughts and tasting the ashes in his mouth, he heard someone enter the room. He looked round indifferently and saw that the chambermaid had come in, bringing fresh linen and cleaning utensils.

“Good morning,” said Mr. Sprockett.

“Good morning,” said the chambermaid.

Mr. Sprockett resumed his staring out of the window.

In his domestic, social, and business dealings, Mr. Sprockett had always been a jokey man. But now the springs of his jokiness had dried up within him. The habits of communication remained, and so he turned again to the chambermaid and said “It’s a fine day.”

“Yes,” said the chambermaid, neatly unfolding and spreading a sheet. Mr. Sprockett watched her moodily instead of watching the smoke blowing across the skies of Toronto.

“Tronno your home?” asked Mr. Sprockett, more from force of habit than anything else.

“No,” said the chambermaid, moving quickly round the end of the bed and causing Mr. Sprockett to step smartly backwards. It did not occur to him that he was in the way.

The chambermaid moved well and neatly. It seemed as if order flowed from her fingertips, and sheets, pillow-slips, blankets, bedcover fell obediently into place instead of standing up to her and wrestling with her and intentionally crumpling themselves and falling out of line as they do in less gifted hands. She was a good-looking woman with too much reserve. A little friendliness wouldn’t hurt, thought Mr. Sprockett, what does she think I am! Her figure was young and slim but her neat head was grey. He caught glimpses, as she turned and turned about, of a face worn but pleasing. Fifty-four? fifty-six? thought Mr. Sprockett who made a hobby of ages.

I wish he’d get out of my way, thought Lilly. If he stands there any longer I’m going on to three hundred and seven.

“And what’s your name, if I may ask?” said Mr. Sprockett who liked to call people by their names.

“Mrs. Walter Hughes,” said the chambermaid.

“Is that right!” said Mr. Sprockett who was for one moment surprised and taken out of himself. “Your husband … er … in business here?” He said that naturally, because while Mr.
Hughes
might be absent through death or divorce Mr.
Walter
Hughes sounded present and active.

“I’m a widow,” said the chambermaid, deftly adjusting the bedcover. She had not turned toward Mr. Sprockett.

Mr. Sprockett, who until this moment had looked at
everything – including Lilly – that came within his vision with the lack of interest shown by fishes, came to life, looked at Lilly, and really saw her. He had always regarded widows as a social or business classification (fill out Form A Section 3, state whether unmarried, married, widowed or divorced) with out emotional overtones or connotations, but now he knew what the word meant. I guess, he thought, married women know things that spinsters don’t know, and widows know a whole lot that married women don’t know. So
that’s
what it is.

“Is
that
right!” he said with some feeling.

Lilly straightened herself and looked at him. She really was very … well, unusual.

“I’ll go on to my next room and come back when you’re through,” she said, and did so.

That night, Mr. Sprockett had nothing in particular to do so he went to a show. He did not like it. Before Bessy passed away they used to like going to a show, they went to lots of shows. They had their favourites. And if he was in – say – Toronto alone, he’d go alone, or ask someone he met to go with him, and that was fine, because everything was all right and when you went out again into the street everything used to seem natural. But now, he had to force himself to go to a show, because the minute you emerged into the street, into real life, it wasn’t real life, it was the same kind of nightmare again, you knew again that you were irrelevant, you belonged nowhere, things had no meaning and were indifferent to you, and you were in a devastated country. But returning home to Winnipeg was much worse than going to a show. He did not want to stay in Toronto, but he did not want to go home. Maybe all this feeling would get better some day. Lots of people had to go through with it. In this frame of mind Mr. Sprockett went back to the hotel and went to bed. He slept a bit but did not rest.

Next morning Mr. Sprockett telephoned the man whom he was meeting at nine o’clock and told him that he could not make it at nine o’clock and would eleven do. If he could not make it by eleven he’d let him know. The man said that would be okay, as a matter of fact it suited him better. Mr. Sprockett then took papers out of his briefcase and scattered them upon a round table. He pulled the armchair over beside the table, selected a folder, sat back in the armchair with his fountain pen in his hand, as if lost in thought. The door was slightly open.

Mr. Sprockett was becoming tired of going through the same folder when the door opened wide and the chambermaid came in. She stopped. “Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know.”

Mr. Sprockett waved a slightly lordly hand that said “Come in and don’t mind me,” gave a perfunctory smile and became again immersed in the folder in which he made notations from time to time. The chambermaid made the bed.

Mr. Sprockett at last gave the sigh of one who has finished his work, closed the folder, and looked up at the chamber maid. He said almost austerely “May I have a few words with you,” and his tone was rather that of polite command than of question.

“Well, I’m busy,” said the chambermaid, hesitating a little, but her words had an upward inflection which did not denote finality.

“Mrs. Hughes,” said Mr. Sprockett, and a huskiness crept into his voice, “you are a widow and you will understand what I am going to say to you.”

Lilly said nothing, but looked at him with her soft brown eyes that were made finer by the delicate new darkness of her brows and lashes.

“I … er … come from Winnapeg,” said Mr. Sprockett. “That is, my home is in Winnapeg and I am returning there
day after tomorrow. I … er … lost Mrs. Sprockett recently. She passed away last May. And I must say …” But Mr. Sprockett could not say it. Lilly did not help him; she stood there silent, her look not quite as impersonal as before.

Mr. Sprockett continued. “You may be a family woman yourself, Mrs. Hughes?”

“I gotta married daughter,” said Lilly.

“Is that right!” said Mr. Sprockett.

He was, for some obscure reason, pleased.

“Her husband in business?” asked Mr. Sprockett who always liked to know these things.

“He’s a lawyer,” said Lilly shortly. Then “Not here. In Vancouver.”

“Is
that
right!” said Mr. Sprockett. He was both pleased and amazed. The fact that Mrs. Walter Hughes had a daughter married to a lawyer seemed to make the suggestion that he was about to offer both right and reasonable.

“Mrs. Sprockett and I … we had no family, and so it makes it all the worse …” Lilly nodded, and he was grateful to her for the nod and for no more.

“Well, I was going to suggest to you, Mrs. Hughes, seeing I don’t know any ladies in Tronno, at least I do know two ladies but I have no wish to invite these ladies, no wish at all, if you would be kind enough to have a bite of dinner with me tonight and go to a show … I’m going back to Winnapeg almost right away you understand so it isn’t as if …” his voice trailed away, “what I meantersay I wouldn’t be in any way …”

Lilly looked, hesitated, and said “I don’t mind if I do.” The acceptance was not warm, but Mr. Sprockett appreciated her almost guarded manner. A woman can’t be too careful, not a nice woman.

A
t half-past six that evening at the time of transition in the sky, when the streets were growing dark and bright and the feeling of night came down on the city, McCloskey’s was loud with chatter and clatter, and Mr. Sprockett who was waiting there for Mrs. Walter Hughes was feeling nervous. Now that he sat there, expecting his chambermaid to dinner, he began to think that he had been a bit silly. What was she going to look like anyway? I don’t know what Bessy would think of me, but I guess Bessy would understand. You
got
ta have some female diversion like and I’m scared pink of Bessy’s friends with marriage in their eye and a person like this who doesn’t expect anything is kind of a relief. I never did just such a thing as this in all my life before but then I never was so unhappy in all my life before. What’s the odds! Lilly, slim, scared, smart, stepped inside the swing door and stood.

A man sitting alone at a table looked at her under deeply furrowed brows. Clasping her bag she stood, her small grey head held straight and well, and her brown eyes widened, looking to right and left. A deer in the city, thought the man,
a deer dressed in black, and see the sabled delicate deer startled on the edge of the multitude startle darkle crash and clash the voices of the multitude startle the delicate elegant deer, and so he went on. But Mr. Sprockett did not think that Lilly was a deer dressed in black. He breathed relief as he saw that she was a darn good-looking woman and knew how to dress, different, of course, from Bessy who had been plump and liked a bit of colour, but very stylish.

“This is very kind of you, Mrs. Hughes,” said Mr. Sprockett as they sat down.

“Oh no,” said Lilly with her small seldom smile.

Mr. Sprockett read from a menu that bewildered Lilly. “You choose,” she said, so he chose. Mr. Sprockett, although chiefly engrossed in his own solitariness, had become interested as to why Mrs. Walter Hughes, a good-looking woman and stylish in appearance, with a daughter married to a lawyer in Vancouver should be working as a chambermaid in a Toronto hotel. He considered. How should he set about a little delicate questioning? He did not know how, so he said, straight out, “Mrs. Hughes, I don’t want to seem inquisitive, but does your dotter
know
that you’re working as a chambermaid in a hotel?”