A Little, Aloud

by Angela Macmillan

  The neighbors sometimes talked of certain ‘better days’ that little Mrs Sommers had known before she had ever thought of being Mrs Sommers. She herself indulged in no such morbid retrospection. She had no time – no second of time to devote to the past. The needs of the present absorbed her every faculty. A vision of the future like some dim, gaunt monster sometimes appalled her, but luckily to-morrow never comes.

  Mrs Sommers was one who knew the value of bargains; who could stand for hours making her way inch by inch toward the desired object that was selling below cost. She could elbow her way if need be; she had learned to clutch a piece of goods and hold it and stick to it with persistence and determination till her turn came to be served, no matter when it came.

  But that day she was a little faint and tired. She had swallowed a light luncheon – no! when she came to think of it, between getting the children fed and the place righted, and preparing herself for the shopping bout, she had actually forgotten to eat any luncheon at all!

  She sat herself upon a revolving stool before a counter that was comparatively deserted, trying to gather strength and courage to charge through an eager multitude that was besieging breastworks of shirting and figured lawn. An all-gone limp feeling had come over her and she rested her hand aimlessly upon the counter. She wore no gloves. By degrees she grew aware that her hand had encountered something very soothing, very pleasant to touch. She looked down to see that her hand lay upon a pile of silk stockings. A placard near by announced that they had been reduced in price from two dollars and fifty cents to one dollar and ninety-eight cents; and a young girl who stood behind the counter asked her if she wished to examine their line of silk hosiery. She smiled, just as if she had been asked to inspect a tiara of diamonds with the ultimate view of purchasing it. But she went on feeling the soft, sheeny luxurious things – with both hands now, holding them up to see them glisten, and to feel them glide serpent-like through her fingers.

  Two hectic blotches came suddenly into her pale cheeks. She looked up at the girl.

  ‘Do you think there are any eights-and-a-half among these?’

  There were any number of eights-and-a-half. In fact, there were more of that size than any other. Here was a light-blue pair; there were some lavender, some all black and various shades of tan and gray. Mrs Sommers selected a black pair and looked at them very long and closely. She pretended to be examining their texture, which the clerk assured her was excellent.

  ‘A dollar and ninety-eight cents,’ she mused aloud. ‘Well, I’ll take this pair.’ She handed the girl a five-dollar bill and waited for her change and for her parcel. What a very small parcel it was! It seemed lost in the depths of her shabby old shopping-bag.

  Mrs Sommers after that did not move in the direction of the bargain counter. She took the elevator, which carried her to an upper floor into the region of the ladies’ waiting-rooms. Here, in a retired corner, she exchanged her cotton stockings for the new silk ones which she had just bought. She was not going through any acute mental process or reasoning with herself, nor was she striving to explain to her satisfaction the motive of her action. She was not thinking at all. She seemed for the time to be taking a rest from that laborious and fatiguing function and to have abandoned herself to some mechanical impulse that directed her actions and freed her of responsibility.

  How good was the touch of the raw silk to her flesh! She felt like lying back in the cushioned chair and reveling for a while in the luxury of it. She did for a little while. Then she replaced her shoes, rolled the cotton stockings together and thrust them into her bag. After doing this she crossed straight over to the shoe department and took her seat to be fitted.

  She was fastidious. The clerk could not make her out; he could not reconcile her shoes with her stockings, and she was not too easily pleased. She held back her skirts and turned her feet one way and her head another way as she glanced down at the polished, pointed-tipped boots. Her foot and ankle looked very pretty. She could not realize that they belonged to her and were a part of herself. She wanted an excellent and stylish fit, she told the young fellow who served her, and she did not mind the difference of a dollar or two more in the price so long as she got what she desired.

  It was a long time since Mrs Sommers had been fitted with gloves. On rare occasions when she had bought a pair they were always ‘bargains’, so cheap that it would have been preposterous and unreasonable to have expected them to be fitted to the hand.

  Now she rested her elbow on the cushion of the glove counter, and a pretty, pleasant young creature, delicate and deft of touch, drew a long-wristed ‘kid’ over Mrs Sommers’s hand. She smoothed it down over the wrist and buttoned it neatly, and both lost themselves for a second or two in admiring contemplation of the little symmetrical gloved hand. But there were other places where money might be spent.

  There were books and magazines piled up in the window of a stall a few paces down the street. Mrs Sommers bought two high-priced magazines such as she had been accustomed to read in the days when she had been accustomed to other pleasant things. She carried them without wrapping. As well as she could she lifted her skirts at the crossings. Her stockings and boots and well fitting gloves had worked marvels in her bearing – had given her a feeling of assurance, a sense of belonging to the well-dressed multitude.

  She was very hungry. Another time she would have stilled the cravings for food until reaching her own home, where she would have brewed herself a cup of tea and taken a snack of anything that was available. But the impulse that was guiding her would not suffer her to entertain any such thought.

  There was a restaurant at the corner. She had never entered its doors; from the outside she had sometimes caught glimpses of spotless damask and shining crystal, and soft-stepping waiters serving people of fashion.

  When she entered her appearance created no surprise, no consternation, as she had half feared it might. She seated herself at a small table alone, and an attentive waiter at once approached to take her order. She did not want a profusion; she craved a nice and tasty bite – a half dozen blue-points, a plump chop with cress, a something sweet – a crème-frappée, for instance; a glass of Rhine wine, and after all a small cup of black coffee.

  While waiting to be served she removed her gloves very leisurely and laid them beside her. Then she picked up a magazine and glanced through it, cutting the pages with a blunt edge of her knife. It was all very agreeable. The damask was even more spotless than it had seemed through the window, and the crystal more sparkling. There were quiet ladies and gentlemen, who did not notice her, lunching at the small tables like her own. A soft, pleasing strain of music could be heard, and a gentle breeze, was blowing through the window. She tasted a bite, and she read a word or two, and she sipped the amber wine and wiggled her toes in the silk stockings. The price of it made no difference. She counted the money out to the waiter and left an extra coin on his tray, whereupon he bowed before her as before a princess of royal blood.

  There was still money in her purse, and her next temptation presented itself in the shape of a matinée poster.

  It was a little later when she entered the theatre, the play had begun and the house seemed to her to be packed. But there were vacant seats here and there, and into one of them she was ushered, between brilliantly dressed women who had gone there to kill time and eat candy and display their gaudy attire. There were many others who were there solely for the play and acting. It is safe to say there was no one present who bore quite the attitude which Mrs Sommers did to her surroundings. She gathered in the whole – stage and players and people in one wide impression, and absorbed it and enjoyed it. She laughed at the comedy and wept – she and the gaudy woman next to her wept over the tragedy. And they talked a little together over it. And the gaudy woman wiped her eyes and sniffled on a tiny square of filmy, perfumed lace and passed little Mrs Sommers her box of candy.

  The play was over, the music ceased, the crowd filed out. It was like a dream ended. Peopl
e scattered in all directions. Mrs Sommers went to the corner and waited for the cable car.

  A man with keen eyes, who sat opposite to her, seemed to like the study of her small, pale face. It puzzled him to decipher what he saw there. In truth, he saw nothing – unless he were wizard enough to detect a poignant wish, a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her forever.

  ARE THEY SHADOWS

  Samuel Daniel

  Are they shadows that we see?

  And can shadows pleasure give?

  Pleasures only shadows be,

  Cast by bodies we conceive,

  And are made the things we deem

  In those figures which they seem.

  But these pleasures vanish fast,

  Which by shadows are expressed;

  Pleasures are not, if they last;

  In their passing is their best.

  Glory is most bright and gay

  In a flash, and so away.

  Feed apace then, greedy eyes

  On the wonder you behold;

  Take it sudden as it flies,

  Though you take it not to hold.

  When your eyes have done their part,

  Thought must length it in the heart.

  READING NOTES

  A reading group in a hostel wanted to read the poem through two or three times. As one member put it: ‘the meaning is a bit slippery’. People have enjoyed talking about the nature of real pleasure: do we spoil it if we think about it? Is it true ‘Pleasures are not, if they last’? Is it right to ‘Take it sudden as it flies’? In the story Mrs Sommers does just this but readers will have different opinions as to whether it was the right thing for her. Some people might feel that it was worth it, while others that at the end of her day, ‘It was like a dream ended’. When she goes back to the reality of her day-to-day life, will feelings of guilt at the extravagance spoil the memory and pleasure of the dream? Nowadays we often hear and read about ‘making time for me’, or ‘me time’. Is this an excuse to be selfish or self-indulgent, or an important necessity?

  Desire

  THE NECKLACE

  Guy De Maupassant

  (approximate reading time 19 minutes)

  The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of being known, understood, loved, married by any rich and distinguished man; so she let herself be married to a little clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction.

  She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was unhappy as if she had really fallen from a higher station; since with women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind are their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies.

  Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries. She was distressed at the poverty of her dwelling, at the bareness of the walls, at the shabby chairs, the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her despairing regrets and bewildering dreams. She thought of silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, illumined by tall bronze candelabra, and of two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the oppressive heat of the stove. She thought of long reception halls hung with ancient silk, of the dainty cabinets containing priceless curiosities and of the little coquettish perfumed reception rooms made for chatting at five o’clock with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they all desire.

  When she sat down to dinner, before the round table covered with a tablecloth in use three days, opposite her husband, who uncovered the soup tureen and declared with a delighted air, ‘Ah, the good soup! I don’t know anything better than that,’ she thought of dainty dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry that peopled the walls with ancient personages and with strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy forest; and she thought of delicious dishes served on marvellous plates and of the whispered gallantries to which you listen with a sphinxlike smile while you are eating the pink meat of a trout or the wings of a quail.

  She had no gowns, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that. She felt made for that. She would have liked so much to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after.

  She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, who was rich, and whom she did not like to go to see any more because she felt so sad when she came home.

  But one evening her husband reached home with a triumphant air and holding a large envelope in his hand.

  ‘There,’ said he, ‘there is something for you.’

  She tore the paper quickly and drew out a printed card which bore these words:

  The Minister of Public Instruction and Madame Georges Ramponneau request the honour of M. and Madame Loisel’s company at the palace of the Ministry on Monday evening, January 18th.

  Instead of being delighted, as her husband had hoped, she threw the invitation on the table crossly, muttering:

  ‘What do you wish me to do with that?’

  ‘Why, my dear, I thought you would be glad. You never go out, and this is such a fine opportunity. I had great trouble to get it. Every one wants to go; it is very select, and they are not giving many invitations to clerks. The whole official world will be there.’

  She looked at him with an irritated glance and said impatiently:

  ‘And what do you wish me to put on my back?’

  He had not thought of that. He stammered:

  ‘Why, the gown you go to the theatre in. It looks very well to me.’

  He stopped, distracted, seeing that his wife was weeping. Two great tears ran slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth.

  ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’ he answered.

  By a violent effort she conquered her grief and replied in a calm voice, while she wiped her wet cheeks:

  ‘Nothing. Only I have no gown, and, therefore, I can’t go to this ball. Give your card to some colleague whose wife is better equipped than I am.’

  He was in despair. He resumed:

  ‘Come, let us see, Mathilde. How much would it cost, a suitable gown, which you could use on other occasions – something very simple?’

  She reflected several seconds, making her calculations and wondering also what sum she could ask without drawing on herself an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical clerk.

  Finally she replied hesitating:

  ‘I don’t know exactly, but I think I could manage it with four hundred francs.’

  He grew a little pale, because he was laying aside just that amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre, with several friends who went to shoot larks there of a Sunday.

  But he said:

  ‘Very well. I will give you four hundred francs. And try to have a pretty gown.’

  The day of the ball drew near and Madame Loisel seemed sad, uneasy, anxious. Her frock was ready, however. Her husband said to her one evening:

  ‘What is the matter? Come, you have seemed very queer these last three days.’

  And she answered:

  ‘It annoys me not to have a single piece of jewellery, not a single ornament, nothing to put on. I shall look poverty-stricken. I would almost rather not go at all.’

  ‘You might wear natural flowers,’ said her husband. ‘They’re very stylish at this time of year. For ten francs you can get two or three magnificent roses.’

  She was not convinced.

  ‘No; there’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among other women who are rich.’

&nbs
p; ‘How stupid you are!’ her husband cried. ‘Go look up your friend, Madame Forestier, and ask her to lend you some jewels. You’re intimate enough with her to do that.’

  She uttered a cry of joy:

  ‘True! I never thought of it.’

  The next day she went to her friend and told her of her distress.

  Madame Forestier went to a wardrobe with a mirror, took out a large jewel box, brought it back, opened it and said to Madame Loisel:

  ‘Choose, my dear.’

  She saw first some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian gold cross set with precious stones, of admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the mirror, hesitated and could not make up her mind to part with them, to give them back. She kept asking:

  ‘Haven’t you any more?’

  ‘Why, yes. Look further; I don’t know what you like.’

  Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb diamond necklace, and her heart throbbed with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it round her throat, outside her high-necked waist, and was lost in ecstasy at her reflection in the mirror.

  Then she asked, hesitating, filled with anxious doubt:

  ‘Will you lend me this, only this?’

  ‘Why, yes, certainly.’

  She threw her arms round her friend’s neck, kissed her passionately, then fled with her treasure.