It was awkward when Wilfred got into trouble for tampering with the postal boxes that stood on street corners. He had discovered a way of getting all the money people put in the slots for stamps. The police found a big pile of coins hidden in his father’s store. The judge sent him to jail for only two months because his parents were very respectable people. He promised to marry Mary when he came out.
One afternoon in the late summer they were married by a Presbyterian minister. Mrs. Barnes made it clear that she didn’t think much of the bride. Mr. Barnes said Wilfred would have to go on working in the store. They took three rooms in a big boarding house on Berkley Street.
Mary cried a little when she wrote to tell Harry she was married. She had always been too independent to cry in that way. She would be his sincere friend and still intended to be successful on the stage, she said. Harry wrote that he was surprised that she had married a fellow just out of jail, even though he seemed to come from respectable people.
In the dance pavilion at Scarborough beach a month later, she saw Harry. The meeting was unexpected and she was with three frowsy girls from a circus that was in the east end for a week. Mary had on a long blue-knitted cape that the stores were selling cheaply. Harry turned up his nose at the three girls but talked cheerfully to Mary. They danced together. She said that her husband didn’t mind her taking another try at the stage and he wondered if he should say that he had been to the circus. Giggling, and watching him closely, she said she was working for the week in the circus, for the experience. He gave her to understand that always she would do whatever pleased her, and shouldn’t try for a thing that wasn’t natural to her. He wasn’t enthusiastic when she offered to phone him, just curious about what she might do.
Late in the fall a small part in a local company at the La Plaza for a week was offered to her. She took the job because she detested staying around the house. She wanted Harry to see her really on the stage so she phoned and asked if he would come to the La Plaza on Tuesday night. Good-humoredly he offered to take her dancing afterward. It was funny, he said laughing, that she should be starting all over again at the La Plaza.
But Harry, sitting solemnly in the theater, watching the ugly girls in tights on the stage, couldn’t pick her out. He wondered what on earth was the matter when he waited at the stage door and she didn’t appear. Disgusted, he went home and didn’t bother about her because he had a nice girl of his own. She never wrote to tell him what was the matter.
But one warm afternoon in November, Mary took it into her head to sit on the front seat of the rig with Wilfred, delivering groceries. They went east through many streets until they were in the beach district. Wilfred was telling jokes and she was laughing out loud. Once he stopped his wagon, grabbed his basket and went running along a side entrance, yelling, “Grocer!” Mary sat on the wagon seat.
Three young fellows and a woman were sitting up on a veranda opposite the wagon. She saw Harry looking at her and vaguely wondered how he got there. She didn’t want him to see that she was going to have a baby. Leaning on the veranda rail, he saw that her slimness had passed into the shapelessness of her pregnancy and he knew why she had been kept off the stage that night at the La Plaza. She sat erect and strangely dignified on the seat of the grocery wagon. They didn’t speak. She made up her mind to be hard up for someone to talk to before she bothered him again, as if without going any further she wasn’t as good as he was. She smiled sweetly at Wilfred when he came running out of the alley and jumped on the seat, shouting, “Giddup,” to the horse. They drove on to a customer farther down the street.
1926
A WEDDING DRESS
For fifteen years Miss Lena Schwartz had waited for Sam Hilton to get a good job so they could get married. She lived in a quiet boarding house on Wellesley Street, the only woman among seven men boarders. The landlady, Mrs. McNab, did not want women boarders; the house might get a bad reputation in the neighborhood, but Miss Schwartz had been with her a long time. Miss Schwartz was thirty-two, her hair was straight, her nose turned up a little and she was thin.
Sam got a good job in Windsor and she was going there to marry him. She was glad to think that Sam still wanted to marry her, because he was a Catholic and went to church every Sunday. Sam liked her so much he wrote a cramped homely letter four times a week.
When Miss Schwartz knew definitely that she was going to Windsor, she read part of a letter to Mrs. McNab. The men heard about the letter at the table and talked as if Lena were an old maid. “I guess it will really happen to her all right,” they said, nudging one another. “The Lord knows she waited long enough.”
Miss Schwartz quit work in the millinery shop one afternoon in the middle of February. She was to travel by night, arrive in Windsor early next morning and marry Sam as soon as possible.
That afternoon the downtown streets were slushy and the snow was thick alongside the curb. Miss Schwartz ate a little lunch at a soda fountain, not much because she was excited. She had to do some shopping, buy some flimsy underclothes and a new dress. The dress was important. She wanted it charming enough to be married in and serviceable for wear on Sundays. Sitting on the counter stool she ate slowly and remembered how she had often thought marrying Sam would be a matter of course. His lovemaking had become casual and good-natured; she could grow old with him and be respected by other women. But now she had a funny aching feeling inside. Her arms and legs seemed almost strange to her.
Miss Schwartz crossed the road to one of the department stores and was glad she had on her heavy coat with the wide sleeves that made a warm muff. The snow was melting and the sidewalk steaming near the main entrance. She went lightheartedly through the store, buying a little material for a dress on the third floor, a chemise on the fourth floor and curling-tongs in the basement. She decided to take a look at the dresses.
She rode an elevator to the main floor and got on an escalator because she liked gliding up and looking over the squares of counters, the people in the aisles, and over the rows of white electric globes hanging from the ceiling. She intended to pay about twenty-five dollars for a dress. To the left of the escalators the dresses were displayed on circular racks in orderly rows. She walked on the carpeted floor to one of the racks and a salesgirl lagged on her heels. The girl was young and fair-headed and saucy looking; she made Miss Schwartz uncomfortable.
“I want a nice dress, blue or brown,” she said, “about twenty-five dollars.”
The salesgirl mechanically lifted a brown dress from the rack. “This is the right shade for you,” she said. “Will you try it on?”
Miss Schwartz was disappointed. She had no idea such a plain dress would cost twenty-five dollars. She wanted something to startle Sam. She never paid so much for a dress, but Sam liked something fancy. “I don’t think I like these,” she said. “I wanted something special.”
The salesgirl said sarcastically, “Maybe you were thinking of a French dress. Some on the rack in the French Room are marked down.”
Miss Schwartz moved away, a tall commonplace woman in a dark coat and an oddly shaped purple hat. She went into the gray French Room. She stood on a blue pattern on the gray carpet and guardedly fingered a dress on the rack, a black canton crepe dress with a high collar that folded back, forming petals of burnt orange. From the hem to the collar was a row of buttons, the sleeves were long with a narrow orange trimming at the cuffs, and there was a wide corded silk girdle. It was marked seventy-five dollars. She liked the feeling it left in the tips of her fingers. She stood alone at the rack, toying with the material, her mind playing with thoughts she guiltily enjoyed. She imagined herself wantonly attractive in the dress, slyly watched by men with bold thoughts as she walked down the street with Sam, who would be nervously excited when he drew her into some corner and put his hands on her shoulders. Her heart began to beat heavily. She wanted to walk out of the room and over to the escalator but could not think clearly. Her fingers were carelessly drawing the dress into her wide coat sleev
e, the dress disappearing steadily and finally slipping easily from the hanger, drawn into her wide sleeve.
She left the French Room with a guilty feeling of satisfied exhaustion. The escalator carried her down slowly to the main floor. She hugged the parcels and the sleeve containing the dress tight to her breast. On the streetcar she started to cry because Sam seemed to have become something remote, drifting away from her. She would have gone back with the dress but did not know how to go about it.
When she got to the boarding house she went straight upstairs and put on the dress as fast as she could, to feel that it belonged to her. The black dress with the burnt orange petals on the high collar was short and loose on her thin figure.
Then the landlady knocked at the door and said that a tall man downstairs wanted to see her about something important. Mrs. McNab waited for Miss Schwartz to come out of her room.
Miss Schwartz sat on the bed. She felt that if she did not move at once she would not be able to walk downstairs. She walked downstairs in the French dress, Mrs. McNab watching her closely. Miss Schwartz saw a man with a wide heavy face and his coat collar buttoned high on his neck complacently watching her. She felt that she might just as well be walking downstairs in her underclothes; the dress was like something wicked clinging to her legs and her body. “How do you do,” she said.
“Put on your hat and coat,” he said steadily.
Miss Schwartz, slightly bewildered, turned stupidly and went upstairs. She came down a minute later in her coat and hat and went out with the tall man. Mrs. McNab got red in the face when Miss Schwartz offered no word of explanation.
On the street he took her arm and said, “You got the dress on and it won’t do any good to talk about it. We’ll go over to the station.”
“But I have to go to Windsor,” she said, “I really have to. It will be all right. You see, I am to be married tomorrow. It’s important to Sam.”
He would not take her seriously. The streetlights made the slippery sidewalks glassy. It was hard to walk evenly.
At the station the sergeant said to the detective, “She might be a bad egg. She’s an old maid and they get very foxy.”
She tried to explain it clearly and was almost garrulous. The sergeant shrugged his shoulders and said the cells would not hurt her for a night. She started to cry. A policeman led her to a small cell with a plain cot.
Miss Schwartz could not think about being in the cell. Her head, heavy at first, got light and she could not consider the matter. The detective who had arrested her gruffly offered to send a wire to Sam.
The policeman on duty during the night thought she was a stupid silly woman because she kept saying over and over, “We were going to be married. Sam liked a body to look real nice. He always said so.” The unsatisfied expression in her eyes puzzled the policeman, who said to the sergeant, “She’s a bit of a fool, but I guess she was going to get married all right.”
At half past nine in the morning they took her from the cell to the police car along with a small wiry man who had been quite drunk the night before, a colored woman who had been keeping a bawdy house, a dispirited fat man arrested for bigamy, and a Chinese man who had been keeping a betting house. She sat stiffly, primly, in a corner of the car and could not cry. Snow was falling heavily when the car turned into the city hall courtyard.
Miss Schwartz appeared in the Women’s Court before a little olive-skinned magistrate. Her legs seemed to stiffen and fall away when she saw Sam’s closely cropped head and his big lazy body at a long table before the magistrate. A young man was talking rapidly and confidently to him. The magistrate and the Crown attorney were trying to make a joke at each other’s expense. The magistrate found the attorney amusing. A court clerk yelled a name, the policeman at the door repeated it and then loudly yelled the name along the hall. The colored woman who had been keeping the bawdy house appeared with her lawyer.
Sam moved over to Miss Schwartz. She found it hard not to cry. She knew that a Salvation Army man was talking to a slightly hard-looking woman about her, and she felt strong and resentful. Sam held her hand but said nothing.
The colored woman went to jail for two months rather than pay a fine of $200.
“Lena Schwartz,” said the clerk. The policeman at the door shouted the name along the hall. The young lawyer who had been talking to Sam told her to stand up while the clerk read the charge. She was scared and her knees were stiff.
“Where is the dress?” asked the magistrate.
A store detective with a heavy moustache explained that she had it on and told how she had been followed and later on arrested. Everybody looked at her, the dress too short and hanging loosely on her thin body, the burnt orange petals creased and twisted.
“She was to be married today,” began the young lawyer affably. “She was to be married in this dress,” he said and good humoredly explained that yesterday when she stole it she had become temporarily a kleptomaniac. Mr. Hilton had come up from Windsor and was willing to pay for the dress. It was a case for clemency. “She waited a long time to be married and was not quite sure of herself,” he said seriously.
He told Sam to stand up. Sam haltingly explained that she was a good woman, a very good woman. The Crown attorney seemed to find Miss Schwartz amusing.
The magistrate scratched away with his pen and then said he would remand Miss Schwartz for sentence if Sam still wanted to marry her and would pay for the dress. Sam could hardly say anything. “She will leave the city with you,” said the magistrate, “and keep out of department stores for a year.” He saw Miss Schwartz wrinkling her nose and blinking her eyes and added, “Now go out and have a quiet wedding.” The magistrate was satisfied with himself.
Miss Schwartz, looking a little older than Sam, stood up in her dress that was to make men slyly watch her and straightened the corded silk girdle. It was to be her wedding dress. Sam gravely took her arm and they went out to be quietly married.
1927
LAST SPRING THEY CAME OVER
Alfred Bowles came to Canada from England and got a job on a Toronto paper. He was a young fellow with clear, blue eyes and heavy pimples on the lower part of his face, the son of a Baptist minister whose family was too large for his salary. He got thirty dollars a week on the paper and said it was surprisingly good screw to start. For five dollars a week he got an attic room in a brick house painted brown on Mutual Street. He ate his meals in a quick-lunch near the office. He bought a cane and a light-gray fedora.
He wasn’t a good reporter but was inoffensive and obliging. After he had been working two weeks the fellows took it for granted he would be fired in a little while and were nice to him, liking the way the most trifling occurrences surprised him. He was happy to carry his cane on his arm and wear the fedora at a jaunty angle, quite the reporter. He liked to explain that he was doing well. He wrote home about it.
When they put him doing night police he felt important, phoning the fire department, hospitals, and police stations, trying to be efficient. He was getting along all right. It was disappointing when after a week the assistant city editor, Mr. H.J. Brownson, warned him to phone his home if anything important happened, and he would have another man cover it. But Bowles got to like hearing the weary, irritable voice of the assistant city editor called from his bed at three o’clock in the morning. He liked to politely call Mr. Brownson as often and as late as possible, thinking it a bit of good fun.
Alfred wrote long letters to his brother and to his father, carefully tapping the keys, occasionally laughing to himself. In a month’s time he had written six letters describing the long city room, the fat belly of the city editor, and the bad words the night editor used when speaking of the Orangemen.
The night editor took a fancy to him because of the astounding puerility of his political opinions. Alfred was always willing to talk pompously of the British Empire policing the world and about all Catholics being aliens, and the future of Ireland and Canada resting with the Orangemen. He flung his
arms wide and talked in the hoarse voice of a bad actor, but no one would have thought of taking him seriously. He was merely having a dandy time. The night editor liked him because he was such a nice boy.
Then Alfred’s brother came out from the Old Country, and got a job on the same paper. Some of the men started talking about cheap cockney laborers crowding the good guys out of the jobs, but Harry Bowles was frankly glad to get the thirty a week. It never occurred to him that he had a funny idea of good money. With his first pay he bought a derby hat, a pair of spats, and a cane, but even though his face was clear and had a good color he never looked as nice as his younger brother because his heavy nose curved up at the end. The landlady on Mutual Street moved a double bed into Alfred’s room and Harry slept with his brother.
The days passed with many good times together. At first it was awkward that Alfred should be working nights and his brother the days, but Harry was pleased to come to the office each night at eleven and they went down the street to the hotel that didn’t bother about Prohibition. They drank a few glasses of good beer. It became a kind of rite that had to be performed carefully. Harry would put his left foot and Alfred his right foot on the rail and leaning an elbow on the bar they would slowly survey the zigzag line of frothing glasses the length of the long bar. Men jostled them for a place at the foot-rail.
Alfred said: “Well, a bit of luck.”
Harry, grinning and raising his glass, said: “Righto.”
“It’s the stuff that heals.”
“Down she goes.”
“It helps the night along.”
“Fill them up again.”
“Toodle-oo.”
Then they would walk out of the crowded barroom, vaguely pleased with themselves. Walking slowly and erectly along the street they talked with assurance, a mutual respect for each other’s opinion making it merely an exchange of information. They talked of the Englishman in Canada, comparing his lot with that of the Englishman in South Africa and India. They had never traveled but to ask what they knew of strange lands would have made one feel uncomfortable; it was better to take it for granted that the Bowles boys knew all about the ends of the earth and had judged them carefully, for in their eyes was the light of far-away places. Once in a while, after walking a block or two, one of the brothers would say he would damn well like to see India and the other would say it would be simply topping.
Ancient Lineage and Other Stories Page 2