Sheila and Others: The Simple Annals of an Unromantic Household

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SHEILA AND OTHERS The Simple Annals of an Unromantic HouseholdWINIFRED COTTER

SHEILA AND OTHERS

SHEILA AND OTHERS The Simple Annals of an Unromantic Household BY WINIFRED COTTER New York E. P. Dutton & Company 681 Fifth Avenue

Sheila

SHEILA

A TOUCH of wistful warmth comes to my heart when I think of Sheila, blue-eyed, bright-haired, Irish Sheila, flushed with the adventure of foreign travel, and all unapprised of the toils that wait in Canadian kitchens to take the feet of the unwary immigrant.

At first she was but a name on a list, one of ten the W. H. H. S. experimented with, advancing the passage money, and "placing" in carefully chosen homes. At least that was how the enthusiastic President of the W. H. H. S. expressed it, and naturally I was flattered to be among the chosen. The name looked promising to me. I built fresh hopes upon it. I pictured a bright young face and an ardent, responsive spirit, with marginal decorations of toast for breakfast of a golden brown hue instead of murky black. And I wasn't far wrong—at least in regard to the first two points. My heart warmed to the twinkly-eyed, frank young girl who presented herself at our door one fine morning with her hat askew and an over-worked "grip" in her hand.

She smiled confidingly, and explained that she'd got on the wrong tram, but the man had been that friendly, Mem. She called me "Mem" from the first, and the Irish brogue of her was music to the ear. She was but eighteen, eager and ready for new worlds to conquer, but had never been in a real kitchen before. I must say my own ardor was damped by this admission, but not hers.

"I'll soon be larnin' how youse like it done, Mem," she would say with cheerful nonchalance.

We were in charge (I almost wrote "grip") at the moment, of a highly accomplished, serious-minded Lady-help of English extraction and lofty connection, who had studied French in Paris and Household Science in New York. She was now getting her "practical" experience in before going on West to let her light shine before a more appreciative and larger-pursed circle of admirers. She was fearfully competent. Our domicile had undergone a unique transformation. The corners in the dim twilight of the attic-stairs had been penetrated with a meat-skewer, the grooves in the hardwood paneling of the bathroom, ditto, and even the superannuated jelly glasses in the cellar's remotest depths had been investigated and "wiped down."

Relays of charwomen had been at work upon us for some time under the manipulation of this energetic lady and we were all worn out, particularly the instigator of these reforms herself, who was of the angular, nervous type, and in whose presence I experienced a sense of guilt, whether because of her pale cheek or the product of the skewer on the back stairs, I cannot say. I suffered from an uneasy sense that things weren't as they should be in Canada, and that I was implicated. Of course I was contrite, but I don't think it helped any

I had long entertained views, previous to this, on the subject of the dignity of domestic labor and had publicly expressed the conviction that ladies engaged in such work should not be debarred the privileges of ladies. Feeling obliged to live up to these principles, in the present experiment, I had a place set at the family board for the experimentee, who neither demanded nor declined the concession, but who rarely achieved the doubtful pleasure of dining with us by reason of the exigencies of serving. This maladjustment was, of course, remedied with Sheila's advent, and the accomplished lady sat with us at meals producing an inhibitory effect upon the flow of conversation, and keeping an ever watchful eye upon Sheila. I could see the firm line of her decisive mouth becoming firmer when the bacon (it was in pre-war days) came in slightly congealed, or the pudding overdone. And I could see too, a cloud beginning to settle on Sheila's confident youth, tinging its brightness.

I became uneasy. The arrangement was merely transient. It was intended to serve two ends; Sheila's induction into Canadian ways, and to provide the Domestic Science lady with harborage until the appointed time when she would spread wing for wider flight, "These old country servants need to be made to understand who is mistress," she remarked to me shortly after Sheila's arrival. "It all depends upon the start they get. I know their ways—if you will permit me—better than you possibly can."

I permitted her. I acquiesced in everything she said and did. I was bound to, partly out of gratitude for her distinguished services at a time of domestic stress, and partly for the sake of peace. But I had my mental reservations, and inwardly prayed that the time might be shortened to us.

Then one day, going into the kitchen, I became aware of an unwonted and self-conscious silence there. Sheila looked like a drooping flower. Her face was kept studiously away from me. I knew the hour had come and I quailed before it. I wonder if other women are such cowards in their kitchens as I am in mine; if they feel, as I do, the delicacies of the situation, the injustices it engenders, the necessary reserves? Personal service involves personal relations between strangers. No wonder such relations become strained, particularly when one remembers the youth, the inexperience and too often the lack of guidance of at least one of the participants. Tact and patience and discerning sympathy are all in requisition when skating over such thin ice as kitchen nerves cover, and too few of us keep these elemental virtues on top.

"Sheila, my girl, what is it?" I said finally.

Thereat my fears were confirmed. Sheila banged the range till the flat-bottomed kettle slithered across it, upset the dipper, and showed other outward signs of inward emotion.

"Come, tell me about it, Sheila. I want to know. Are you not happy with us here?"

Sheila held herself rigid a moment then flung into a chair; the bright head went down on one round young arm, and a sob became audible.

I put my hand on the tangle of coppery hair that ran riot under the wisp of a cap she wore and begged her to tell me what the trouble was. She struggled valiantly with herself, finally getting the upperhand.

"I doesn't be plazin' ye, Mem, an' I'll be afther lookin' for anither place," finally emerged in smothered accents from the bent head.

"O no, surely you won't be doing that Sheila, you are really getting on very nicely. You did the dining-room beautifully this morning."

"Her do'ent say that! She's afther sayin' as how I do'ent be plazin' ye, an' O'im thinkin' mesilf as how the house work ain't suited to me, an' O'ill be doin' betther at some ither thrade."

She was a motherless bairn who had run wild on her native heath. She had never even been in a city before setting sail for the new land where all was "sthrange" to her.

"Sheila," I found myself saying unpremeditatedly, "does it seem very far away to you here, and do we talk queer?"

"Youse do that," responded Sheila with unmistakable fervor.

"And we seem to have a great many different things to eat, don't we," I went on, following up my inspiration.

"Youse do," sobbed Sheila again with prompt and emphatic concurrence.

"And—and anything else, Sheila?"

Cept jest that she do be makin' me feel O'im the dthirt undther her feet."

"Well, but Sheila, my dear (yes, I said 'my dear') you're not to let yourself be feeling that way any more. It isn't true. She hasn't meant it that way. It's just her manner. And she's leaving us in a day or two anyway. And you know I couldn't get on by myself the way things are, now could I? No; and you'll stay and help me out a while longer, won't you, Sheila, till we see how we get on by ourselves?"

"I will that, Mem," responded Sheila with unexpected and reassuring heartiness.

After the lady of domestic experience and convictions left us to our own inferior ways, we settled down into a comfortable routine, while the dust (I suppose) settled down again also into the grooves of the bathroom panels, and not many days after the departure I heard that most cheering of all sounds to a housekeeper's ear, a snatch of song from the kitchen.

The exigencies of said kitchen had been presided over so long by maidens of uncertain age and temper that it was a welcome change to have there a brisk young person radiating energy, who didn't resent one's appearance as an intrusion, or one's interest in the state of the bread-box as an unwarrantable liberty. On the contrary, Sheila invited inspection with every appearance of having nothing to conceal. Everyone took to her. The cheeriness of her smile and coaxing manner warmed the heart of the callers at the door (where also the effulgence of the brass testified to her thoroughness) and inspired hope in the needle- book men and vendors of crocheted-lace horrors of whom our street seems to have more than its rightful share. One friend said to me, "I thought at first I had come to the wrong house, I had got so used to old Hannah's massive immobility, covering latent suspicion, that I was for backing off when I beheld this radiant piece of Ould Ireland."

But not all the visitors were for the front door by any means. Youth and sweetness draw homage in the kitchen no less than in the parlor—very much more so, in fact, being less barricaded by convention there.

First came Maggie O'Rourke, Sheila's cabin mate on the passage out, a strapping, outspoken damsel whose brogue, rich in quality, demanded concentrated attention. She had fallen in the allocation, to the home of Toronto magnate manned (and womaned) by a staff of twelve who evidently rendered the life of the supervising housekeeper a daily misery. At least, mine would have been so under the conditions pictured by Maggie, who drew some very realistic vignettes of high life in Toronto's select circles. The raciest of these were no doubt reserved for Sheila's ear alone, but the combination of youthful spirits and a half-day off often proved irresistible to Maggie's ready tongue.

"So you are liking your new place," I said to her one day, "that's good."

"Yes'm, though it do be a bit out o' the way o' the cyars; we do be havin' a noo butler the week, Thomas be name. The Misthress be's away an' the masther is that partic'lar. Cook, she up an' made a noo kind o' scone fer breakfas' the morn, an' w'en Thomas took them in, says the masther, 'W'at be this, Thomas?' says he, an' says Thomas solemn like, 'Scones, Sir!' an' the masther he up an' throwed them at 'im. An' w'en Thomas telled us about it, 'My goodness,' says I, 'an' w'at d'ye do then?' An' Thomas, 'e says, cool-like, 'I let 'em lay.

But it was not through Maggie alone that social life solicited Sheila. "Gentlemen friends" began to present themselves, red-faced, blocky individuals, redolent of scented soap and encased in obviously new and uncomfortable-looking suits.

I found myself in the course of time becoming familiarized with the physiognomy of one in particular, a raw-looking youth whom one might suspect of coming under R. L. S.'s category of "good but incompetent." But whatever he lacked in brilliancy, he endeavored to atone for in frequency and duration. His visits were interminable, and presently I found that he had settled into the position of "me friend" which seemed to entail at least a fair prospect of permanency—a prospect further confirmed at Christmas by the appearance on Sheila's round arm of a new shiny gold (rolled?) watch.

I tried to conceal my surprise over this and other costly tokens that the season brought Sheila. She herself took them in a matter-of-fact way that betokened an astonishing ability to assimilate the new world and all its doings. But their appearance confirmed my conviction that not only is money more easily earned and spent than formerly, but that boys and girls of Sheila's class are much less prone to the habit of saving than were their forbears.

Of course I duly admired the watch, thinking thus to add to Sheila's own pleasure in it, but was rather baffled by an ostentatious show of indifference on her part.

In the course of a very few months, Sheila had become a well-poised, self-assured young person. Life in Canada had wrought a marked transformation. She had risen to her opportunities and adapted herself with surprising flexibility to such resources as her position and attractions commanded. It was plain that she was wrought of "good stuff." I liked her none the less for a certain reserve she showed along with her open-hearted warmth of disposition. I recognized it as an essential quality of substance and of capacity for growth. She was never afraid to acknowledge any little kindness shown her, as smaller natures are (as though gratitude might frighten it away), and she had the really priceless quality of identifying herself with the interests of the household, sharing its pleasures and taking for granted a corresponding interest in her own.

But there was not wanting evidence that Sheila was ripening for another and larger sphere than our small circle afforded. I realized it long before she did. So that when she told me one day that her sister who had preceded her to America and was now in Cleveland doin' fine, and suggesting that Sheila join her (adding with cheerful confidence "When you are suited, Mem"), I was more concerned for her welfare than I was surprised.

"Cleveland!" I exclaimed. "But I don't like to see you go so far away."

"Shure, an' I'll be all right, Mem, wi' me sisther an' me brither. He's talkin' of comin' over too, the little wan, the plumber by thrade. Me and the sisther'll be buyin' his passage belike. Me sisther says there do be a fine situation waitin' on me."

The invincible confidence of youth was dancing in her eye. Adventure lay before her and she held out both arms to it. "It is but natural," I said to myself, and yet I could not help feeling solicitude on her behalf. It wasn't a city I had been picturing as Sheila's manifest destiny, but one of those little, comfortable-looking houses that grow in such abundance on the outskirts of Toronto, where the storks call often, and where thrifty young couples growing in wisdom and worldly possession add substantial increase to the general sum of happiness.

If as a marginal decoration to this picture I had added some inheritance on my own part, of Sheila's future, an extra hand at dinner parties, or during the orgy of spring cleaning, it was merely, I hope, by way of filling out the color scheme. Such vicarious under-studies, permanently located within reach, are as a rock of refuge to the weary housekeeper, battered amid the tides of successive domestic upheavals and infelicities.

I did not at the time altogether abandon hope that it might yet be so for Sheila and me. I thought "me friend" was a permanency, and would ultimately bring her back. But it appears that even a gold-filled watch is not to be taken as a sign of indissoluble affection, for when I made some discreetly distant reference to the young man left behind, the dimple in Sheila's cheek became a line and she said in a laconic tone "Oh, him!"

So when I was "suited," Sheila bought her an expensive, braided blue serge suit in the latest mode, and a hat with a curly cock's feather that nodded aggressive defiance to all the world, happily belying the smiling face beneath, and set forth for new and greener pastures.

It was not without foreboding I saw her go. She seemed to me so young to face the great world alone, the Juggernaut world of allurement and shallow estimate, and self-seeking and easy indifference.

True to her promise to let us know how she got on, came presently a letter—"I now take my pen in hand hoping it finds youse all as it leaves me at present"—and saying little about herself save the bald fact that she was working in a "refined hotel," and getting good pay. At its close she thanked me for past kindness adding with characteristic heartiness, "Youse was awful good to me."

On Christmas morning that year, along with the mountain of highly-embossed declarations of devotion from all and sundry, came one of those irritating customs cards that unfeelingly announce, "1 package from United States," without even the meagerest specifications on which the expanding imagination can feed. Of course, it was days before we got it, for nobody goes downtown after Christmas, and I had time to body forth all sorts of possibilities, pleasing and otherwise. Sheila was the last contingency that would have entered my mind, yet from Sheila it proved to be. And what do you think! it was an elegant fantasia in gold braid and bead embroidery, designed for the embellishment of one's bodice, to be applied or removed at will. It was an expansive glorification of "quite the newest thing," a really handsome and modish acces- sory, and must have cost a pretty penny. The touch of barbaric splendor with which it was glitteringly wrought, found response in the rudimentary savage within me, and I knew how it must have appealed to Sheila's unpurged soul. I was glad it was beyond her range to so much as suspect the unsuitability of such a gift, far handsomer and more valuable than the tiny remembrance I had sent to her. There was nothing to be done now of course, but to accept gracefully, and this I proceeded to do.

After many days came this reply, innocent of punctuation, the last word ever received from or of our little bright-haired Sheila.

"I have great pleasure in answering your ever welcome letters and cards and the picture of your flowers is just beautiful. I am very pleased to have it and to know youse is all well as this leaves me at present. Mrs. C., I am very glad to know that you like your little Xmas present. It is only an appreciation of your kindness to me when I was living with you and I thank you very much for all you done for me. Mrs. C., we may all have lots of friends but it is very hard to find a true friend. And when we find a true friend I think it is our duty to try to keep them and to appreciate them. As I am going around now Mrs. C., I have got a chance to see and understand what this world is like and what it is made up of. It certainly is a very wonderful world, and I am very glad to know that Janet is with you still and keeping well. It takes a lot off you to know that some one just understands your customs and everything else. Well now, Mrs. C., I hope I am not taking up too much of your time in writing as I know you have a lot to contend with now. I will draw to a close as this leaves me well, hoping to find youse all the same. I am yours most respectfully,

Sheila."

That letter remains my best credential as a mistress and I prize it accordingly. I am more grateful for it even, than the bead "Plastron" which is perennially admired by my artistic friends, one of whom observing it not long ago, charged me with flagrant extravagance. I use it to brighten up my pre-war gowns, but I never put it on without a thought of Sheila and a drag at the heart. What lay behind that allusion to "a true friend"? I doubt if her term at the refined hotel was a long one. It hurt my sense of fitness to think of her there. Her innate quality was far above the rank blind fortune placed her in, and when I recall her it is less as a maid of all work than as a spirit superior to circumstances, transcending them by sheer buoyancy born of faith and good cheer and fine quality.

Mrs. Montrose

MRS. MONTROSE

SHE rose as I entered the room and remained standing until I asked her to be seated.

It certainly conduces to self-respect to be treated like a lady. I felt myself instinctively assuming a gentler manner as I crossed the room, at the same time marshaling to my aid such remnants of dignity as my long association with people of the "Good-as-you-or-better type" have left to me.

When I snapped on the light and saw her face I was almost startled. It was of a pure Madonna type, with soft, dark eyes, and lines of settled and perfect composure. A type suggestive of a long line of ancestors, and well-bred ones at that. It stirred the latent artist in one, winging one's thoughts back to the paradise of the Pitti, and to that majestic Roman Matron in the Naples Gallery with its air of magnificent completion and rounded repose. I wondered if she had ever posed, and a drifting thought of our portrait-friend Mr. Grier, made a snatch at my consciousness, followed by the chilling doubt as to whether she really was our new wash-lady or not, that Sally had implored me to try. She might even be a caller.

She was dressed in black, which is so noncommittal always, and her hat, though strictly unobstrusive, had really an air.

I approached negotiations with caution, using the weather as a preliminary medium. Her replies and manner were perfect. Her voice, low and essentially refined, had a rich modulation, unmistakably English, but without a stray h or misplaced accent, and her whole air conveyed just the right balance of responsiveness and reserve. I resolved on the plunge.

"You have come to see me about—a-about giving us some assistance?" I could not bring myself to say washing. It was too abrupt, and also too remote a contingency in the presence of this refined, well-bred lady.

But she met my overtures without hesitation, "I am experienced in laundry work."

My own eye faltered, if hers didn't. I pretended to read just a cushion and felt uncomfortably conscious after she had gone, that the light casualness with which I finished negotiations, had been overdone. Indeed, doubts assailed me in the remembered presence of this magnificent creature as to whether I could really lay claim to being a lady myself or not!

I made it a point to keep away from the laundry on the days she was there. It wasn't sentiment altogether, though I tried to put it down to that, but an unpleasant feeling of social dislocation. It produced distinctly disagreeable sensations to see those rounded arms bared to the elbow, and those shapely hands swollen and reddened with soap and water—my soap and water—and I don't like feeling inferior in my own house. Besides, what was the use of going? My nature argued with my avocation. It would only be an anomaly if not an actual intrusion, to tell a Madonna, even though merely a Madonna of tubs, how to conduct the renovation of your soiled linen. So I gave in, for I am a weak creature at best, ruled by the wants of life as much as by the oughts, and kept a safe distance from the laundry on wash-days. I issued instructions (unnecessary ones) to Janet that Mrs. Montrose was never to be allowed to leave without a good meal, and I left the money always in a respectfully sealed envelope on the kitchen shelf. I inquired punctiliously after the state of her family's health, too, on those rare occasions when I saw her, but refrained from giving her the advice which is usual in these connections, and which acts as a safety valve for the employer and is acceptable to the employed in proportion to the number of extra dimes accompanying it.

Then one day there came up a request from Mrs. Montrose that I would spare a few minutes for an interview. I was alarmed at first. There are always such incalculable elements in the situations below stairs. Our whole theory of domestic relations is built upon a wrong principle, and, explosions sooner or later, major or minor, are natural consequence. But it was not a dismissal of us as a "place" that Mrs. Montrose had come to give me, nor to ask for a "raise" nor yet to lodge complaint as to the kind of wringer we used, but to solicit my influence and interest on Mr. Montrose's behalf. I was requested to speak a word to the clergyman of a suburban church, whom I knew slightly, in favor of his appointment as organist, during the illness of the regular incumbent. I must say that it gave me something of a turn—in fact it really took my breath away. Mr. Montrose an organist! But the quiet composure, the even respect without servility, with which the request was proffered, helped to steady me and to accept the situation, as though it were a normal one. Incidentally I learned that Mr. Montrose was an architect by profession, but had been obliged to leave a lucrative "post" In England on account of his health. He required a drier climate. It was expected that the bracing air of Canada would do a great deal for him. He was engaged just now in clerical work in an accountant's office downtown.

These items of information led naturally to others. I could scarcely take my eyes from Mrs. Montrose's face while she related them. She had regular features, a fine luminous complexion and superb eyes. Some might have thought the expression wanting in animation, but to me there appeared far greater beauty in the repose her every motion revealed, not the negative repose of inhibition or defeat, but that of a nature at once large and restrained.

The facts she communicated were brief, but not told as if there were any wish to conceal. Reginald, the boy, was clerking downtown, and going to "the Tech" (still down on College Street in those days). The delicate color on the oval cheek deepened as she told me he had taken a scholarship in mathematics "at home" just before they sailed.

Louise, the fifteen-year-old girl, was in service, but only during the day. Her father or brother went for her every evening. The two younger ones were still going to school.

These were the bald facts; no embellishment, no explanation, no appeal. She was incapable, you realized at once, of the shiftiness, the heightened coloring, the subterfuge, that smaller natures resort to in such situations. Here was one who knew only how to bear, not to rebel. Her majestic calm silenced your own whimperings over the injustices of fate. You felt the invincible dignity of suffering silently borne.

Gradually a sort of unspoken understanding established itself between us. I took her situation for granted as if it were quite the natural thing, and it seemed to me she slowly began to lean back somewhat upon my friendliness. I may have fancied this, for there was not the slightest commitment of herself even to me. The troubled waters that shallower and less stable natures know, could never reach her. She had set sail upon that sea of calms into whose unplumbed depths the wreckage of past storms had long sunk from sight. She accepted such offerings as I ventured to make from time to time, with no undue expression of gratitude, but with becoming acknowledgment. A couple of supernumerary chairs a bed-couch that had retired from public view to the cellar (what a loss to the romance of modern literature the attic is!) and some odds and ends from the culinary department were, I remember, among the articles that changed hands in this way, more a relief to myself I suspect, than an acquisition to her.

The affair of the couch brought me the unexpected pleasure of coming face to face with Mr. Montrose. I looked him over with considerable interest. He was short and stocky after the manner of a certain type of Englishman and there proceeded from him the rankest smell of tobacco it was ever my lot to inhale. He wore a shabby great-coat and a stolid expression which from time to time relaxed into something that was to him evidently the equivalent of facetiousness. In fact it was borne in upon me before the episode of the couch (which he unwisely undertook to get out through the cellar window) was closed, that humor was Mr. Montrose's adopted rôle in life. He had the typical Englishman's belief in himself as the unassailable, authorized standard, made all the more invincible by his determination to take you light-heartedly in a jocular manner however obstructive your eccentricities might be.

He was a well-authenticated specimen of the upper class old-country ne'er-do-well, which before the War we had reason to feel England was producing and Canada importing on too large a scale.

We were used to them in every shade of (Aryan) complexion from ashy gray to molten red, and in every degree of shabbiness. One knew them from afar by their caps, for the Englishman though he produces both the name and the article, never wears a Derby. He leaps direct from cap to stove-pipe, if he leaps at all. This, of course, with other of his vagaries, may be of climatic origin. It never does to judge a people without living at least six months under their native skies. One may do them unwitting injustice.