Growing Pains (7 page)

“Dick, I don’t believe it, not all. If it was as wicked as she said the black would come up the chimneys and smudge the sky; wicked ones can shut their doors and windows but not their chimneys. There is direct communication always between the inside of the houses and the sky. There is no smudge on the sky above the chimneys. San Francisco’s sky is clear and high and blue. She even said, Dick, that she was not sure of that dirty old Art School of mine—it was in a squalid district and that I was never, never to go off the main thoroughfares. I was never to speak to anyone and I was never to answer if anyone spoke to me. All right, Dick, I’ll do that but all the rest I am going to forget!”

The most close-up ugliness I saw during my stay in San Francisco was right in the Lyndhurst, in Mrs. Piddington’s own private sitting-room.

IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE
. The Piddingtons had gone to the theatre and left me sitting there by their fire writing letters home. There was a big cake on the table beside me just come from home along with parcels that were not to be opened till Christmas morning.

A tap on the door. A friend of Frank Piddington’s was there with a great bunch of roses to Christmas Mrs. Piddington.

“She is not in,” I said.

“ ’Sno matter, I’ll wait.”

“They will be very late.”

“Thas-all-right.”

He pushed past me into the sitting-room, steadying himself by laying his hands one on either of my shoulders. He was very unsteady. I thought he was going to fall.

“Don’ feel s’good,” he said, and flung himself into an arm chair and the roses onto the table.

I went to get water for the flowers and when I came back he was already heavily asleep. His flushed face had rolled over and was pillowed on my home cake.

I stood looking in dismay. He must be very ill. He had seemed hardly able to walk at all. He had gone to sleep with a lighted cigar between his fingers, its live end was almost touching the upholstery of the chair. I dare not take it from his hand, I dare not go to my room and leave it burning. The evening was early. I sat and watched and watched. The cigar smouldered to its very end. The ash did not fall but kept its shape. Would the cigar burn him when it reached his skin and wake him? No, just before it reached the end it went out.

CREAK, SLAM! CREAK, SLAM!
went the heavy old door of the Lyndhurst, surely it must have swallowed all its inmates by now; but the Piddingtons did not come. I could not go now because Mrs. Piddington enjoyed fainting at shocks. If she came in after midnight and saw a man asleep in her sitting-room she was sure to faint. Half after midnight I heard her hand on the door knob and sprang!

“Don’t be frightened, he’s asleep and very ill!”

“Who’s asleep? Who’s ill?”

“Mr. Piddington’s friend.”

Mrs. Piddington circled the sleeping man sniffng.

“Frank, take that drunk home!”

Frank burst into guffaws of coarse laughter.

“Our innocent!—entertaining drunks after midnight on Christmas Eve! Ha, ha!”

MRS. PIDDINGTON TWIDDLED
the envelope. Her eyes upon my face warned me, “Don’t forget I am your boss!”

“You are to call on the Roarats at once,” she said, and shook my sister’s letter in my face.

“I don’t intend to call upon the Roarats, I hate them.”

“Your hating is neither here nor there. They were old friends of your parents in the days of the California gold rush. Your sister insists.”

“And if I won’t go?”

“In place of your monthly check you will receive a boat ticket for home. You have the Roarats’ address? Very well, next Saturday afternoon, then.”

Mrs. Piddington approved the Roarats’ address.

“Um, moneyed district.”

“They are disgustingly rich, miserably horrible!”

THE FOLLOWING PERFECTLY
good Saturday afternoon I wasted on the Roarats. The household consisted of Mr., Mrs., Aunt Rodgers, a slatternly Irish servant and an ill-tempered parrot called Laura.

Mr. Roarat was an evil old man with a hateful leer, a bad temper, and cancer of the tongue. Mrs. Roarat was diminutive in every way but she had thickened up and coarsened from long association with Mr. Roarat. She loathed him but stuck to him with a syrupy stick because of his money. Aunt Rodgers had the shapeless up-and-downness of a sere cob of corn, old and still in its sheath of wrinkled yellow, parched right through and extremely disagreeable. Ellen the Irish maid had a violent temper and a fearful tongue. No other family than one specializing in bad temper would have put up with her. The parrot was spiteful and bit to the bone. Her eyes contracted and dilated as she reeled off great oaths taught her by Mr. Roarat. Then with a slithering movement she sidled along her perch, calling, “Honey, honey” in the hypocritical softness of Mrs. Roarat’s voice.

The Roarats said they were glad to see me. It was not me they welcomed, anything was a diversion. When I left I was disgusted to discover that I had committed myself to further visits and had, besides, accepted an invitation to eat Thanksgiving dinner at their house.

THE TURKEY WAS
overcooked for Mr. Roarat’s taste, the cranberry too tart for Mrs. Roarat’s. Aunt Rodgers found everything wrong. Ellen’s temper and that of the parrot were at their worst.

Laura, the parrot, had a special dinner-table perch. She sat beside Mr. Roarat and ate disgustingly. If the parrot’s plate was not changed with the others she flapped, screamed and hurled it on the floor. Throughout the meal everyone snarled disagreeable comments. Aunt Rodgers’ acidity furred one’s teeth. The old man swore, and Mrs. Roarat syruped and called us all “honey.”

“Pop goes the weasel!” yelled Laura, squawking, flapping and sending her plate spinning across the floor.

“There, there, Laura, honey!” soothed Mrs. Roarat and rang for Ellen who came in heavy-footed and scowling with brush and dustpan. When she stooped to gather up the food and broken plate Laura bit her ear. Ellen smacked back, there was a few moments’ pandemonium, Mr. R., Aunt R., Ellen and Laura all cursing in quartette. Then Mrs. Roarat lifted Laura, perch and all, and we followed into the parlour. For my entertainment a great basket of snapshots was produced. The snaps were all of Mrs. Roarat’s relatives.

“Why do they always pose doing silly things?” I asked.

“You see, honey, this household being what it is, my folks naturally want to cheer me.”

Aunt Rodgers gave a snort, Mr. Roarat a malevolent belch. The parrot in a sweet, tender voice (Mrs. Roarat’s syrupiest) sang, “Glory be to God on high!”

“Yes, Laura, honey,” quavered Mrs. Roarat, and to her husband, “Time you and Laura were in bed.”

Mr. Roarat would not budge, he sat glowering and belching. Aunt Rodgers put the parrot in her cage and covered it with a cloth but Laura snatched the cloth off and shrieked fearfully. Aunt Rodgers beat the cage with a volume of poems by Frances Ridley Havergal. It broke a wire of the cage and the book did not silence the bird who screamed and tore till her cover was in shreds.

Mrs. Roarat came back to her relatives in the snapshot basket for comfort.

“Here is a really funny one,” she said, selecting a snap of a bearded man in a baby’s bonnet kissing a doll.

Mr. Roarat was now sagging with sleep and permitted his wife and Aunt Rodgers to boost one on either side till they got him
upstairs. It took a long time. During one of their halts Ellen came from the back in a terrible feathered hat.

“Goin’ out,” she announced and flung the front door wide. In rushed a great slice of thick fog. Mrs. Roarat looked back and called to me, “It’s dense out, honey, you will have to stay the night.” I drew back the window curtain; fog thick as cotton wool pressed against the window.

The Roarats had a spare room. Mr. and Mrs. Piddington would get home very late and would suppose I was up in my bed. Mrs. Roarat’s “honey” and Aunt Rodgers’ vinegar had so neutralized me that I did not care what I did if I could only get away from that basket of snapshots.

The door of the spare room yawned black. We passed it and out rushed new paint smells. “Redecorating,” said Mrs. Roarat. “You will sleep with Aunt Rodgers!”

“Oh!”

“It’s all right, honey, Aunt Rodgers won’t mind much.”

Aunt Rodgers’ room had no air space, it was all furniture. She rushed ahead to turn on the light.

“Look out!” she just saved me a plunge into a large bath tub of water set in the middle of the floor.

“Fleas—San Francisco’s sand this time of year! Each night I shake everything over water, especially if I have been out on the street.”

Immediately she began to take off and to flutter every garment over the tub. When she was down to her “next-the-skins,” I hurried a gasping, “Please, what do I sleep in?”

Too late, the “skin-nexts” had dropped!

Aunt Rodgers said, “Of course child!” and quite unembarrassed but holding a stocking in front of her she crossed the room and took the hottest gown I ever slept in out of a drawer. I jumped it
over my head intending to stay under it till Aunt Rodgers was all shaken and reclothed. I stewed like a teapot under its cosy. At last I
had
to poke my head out of the neck to breathe; then I dived my face down into the counterpane to say my prayers.

After a long time the bed creaked so I got up. On Aunt Rodgers’ pillow was a pink shininess, on the bed post hung a cluster of brown frizz, there was a lipless grin drowning in a glass of water. Without spectacles Aunt Rodgers’ eyes looked like half-cooked gooseberries. Her two cheeks sank down into her throat like a couple of heavy muffins. A Laura’s claw reached for the light pull. I kept as far to my own side of the bed as possible.

Dark—Aunt Rodgers’ sleeping out loud! It had never occurred to me that I
could
ever be homesick for my tiny room on top of the old Lyndhurst but I was.

IN GEARY STREET SQUARE
, close to the Lyndhurst, was a Church of England with so high a ritual that our Evangelical Bishop would have called it Popish.

On Easter morning I went into the Geary Street Square. The church bell was calling and I entered the church and sat down in a middle pew. The congregation poured in. Soon the body of the church was a solid pack of new Easter hats. From the roof the congregation must have looked like an enormous bouquet spread upon the floor of the church. But the decoration of the ladies’ heads was nothing compared to the decoration of the church, for her flowers were real, banks of Arum and St. Joseph’s lilies, flowers of every colour, smell and texture. Every corner of the church was piled with blossoms, such as we would have had to coax in greenhouses in Canada; but here, in California, there was no cold to frighten flowers, nothing had to be persuaded to grow. Stained-glass windows dyed some of the white flowers vivid. White flowers in shadowy corners glowed whiter because of the shine of lighted candles. Incense and flower-perfume mixed and strayed up to the roof. Hush melted and tendered everything.
The hush and holiness were so strong that they made you terribly happy. You wanted to cry or sing or something.

Suddenly high up under the roof, where incense and the fragrance of flowers had met, sounded a loveliness that caught your breath. For a moment you thought a bird had stolen into the church, then you found there were words as well as sound.

“Jesus Christ is risen today, Hallelujah!”

Quickly following the words, a violin exquisitely wailed the same thought, and, bursting hurriedly as if they could hardly wait for the voice and the violin to finish, the booming organ and the choir shouted, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

It was a tremendous gladness to be shut up in a building; it was the gladness of all outdoors.

Either the church or I was trembling. The person on either side of me quivered too, even the artificial hat-flowers shook.

A clergyman climbed up into the pulpit and lifted arms puffy in Bishop’s sleeves.

The church hushed to even greater stillness, a stillness like that of the live flowers which, like us, seemed to be waiting for the Bishop’s words.

I HAD ADVANCED FROM
the drawing of casts and was now painting “still life” under the ogling eye of the French Professor. I was afraid of him, not of his harsh criticisms but of his ogle-eyes, jet black pupils rolling in huge whites, like shoe buttons touring round soup-plates.

He said to me, “You have good colour-sense. Let me see your eyes, their colour.”

The way he ogled down into my eyes made me squirm; nor did it seem to me necessary that he should require to look so often into my “colour-sense.”

He was powerful and enormous, one dare not refuse. His criticism most often was, “scrape, repaint.”

Three times that morning he had stood behind my easel and roared, “Scrape!” When he came the fourth time and said it again, my face went red.

“I have, and I have, and I have!” I shouted.

“Then scrape again!”

I dashed my palette knife down the canvas and wiped the grey ooze on my paint rag.

In great gobbing paint splashes I hurled the study of tawny ragged chrysanthemums onto the canvas again. Why must he stand at my elbow watching—grinning?

The moment he was gone I slammed shut my paintbox, gathered up my dirty brushes, rushed from the room.

“Finished?” asked my neighbour.

“Finished with scraping for that old beast.” She saw my angry tears.

The Professor came back and found my place empty. “Where is the little Canadian?”

“Gone home mad!”

“Poor youngster, too bad, too bad! But look there!” He pointed to my study—“Capital! Spirit! Colour! It has to be tormented out of the girl, though. Make her mad, and she can paint.”

The hard-faced woman student, the one who ordered birds for her still-life studies to be smothered so that blood should not soil their plumage, the student we called “Wooden-heart,” spoke from her easel in the corner.

“Professor, you are very hard on that young Canadian girl!”

“Hard?” The Professor shrugged, spread his palms. “Art—the girl has ‘makings.’ It takes red-hot fury to dig ’em up. If I’m harsh it’s for her own good. More often than not worth while things hurt. Art’s worth while.”