Cold Sweat

His hand trembled–so did his voice.

“You will leave the door of your flat unlocked tonight? So that I could reach the ‘phone?”

“Certainly.”

He went to the door, stood there, clinging to the knob as if he must hold on to something.

“Beautiful night,” he said and all the while he was turning up his coat collar because of the storming rain outside. He went into the night. I closed the door; the knob was wet with the sweat of his hand.

Bump, bump, bump, and a curse. I ran out and looked over the rail. He was rubbing his shins.

“That pesky cat–I trod on her–” he cursed again. He loved that cat. I heard him for half an hour calling among the wet bushes. “Puss, Puss, poor Puss.” Maybe that mother cat knew his mind needed to be kept busy and was hiding.

I was just turning in when he came again.

“She’s all right.”

“You have had word? I am so glad–“

“The cat, I mean,” he said, glowering at me. “She was not hurt when I trod on her–shan’t sleep tonight–not one wink, but if I should not hear your ‘phone–would you call me?–leave your window open so I shall hear the ring?”

“All right, I’ll call you; I am sure to hear if you don’t.”

“Thanks, awfully.”

The telephone did not ring. In the morning he looked worse.

He came up and sat by the ‘phone, scowling at the instrument as if it were to blame. At last he found courage to ring the hospital. After a terse sentence or two he slammed the receiver down and sat staring.

“That your porridge burning?”

“Yes!” He rushed down the stair, and returned immediately with the black, smoking pot in his hand.

“If it were not Sunday I’d go to the office–hang! I’ll go anyhow.”

“Better stay near the ‘phone. Why not a hot bath?”

“Splendid idea. But–the ‘phone?”

“I’ll be here.”

No sooner was he in the tub than the message came.

“You are wanted on the ‘phone.” I shouted through two doors.

“Take it.” He sounded as if he were drowning.

I was down again in a moment. “A boy–both doing well.” Dead stillness.

By and by I went down. He was skimming the cream off the milk jug into the cat’s dish. The hair stuck damp on his forehead, his cheeks were wet.

“Thank God I was in the tub! I could not have stood it–I should never have thought of asking how she–they –were.” Realization of the plural clicked a switch that lit up his whole being. 

 A Tyrant and a Wedding

SHE CAME from the prairie, a vast woman with a rolling gait, too much fat, too little wind, only one eye.

She stood at the bottom of the long stair and bribed a child to tell me she was there. Her husband sat on the verandah rail leaning forward on his stick, her great shapeless hand steadying him. This lean, peevish man had no more substance than a suit on a hanger. A clerical collar cut the mean face from the empty clothes.

The old lady’s free hand rolled towards the man. “This,” she said, “is the Reverend Daniel Pendergast. I am Mrs. Pendergast. We came about the flat.”

The usual rigmarole–rental–comfortable beds–hot water . . . They moved in immediately.

I despised the Reverend Pendergast more every day. His heart was mean as well as sick. He drove the old lady without mercy by night and by day. She did his bidding with patient, adoring gasps. He flung his stick angrily at every living thing, be it wife, beast or bird–everything angered him. Then he screamed for his wife to pick up his stick–retrieve it for him like a dog. She must share his insomnia too by reading to him most of the night; that made the tears pour out of the seeing and the unseeing eye all the next day. Her cheeks were always wet with eye-drips.

I was sorry for the old lady. I liked her and did all I could to help her in every way except in petting the parson. She piled all the comforts, all the tidbits, on him. When I took her flowers and fruit from my garden, it was he that always got them, though I said, most pointedly, “For you, Mrs. Pendergast,” and hissed the “S’s” as loud as I could. She would beg me, “Do come in and talk to ‘Parson’; he loves to see a fresh face.”

Sometimes, to please her, I sat just a few minutes by the sour creature.

One morning when I came down my stair she moaned through the crack of the door, “Come to me.”

“What is the matter?” I said. She looked dreadful.

“I fell into the coal-bin last night. I could not get up. My foot was wedged between the wall and the step.”

“Why did you not call to me?”

“I was afraid it would disturb the Parson. I got up after a while but the pain of getting up and down in the night to do for my husband was dreadful torture.”

“And he let you do it?”

“I did not tell him I was hurt. His milk must be heated–he must be read to when he does not sleep.”

“He is a selfish beast,” I said. She was too deaf, besides hurting too much, to hear me.

When I had helped to fix her broken knees and back, I stalked into the living-room where the Reverend Pendergast lay on a couch.

“Mrs. Pendergast has had a very bad fall. She can scarcely move for pain.”

“Clumsy woman! She is always falling down,” he said indifferently.

I can’t think why I did not hit him. I came out and banged the door after me loudly, hoping his heart would jump right out of his body. I knew he hated slams.

There was an outbreak of caterwaulings. The neighbourhood was much disturbed. The cats were strays-miserable wild kittens born when their owners went camping and never belonging to anyone.

The tenants put missiles on all window ledges to hurl during the night. In the morning I took a basket and gathered them up and took them to the tenants’ doors so that each could pick out his own shoes, hairbrushes, pokers and scent bottles. Parson Pendergast threw everything portable at the cats. The old lady was very much upset at his being so disturbed. At last, with care and great patience, I enticed the cats into my basement, caught them and had them mercifully destroyed.

When I told the Pendergasts, the Parson gave a cruel, horrible laugh. “I crushed a cat with a plank once–beat the life out of her, just for meowing in our kitchen–threw her into the bush for dead; a week later she crawled home–regular jelly of a cat.” He sniggered.

“You–a parson–you did that? You cruel beast! To do such a filthy thing!”

Mrs. Pendergast gasped. I bounced away.

I could not go near the monster after that. I used to help the old lady just the same, but I would not go near the Reverend Pendergast.

One day, I found her crying. “What is it?”

“Our daughter–is going to be married.”

“Why should she not?”

“He is not the kind of man the Parson wishes his daughter to marry. Besides they are going to be married by a J.P. They will not wait for father. There is not another parson in the vicinity.”

The old lady was very distressed indeed.

“Tell your daughter to come here to be married. I will put her up and help you out with things.”

The old lady was delighted. The tears stopped trickling out of her good eye and her bad eye too.

We got a wire off to the girl and then we began to bake and get the flat in order.

The Parson insisted it should be a church wedding–everything in the best ecclesiastical style, with the bishop officiating. The girl would be two days with her parents before the ceremony. She was to have my spare room. However, the young man came too, so she had the couch in her mother’s sitting room. They sent him upstairs without so much as asking if they might.

I was helping Mrs. Pendergast finish the washing-up when the young couple arrived. Mrs. Pendergast went to the door. She did not bring them out where I was, but, keeping her daughter in the other room, she called out some orders to me as if I had been her servant. I finished and went away; I began to see that the old lady was a snob. She did not think me the equal of her daughter because I was a landlady.

It was very late when the mother and daughter brought the young man upstairs to my flat to show him his room. They had to pass through my studio. From my bedroom up in the attic I could look right down into the studio. My door was ajar. There was enough light from the hall to show them the way, but the girl climbed on a chair and turned all the studio lights up full. The three then stood looking around at everything, ridiculed me, made fun of my pictures. They whispered, grimaced and pointed. They jeered, mimicked, playacted me. I saw my own silly self bouncing round my own studio in the person of the old lady I had tried to help. When they had giggled enough, they showed the young man his room and the women went away.

I was working in my garden next morning when the woman and the girl came down the path. I did not look up or stop digging.

“This is my daughter…You have not met, I think.”

I looked straight at them, and said, “I saw you when you were in my studio last night.”

The mother and daughter turned red and foolish looking; they began to talk hard.

The wedding was in the Cathedral; the old man gave his daughter away with great pomp. The other witness was a stupid man. I was paired with him. We went for a drive after the ceremony.

I had to go to the wedding breakfast because I had promised to help the old lady; I hated eating their food. The bride ordered me around and put on a great many airs.

The couple left for the boat. Mrs. Pendergast and I cleared up. We did not talk much as we worked. We were tired.

Soon the doctor said the Reverend Daniel Pendergast could go home to the prairies again because his heart was healed. I was glad when the cab rolled down the street carrying the cruel, emaciated Reverend and the one-eyed ingrate away from my house–I was glad I did not have to be their landlady any more.