38 And so farewell
There was a nasty jolt in store for me one morning when I arrived at the shop. Business was slack, and Mr Clemetson had been notified to cut down the staff. Naturally, since I was the youngest employee, I should be the victim. But Mr Clemetson understood how desperately I needed the job. It was all we had to live on the most of that year. He had made a tentative arrangement with the chief. In former years huge orders of ‘flies’ had been sent to a small jobber, who turned them out at low cost. If I could make these things as cheaply, turn out a sufficient number to justify my salary, I could stay on. The job would tide me over into the busy season.
Heavens, what a day that was! In this day of motorcars, the honourable ‘fly’ is long forgotten. It was a net of coarse twine that covered the horse from head to tail. It had to be seamed down the middle, hemmed all round, leather clasps attached at strategic places, eyeholes sewn and taped. To earn my seven dollars I should have to make at least twenty in the day. The machine was second nature by now, but the material was tricky, killing to the hands.
I went at the stuff in a sort of angry despair, timing each fly, racing the horrid clock. At five I had finished sixteen, but was in such a state of jitters I felt myself getting sick. Not figuratively speaking. A few moments recess, a dash of water in my face, and, more peaceable within, back I run to produce two more flies before six o’clock.
By the end of the week I had struck a stride of twenty-eight flies a day; my job was safe, and I had the pleasure of knowing that no other female had covered so many horses in a single day. I even had the thrill of finding an extra dollar in my pay envelope. Such are the rewards of virtue!
Time literally whirled by after that, with nothing untoward to fix my attention. Then, without much warning, Bertha came down with a severe bronchial attack. For a day or two we thought nothing of it; she was never strong, and the weather had produced no end of colds, sinus, and other ills.
One morning Margot came to work late, visibly distressed. Bertha was very ill, and she wanted to see me. After work I hurried to the house to see my dear friend for the last time. Patient and sweet, though every breath was torture; groping for my hands, she smiled at me:
‘Don’t grieve for me, dear,’ she said. ‘I’ve been tired for so long—so very long. We will meet again—in some happier place …’
A plain, soft-spoken girl, doing her colourless duty without complaint or criticism, and slipping away for ever, gently, as the seasons glide into the great years. The old machine stood silent for a few days, and none of us dared look at it openly. It was so strange not to see her there, a little bent and ungainly, her red hair tumbled over a fine, white brow; never to catch that quiet smile, so intimate and kindly. Tents must go on: the machine raced once more under another hand. Minnie Nelson joined our small ranks, and quickened the rhythm of existence with her merriment and mischief.
In the late spring papa wrote to us from Winnipeg that he had a permanent job with my uncle, and had taken a small house. In a few days the packing was done, the precious cow sold, and mother and the two children had taken their departure. I elected to stay behind, and moved in with the Careys.
Hope and a hundred dazzling plans flared high in my head. I should get myself some clothes, and then save enough money to tide me through the Normal Course. It seemed such a simple business now that I had only my board to worry about. For a time, everything went on gaily. Mother Carey selected sensible material, and made me two dresses and a very perky blouse. I bought a woollen suit, shoes, and a hat.
By this time it was midsummer. I had a fourteen-block climb up the steepest of hills every night, after an eight-hour tussle with the heavy tents, and the long race with time and the flies all winter had not done me much good. One fine night, after dragging up the hill without much enthusiasm, I suddenly keeled over. Mother Carey trotted me to the doctor, who promptly told me I was slated for the heavenly realm if I did not behave. I was anaemic, suffering nervous depletion, etc. etc.—in fact, a general mess. In plain words, I needed a complete rest, and what was more, I’d get it one way or another, no matter what I did about it!
The only thing I could do about it was to go on working until I had enough money to pay my fare to Winnipeg. Which took longer than I expected, thanks to a ruptured blood-vessel, and the patching process. However, I was accustomed to physical tantrums. The only thing that upset me to any extent was the explosion of so many fine hopes. Something else caused me deeper pain, however.
I had seen little of Laura for a long time. Now I unearthed the fact that she was ill in the hospital, about to undergo a critical operation. Nothing that had happened to me hurt so much as the hour I spent with her in the little white hospital ward. She seemed to be all eyes, as though every ounce of vital energy had centred in their wide, grey depths—eyes, and a poignant smile that wrung the heart.
Her voice was a thread of sound that had in it an earnest of will, like the notes of a little bird singing out a captive heart. What happened to her did not matter, she said. She had managed to accomplish something, after all.
Last spring, she had taken out a life insurance in behalf of her little sister. Alma would have a chance. Alma would have a thousand dollars for her education! To manage it, she had—well—taken a leaf from the blonde virgin who managed sirloins on three-fifty a week. But God would understand!
Strange, how the heart can weep and the eyes record indifferent images. Stepping out of the hospital, with its medicated chill and deceptive serenity, the loveliness of the day shocked me into a kind of nerveless subjection, as though some terrible power were forcing upon me some ritual service. A beautiful day: one of those rare, still days, that quiver with deep, integral grace; earth and air and wide blue water conjoined in peace; even the noises of the street had a muted quality that scarcely ruffled the quiet. The sun, heavy with its freight of gold, hung in a smooth canvas of misty coral, veined with violet. The lake was an inverted sky, with one dark ship in its bosom.
Strange, to see these things so clearly through a prism of tears; to see them with the occult vision of the mind, as one sees in sleep the essence of beauty framing a dear, loved face.
