1 Which Presents Jemima Ann
IT is a dreary prospect. All day long it has rained; as the short afternoon wears apace, it pours. Mrs. Hopkins’ niece, laying down the novel, over which for the past hour she has been absorbed, regards the weather through the grated kitchen window with a gentle melancholy upon her, begotten of its gloom, and returns despondently to her novel. A soft step stealing down the back stairs, a soft, deprecating voice, breaks in upon the narrative and her solitude.
“If you please, Miss Jim?”
“Oh!” says Jemima Ann, “is that you? Come in, Mr. Doolittle. Dreadful nasty evening, now, ain’t it?”
“Well, it ain’t nice,” says Mr. Doolittle, apologetically; “and I guess I won’t muss your clean floor by coming in. What I’ve looked in for, Miss Jim, is a pair o’ rubbers. Mrs. Hopkins she don’t like gum shoes left clutterin’ about the bedrooms, so she says, and totes ’em all down here. Number nines, Miss Jemima, and with a hole in one of the heels. Thanky; them’s them.”
Jemima Ann produces the rubbers, and Mr. Doolittle meekly departs. He is a soft-spoken little man, with weak eyes, a bald spot, a henpecked and depressed manner. Jemima Ann wishes all the boarders were like him—thankful for small mercies, and never finding fault with the victuals, or swearing at her down the back stairs. The boarders do swear at Jemima Ann sometimes, curses both loud and deep, and hurl boots, and brushes, and maledictions down the area, when, absorbed in the aesthetic woes of her heroine, she forgets the gross material needs of these sinful young men. But long habit, seven years of boarding-house drudgery, has inured her to all this; and imprecations and bootjacks alike rain unheeded on her frowzy head. A sensible head, too, in the main, and with an ugly, good-humored face looking out of it, and at boarding-house life in general, through two round, bright black eyes.
It is a rainy evening in early October, the dismal twilight of a wet and dismal day. Mrs. Hopkins’ basement kitchen is lit by four greenish panes of mud bespattered glass, six inches higher than the pavement. Through these six inches of green crystal Jemima Ann sees all she ever sees of the outdoor world on its winding way. Hundreds of ankles, male and female, thick and thin, clean and dirty, according to the state of the atmosphere, pass these four squares of dull light every day, and all day long, far into the night, too; for Mrs. Hopkins’ boarding-house is in a popular street, handy for the workingmen—artisans in iron, mostly, who frequent it. A great foundry is near, where stoves and ranges, and heaters and grates are manufactured, with noise and grime, and clanking of great hammers, and clouds of blackest coal-smoke, until that way madness lies; and the “hands ” emerge in scores, black as demons, and home to wash and dine at Mrs. Hopkins’ boarding house. Limitless is the demand for water, great and mighty the cry for yellow soap, of these horny-handed Vulcans, who, like lobsters, go into these steaming caldrons very black and come out very red. For seven long years Jemima Ann has waited on these children of the forge, and been anathematized in the strongest vernacular for slowness and “muddle-headedness,” and got dinners and teas, and washed dishes, and swept bed rooms, and made beds, and went errands, and read novels and story-papers, and watched the never-ending stream of boot-heels passing and repassing the dingy panes of glass, and waxed, from a country lass of seventeen, to a strong-armed, sallow-faced young woman of twenty-four; and all the romance of life that ever came near her, to brighten the dull drab of every day, was contained in the “awful” nice stories devoured in every spare moment, left her in the busy caravans of her aunt Samantha Hopkins.
The rain patters against the glass; the twilight deepens. Jemima Ann has to strain her eyes to catch the last entrancing sentences of chapter five. The ankles that scurry past are muddy, the skirts bedraggled. Jemima Ann wishes they were fewer; they come between her and the last bleak rays of light. A melancholy autumnal wind rises, and blows some whirling dead leaves down the area; the gutter just outside swells to a miniature torrent, and has quite the romantic roar of a small river. Jemima Ann pensively thinks. Even she can read no more. She lays down her tattered book with a deep sigh of regret, props her elbows on her knees, sinks her chin in her palms, and gazes sentimentally upward at the greenish casement. It is nearly time to go and light the gas in the front hall and dining-room, she opines. The men will be here directly, all shouting out together for warm water and more soap, and another towel, and—be dashed to you! Then there is cold corned-beef to be cut up for supper, and bread cut in great slices from four huge home-made loaves, and the stewed apples to be got out, and the tea put to draw, and after that to be poured, and after that, and far into the weary watches of the night, dishes to be washed, and the table reset for to-morrow’s breakfast.
Jemima Ann sighs again, and this time it is not for the patrician sorrows of the lovely Duchess Isoline. In a general way she has not much time for melancholy musings. The life of Mrs. Hopkins’ “help” does not hold many gaps for reflection. It is a breathless, dizzying round and rush—one long “demnition grind,” from week’s end to week’s end. And perhaps it is best it should be so, else even Jemima Ann, patient, plodding, strong of arm, stout of heart, sweet of temper, willing of mind, might go slowly melancholy mad.
“It would be awful pleasant to be like they are in stories,” muses Jemima Ann, still blinking upward at the gray squares of blurred light, “and have azure eyes, and golden tresses, and wear white Swiss and sweeping silks all the year round, and have lovely guardsmen and dukes and things, to gaze at a person passionately, and lift a person’s hand to their lips.” Jemima Ann lifts one of her own, a red right hand, at this point, and surveys it. It is not particularly clean; it has no nails to speak of; it is nearly as large, and altogether as hard, as that of any of the foundry “hands;” and she sighs a third sigh, deepest and dolefullest of all. There are hands and hands; the impossibility of any mortal man, in his senses, ever wanting to lift this hand to his lips, comes well home to her in this hour. The favorite “gulf ” of her novels lies between her and such airy, fairy beings as the Duchess Isoline. And yet Jemima Ann fairly revels in the British aristocracy. Nothing less than a baronet can content her. No heroine under the rank of “my lady” can greatly interest her. Pictures of ordinary every-day life, of ordinary every-day people, pall upon the highly-seasoned palate of Jemima Ann. Her own life is so utterly unlovely, so grinding in its sordid ugliness, that she will have no reflection of it in her favorite literature. Dickens fails to interest her. His men and women talk and act, and are but as shadowy reflections of those she meets every day.
“Nothing Dickens ever wrote,” says Jemima Ann, with conviction, “is to be named in the same day with the ‘Doom of the Duchess,’ or ‘ The Belle of Belgravia. ‘
“The darkness deepens, the rain falls, the wind of the autumn night sighs outside. Through the gusty gloaming a shrieking whistle suddenly pierces, and Jemima Ann springs to her feet, as if shot. The six o’clock whistle! The moments for dreaming are at an end. Life, at its ugliest, grimiest, most practical, is here. The men will be home for supper in five minutes.
“Jim! ” cries a breathless voice. It is a woman’s voice, sharp, thin, eager. There is a swish of woman’s petticoats down the dark stairs, a bounce into the kitchen, then an angry exclamation: “You Jim! are you here? What are you foolin’ at now, and it blind man’s holiday all over the house! ”
“I’m a lightin’ up, Aunt Samanthy,” responds Jemima Ann, placidly; “you know you don’t like the gas aflarin’ a minute before it’s wanted, and the whistle’s only just blowed.”
“I’m blowed myself,” says Aunt Samantha—not meaning to be funny, merely stating a fact; “and clean out o’breath. I’ve run every step of the way here from—Jemimy Ann, what d’ye think? They want me to take in a woman!”
”Do they?” says Jemima Ann. The gas is lit by this time, and flares out over the untidy kitchen and the two women. “I wouldn’t, if I was you. Who is she?”
“Rogers has her,” says Mrs. Hopkins, vaguely. “She’s with the rest at the hotel; but there ain’t no room for her there. Rogers is full himself, and he wants me to take her; says she ain’t no bother; says she ain’t that sort; says she’s a lady. That’s what he says; but don’t tell me! Drat sich ladies! She’s one of that circus lot.”
“Oh!” says Jemima Ann, in a tone of suppress ed rapture; “a circus actress ! Lor! you don’t say so!”
“And she’s got a little girl,” goes on Mrs. Hopkins, in an irritated tone, as if that were the last straw, and rubbing her nose in a vexed way, ” she’ s a Miss Mimi—Something, and she’s got a little girl! Think o’ that! Rogers says it’s all right. Rogers says all them sort does that way; marries and raises families, you know, and stays miss right along. This one’s a widow, he says. And he wants me to take her in; says he knows I ‘ve got a spare room, and would like to oblige a charming young lady and a dear little child—not to speak of an old neighbor like him. Yar! I ‘ll see ‘e m all furder first—the whole bilin!”
“Oh, Aunt Samanthy, do let her come!” says Jemima Ann. “I should love to know a circus lady. Next to a duchess, an actress or a nun is the most romantic people in any story. ”
“No, I sha’n’t,” Mrs. Hopkins snappishly responds; “not if I know myself and my own sex when I see ’em. When first I start ed in the boardin’ line I took in females—ladies they called themselves, too, and table boarded ’em—dress makers, workin’ girls, and that—and I know all about it. One woman was more trouble in a day than six foundry hands in a week. Always a hot iron wanted please, and a little bilin’ water to rinse out a handkerchief or a pair of stockings in a basin, and cups o’ tea promiscuous, and finding fault continual with the strength of the butter and the weakness of the coffee. So I soon sent that lot packing, and made up my mind to sink or swim with the foundry hands. Give a man a latch-key, lots of soap and water, put his boots and hair oil where he can lay his hand on ’em, let him have beefsteak and onions, and plenty of ’em, for his breakfast, and though he may grumble about the victuals, he don’t’ go mussin’ with his linen at all sorts of improper hours .I won’ t have the circus woman, and that’s all about it.
“Did you tell Mr. Rogers so?” asks Jemima Ann, rather disappointed.
“Mr. Rogers is a yidyit; he wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘I’ll step round this evenin’, ‘ said the grinning old fool, ‘and bring the lady with me, Mrs. Hopkins. You won’t be able to say no to her—no one ever is. I know the supper and six-and-twenty foundry hands is lyin’ heavy on your mind at the present moment,’ says he, ‘and your nat’rel sweetness of disposition,’ he says, ‘is a trifle cruddled by ’em.’ Yas! I never see sich anold rattle-tongue. But he’ll see! Let him fetch his—Lord’s sake, Jemima Ann! there’s them men, and not so much as a drop of tea put to dror! Run like mad, and light the gas! ”
Jemima Ann literally obeys. She flies up stairs like a whirlwind, sets a match to the hall gas, and has it blazing as the front door is flung wide, and the foundry hands, black, hungry, noisy, muddy, troop in, and upstairs, or out back to the general “wash’us.”
There is no more time for talking, for thinking, hardly for breathing—such a multiplicity of things are to be done, and all, it seems, to be done at once . Hot water, soap, towels—the tocsin of war rings loudly upstairs and down, and in their various chambers. Gas is lit, the long table set, knives rubbed, bread cut, meat sliced, chairs placed—all is confusion, Babel condensed.
Jemima Ann waits. Coarse jokes rain about her, a dozen voices call on her at once, demanding a dozen different things, and she is—somethinged—at intervals, for lacking as many hands as Briareus. But mostly it all falls harmless and half-unheard. She is regretting vaguely that lost circus lady. Since she may never be a duchess, nor even, in all human probability, a “my lady,” it strikes Mrs. Hopkins’ niece the next best thing would be to turn circus rider, or become a gipsy and tell fortunes. To wear a scarlet cloak, to wander about the “merry green wood,” to tell fortunes at fairs, to sleep under a cart or a hedge, in “the hotel of the beautiful stars”—this would be bliss. Not that scarlet is in the least becoming to her, and to sleep under a hedge—say, on a night like this—would not be quite unadulterated bliss—might even be conducive to premature rheumatism. But to go jumping along one’s life path through paper hoops, on flying Arab steeds, in gauze and spangles—oh! that would be a little ahead of perpetual tea pouring, bread-cutting, bed-making for six-and-twenty loud- voiced, rough-looking foundry men.
She has been to a circus just once, she remembers, and saw some lovely creatures, in very short petticoats, galloping round a sawdust ring in dizzying circles, on the bare backs of five Arab steeds at once, leaping over banners and through fiery hoops, and kissing finger-tips, and throwing radiant smiles to the audience.
Jemima Ann feels she could never reach such a pitch of perfection as that. Her legs (if these members may be thus lightly spoken of) are not of that sylph-like sort a sculptor would pine to immortalize in marble. She wears a wide number seven, and her instep has not the Andalusian arch, under which water may flow. In point of fact, Jemima is flat-footed. In no way does the symmetry of her body correspond with that of her mind. Still, it would have been something to have had this lady rider come. If not the rose herself, she would at least for a little have lived near that peerless flower; but the gods have spoken—or Aunt Samantha has, which is much the same—and it may never be.
Supper is over, the men hurry out, on pleasure and pipes bent, not to return until ten o’clock brings back the first straggler with virtuous thoughts of bed.
Mrs. Hopkins and her niece sit wearily down amid the ruins of the feast , and brew them selves a fresh jorum of tea. A plate of hot, buttered toast is made, some ham is cooked, “which,” says Mrs. Hopkins, “a bit of br’iled ham is a tasty thing for tea, and, next to a pickled eyester, a relish I’m uncommon partial to, I do assure you.”
And both draw along breath of great relief as they take their first sip of the cup that cheers.
“I’m that dead beat, Jim ,” observes the lady of the house, “that I don’ t know whether I’m a sittin’ on my head or my heels, as true as you ‘re born !”
As Mrs. Hopkins in a general way sits on neither, this observation is difficult to answer lucidly, so Jemima Ann takes a thoughtful bite out of her toast, with her head plaintively on one side, and answers nothing.
Mrs. Hopkins is a tall, thin, worried-looking woman, with more of her bony construction visible than is consistent with personal beauty , and with more knowledge of her internal mechanism than is in any way comfortable, either for herself or Jemima Ann.
Mrs. Hopkins is on terms of ghastly familiarity with her own liver, and lungs, and spine, and stomach, and takes dismal views of these organs, and inflicts the dreadful diagnosis on her long-suffering niece.
“Aunt Hopkins,” says Jemima Ann, “I’m most awful sorry you didn’t take in that lady from Mr. Rogers’. I should love to a knowed her.”
“Ah! I dare say, so’s you could spend your time gaddin’ up to her room, and losin’ your morals, and ruinin’ your shoes. No, you don’t. She’d worrit my very life out, not to speak of my legs and temper, in two days. And a child, too—a play-act in’ child! What would we do with a child in this house, I want to know, among twenty-six foundry hands, and not time in it to say ‘Jack Robinson’—no, nor room either?”
Jemima Ann opens her lips to admit the point of her knife, laden with crumb and gravy, and to remark that she doesn’t want to say “Jack Robinson,” when the door-bell sharply and loudly rings.
“There!” cries Mrs. Hopkins, exasperated. “I knowed it! It’s her and him! Doose take the man, he sticks like a burr! Show ’em to the front room , Jim,” says her aunt , wrathfully, adjusting her back hair, “and tell ’em I’ll be there. But I ain’t agoin’ to stir neither,” adds Mrs . Hopkins to herself, resuming her toast, “until I’ve staid my stomach.
“Jemima Ann springs up breathless and radiant, and hastens to the door.
And so, like one of her cherished heroines , hastens, without knowing it, to her “fate.” For with the opening of the street door on this eventful evening of her most uneventful life, there opens for poor, hard-worked Jemima Ann the one romance of her existence, never quite to close again till that life’s end.
