The House of All Sorts

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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 old lady was very distressed indeed.

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

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

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

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.

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."

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

Mrs. Pendergast gasped. I bounced away.

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.

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."

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

"You--a parson--you did that? You cruel beast! To do such a filthy thing!"

"Why should she not?"

"Why did you not call to me?"

"What is the matter?" I said. She looked dreadful.

"This is my daughter...You have not met, I think."

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

"Our daughter--is going to be married."

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

"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."

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

"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 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."

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

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

"And he let you do it?"

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.