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The Pink Shawl:
Marjorie Bowen:
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Language: English
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The Pink Shawl
by
Marjorie Bowen
ILLUSTRATED BY R.M. BRINKERHOFF
First published in Maclean's, 15 February 1925
This e-book edition: Project Gutenberg Australia, 2023
Maclean's, 15 February 1925, with "The Pink Shawl"
ROSE SMITH had never made any attempt to live up
to her Christian name; she had never been anything like a rose;
to hear her name and to see her was to suffer a dislocation of
ideas; after that, "rose" would mean something else to you
besides a flower.
The boundaries of her features were in as fluid a state as the
frontiers of central Europe; emotion, the weather, or even a cup
of hot tea, changed the whole map of her face, which appeared to
shrink in one part, swell in another, and be one moment a whitish
grey, and the next a bluish pink; indigestion, perhaps, or a
sensitive soul, but poignantly unbecoming.
But Rose in the backwash of a remote town and the backwash of
a remote faith, was not troubled by her plainness; there were a
great many texts hanging about her simple home and they all
inculcated a severe adherence to morals in preference to any
outward adornments; it was tacitly understood that the clear
complexions of the angels in the border of﹃Blessed are the pure
in heart﹄were due to the fair air of heaven and not to the most
modest dose of magnesia, and that the purity referred wholly to
the heart and not to any other organ whatever—also﹃Cleanse
your hearts and not your garments﹄meant just what it said, and
under garments you might include a lot of things from wallpapers
and carpets to window panes and saucepans; of course you had the
laundry van calling, not that you were afraid your neighbors
might think your cleanliness in question, but that you were
afraid they might think you did your own "washing"—washing
it was, not laundry, when you did it yourself.
For the same reason the steps received a daily mask of
hearthstone, furtively, in the early morning that was Biblical
too. Rose often thought of "whitened sepulchres."
Rose's greatest mental adventure was the occasional
examination of a row of rather battered novels, left precariously
perched on a shelf, by a delinquent lodger. Once she found there
a pretentious cookery book, with lots of pictures of engaging
pies and cakes, which made her wonder—.
Once Rose found on a lodger's shelf a rather pretentious
book, with lots of engaging pictures of pies and cakes.
*
MRS. SMITH and Rose lived with, by, for, on, the lodgers, and
as they were not above two miles from the sea, close to the
shops, chapels and the cinema, they received in the summer, not
the summer weather, the summer months, numbers of "guests" who
came from similar houses, steps, texts, aspidistras, streets,
shops and cinemas for a complete "change."
They had one lodger who, like the wreath on Father's
sepulchre, was permanent.
And not only permanent but opulent; he was the manager of a
store of more than local celebrity that had lately opened a
branch near Malvernia Terrace.
In the pall of fishy, greasy odor that rose from those secret
regions below and gently settled on the whatnots, photos, bamboo
and imitation leather furniture Mr. Minxton found an atmosphere
of home, and often said so, gratefully; his refined features
which looked as if they had once been melted and only rescued
before they "ran" out of all semblance to humanity, his neat
clothes, and his unfaltering courtesy, which branded him as
firmly as the name of the maker branded on the biscuits he
handled so deftly, made Mrs. Smith and Rose decided he was "quite
the gentleman."
He did not disdain sometimes to descend to the inner mysteries
and contemplate with a calm eye the aftermath of his last meal or
the chaotic pie preparation for his next; custom had blunted his
natural instincts; unflinchingly he praised the curious messes
over which Mrs. Smith labored with a rather bitter pride, and
earnestly he talked to Rose on a subject that he, at least found
completely engrossing, himself.
He, too, went to the chapel and the elegance of his appearance
and the brightness of his smile radiated the sodden melancholy of
the provincial Sunday for Rose.
*
ONE day, Rose, walking back beside Mr. Minxton through the
liverish looking streets from the stuffiness of the chapel to the
stuffiness of her home, confided to her cavalier her Life
Tragedy.
She had once been engaged; she could hardly believe it
herself, she added frankly, but it had been during the war.
"That accounts," said Mr. Minxton, soothingly.
Rose blushed beneath her faded pimples.
"He was billeted on us—seventeen and sixpence a week and
expecting three meat meals a day, wanting the best of everything
and getting it too, whether we was out of pocket or not."
"Ah, I know the sort, too good to him, you were, of course,"
said Mr. Minxton vaguely.
"Well, I don't know. I wouldn't say he hadn't got a way with
him, didn't half make himself comfortable though. Mother couldn't
do enough for him, doing his bit, as they used to say; you know
the fuss there was."
Rose sighed.
"He was a milkman in real life, somewhere in London. Well, he
made up to me, took us both to the movies one night and a fish
supper afterwards. I don't know half he said, me teeth were that
bad and I'd got cotton wool in me left ear, the side he sat, and
what with that and his cracking of nuts and Mother nudging me to
take notice how badly them bits of girls was behaving with the
other soldiers in front, I didn't catch it all proper, but Mother
said, coming home, 'take it from me you're engaged, Rose,' and we
bought a bottle of whisky and sat in the firelight, and he said
he liked them plain and good with a bit at the bank, and I was
never a looker and I had the bit all right, then."
"Where has it gone? The bit?" asked Mr. Minxton with a sudden
keen interest. "Did he borrow it?"
"I don't know about borrowed," replied Rose drearily. "He had
it—"
"But you've had time since to get some more together."
"Time, but not the heart," said Rose. "You see, he went away
next day and broke it off, the engagement, on a postcard written
in the train. No stamp and twopence to pay."
Mr. Minxton looked at her as if he was considering something
and Rose thought she saw a gleam of tenderness in those boot
button eyes.
"Of course it was a lucky escape," she said.﹃I don't know
where I'd be now if I'd married him—I don't know where I am
now,﹄she added despondently. "It's a poor sort of life, come to
look at it."
Mr. Minxton pressed her arm.
"Now, don't you get downhearted; what you've got is that
Sunday feeling, nothing to do but employ your mind, worrying
what's no use worrying for. Now suppose we were to take a walk on
the front, just to stretch our shoes a bit? What you put on once
a week is hard on the corns, I always say; sitting in chapel
won't ease footleather."
A faint goldenness clothed Rose's mental outline; she pressed
coquettishly against Mr. Minxton so that they stumbled at the
crossing.
"I don't say I haven't something put by, and the house is
ours. Father built that row and the one next is ours too, a tidy
bit of rent—but what's the good? I don't get much fun out
of it."
"You don't want fun," said Mr. Minxton, sternly. "Worst thing
in the world—fun."
Glib self defence animated Rose.
"Of course I know that, Mr. Minxton; isn't likely I'd be
forgetting, with the bringing up I've had, and as for young
Ed—"
"I don't think," Mr. Minxton interrupted firmly, "you acted
right there—letting him have the money."
"I was took off me feet," apologized Rose. "You know—the
war—"
"I know, right enough, but I don't
approve—sensible woman like your mother."
"Mother wasn't herself—bothered, as you might say, and
Ed had such a way of putting things, talked of them
Germans—or the Huns—one of them lot landing and
taking it all—the money, I mean."
"Well," Mr. Minxton contrived some show of tenderness for
feminine folly, "I don't say there aren't excuses—"
"And he didn't have so much," said Rose eagerly, "not all, Mr.
Minxton. Mother stood out there, 'for who knows, Rose,' she used
to say, 'that there won't be Mr. Right popping along some
day.'"
And Rose, whose features seemed to have spread and become
vague under the action of the east wind nipping up from the sea,
giggled and snuggled coyly.
"Well, who knows," conceded Mr. Minxton. "I'm, mind you, not
saying that he won't—"
*
A DELICIOUS sensation of warmth crept round Rose's rather
chilled members; she felt a faint reflection of those emotions
that had intoxicated her as she had sat before the fire with the
soldier and the whisky, and the cocaine in her tooth and
ear—a kind of painful delirium.
Mr. Minxton remained calm; he surveyed, with a professional
glance, the belt of new shops on the front; shops so carelessly
refined that there were no shutters or blinds to hide the
"novelties" within.
"Well, we are getting chick," he remarked, and stopped before
the plate glass that enshrined "Poppe—modes et
robes."
There was nothing in this window but one shawl.
Pale pink silk with a huge rose in deeper shades of pink
embroidered in one corner and a fringe a foot deep.
This shawl broke on Rose as a sort of apotheosis of her daring
thoughts—marriage—new clothes—a bottom
drawer—Mr. Minxton—sitting hand in hand—in the
Pink Shawl.
"Just about your size," remarked Mr. Minxton. "Rose for
Rose—sweets to the sweet, as they say at the refreshment
stall."
Rose could have fainted with joy; was he going to buy her the
Shawl?
"It's my color to a turn," she confessed.
*
MR. MINXTON scattered a superior smile over her yielding mood,
then remarked that there was pork for dinner and if they didn't
want the crackling spoiled there was urgent need to hurry
home.
From that delicious moment the Pink Shawl consolidated the
misty chaotic dreams of Rose; it became to her what America was
to Columbus, unexpected, unlikely, but full of dazzling hope.
She told Mrs. Smith about it, in the same breath as she spoke
of Mr. Minxton's probable "intentions."
"Oh, Mother, I'm so happy!"
Mr. Minxton continued his attentions, but he did not buy the
shawl; Rose, with an impulse of exhilarated recklessness, went in
and priced it; a creature who seemed to belong to another sex
from Rose,—she was so polished, neat and suave—said,
"Only five guineas" with a wonderful indifference that both awed
and stimulated Rose.
"Why shouldn't I buy it for myself, Mother? We've got a bit
put by, and I must begin to get my things together, you know,
what them papers call the bottom drawer—"
"Well, if you were sure of Mr. Minxton," said Mrs. Smith,
tenderly, inspired by feminine frivolity but remembering Ed; but
Rose thought she was sure; Mr. Minxton's "attentions" were
unmistakable.
*
THE struggling watering place (they would call it that, which
made it sound like a cattle pool) moribund in the winter, and
hysterically alive in the summer, possessed a struggling
newspaper that Rose read carefully every Wednesday. Most
carefully the weddings; the editor was lavish about the weddings;
the most wonderful weddings; almost every week there was one, an
orgy of compliments, beauty, crepe de chine, lucky horse shoes,
white heather, wedding marches—and presents.
Father of Bride—Cheque.
Father of
Bridegroom—Another cheque.
Motherof Bride—Crochet
set.
Mother of Bridegroom—Silver handled umbrella.
Annie, Willie, Katie, Sally, Muriel, Gladys and Baby Bob—A
pen wiper.
Staff of Messrs. Robem—Rose bowl
(electro).
Grannie Mitchem and Grannie Dale—A wool
winder.
And so on; Rose could read for hours, up one column and down
another, and then back again.
She had it all planned out; the hymns, the march, the going
away dress, the bridesmaids (carrying bouquets of sweet peas and
wearing horse shoe brooches, the gift of the bridegroom),
Mother's grey gown and white kids. . .
And then she bought the Shawl.
Drew five pounds, five shillings from the Savings Bank and
bought the Shawl, which was still there wilting in a slightly
wilted shop which had proved slightly too modern for the
neighborhood.
*
ROSE'S emotion, till then in crescendo, had a climax; it was
when she brought the Shawl home and draped it round herself,
standing in the piled up, darkish kitchen; the pink silk slipped
gracefully from the tissue paper, and hung in luxurious folds
round her stumpy figure.
Mrs. Smith was awed; everything in the room looked dirty, old
and sad; Rose's face looked "funny," a "funny" colour; it was a
merciless pink, clear and hard, like nothing in nature, but
putting nature to shame.
It was then Mr. Minxton entered; they, in their excitement,
had forgotten his dinner; he came in, jovially, to remind them;
but at the sight of the Pink Shawl his humour changed.
"It don't suit you," he remarked, coldly.
Rose took it off.
"I liked it," she quavered, then, with a fatal attempt to
imitate the "insouciance" of the shop damsel, she added, "It was
only five pounds five shillings."
Mr. Minxton's glance was withering.
"Only! Well, I never, no wonder they talk of the nation going
to pieces when talk like that is going on! Wicked, I call
it."
"It's her own money, what she's worked hard for," stammered
Mrs. Smith, paling, however, before the dreaded masculine
judgment.
Rose was wrapping the Shawl up in the tissue paper; her glance
was supplicant, but Mr. Minxton was too outraged to respond.
"First that soldier, and now this," he said. "You're pretty
flighty, aren't you? Well, I hope you'll find a husband who can
keep you in luxury, that's what I hope—"
The next day he left for other rooms; the next month he
married the only daughter of a "warm" man with a tidy little
business.
In the list of wedding presents figured: "Mrs. Smith and
Rose—A Pink Shawl!"
THE END
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