United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

Page 17 text:

RIPE FRUIT So may’st thou live, till, like ripe fruit, thou drop Into thy mother’s lap, or he with ease Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature. P. L. XI. I. M rs. Atkins lay in bed, staring apathetically at the b rown patch on the ceiling, and vaguely trying to adjust her neat soul to the squalor of a back-room in a thirt-rate rooming-house. Just my luck to have a room under the lavatory. As her eyes followed the brown stain down the wallpaper, her mind sought about for an incentive to heave her body out of the bed, trying to form a plan out of a vast idleness. A glimpse of Mrs. Atkins fifteen years before this Sunday morning would have led one to believe that violent catastrophe had brought her downfall. This was not the case. Mrs. Atkins was only one of many middle-class women whose lives had ceased with the departure of their husbands and children. Back in that era known to her as “when Jim was alive,” Jean Atkins had been something of a zealot in the performance of her wifely duties. Her dusting and mopping was fervent. She outdid her wifely neighbors in lacy aprons and in profusion of rosettes on her bed-throws and curtains. Nor were her efforts devoted to her home to the exclusion of her person. In the glow of her enthusiasm, she seized upon every opportunity to make herself the Model Wife, as conceived by Hollywood and American advertising companies. She watched her diet, gave herself facials to discourage the wrinkles; was careful to cry when the cookies burned; bought negligees trimmed with imitation ostrich feathers; and rubbed deodorant into her armpits every night. Lest it appear that Mrs. Atkins was inter¬ ested only in things of the flesh, it must be added that she never missed a Sunday mass, and confessed regularly. In her more devout moments she liked to think of herself as tending her body as one would tend something foul, in the hope of making it more acceptable in the sight of God. Usually she didn’t worry about justifying her preoccupation, but just went on perfecting herself. This little idyll came to an end as idylls will. Jim Atkins, a line¬ man for the Street Railway Company, was killed while repairing some wires in an electric storm. The Company lawyer did not con¬ sider the catastrophe unusual, so Mrs. Atkins received only a small pension. Her son, a bookkeeper in Regina, showed an understandable reluctance to allow the presence of a doting mother to interrupt his [15]

Page 16 text:

AS LOVED OUR FATHERS As loved our fathers, let us love old things; Grass in fields, stirred by warm winds; Leaves in woody groves whispering quietly: Rain making spotty patterns on burning ground, The glint of rivulets made by melting snow, The far speck of horizon uninvaded by trees: And put away this hour of whirring belt, The piston threshing in its steel tomb; The squeal of turning metal in the lathe, Clouds of foul smoke killing foliage, slowly blackening, Faces hungry, hammer, sickle, marching, cheering; Smells of sweat, grime, oil, and chemicals; For tears fall into rivers here, To speed far out to sea. —W. A. McKay, Theo. EVENING AT BASSWOOD LAKE Here stay for me the feverish bustling round Through many days. Let my dulled sense find Each gentle woodland sound. Here let the lazy ripplings of the tide, As on the pebbled beach its waters climb Under the chafing wind, Bring to the tired soul, forgetfulness of time. Sweet rest that follows every joyous day, Uncovering the beauty of the night To men who tire of play; Sweet coolness of the quiet-falling dusk, Absolving us from heated passion’s sway: Too much we sought delight In strained pursuits, while here our truest pleasure lay. —R. Purvis-Smith, ’39. Moore s — Open all night including Sunday [14]

Page 18 text:

already modest sowing of bachelor wild oats, a sowing pathetically hampered by his small salary. So Jean Atkins was left face to face with the decay of her life, her husband, home and son lost, and her body no longer responding to her treatments. After two years she was still confused and at a loss to account for her uselessness. This particular Sunday was no different from its immediate pre¬ decessors. Whetting her dull spirits upon the possibility that some¬ one at church might invite her for dinner, Mrs. Atkins made the supreme effort. Up came the body; heavy and misshapen; the vast stomach settling down upon thin, flabby thighs. Grotesque, she stood trying not to see the decay of her body. She could put on her good corsets, her near-silk dress, her synthetic silk stockings, and it wouldn’t look so bad. She shook her head to clear away the surg¬ ing consciousness of lonesomeness, uselessness and decay. After all did the priest not say she was atoning for Man’s Sin? Suddenly devout, she lumbered over to the closet muttering to herself . . . “Hail Mary, Mother of Jesus . . Hail Mary, Mother . . . Mother.” II. The room might have belonged to a man whose life had been made rich and mellow through the possession of good books, whole shelves of them; but it didn’t. It belonged to a woman and now she was sitting at the desk, writing nervously on a pad of paper . . . The room was pregnant with sadness. Mary’s soft brown eyes gave back a deep copper glow to the log fire. The room was one in which work had been done ... It had that spirit of . . . amiability that dull oak and brown leather gives forth .... Mary was still absorbed in the dull fire, when John Thatcher came quietly in, watched her for a moment, then spoke. “Mary,” he said, . Suddenly the woman threw down her pen. “Oh, hell, what would he say?” Roger looked up from his paper. Hello, probably.” “Smarty. Oh, well, what do I care? I’m sick of writing stories anyway. I’m through.” “Tut, tut. Imagine Western Canada ' s most famous woman novel¬ ist saying that. Let’s see, what was it Lamboume of the Press said? Quote: Elizabeth Warren has a n intellectual intensity which re¬ minds one of the better male novelists, Lloyd Douglas for instance. Her characters make an appeal to our intellect and not to our emo¬ tions. Miss Warren’s latest novel, ‘Jane Watkins, Author,’ will sat¬ isfy the most exacting taste. Unquote.” Impatiently Elizabeth rose and walked to the window. “Oh, stop, Roger. Lambourne always was a fool. There are moments [16]