Through the open window I could hear that she supposed me to be still
with her. Presently there was an abrupt pause and the hymn began again.
I told Ruth next morning that I thought she had misjudged Mrs. Muff;
she seemed a good-natured old lady, and used to putting up with things.
I was informed that she had carried on something dreadful that morning,
wanting three courses for breakfast, besides jam and coffee; said tea
wasn’t fit stuff to begin the day on, there was nothing strengthening
about it. “And she’s calling the soap for everything,” Ruth added;
“says she can’t wash with it, and there is no place to dry the
clothes--perhaps you wouldn’t mind speaking to her.”
She was out on the back lawn this time hanging out the clothes. Some
eccentric flannel garments flaunted defiance, with one leg in the air,
and Mrs. Muff sang:
“_At the sign of triumph
Satan’s host doth flee----_”
“Certainly it does,” I said to myself, and turning up my sleeves I
walked out.
“Mrs. Muff,” I began, “what is all this again about breakfast and soap?”
Mrs. Muff in tears was worse than anything I had imagined to be
possible. The only thought that enabled me to proceed was that Ruth in
tears would be less harrowing but far more terrible. As usual, pity was
conquered by fear, and I saw myself as an egg-thirsty tyrant standing
(with Ruth behind me) belabouring the prostrate body of poor musical
Mrs. Muff with a bar of Gossage’s Tallow Crown. Neither “Primrose
Glory” (I think that was the name of her soap) nor fried fish were
ever mentioned between us again. Ruth generously added half a cold pie
to the peace contract, and I contributed a blue serge suit dear to
James’s heart. It is always satisfactory to work in minor interests
with great ones and to combine generosity with one’s own advantage.
Imagination is sometimes thought to belong to a high order of
intelligence. I believe it often depends upon absence of education.
A great mind may so use its education that it only provides a wider
field for the imagination, just as the marvellous digestion of a goat
can adapt all sorts of inedible stuff to a useful end, but it is
difficult to improve on the brilliant fancy of quite ordinary children
and illiterate old ladies. If Mrs. Muff had had a normally adult
intelligence or the least smattering of science, she would never have
expected me to believe that the numerous handkerchiefs that got lost in
the wash had gone down the grid. We lost six in one week and ten in the
next, and still the water flowed peacefully away, nor ever tarried for
a moment round Mrs. Muff’s ill-protected roots. I gave orders that if
she would make such a mess she must stand on a foot-stool, which she
reluctantly did; but if her explanation about the grid had contained
a tenth part of fact she would have been standing knee-deep in a lake
in no time. If Mrs. Muff had not been so deaf I should have told her
some of the explanations that I have heard children give for natural
phenomena, and asked whether they seemed to her at all remarkable. A
nice child of my acquaintance, who invariably comes to dinner with
dirty finger-nails, has given me quite a lot of imaginative pleasure.
Once (she was reproved and sent back each time) it was the cold weather
that had made them black; another day--the next, I believe--it was the
thunder; the last time I went there to lunch it was because she had
been hanging down her hands, and her mother commented upon the curious
fact that the week before it had been because she was reaching up to do
her hair. I myself have been told that the plates were sooty because
the plumber was in the house, that the fresh eggs were bad because
of the time of year, and I have waited to complete my collection of
“facts that every housewife ought to know,” until I am assured that the
cat has had an unusual number of kittens on account of the range.
_CHAPTER XI_: HUSBANDS
To those about to marry a husband often seems not only a subject for
affection and admiration but also for respect such as is given to an
older and more experienced being. The young bride sees herself in
imagination the possessor of a husband and children; she classifies
them as belonging to separate orders of being. This I have found to
be a mistake, but many of us drift so gently into a knowledge of the
fact that we never notice how far we have wandered from our original
conception. I realised the position quite suddenly one day. There was
no falling apple nor boiling tea-kettle nor anything of that sort to
start the theory in my head; it was not even as if I had been cutting
down James’s trousers to fit Tom. I had been sitting with my hands in
my lap, twiddling my thumbs, when all of a sudden this occurred to
me. “James is to the other children what the thumb is to the other
fingers. I have five fingers, the most powerful and useful of which
stands apart from the others and is called the thumb. I have five
children of which the first, the most powerful and useful, is called
the husband. I have been deceived by instinct, by tradition, and by
my parents, and it does not matter in the least; things are exactly
as they were before. I will brush my husband’s hat and think no more
about it.” But I did think more about it. I began also to notice other
ladies in the same predicament, and marked how unconscious they were
of their true position. I watched them feed and dress and exercise
their first-born husbands, observing how they advised and reproved and
deceived them for their good, how they encouraged them to work and were
surprised when the work was recognised and paid for by the world. Mrs.
Beehive’s husband was rather celebrated. He had built a great many
public buildings, she once told me with pride and in just the same way
as she described how baby had begun to take notice at an exceptionally
early age. I could hear her, in imagination, say, “Yes, dear, very
nice indeed,” while Mr. Beehive toiled and built like the dearest and
humblest of beavers that he is, occasionally reviving his hopeful
efforts to explain the nature of creation to the passive, mutton-headed
creature who has, so to speak, swallowed him up and borne him anew for
herself against his will. Another thing I discovered was that Ruth knew
what a husband is and never told me. Servants are much sharper than
their mistresses about these things. I suppose it is because they are
not distracted by love and marriage. In their minds the master and the
children are lumped together with other troublesome and necessary facts
which girls have to put up with. (Whether they are “Mother’s” husband
and children or the mistress’s makes very little difference.) They
want a great deal more cooking than anyone would do for themselves,
they tear their clothes, and are unpunctual and passionate. Sometimes
they come home drunk and use up the money that is wanted for the
house, or they speculate and gamble with it--silly fellows--instead of
laying it out sensibly on bargains and outings. The only excuse they
might have for doing the things they do--littering up the place with
books and papers and musical instruments, screaming at one another
without their hats in the street, or sitting in poky rooms in their
shirt-sleeves--the only excuse they might have for all this folly would
be to get well paid for it, so that they might spend at least part of
the day sensibly in dancing and holiday-making. But not at all. They
come home either as surly as bears or else perfectly limp and useless
for conversation, they want more cooking done, and probably have less
money on them than they took out. That is Ruth’s view I know, and it is
that, secretly or avowed, of all the experienced women of good repute
whom I know; those who think otherwise are not wives at heart, they are
on a par with, if they are not actually, concubines. Soon after the day
when I had twiddled my fingers and thought of these things, I began to
notice all sorts of little contributory facts which fitted in with my
newly formed theory. What Ruth said was nothing new, but I had never
understood it before. I went into the kitchen, as usual, to go through
the ceremony which Tom calls “seeing the beef.” I had been out alone
the evening before, and had left a chop for James’s dinner.
“There is very little of the cold grouse left, m’m,” said Ruth, “the
master’s been at it.”
“But I left a chop for him, didn’t I?” I asked.
“Yes’m, but he’s been at the grouse all the same. He would have it. You
can see for yourself.”
Yes, I thought, if things were not as I now see they are, Ruth would
have spoken differently. She would have said: “I am sorry, m’m, I can’t
let you have the grouse to-day, but it was required for the master.” As
it is, the very servants can evidently see no difference between the
master wanting cold grouse and the boys raiding the pantry for tarts.
Where is my husband? It appears that I have not got one. There is no
such thing.
I then remembered with painful feelings of disillusionment something
that Clara had said a few days before. “The master’s vests, m’m, they
are all out at the elbows, with him yawning like that. He pulls them to
pieces every time he raises his arms. I wonder could you speak to him
about it?”
“He only yawns like that when he is doing very difficult work, Clara,”
I said at the time. “We can’t help it; it wouldn’t do to interrupt him.”
“No, m’m, but if you could just mention it to him--you see it takes me
all the evening to mend them when I ought to be getting on with the new
curtains.” It was just as if she had said: “Of course, it is a pity he
shouldn’t enjoy himself, and I would be the last to wish to stop it,
but we can’t let his play stand in the way of what has to be done.”
The idea of a wife being the mother of her husband is an old one, but
it has been too ambiguously put before the public, therefore girls
still marry under a misapprehension. The misapprehension is of no
consequence and hurts no one, but I cannot help thinking it would save
disappointment if instead of nursing a delusion we could idealise a
fact. If children were not made unnecessarily ridiculous the supposed
husband would not be missed from the family group. If Mrs. Beehive
gave to her younger children some of the dignity which she has, by
reason of her nature, stripped from Mr. Beehive it would be a great
deal better than throwing it away, and Mr. Beehive would suffer less
from being placed in the same pigeon-hole with his own baby. Why should
the mother of the family be the only one who is allowed any dignity or
private life? She denies this, of course, and draws you a beautiful
fancy picture of papa, the head of the house. She dresses him up for
your benefit in all his war-paint of waistcoat and whiskers, but she
does it in just the same spirit as she dresses up her son as a postman
to please him while she gets on with her work. And the cruel thing is
that she has so long ago stripped him of his natural fur and feathers
that when she says “that is enough,” and folds away the waistcoat and
whiskers in a drawer, he is exposed to the neighbours in a defenceless
and absurd condition.
What is it that binds Mr. and Mrs. Beehive together? The problem has
fidgeted me for years. It has disturbed me in my work, and sometimes
even caused me to overlook Mr. Jones’s iniquities until it was too late
to do anything. I once asked Ruth why it is that married people remain
with one another, and she said she supposed it was the evenings.
“What about the evenings?” I asked.
“Well, you see, m’m,” she said, “as you know yourself, there is not
very much for unmarried girls as is anyways respectable to do in the
evenings.”
“Yes, but the men, Ruth,” I said,“--mind the milk--it is boiling--thank
you--why do they stay to be treated like children?”
“Well, m’m, I suppose it is because they are what you might call
childish. Of course, you may say they do bring in the money, and some
of them are very knowledgeable--such as master--but you’ll find they
haven’t much idea of spending an evening profitably without they are
married.”
_It wouldn’t do to let them know_, is a great phrase in every peaceful
household. And it is quite true; it would never do at all. Husbands
want reasons for everything and we know what that means! It is
impossible to make them understand why some perfectly ordinary things
cannot be done. We say, perhaps, light-heartedly enough, “I have such
a headache, I wish I hadn’t to go out!” and he says, “Well, why do you
go out?” Of course we reply that there is the fish to be got--it never
came--and then it is his turn to say, “Why not send Ruth?” We explain
that Ruth has to cook the dinner.
“But she can’t cook the fish before it comes.”
“But there are the other things?”
“Oh, never mind them, your head is the only thing that matters. Let
Ruth go.”
We end by a detailed description of the cook’s afternoon and the havoc
this slight disorganisation of the traffic would cause, knowing, of
course, perfectly well that there is no reason why Ruth should not go
except that she just can’t. Cooks don’t go for fish unless they offer
to, and then they are not experienced enough. What we really want the
man to do is to say he will go, but we don’t say this because it would
end in his sending Ruth and thinking himself very clever. He would
report that she was delighted to go and made no fuss whatever. Next
day we should be made to feel that the unwritten law had been broken
through our fault. We had taken a mean refuge behind the master, whose
orders she could not refuse to obey. Things would be very uncomfortable
for some time and she would very likely ask whether the master were
going to undertake the housekeeping, because if so--etc. But it is
impossible to explain all that at the time, so we are either cross
because of the headache and conceal the cause, or else we are rude
at once when he begins his suggestions, and then he says women are
unreasonable and ought to take more exercise.
I seem always to be exploding fallacies in this book, but there is one
more which must be mentioned because it is connected with the husband
fallacy. It is part of Mrs. Beehive’s whisker make-up. This is the
fallacy of the Experienced Man. I have never yet seen a man who gave
me the impression of being in the least experienced in anything more
important than the details of his own business. In matters of life and
death he is as hopeful at eighty as he was at eight. James still says
to me: “What a good plan it would be to share a house for the summer
with the Van Diemans. You see, they would not be in our way in the
least; they would have rooms to themselves, we needn’t see them unless
we want to. He would be there to fish and play golf with me, and you
would be left with her. She would probably do the housekeeping for you.”
The last time he mentioned this I said: “Do you ever go to stay
with anyone without hiding at the top of the house and pretending
you are dead for nine-tenths of the day?” He said no, but that was
different--when you had rooms of your own. I replied: “Do you know what
you would do? You would open the door of our sitting-room as you came
upstairs and say: ‘Why not come in and have a chat and a smoke?’ The
poor deluded dears would come in, you would be as pleased as Punch for
ten minutes and then begin to fidget.”
“Oh, but then they would go,” said James, “and besides I like it for
much longer than that.”
“You don’t, ten minutes is the outside limit. I have timed you often
when the Van Diemans have been here: in ten minutes you begin to wind
up your watch and ask where they are going to spend Christmas.”
“Oh, do I?” said James.
“Yes, and another thing, you don’t like fishing. It is the idea of
fishing that you like. When it comes to the point you go because Van
Dieman is such a good chap, but you hate the wet grass, and the flies,
and not catching anything.”
“What a sordid mind for detail you have,” he said; “there is no
imagination about you.”
“An ounce of experience is worth two pounds of imagination,” I answered.
We took our holiday in an altogether different way, and James was
appalled when the Van Diemans told him how they had spent their time.
He said it was inconceivable how people could enjoy that sort of thing.
When I pointed out that it was entirely owing to my foresight and
intelligence that we had not been there, he said shamelessly that it
would have been quite different if we had gone; it was just an accident
that they had behaved in accordance with their temperaments and their
invariable habit.
Women, on the other hand, are so experienced that I have begun to
think they remember not only their childhood but also their previous
incarnations. From what I know of both sexes it seems probable that
Adam spat out his piece of apple behind the nearest fig-tree, while
Eve munched hers conscientiously to the end and got some good out of
it. I used to consult Mrs. Beehive in the early days about all sorts
of domestic matters, but finally I gave it up because she was so
depressing. She said so often: “It’s no good, dear. It’s a nice idea, I
know, but you will find it will rot with the sun,” and it always did,
in spite of Mr. Beehive saying that it was sure to do beautifully, and
that the reason why theirs had been a failure was the unusual dampness
of the year; it was not likely to occur again.
Husbands seldom learn by experience to recognise the object of their
instinctive desire. Just as a baby screams and reaches towards the
plant in the middle of the table when it really needs to go into the
kitchen and ask cook for milk with a little water in it--not too
hot--so a man says to his wife: “I dislike your clothes intensely. I
wish you would go and buy a sort of shawl arrangement and drape it
round you like the figures you see on a Greek vase. That is the way
women ought to dress.” The poor fish-faced lady with the innocent
expression and wispy hair goes obediently to Derry and Toms’s and buys
an expensive silk shawl which she arranges round her ill-balanced
form in exact imitation of the lady on the vase in Edward’s room, and
comes down to dinner. Then the real tragedy begins, and all about a
shawl! What he really had before his mind was no more a shawl than it
was an Inverness cape or a Moujik’s jacket. It was a confection which
he had seen on a lady in the Park with a beautiful figure, and if his
innocent old dear had bought the same model and put it on he would have
called her shameless and abandoned. If he had more experience and fewer
childish dreams he would address her as follows: “My dear, I wish that
you would not dress in parti-coloured scraps that don’t fit. I cannot
myself think what you would look nice in, but first stand up straight
and do your hair, and then try on clothes until you find something that
I tell you is right.”
It is the folly of either side trying to explain anything to the other
that leads to bloodshed.
_CHAPTER XII_: CHRISTMAS
When I asked Ruth what about Christmas, she said that it was always a
pleasant season and she hoped none of us would break down; it meant
so much to do for all. So of course I asked whether it would be any
help to have in Mrs. Muff to wash up while Ruth made the puddings. She
agreed that would probably be the best plan, as it would be a pity if
we were not able to enjoy ourselves when it came to the point. She
herself was usually at her wits’ end about Christmas-time.
“But you love that, Ruth!” I said candidly, forgetting myself for the
moment.
“I beg pardon, m’m?”
“It is your wits’ beginning that bothers you, isn’t it?” I explained.
“I mean” (seeing her face darken) “it is a nuisance thinking of things,
I know, I feel it myself. We shall be able to give our minds to it if
Mrs. Muff is here.”
I then passed hastily on to other things: the puddings, for instance,
which took complete possession of my kitchen for a time. I do not think
they became as personal to Ruth as to me. For my taste they were made
too much of; they and the mince-pies crowded out the place and I was
thankful to get rid of them. Long before Christmas I looked forward to
the day when they all would be dead--“Arthur, Henry, Claud, Stanley,
Gordon, Livingstone, Howard, Percy, George, Gerald, Trafford, and
Herbert,” I counted along the shelf, “and all the little Thompsons.
Arthur and Henry we shall want for ourselves and the kitchen on
Christmas Day, you might give Claud to Mrs. Muff, and let Mullins have
Stanley. Gordon and Livingstone are smaller and will do for New Year’s
Day, so that leaves six to kill before Easter----” I caught sight of
Ruth’s face, pale and agitated. “I am so sorry,” I apologised. “You
know they seem almost like children, we have taken such an interest in
them.”
“Would you care for a cup of tea, m’m?” Ruth asked anxiously.
“By and by,” I said. “I don’t really care very much for food just now.
What about the turkey?”
“Well, m’m,” said Ruth, “a good-sized one that would stuff nicely ought
to do us over Boxing Day, with a bit of beef, and there will be all the
sausages.”
I already began to feel fat and over-fed; what with Claud and the
others, and my enemy the beef with all his sausages, besides the
stuffing, all arriving to lunch on the same day. It was like a lot of
fat people driving over for tea and to spend the afternoon; a thing I
have always detested.
“Ruth,” I pleaded, “you don’t think we might tell the tradespeople that
of course one makes allowances at Christmas when every one is busy, so
I should not be too exacting if one or two things--the sausages for
instance--never came?”
“Oh, no, m’m,” she said proudly, “they’d never disappoint us at
Christmas!”
“Ruth, I have hit upon a profound truth!” I exclaimed. “There is
nothing the matter with sin in itself. The only thing that makes the
Devil a bad man is that he misbehaves at the wrong time and in the
wrong place. Think of the praiseworthy murders that might be committed
on the right people, the thefts of horrible objects from the home
that would reform humanity; arson if committed on the right kind of
shops----” Ruth was running the taps for the washing-up and did not
hear a word I said, so I left her and went upstairs to elaborate
my theory of sin and write to Mrs. Muff. I allowed Ruth to arrange
what food she liked during the next few days, as the kitchen was
uninhabitable. They were giving the place a good clean down, she said.
The open door disclosed Mrs. Muff singing hymns on a cork island in
the middle of a flood, and an army of evicted beetles trying to settle
their families into new quarters before Christmas, while Ruth and the
range (clasped in one another’s arms, like the victims of Pompeii)
breathed mutual forgiveness in a volcanic darkness of dust and ashes. I
went out and met the efficient female coming back from town.
“I suppose you have done all your Christmas shopping?” she observed. “I
always like to get mine done before the rush begins.”
“I am waiting for the London catalogues,” I said. “It is such a good
way to shop.”
She told, as she had done before, how far more satisfactory it is to
shop in person. “They put you off with anything if you leave it to
them,” etc. I pointed out that with things like soap, and scent, and
foie gras, and postage stamps, which are what I generally give people,
there is not a wide field for the discretion of the shopman. She was so
genuinely grieved at my idea of presents, and I know that she is such
a good woman, understanding the public taste, and so on (besides, the
catalogues had not come), that I thought it might be fun to try her way
and see what it was like.
I turned into the principal street where the windows were full of
suggestions: “Christmas novelties,” “Serviceable Xmas presents,” “What
about the boys? Boots’ marvellous cash sponge always in request.” I
bought some things marked “three-eleven-three,” and thought I was
doing very well to secure them, as there were only a few. A little
farther down the street I saw a great many more of the same things,
only they were marked “one-eleven-three,” and looked in better
condition. I went home and rearranged my list of people so as to use
up some of the inferior “three-eleven-threes.” “I will take away
Cousin Jemima’s soup-bowl,” I thought, “and give her one of the spare
three-eleven-threes, then Pauline can have the soup-bowl and I will
give her pencil-case to Jimmy Duncan, because his mother has taken me
out so often.”