"I should like," announced Grizel to Martin over the breakfast table, "I
should like to publish an apology, illuminated and framed, dedicated to
middle-class house-mistresses, to explain how I'd misjudged 'em, and say
I'm sorry."
"Now that, in a manner of speaking, you have become one of them
yourself."
"I don't know what you mean by `a manner of speaking.' I _have_, wuss
luck! so now I know. I always laughed before, and felt superior and
forbearing, and wondered why he married her, and felt so sorry for him
that he had. One of the many aggravating things about a man is that he
looks so much nicer middle-aged. He is scraggy when he is young, but he
fills out, and grows broad and dignified, and the little touch of grey
in his hair has quite a _poudree_ effect. But his wife does not
improve. Take 'em fat, or take 'em thin, there's no getting away from
it, they look worse every year. It needs a lot of grace, Martin, for a
woman, to watch herself growing steadily into a fright, and to keep on
smiling!"
"Every woman, my vain one, is not so much occupied with her appearance
as you are. When she gets middle-aged, she doesn't care."
"Then she ought to, or her last estate will be worse than the first.
Her husband and children will rise up and rend her. Her boys will blush
for her when she goes to their public school; and her girls will have
engagements when she wants to go out, and her husband will think
thoughts, and look back and wonder `_Why_'--"
"Not necessarily. It doesn't follow. I was at a musical At Home one
evening last year, when a professional sang, `Believe me if all those
endearing young charms'--You know how it goes on!--`were to fade by
to-morrow, etc., thou wouldst still be beloved, as this moment thou art,
and around the dear ruins, each wish of my heart, would entwine itself
faithfully still.' The hostess seized that moment to sail out of the
room. She was a vast woman. Parts of her were engulfed by the doorway
long before her head vanished from sight. She had numerous chins, but,
imbedded in flesh, one could still trace a likeness to an ethereally
fair daughter. The host took me by the arm, and pointed covertly to the
door. `_My dear Ruins_!' he whispered beneath his breath. `_My dear
Ruins_!' But there was love in his eyes, as well as fun. He loved his
Ruins!"
"Bless him!" cried Grizel warmly. "May his tribe increase! But most
men don't. So she must do her best. If she's fat, she diets, and it's
harder for a middle-class housewife to diet than for any creature on the
face of the earth. Because why? She has to rack her brains every
morning to think of nice things for other people to eat, and naturally
she thinks of the things she likes best herself, and then she sallies
forth and buys them, and smells the smell of their seasoning all
afternoon, and at the great moment says, `No thank you!' and eats minced
beef. And when the poor dear catches hold of an infinitesimal crinkle
in her gown, and calls upon those present to witness that she grows so
thin that it hangs upon her,--they jeer, and laugh her to scorn. I've
heard it. I've seen it. It's a heartrending sight."
"I'll promise faithfully not to jeer when you grow fat."
"I never shall," Grizel assured him. "Scrags are my line. Scrags are
much easier to deal with. Scrags can always be mitigated if you lavish
enough money; it's the plain coat and skirt that's the devil. I'd like
to found a charity for the supply of draped garments to the thin wives
of clergymen. _Can't_ you see them,--in navy-blue serge, with flannel
shirts falling well in at the chest? It must have a depressing effect
on the sermons! ... What was I talking of last! It's rather difficult
to keep count."
"The superiority of middle-aged men over their wives. Wasn't that it?"
"I never said they were superior. They're not, but they look it, and
that's an extra burden on the wives. It proves without any doubt soever
that women's work is more exhausting than men's."
"Is this by any chance a suffragette lecture in disguise?"
"Certainly not. Who mentioned suffragettes? I'm talking of the
old-fashioned women who stay at home, and look after their own affairs,
and I'm sorry for them, and wonder they are not fifty times more stupid
than they are, and I'm sorry I spoke. I said in my haste, `They can
talk of nothing but their servants.' Poor darlings! What wonder? Shut
in from morning till night with two aproned fiends, who at any moment
may reduce you to starvation, or poison you as you eat. (I don't care
if my pronouns _are_ mixed! I shall mix them if I like!) Suppose man
had to live day and night mewed up with his clerk and office boy;
suppose _you_ were followed wherever you went by grumbles and breakages,
and a smell of onions, and daren't let go, in case you were left to
clean the sink yourself! A woman said to me the other day, that after a
lifelong struggle she could not for the life of her decide which was
worse--a servant who thinks, or a servant who don't. Her housemaid
_could_ think. She thought the laundry bill had been rather high the
last few weeks, so she kept back a lot of table-linen what time a party
of guests were expected. She was hurt about it when reproved, and said
she could never do right. She couldn't... Martin! make up my mind for
me.--Should I give Parsons notice or not?"
Martin elevated his eyebrows, and nodded once or twice with an air of
enlightenment.
"Ah-ha! Now we come to it! I was waiting for the personal application.
Parsons, eh! Let me hear the case. Yours and Parsons's. Then I can
judge."
Grizel rested both elbows on the table, and supported her chin in the
hollow of her hands.
"Parsons," she said clearly. "Maud Emily, age twenty-six. Profession,
House-parlourmaid. Religion, Anabaptist (I'm sure she's an Anabaptist,
by the cut of her Sunday hat). Honest. Steady. Clean in her work and
person. Willing and obliging. Can clean plate... Forgets everything.
Breaks the rest. Snores while waiting. Has feelings, and an invalid
mamma, who, I feel it in my bones, will be tuk worse regularly on the
afternoons of dinner parties. In every emergency, can be backed to do
the worst possible thing... There! it's a problem for a society paper!
... _What should Mrs Beverley do_?"
"Mrs Beverley should exercise patience and self-control. She should
speak gently to the poor girl, who no doubt is doing her best. First
Prize awarded for this solution, a copy of Mrs Tupper's famous work,
_The Blue Boy Darling_."
Grizel contemplated him frowningly.
"Something will have to be done about your jokes! You have no sense of
fitness. It drives me daft when a person jokes when I am worried. I'll
laugh myself in a fortnight's time; with grace I'll laugh to-morrow, but
I won't laugh to-day for all the jokes on earth, and I hate anyone who
tries to make me do it. I'm not in the mood for jokes, and you ought to
know it without being told."
"Sorry, Madam, but there seems something wrong with your theory. You
want to be cheered when you are already cheered, and not to be cheered
when you are in need of cheering."
"Silly jokes," Grizel said firmly, "do not cheer. They can be endured
in periods of health. In periods of affliction they are the last straw
which breaks the woman's back."
Martin chewed his bacon in dignified silence, while his wife cocked a
speculative eye at him to see if she had gone too far. Presently the
two pairs of eyes met, and Grizel, made an extraordinary play with her
eyebrows which gave the effect of contrition, and defiance, and injured
innocence, and apologetic love, and half a dozen appealing sentiments
rolled into one, whereat Martin shrugged, and cried, "You women!" and
racked his brain to think what consolation to offer next.
"Cheer up, darling, we'll have a holiday next month. I've had a note
from the agent to say we can have the house, and the Squire is keen to
join. You'll enjoy the sea and unlimited powwows with Lady Cassandra,
and, if you speak her fair, perhaps she'll take over the housekeeping,
and set you free."
The mutual renting of a house near a seaside golf course had been in
discussion for some time between the two households, but Grizel betrayed
only a mitigated satisfaction in her husband's proposal.
"Cassandra knows nothing about housekeeping, and if she did I'm not
going to give it up, just as there's a chance of getting a little
credit. I'm getting quite a daisy at it now. Guess what you're going
to have to-night? _Best end of the neck_! Cook suggested it, and I
said, `_Whose_ neck?' She looked quite scared. Martin, did you know
you had chops growing inside your neck? Isn't it thrilling?... I'm
going to kiss you on the best end of your neck!"
She rose, and put her threat into execution, then sauntered over to an
easy chair, and lit a cigarette.
"Of course, when you talk so sweetly about my talks with Cassandra, I
know you are inwardly gloating on golf. You throw Cassandra to me as a
sop, so that you may feel free, and have no scruples in leaving me day
after day. Never mind! retribution will be yours. Poor angel! _how_
tired you will get of hours and hours of undiluted Squire..."
"I'm not so sure; he is a type, and I'm interested in types, and from
the golfer's point of view, an approximate handicap covers a multitude
of sins. And I don't propose to confine myself to Raynor. I asked
Peignton to come down, and he was delighted."
Grizel frowned thoughtfully.
"I like Captain Peignton. It's noble of me, for he has never quite made
up his mind to like me, but I'm not altogether sure that you were wise
to ask him this time."
"For Heaven's sake why not?"
Martin's bewilderment was transparent. Grizel dropped her eyes, and
played with her cigarette. A suspicious listener might have accused her
of searching for a judicious reply.
"Well!--he's engaged. And I don't want her. She would be in the way."
"Is it necessary to ask her at all?"
"If he comes, yes. I think we ought."
Martin looked thoughtful in his turn. It was evident that, like his
wife, he was not anxious for the society of Teresa Mallison, but after a
moment's consideration he was ready with a solution.
"We'll ask her from Friday till Monday, at the end of his stay. Then
they can travel home together. She will understand that he is asked
primarily for golf. What on earth makes you imagine that he doesn't
like you?"
Grizel pursed her lips.
"I think... _he_ thinks, I have more than my share!"
"Of--what?"
"Happiness."
Martin's face softened eloquently.
"So you have, darling. So you always will have. But that's thanks to
yourself. And why should he grudge you your happiness, pray? Isn't he
happy himself? Isn't his Teresa happy?"
"Oh, yes. Teresa is as happy as Teresa can be."
"Well, then!" exclaimed Martin conclusively, and dropped the subject.
He had wisely abandoned the effort of following his wife's nights of
thought, and was for the moment more engrossed with his own. He glanced
at the clock, and there fell over his face that restless, straining
expression which Grizel had learned to recognise as a sign that work in
the study was not going well. Being a wife she dared a question which
from anyone else would have been an offence.
"Book dragging?"
"Badly."
"What's the trouble?"
"Come to a full stop. I know where I am, and I know where I want to
get, but there's a middle distance to be filled in... filled, not
padded... and ideas won't come. I need four or five chapters to give
the characters time to--er--"
"I know." Grizel tilted her chin and assumed an expression of ferocious
absorption. She would emerge from it presently and make suggestions,
and none of the suggestions would be of the slightest use. Martin knew
as much, but he lingered all the same because Grizel was Grizel, and
whatever she said delighted him to hear.
"Make the heroine go into the park, and sit on a bench, and talk to an
old man..."
"Yes."
"Well... A shabby old man, but with signs of race. He would hint at
troubles, and she would sort of lure him on to tell her his history--"
"Yes?"
"How stupid you are! Then of course you must work it out. He might be
a miser, or an uncle from China--or the husband of someone who had
married again. _Is_ anyone married again?"
"No."
"Oh, well then, she _won't_ meet him! ... What about a fire? No! you
had a fire in the last book. Or a flood. Is there a river anywhere
handy that could flood them out?"
"There is not."
"Don't be so blighting. I'm trying to help. Could there be a lost
will? It's banal, I know, but what can you do? Everyone writes novels,
and there isn't a plot left. Even leprosy is overdone. Now if you'd
bring in a few chapters about the parlourmaid I'd write them for you.
That reminds me! I was forgetting to ask you something, and it's most
important. Parsons says there are two handkerchiefs short from the
laundry, and the man is coming for the money, and what will I say.
Martin! what _do I_ say? What does one say when the laundry is short?
Should I be angry? How angry? I don't care a dump about the old
things, but I'll pretend I do. Shall I tell him you've a cold, and have
only a dozen and can't do without them? Ought I to make him leave his
own? Just give me a hint, and I'll work it out. Could I demand
compensation? Happy thought! Are they insured?"
Martin laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
"Domesticities again. I'm off. I believe Katrine used to dock off
sixpences... Well! you will let the Raynors know that we can have the
house?"
"I'll ring up Cassandra, and ask her to drive round to talk over
details. Whenever I'm sorry that I married you, Martin, I'm glad again
because of Cassandra. I'm a real safety valve to Cassandra. The poor
dear soul had no one to grumble to before I came. A sympathetic woman
listener who is not above throwing in a curse on her own account is
absolutely necessary when one lives alone with a man. Now look at
you--"
Martin shut the door firmly behind him, and mounted the staircase two
steps at a time.