DOMESTICITY INVADED
I
Early in the afternoon, two days later, Hilda came, with an air of
reproach, into her mother's empty bedroom. Mrs. Lessways had contracted
a severe cold in the head, a malady to which she was subject and which
she accepted with fatalistic submission, even pleasurably giving herself
up to it, as a martyr to the rack. Mrs. Lessways' colds annoyed Hilda,
who out of her wisdom could always point to the precise indiscretion
which had caused them, and to whom the spectacle of a head wrapped day
and night in flannel was offensively ridiculous. Moreover, Hilda in
these crises was further and still more acutely exasperated by the
pillage of her handkerchiefs. Although she possessed a supply of
handkerchiefs far beyond her own needs, she really hated to lend to her
mother in the hour of necessity. She did lend, and she lent without
spoken protest, but with frigid bitterness. Her youthful passion for
order and efficiency was aggrieved by her mother's negligent and
inadequate arrangements for coping with the inevitable plague. She now
made a police-visit to the bedroom because she considered that her
mother had been demanding handkerchiefs at a stage too early in the
progress of the disease. Impossible that her mother should have come to
the end of her own handkerchiefs! She knew with all the certitude of her
omniscience that numerous clean handkerchiefs must be concealed
somewhere in the untidiness of her mother's wardrobe.
See her as she enters the bedroom, the principal bedroom of the house,
whose wide bed and large wardrobe recall the past when she had a father
as well as a mother, and when that bedroom awed her footsteps! A thin,
brown-frocked girl, wearing a detested but enforced small black apron;
with fine, pale, determined features, rather unfeminine hair, and
glowering, challenging black eyes. She had a very decided way of putting
down her uncoquettishly shod feet. Absurdly young, of course; wistfully
young! She was undeveloped, and did not even look nearly twenty-one. You
are at liberty to smile at her airs; at that careless critical glance
which pityingly said: "Ah! if this were my room, it would be different
from what it is;" at that serious worried expression, as if the anxiety
of the whole world's deficiencies oppressed the heart within; and at
that supreme conviction of wisdom, which after all was little but an
exaggerated perception of folly and inconsistency in others!... She is
not to be comprehended on an acquaintance of three days. Years must go
to the understanding of her. She did not understand herself. She was not
even acquainted with herself. Why! She was naïve enough to be puzzled
because she felt older than her mother and younger than her beautiful
girlish complexion, simultaneously!
She opened the central mirrored door of the once formidable wardrobe,
and as she did so the image of the bed and of half the room shot across
the swinging glass, taking the place of her own reflection. And
instantly, when she inserted herself between the exposed face of the
wardrobe and its door, she was precipitated into the most secret
intimacy of her mother's existence. There was the familiar odour of old
kid gloves.... She was more intimate with her mother now than she could
ever be in talking to her. The lower part of this section of the
wardrobe consisted of three deep drawers with inset brass handles, an
exquisitely exact piece of mahogany cabinetwork. From one of the drawers
a bit of white linen untidily protruded. Her mother! The upper part was
filled with sliding trays, each having a raised edge to keep the
contents from falling out. These trays were heaped pell-mell with her
mother's personal belongings--small garments, odd indeterminate trifles,
a muff, a bundle of whalebone, veils, bags, and especially cardboard
boxes. Quantities of various cardboard boxes! Her mother kept
everything, could not bear that anything which had once been useful
should be abandoned or destroyed; whereas Hilda's propensity was to
throw away with an impatient gesture whatever threatened to be an
encumbrance. Sighing, she began to arrange the contents of the trays in
some kind of method. Incompetent and careless mother! Hilda wondered how
the old thing managed to conduct her life from day to day with even a
semblance of the decency of order. It did not occur to her that for
twenty-five years before she was born, and for a long time afterwards,
Mrs. Lessways had contrived to struggle along through the world, without
her daughter's aid, to the general satisfaction of herself and some
others. At length, ferreting on the highest shelf but one, she had the
deep, proud satisfaction of the philosopher who has correctly deduced
consequences from character. Underneath a Paisley shawl she discovered a
lost treasure of clean handkerchiefs. One, two, three, four--there were
eleven! And among them was one of her own, appropriated by her mother
through sheer inexcusable inadvertence. They had probably been lying
under the shawl for weeks, months!
Still, she did not allow herself to be vexed. Since the singular
hysterical embrace in the twilight of the kitchen, she had felt for her
mother a curious, kind, forbearing, fatalistic indulgence. "Mother is
like that, and there you are!" And further, her mood had been so changed
and uplifted by excitement and expectation that she could not be
genuinely harsh. She had been thrilled by the audacity of the visit to
Mr. Cannon. And though she hoped from it little but a negative
advantage, she was experiencing the rare happiness of adventure. She had
slipped out for a moment from the confined and stifling circle of
domestic dailiness. She had scented the feverish perfume of the world.
And she owed all this to herself alone! She meant on the morrow, while
her mother was marketing, to pursue the enterprise; the consciousness of
this intention was sweet, but she knew not why it was sweet. She only
knew that she lived in the preoccupation of a dream.
Having taken two of the handkerchiefs, she shut the wardrobe and turned
the key. She went first to her own small, prim room to restore stolen
property to its rightful place, and then she descended towards the
kitchen with the other handkerchief. Giving it to her mother, and
concealing her triumph beneath a mask of wise, long-suffering
benevolence, she would say: "I've found ten of your handkerchiefs,
mother. Here's one!" And her mother, ingenuously startled and pleased,
would exclaim: "Where, child?" And she, still controlling herself, as
befitted a superior being, would reply casually: "In your wardrobe, of
course! You stuck to it there weren't any; but I was sure there were."
II
The dialogue which actually did accompany the presentation of the
handkerchief, though roughly corresponding to her rehearsal of it, was
lacking in the dramatic pungency necessary for a really effective
triumph; the reason being that the thoughts of both mother and daughter
were diverted in different ways from the handkerchief by the presence of
Florrie in the kitchen.
Florrie was the new servant, and she had come into the house that
morning. Sponsored by an aunt who was one of the best of the Calder
Street tenants, Florrie had been accepted rather unwillingly, the
objection to her being that she was too young--thirteen and a half. Mrs.
Lessways had a vague humanitarian sentiment against the employment of
children; as for Hilda's feeling, it was at one moment more
compassionate even than her mother's, and at another almost cynically
indifferent. The aunt, however, a person of powerful common sense, had
persuaded Mrs. Lessways that the truest kindness would be to give
Florrie a trial. Florrie was very strong, and she had been brought up to
work hard, and she enjoyed working hard. "Don't you, Florrie?" "Yes,
aunt," with a delightful smiling, whispering timidity. She was the
eldest of a family of ten, and had always assisted her mother in the
management of a half-crown house and the nurture of a regiment of
infants. But at thirteen and a half a girl ought to be earning money for
her parents. Bless you! She knew what a pawnshop was, her father being
often out of a job owing to potter's asthma; and she had some knowledge
of cookery, and was in particular very good at boiling potatoes. To take
her would be a real kindness on the part of Mrs. Lessways, for the
'place' was not merely an easy place, it was a 'good' place. Supposing
that Mrs. Lessways refused to have her,--well, Florrie might go on to a
'potbank' and come to harm, or she might engage herself with
tradespeople, where notoriously the work was never finished, or she
might even be forced into a public-house. Her aunt knew that they wanted
a servant at the "Queen Adelaide," where the wages would be pretty high.
But no! No niece of hers should ever go into service at a public-house
if she could help it! What with hot rum and coffee to be ready for
customers at half-past five of a morning, and cleaning up at nights
after closing, a poor girl would never see her bed! Whereas at Mrs.
Lessways'...! So Mrs. Lessways took Florrie in order to save her from
slavery.
The slim child was pretty, with graceful and eager movements, and
certainly a rapid comprehension. Her grey eyes sparkled, and her brown
hair was coquettishly tied up, rather in the manner of a horse's tail on
May Day. She had arrived all by herself in the morning, with a tiny
bundle, and she made a remarkably neat appearance--if you did not look
at her boots, which had evidently been somebody else's a long time
before. Hilda had been clearly aware of a feeling of pleasure at the
prospect of this young girl's presence in the house.
Hilda now saw her in another aspect. She wore a large foul apron of
sacking, which made her elegant body quite shapeless, and she was
kneeling on the red-and-black tiled floor of the kitchen, with her
enormous cracked boots sticking out behind her. At one side of her was a
pail full of steaming brown water, and in her red coarse little hands,
which did not seem to belong to those gracile arms, she held a dripping
clout. In front of her, on a half-dried space of clean, shining floor,
stood Mrs. Lessways, her head wrapped in a flannel petticoat. Nearer to
the child stretched a small semi-circle of liquid mud; to the rear was
the untouched dirty floor. Florrie was looking up at her mistress with
respectful, strained attention. She could not proceed with her work
because Mrs. Lessways had chosen this moment to instruct her, with much
snuffling, in the duties and responsibilities of her position.
"Yes, mum," Florrie whispered. She seemed to be incapable of speaking
beyond a whisper. But the whisper was delicate and agreeable; and
perhaps it was a mysterious sign of her alleged unusual physical
strength.
"You'll have to be down at half-past six. Then you'll light your kitchen
fire, but of course you'll get your coal up first. And then you'll do
your boots. Now the bacon--but never mind that--either Miss Hilda or me
will be down to-morrow morning to show you."
"Yes, mum," Florrie's whisper was grateful.
"When you've got things going a bit like, you'll do your parlour--I've
told you all about that, though. But I didn't tell you--except on
Wednesdays. On Wednesdays you give your parlour a thorough turn-out
_after_ breakfast, and mind it's got to be all straight for dinner at
half-past twelve."
"Yes, mum."
"I shall show you about your fire-irons--" Mrs. Lessways was continuing
to make everything in the house the private property of Florrie, when
Hilda interrupted her about the handkerchief, and afterwards with an
exhortation to beware of the dampness of the floor, which exhortation
Mrs. Lessways faintly resented; whereupon Hilda left the kitchen; it was
always imprudent to come between Mrs. Lessways and a new servant.
Hilda remained listening in the lobby to the interminable and rambling
instruction. At length Mrs. Lessways said benevolently:
"There's no reason why you shouldn't go to bed at half-past eight, or
nine at the latest. No reason whatever. And if you're quick and handy
--and I'm sure you are--you'll have plenty of time in the afternoon for
plain sewing and darning. I shall see how you can darn," Mrs. Lessways
added encouragingly.
"Yes, mum."
Hilda's heart revolted, less against her mother's defects as an
organizer than against the odious mess of the whole business of
domesticity. She knew that, with her mother in the house, Florrie would
never get to bed at half-past eight and very seldom at nine, and that
she would never be free in the afternoons. She knew that if her mother
would only consent to sit still and not interfere, the housework could
be accomplished with half the labour that at present went to it. There
were three women in the place, or at any rate, a woman, a young woman,
and a girl--and in theory the main preoccupation of all of them was this
business of domesticity. It was, of course, ridiculous, and she would
never be able to make anyone see that it was ridiculous. But that was
not all. The very business itself absolutely disgusted her. It disgusted
her to such a point that she would have preferred to do it with her own
hands in secret rather than see others do it openly in all its squalor.
The business might be more efficiently organized--for example, there was
no reason why the sitting-room should be made uninhabitable between
breakfast and dinner once a week--but it could never be other than
odious. The kitchen floor must inevitably be washed every day by a girl
on her knees in sackcloth with terrible hands. She was witnessing now
the first stage in the progress of a victim of the business of
domesticity. To-day Florrie was a charming young creature, full of
slender grace. Soon she would be a dehumanized drudge. And Hilda could
not stop it! All over the town, in every street of the town, behind all
the nice curtains and blinds, the same hidden shame was being enacted: a
vast, sloppy, steaming, greasy, social horror--inevitable! It amounted
to barbarism, Hilda thought in her revolt. She turned from it with
loathing. And yet nobody else seemed to turn from it with loathing.
Nobody else seemed to perceive that this business of domesticity was not
life itself, was at best the clumsy external machinery of life. On the
contrary, about half the adult population worshipped it as an exercise
sacred and paramount, enlarging its importance and with positive gusto
permitting it to monopolize their existence. Nine-tenths of her mother's
conversation was concerned with the business of domesticity--and withal
Mrs. Lessways took the business more lightly than most!
III
There was an impatient knock at the front door,--rare phenomenon, but
not unknown.
Mrs. Lessways cried out thickly from the folds of her flannel petticoat:
"Hilda, just see who that is, will you?... knocking like that! Florrie
can't come."
And just as Hilda reached the front door, her mother opened the kitchen
door wide, to view the troublesome disturber and to inform him, if as
was probable he was exceeding his rights, that he would have done better
to try the back door.
It was Mr. Cannon at the front door.
Hilda heard the kitchen door slammed to behind her, but the noise was
like a hallucination in her brain. She was staggered by the apparition
of Mr. Cannon in the porch. She had vaguely wondered what he might do to
execute his promise of aid; she had felt that time was running short if
her mother was to be prevented from commencing rent-collector on the
Monday; she had perhaps ingenuously expected from him some kind of
miracle; but of a surety she had never dreamed that he would call in
person at her home. "He must be mad!" she would have exclaimed to
herself, if the grandeur of his image in her heart had not made any such
accusation impossible to her. He was not mad; he was merely inscrutable,
terrifyingly so. It was as if her adventurous audacity, personified, had
doubled back on her, and was exquisitely threatening her.
"Good afternoon!" said Mr. Cannon, smiling confidently and yet with
ceremoniousness. "Is your mother about?"
"Yes." Hilda did not know it, but she was whispering quite in the manner
of Florrie.
"Shall I come in?"
"Oh! Please do!" The words jumped out of her mouth all at once, so
anxious was she to destroy any impression conceivably made that she did
not desire him to come in.
He crossed the step and took her hand with one gesture. She shut the
door. He waited in suave silence. There was barely space for them
together in the narrow lobby, and she scarce dared look up at him. He
easily dominated her. His bigness subdued her, and the handsomeness of
his face and his attire was like a moral intimidation. He had a large
physical splendour that was well set off and illustrated by the
brilliance of his linen and his broadcloth. She was as modest as a mouse
beside him. The superior young woman, the stern and yet indulgent
philosopher, had utterly vanished, and only a poor little mouse
remained.
"Will you please come into the drawing-room?" she murmured when, after
an immense effort to keep full control of her faculties, she had decided
where he must be put.
"Thanks," he said.
As she diminished herself, with beautiful shy curves of her body,
against the wall so that he could manoeuvre his bigness through the
drawing-room doorway, he gave her a glance half benign and half politely
malicious, which seemed to say again: "I know you're afraid, and I
rather like it. But you know you needn't be."
"Please take a seat," she implored. And then quickly, as he seemed to
have no intention of speaking to her confidentially, "I'll tell mother."
Leaving the room, she saw him sink smoothly into a seat, his rich-piled
hat in one gloved hand and an ebony walking-stick in the other. His
presence had a disastrous effect on the chill, unfrequented
drawing-room, reducing it instantly to a condition of paltry shabbiness.
The kitchen door was still shut. Yes, all the squalor of the business of
domesticity must be hidden from this splendid being! Hilda went as a
criminal into the kitchen. Mrs. Lessways with violent movements
signalled her to close the door before speaking. Florrie gazed
spellbound upwards at both of them. The household was in a high fever.
"You don't mean to tell me that's Mr. Cannon!" Mrs. Lessways excitedly
whispered.
"Do--do--you know him?" Hilda faltered.
"Do I know him!... What does he want?"
"He wants to see you."
"What about?"
"I suppose it's about property or something," Hilda replied, blushing.
Never had she felt so abject in front of her mother.
Mrs. Lessways rapidly unpinned the flannel petticoat and then threw it,
with a desperate gesture of sacrifice, on to the deal table. The
situation had to be met. The resplendent male awaited her in the
death-cold room. The resplendent male had his overcoat, but she,
suffering, must face the rigour and the risk unprotected. No matter if
she caught bronchitis! The thing had to be done. Even Hilda did not
think of accusing her mother of folly. Mrs. Lessways having patted her
hair, emptied several handkerchiefs from the twin pockets of her
embroidered black apron, and, snatching at the clean handkerchief
furnished by Hilda, departed to her fate. She was certainly startled and
puzzled, but she was not a whit intimidated, and the perception of this
fact inspired Hilda with a new, reluctant respect for her mother.
Hilda, from the kitchen, heard the greetings in the drawing-room, and
then the reverberations of the sufferer's nose. She desired to go into
the drawing-room. Her mother probably expected her to go in. But she
dared not. She was afraid.
"I was wondering," said the voice of Mr. Cannon, "whether you've ever
thought of selling your Calder Street property, Mrs. Lessways." And then
the drawing-room door was closed, and the ticking of the grandfather's
clock resumed possession of the lobby.