"But suppose she is a candidate, what then?"
"You don't flatter me, Mr Tyler. Should you allow your wife to act in
direct antagonism to your wishes?"
"I reckon not." He grinned significantly. "Then shall you leather Mrs
Bloxam if she tries any of her little games? I rather fancy you'll find
you've put off leathering her too long. They want a lot of strap when
you're first starting."
What did the fellow mean? How dare he talk to me like that? Really,
this business was bringing me on terms of uncomfortable familiarity
with the most curious characters. Leather Mrs Bloxam! I shivered at the
thought. What did he take me for? And her? Henrietta is not the sort of
person to whom it is necessary to do more than remotely hint at what
are the channels in which the course of a wife's duty flows. And yet--
I wished the fellow had never shown me his wretched, nonsensical,
trumpery paper, which he had apparently stolen from the imbecile
Briggs. As though my mind was not already sufficiently occupied. If I
had dreamt that this preposterous School-Board business would have been
such a source of worry, so far as I was concerned Crookenden and his
Church school might have gone on for ever. In my agitation--I am
agitated, sometimes, by a very little--I touched Toby with the whip, so
that, when I got him home, he was in quite a lather.
Mrs Bloxam was in her own sitting-room. I found her there. I had worked
myself into something approaching a state of indignation. I produced
Tyler's handbill with a sort of flourish.
"Henrietta, some scoundrel has been taking liberties with your name."
"Mr Bloxam!"
She was engaged on some needlework of a domestic character, from which
she looked up at me with an air of apparent surprise.
"I shall cause immediate legal proceedings to be taken against the man
who has acted in a manner calculated to bring you and myself into
public contempt."
"To what man do you allude?"
"To the man who put your name on this."
I gave her Tyler's handbill. She looked it up and down, very carefully,
as it seemed to me.
"I fail to see what there is here to which you have any reason to take
objection."
"Nothing there! When the impertinent rascal has dared to put you
forward as one of Crookenden's puppets."
"If he has done so, he is to blame, for I certainly am no one's puppet.
I have merely availed myself of that of which you have so freely
availed yourself, the right to call my soul my own."
"Henrietta! I don't understand what you mean."
"And yet it is simple enough. Ever since I have been able to think on
such subjects at all, I have had my own views on the subject of
education--true education as opposed to false. When I see such
creatures as Broadbridge and Tyler endeavouring to promulgate their
hideous notions and notorious malpractices in the place in which I
live, I cannot refuse to listen to the call of duty which summons me,
both as a Christian and a woman of education and refinement, to take my
stand against them."
"Then am I to gather that that name--that your name--that my name--is
there by your authority?"
"Your name, certainly not. My name, undoubtedly."
"But have you forgotten that I am myself a candidate?"
"So, I am sorry to say, I have been given to understand."
"I represent the cause of progress and advance."
"Both, I imagine, in the direction of the public-house. I am credibly
informed that since your candidature there has been more drunkenness in
Copstone than has ever been known before in the annals of the parish."
It was a monstrous thing to say. Yet I wished that my associates had
been teetotallers, and that we could have had the use of the parish
room.
"Henrietta, I will not characterise the statement which you have just
now made. I content myself by taking up my position as head of this
household to prohibit your pursuing any farther the dangerous pathways
along which your feet have been induced to stray by the Jesuitical
teachings of an insidious foe."
"Speak English, Augustus, if you please, at home. Rodomontade, if you
choose, where nobody understands you, or wants to. Here say plainly
what you mean."
"I forbid you to carry the farce of your candidature any farther."
"That I readily undertake to do. I promise you it shall be no farce."
"Farce or no farce, I command you to take your name from off that
list." I regret to say that Henrietta snapped her fingers in the air.
"Am I to understand that you snap your fingers at the expression of my
wishes?"
"You have not even troubled yourself to do that. You have known all
along what my wishes were, yet you have chosen to entirely ignore my
most sacred aspirations."
"Henrietta, the husband is the head of the wife."
"Who says so? Your friend Tyler? It is notorious that he scoffs at the
sanctity of the marriage tie."
"Don't call that man my friend."
"No? Do you authorise me to state in public that you repudiate his
friendship?"
"I won't chop phrases with you. I will merely remind you that at the
altar you promised me obedience."
"Suppose you were to instruct me to commit murder, would you consider
it my duty to carry the promise even so far?"
"I am not instructing you to commit murder."
"You are requesting me to do something analogous, to murder all that is
best and noblest in the parish of Copstone."
"That's an outrageous falsehood."
She stood up.
"Of course, if you accuse me of deliberate untruth--"
"You won't get out of it like that. I tell you, frankly, that if you
are not careful I shall go straight to Crookenden and tell him with my
own lips that I have forbidden you to stand."
"He knows already that you would forbid me. They all know it. It is
because of that knowledge they have urged me to take up the position I
have done, and to persist in it; in the hope that my action may do
something to mitigate the evil example which you are setting to the
parish."
"This is awful. When I stood beside you at the altar I never thought
that you would speak and behave to me like this--never!"
"Nor I that I should be constrained to such a course. You may, however,
easily make the situation more tolerable."
"How?"
"By withdrawing your candidature."
"Indeed! Now I see the point at which the whole thing's aimed.
Crookenden has egged you on to make a public exhibition of yourself in
order to drive me from the righteous stronghold which I have occupied.
I see the Jesuit hand."
She shrugged her shoulders as calmly as if we were discussing the
question of thick or clear soup for dinner.
"You see things which do not exist. It is a condition of a certain
mental state. There is one thing I should like to say. I have been told
that courtesy is the characteristic note of English politics. That men
may sit on opposite sides of the House and yet be very good friends
both in and out of it. I hope that may be the same with us. You have
taken up the cry of 'Beer and the "Fox and Hounds,"' I that of the
'Bible and Clean Living.' Let each admit that the other may be actuated
by conscientious motives. Then we shall still be good friends, though
we may agree to differ."
It was no use talking to such a woman, not the slightest. We all have
to bear our burdens, and I bore mine, though I never supposed that it
would have taken the shape of being opposed by my own wife in an
election for the School Board. As a matter of fact, it was
unendurable--yet I bore it. Not only did she persist in her candidature,
but she carried it on with a degree of activity which was little less
than astounding. The contest afforded considerable entertainment to the
parish. From the public interest point of view there might have been
only two candidates--she and I. It was a subject of constant comment
in the public prints. "Husband and wife oppose each other at a
School-Board election. Amusing situation. Lively proceedings." That was
the sort of headline which confronted me in I do not know how many
papers.
Some of my colleagues actually chose to regard me as responsible for
Mrs Bloxam's conduct. It is a painful moment when a man, of a naturally
sensitive disposition, has to state in public that his wife is acting
in direct defiance of his wishes. And the delicacy of his position is
intensified when his hearers begin to criticise her conduct. It is in
accordance with the fitness of things to abuse your opponent; but when
your opponent is your own wife, it is an open question whether, even if
you are entitled to abuse her yourself, your associates have a right to
do so too. It is obviously a problem of an exceedingly complicated
character, and one which, I believe, has never been properly thrashed
out. I shall never forget my sensations when, at a meeting at the "Fox
and Hounds," Tyler began to call Henrietta names. I had to stop him.
Then he said I was a traitor. He certainly succeeded in creating a
suspicion that I was in collusion with my own wife to cause him and
myself to be defeated. I had to put great restraint upon myself to
prevent a vulgar brawl.
One morning, as I was walking along Church Lane, I met Crookenden. I
stopped him. There was no beating about the bush. I went straight to
the point.
"I hope, Mr Crookenden, that you are able to reconcile it with your
conscience that you have succeeded in sowing the seeds of discord
between husband and wife."
"Pray how have I done that?"
"You know very well what I mean, sir. Have the goodness not to feign
ignorance with me."
"You refer to your wife's action with reference to that pet scheme of
yours, the School Board with which you are about to saddle the parish."
He actually laughed. That is the kind of man he is. No wonder that some
say the Church of England totters to a fall! Just then Colonel Laughton
came through the clapper gate. Crookenden turned to him.
"Ah, Mr Bloxam, here is the man you should assail. Laughton, Mr Bloxam
wants to know who induced Mrs Bloxam to put herself forward in
connection with that School Board of his."
"Why, Madge, of course." The Colonel addressed himself to me. "Mrs
Laughton said to your wife, 'Here's Bloxam making an ass of
himself'--"
"Sir!"
"I'm not implying that that's the exact word she used, but that's the
sense of it. 'Let's do something to show that it's not always the women
who are idiots. If you'll stand, I will.' But your wife wouldn't, so
Madge kept on, and kept on at her, till she did; few people can hold
out against Madge when she's made up her mind about a thing." Laughton
put his feet apart, his stick under his arm, and his hands in his
trouser pockets. "Why, you don't mean to say that you object to your
wife standing. My wife is, and I don't mind."
"The cases are not identical. Mrs Laughton is not standing in
opposition to you."
"No, I'm not a fool--at least, I'm not that kind. Now, look here,
Bloxam, we all know what's the matter with you, and why you've gone out
of your road to set the parish by the ears. Crookenden's rubbed you the
wrong way, that's the beginning and the end of it. Now here is
Crookenden, and I'm speaking for him when I say that he'll be delighted
to shake hands with you and say 'As we were.' Then your wife'll
withdraw her candidature in favour of yours, and be only too glad to
get the chance of doing it."
Crookenden held out his hand.
"Whether Bloxam prefers to stand as an opposition candidate or not
makes no difference to me. But I do trust that he won't allow a
friendship of many years' standing to be interrupted by a little
difference of opinion on the subject of education."
There was a twinkle in the rector's eyes which I did not altogether
relish. But I believe I should have taken his hand if Tyler had not
just then appeared in sight. I remembered what I had said to him, and
in his hearing, and I refrained. I observed, with dignity,--
"I am afraid that there is more in question than a difference of
opinion on the subject of education."
And I walked away.