"Well, have you finally decided to give us the chuck?"
"May I ask, Mr Tyler, what it is you mean?"
"Oh, it's plain enough. I always am plain, I am." He was, confound his
impudence! "Have you arranged to back out in favour of Mrs Bloxam?
That's what I want to know. So long as one of the family gets in, I
dare say you don't care which it is. But that won't do for me." He laid
his great, grimy hand upon my shoulder, and kept it there
in spite of my effort at withdrawal. "You've been stirring us up,
you've been worriting us till you've got us all alive about this
here School Board, you've got us all to stand, and now it looks
to me as if you was going to dish us and leave us to be laughed at;
because, don't tell me that a man can't get his wife to do what he
chooses--leastways, a man that is a man." He looked at me with his
great black eyes in a way I did not like. "You mind me, Mr Bloxam, if
after all that's passed I'm left out in the cold, for folks to snigger
at, no matter by whom it is, man or woman, you'll be sorry--you hear
that? you'll be sorry. I'm not the sort to play a joke on, as perhaps
you'll find before you've done."
He slouched off without affording me an opportunity to give him a piece
of my mind, even had I been disposed to do so, of which I am not sure.
The fact is, he is such an impossible character, having been convicted
several times of assaults with violence, that he is not at all the sort
of person with whom I should condescend to remonstrate, beyond, that
is, a certain clearly-defined limit.
Two days afterwards the poll was taken. Very thankful I was. Had it
been postponed much longer I should have gone away for a change of air.
My system was completely run down. I saw most plainly that for a person
of my constitution public life was not desirable. I wished, very
heartily, that I had never had anything to do with the business from
the first.
My emotions cannot be pictured when the result was announced. Mrs
Bloxam and I were bracketed together at the head of those who were
elected. We had each received the same number of votes. And it is my
belief that all the idiots in the country-side, of every shade of
opinion, thought it would be a joke to plump for the pair of us. On no
other hypothesis can I understand such an obvious coincidence.
Crookenden came next. And, after him, came four of his nominees. I was
the only one on our side who was returned.
There, at present, the situation remains. The first meeting of the
Board has yet to take place. I need not point out how, in anticipation
of that event, my situation is painful in the extreme. That solemn
truth is only too obvious. I am one against six; and one of those six
is Henrietta. It is dreadful to think that, in public matters, my wife
should be in a position to trample on me whenever she pleases. How can
a woman respect her husband when he is in such a humiliating minority?
Situated as we are she has only to contradict me to prevail. What,
then, becomes of marital authority? Such a condition of affairs is an
unnatural one.
My recent colleagues, by some perversion of reasoning, choose to
consider, as they put it, that I have "dished" them. I do not know how
they make it out. I can safely affirm that my conduct defies criticism.
Yet Tyler has already nearly assaulted me in the street; while in the
presence of a large number of persons, Broadbridge has asked me if I
call myself a gentleman. It seems to me that I could hardly be in a
more uncomfortable position.
I say--I have said it more than once before, but I repeat it
again--that the fact that such a state of things should be even
possible, points to a radical defect in the fabric of the British
constitution. One, moreover, which calls for instant and drastic
remedy, if we are not to relapse into a condition of worse than
savagery. To speak of nothing else, how can a woman give due and proper
consideration to the Apostolic teaching, "Wives, obey your husbands,"
if she is not only in active and even organised opposition to her
husband, but actually in a majority against him of six to one?
I ask the question without having the slightest doubt of what is the
answer which I must receive. It is not in accordance with the Divine
intention that a husband should be made to look like a fool. And what
else can he do if he finds himself in such a situation?