E-text prepared by Al Haines
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 18430-h.htm or 18430-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/4/3/18430/18430-h/18430-h.htm)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/4/3/18430/18430-h.zip)
OUR ELIZABETH
A Humour Novel
by
FLORENCE A. KILPATRICK
Illustrated by Ernest Forbes
[Frontispiece: Elizabeth Renshaw.]
Thornton Butterworth Limited
62 St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 2
Published November 1920
TO CIS
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Elizabeth is not a type; she is an individuality. Signs and omens at
her birth no doubt determined her sense of the superstitious; but I
trace her evolution as a figure of fun to some sketches of mine in the
pages of Punch. These, however, were only impressions of Elizabeth on
a small scale, but I acknowledge the use of them here in the process of
developing her to full life-size. Elizabeth, as I say, is a
personality apart; there is only one Elizabeth. Here she is.
F. A. K.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 20
ILLUSTRATIONS
Our Elizabeth . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
Henry and I looked at the Cookery Book
The Kid
A Bad Sign
Marion dropped fifteen stitches
Our Friend William
'Wot's 'orrible about it?'
'Oh, must I, Mama?'
''E was starin' at it wild-like.'
'Do you mean the boiler one?' I asked.
'I suppose I'm shocking you terribly.'
A slight lowering of the left eye-lid.
Henry, being a Scotsman, likes argument.
'A fair razzle-dazzle.'
She dashed from the room in a spasm of mirth.
'Am I not a suitable wife for Henry?'
'Carn't you get rid of 'er?'
'Stop, William!' Marion said.
'Oo ses the Signs is wrong?'
''Ere's to us, all of us!'
OUR ELIZABETH
CHAPTER I
If you ask Henry he will tell you that I cannot cook. In fact, he will
tell you even if you don't ask. To hold up my culinary failures to
ridicule is one of his newest forms of humour (new to Henry, I
mean--the actual jokes you will have learned already at your
grandmother's knee).
I had begun to see that I must either get a servant soon or a judicial
separation from Henry. That was the stage at which I had arrived.
Things were getting beyond me. By 'things' I mean the whole loathsome
business of housework. My _métier_ is to write--not that I am a great
writer as yet, though I hope to be some day. What I never hope to be
is a culinary expert. Should you command your cook to turn out a short
story she could not suffer more in the agonies of composition than I do
in making a simple Yorkshire pudding.
Henry does not like housework any more than I do; he says the
performance of menial duties crushes his spirit--but he makes such a
fuss about things. You might think, to hear him talk, that getting up
coal, lighting fires, chopping wood and cleaning flues, knives and
brasses were the entire work of a household instead of being mere
incidents in the daily routine. If he had had to tackle my
duties . . . but men never understand how much there is to do in a
house.
Even when they do lend a hand my experience is that they invariably
manage to hurt themselves in some way. Henry seems incapable of
getting up coal without dropping the largest knob on his foot. If he
chops wood he gashes himself; he cannot go through the simple rite of
pouring boiling water out of a saucepan without getting scalded; and
when he mounts the steps to adjust the blinds I always keep the brandy
uncorked in readiness; you see, he declares that a chap needs something
to pull himself together after a fall from a step-ladder.
Perhaps you trace in all this a certain bitterness, a veiled antagonism
on my part towards Henry; you may even imagine that we are a bickering
sort of couple, constantly trying to get the better of each other. If
so, you are mistaken. Up to six months before this story opens our
married life had been ideal--for which reason I didn't open the story
earlier. Ideal marriages (to any one except the contracting parties)
are uninteresting affairs. It is such a pity that the good, the
laudable, things in life generally are.
One of the reasons why our union was ideal (up to six months before
this story opens) was that we shared identical tastes. Comradeship is
the true basis of--but perhaps you have read my articles on the subject
on the Woman's Page of the _Daily Trail_. I always advise girls to
marry men of their own temperament. As a matter of fact, I expect they
marry the men who are easiest to land, but you're not allowed to say
things like that (on the Woman's Page). We have pure and noble ideals,
we are tender, motherly and housewifely (on the Woman's Page).
Henry and I were of the same temperament. For one thing, we were
equally incompetent at golf. Perhaps I foozled my drive rather worse
than Henry, but then he never took fewer than five strokes on the
green, whereas I have occasionally done it in four. Then we mutually
detested gramophones. But when we discovered that we could both play
'Caller Herrin'' on the piano with one finger (entirely by ear) we felt
that we were affinities, and got married shortly afterwards.
Stevenson once said, 'Marriage is not a bed of roses; it is a field of
battle.' At the epoch of which I write Henry and I had not got to
turning machine-guns on each other. At the most we only had diplomatic
unpleasantnesses. The position, however, was getting strained. I
realized quite clearly that if we didn't obtain domestic help of some
sort very soon it might come to open hostilities. Isn't it surprising
how the petty annoyances of life can wear away the strong bulwarks of
trust and friendship formed by years of understanding? Our particular
bulwarks were becoming quite shaky through nothing else but having to
muddle through the dull sordid grind of cooking and housework by
ourselves. We were getting disillusioned with each other. No
'jaundiced eye that casts discolouration' could look more jaundiced
than Henry's when I asked him to dry up the dinner things.
Having explained all this, you will now understand something of my
feelings when, on going to answer a knock at the door, I was confronted
by a solid female who said she had been sent from the Registry Office.
Oh, thrice blessed Registry Office that had answered my call.
'Come in,' I said eagerly, and, leading the way into the dining-room, I
seated myself before her. With lowered eyes and modest mien I was, of
course, waiting for her to speak first. I did not wait long. Her
voice, concise and direct, rapped out: 'So you require a cook-general?'
'Yes--er--please,' I murmured. Under her searching gaze my knees
trembled, my pulses throbbed, a slight perspiration broke out on my
forehead. My whole being seemed to centre itself in the mute inquiry:
'Shall I suit?'
There was a pause while the applicant placed her heavy guns. Then she
opened fire immediately. 'I suppose you have outside daily help?'
'Er--no,' I confessed.
'Then you have a boy to do the windows, knives and boots?'
'No.'
'Do you send everything to the laundry?'
'Well . . . no . . . not quite.' I wanted to explain, to modify, to
speak airily of woollens being 'just rubbed through,' but she hurried
me forward.
'Have you a hot water circulator?'
'No.'
'A gas cooking-range?'
'No.'
It was terrible. I seemed to have nothing. I stood, as it were, naked
to the world, bereft of a single inducement to hold out to the girl.
'Do you dine late?'
At this point, when I longed to answer 'No,' I was compelled to say
'Yes.' That decided her. She rose at once and moved towards the door.
'I'm afraid your situation won't do for me,' she remarked.
That was all she said. She was perfectly dignified about it. Much as
she obviously condemned me, there was no noisy recrimination, no
violent vituperative outburst on her part. I followed in her wake to
the door. Even at the eleventh hour I hoped for a respite. 'Couldn't
something be arranged?' I faltered as my gaze wandered hungrily over
her capable-looking form. 'We might get you a gas-cooker--and all
that.'
Do not condemn me. Remember that my will had been weakened by
housework; six months of doing my own washing-up had brought me to my
knees. I was ready to agree to any terms that were offered me. The
applicant shook her head. There were too many obstacles in the way,
too many radical changes necessary before the place could be made
suitable for her. I realized finality in her answer, 'No, nothink,'
and closing the front door behind her, I returned to the study to
brood. I was still there, thinking bitterly, the shadows of the
evening creeping around me, when Henry came in.
'Hallo,' he said gruffly. 'No signs of dinner yet? Do you know the
time?'
And only six months ago (before this story opens) he would have
embraced me tenderly when he came in and said, 'How is the little
wifie-pifie to-night? I hope it hasn't been worrying its fluffy little
head with writing and making its hubby-wubby anxious?'
Perhaps you prefer Henry in the former role. Frankly, I did not. 'You
needn't be so impatient,' I retorted. 'I expect you've gorged yourself
on a good lunch in town. Anyhow, it won't take long to get dinner, as
we're having tinned soup and eggs.'
'Oh, damn eggs,' said Henry. 'I'm sick of the sight of 'em.'
You can see for yourself how unrestrained we were getting. The thin
veneer of civilization (thinner than ever when Henry is hungry) was
fast wearing into holes. There was a pause, and then I coldly
remarked: 'You didn't kiss me when you came in.'
It was a custom to which I was determined to cling with grim
resolution. If I allowed his treatment of me to become too casual we
might continue to drift apart even when we had some one to do the
washing-up.
Henry came over to me and bestowed a labial salute. It is the only
adequate description I can give of the performance. Then I went to the
kitchen and got out the cookery-book.
It is a remarkable thing that I am never able to cook anything without
the aid of the book. Even if I prepare the same dish seven times a
week I must have the printed instructions constantly before me, or I am
lost. This is especially strange, because I have a retentive memory
for other things. My mind is crammed with odd facts retained from
casual reading. If you asked me, the date of the Tai-ping Rebellion
(though you're not likely to) I could tell you at once that it
originated in 1850 and was not suppressed until 1864, for I remember
reading about it in a dentist's waiting-room when I was fifteen. Yet
although I prepared scrambled eggs one hundred times in six months
(Henry said it was much oftener than that) I had to pore over the
instructions as earnestly when doing my 'century' as on the first
occasion.
The subsequent meal was taken in silence. The hay-fever from which I
am prone to suffer at all seasons of the year was particularly
persistent that evening. A rising irritability, engendered by leathery
eggs and fostered by Henry's expression, was taking possession of me.
Quite suddenly I discovered that the way he held his knife annoyed me.
Further, his manner of eating soup maddened me. But I restrained
myself. I merely remarked: 'You have finished your soup, I _hear_,
love.' We had not yet reached the stage of open rupture when I could
exclaim: 'For goodness' sake stop swilling down soup like a grampus!'
I have never heard a grampus take soup. But the expression seems
picturesque.
Henry, too, had not quite lost his fortitude. My hay-fever was
obviously annoying him, but he only commented: 'Don't you think you
ought to go to a doctor--a really reliable man--with that distressing
nasal complaint of yours, my dear?' I knew, however, that he was
longing to bark out: 'Can't you do something to stop that everlasting
sniffing? It's driving me mad, woman.'
How long would it be before we reached this stage of debacle? I
brooded. Then the front door bell rang.
'You go,' I said to Henry.
'No, you go,' he replied. 'It looks bad for a man if he is master of
the house to answer the door.'
I do not know why it should look bad for a man to answer his own door
unless he is a bad man. But there are some things in our English
social system which will ever remain unquestioned. I rose and went to
open the front door. The light from the hall lamp fell dimly on a lank
female form which stood on the doorstep. Out of the dusk a voice spoke
to me. It said, 'I think you're wantin' a cook-general?'
I cried out in a loud voice, saying, 'I am.'
'Well, I'm Elizabeth Renshaw. You wrote to me. I got your letter sent
on from the Registry Office along with ninety others. But I liked
yours the best, so I thought there'd be no 'arm in coming to see----'
'Come in, Elizabeth,' I said earnestly. 'I'm glad you liked my letter.'
I began to wonder if I was not a great writer after all.